The Right to Food: How to Guarantee

Abstract

The article accepts the idea of a right to food as a socially basic right - everyone's minimum reasonable claims on the rest of humanity. It then tries to determine whether, and how, a global right to food might become a reality for the present generation of hungry people. Physical constraints to increased agricultural production, while important, are not insurmountable barriers to achieving a right to food. More fundamental are choices about the shape of development programs within countries - and their immediate beneficiaries - and the way in which international transactions distribute the costs, risks, and burdens of guaranteeing a sustainable right to food. The author argues that international changes should be made to minimize the current tendency for the greatest burdens and costs of securing a right to food to fall on individuals and collectivities with the fewest resources for changing the existing political and economic structures.