Global food insecurity as a crisis of social reproduction for the classes of labour

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the ongoing global food crisis, beyond a conjunctural price increase, is an expression of the structural crisis of social reproduction experienced by the classes of rural labour in the Global South. By interrogating the reports and policy recommendations of international organizations on global food insecurity, the essay focuses on the internal relationship between the crisis of social reproduction for the classes of labour who cannot produce and who cannot consume sufficient and healthy food.

Introduction

On 13 April 2022, the Heads of the World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and World Trade Organization (WTO) released a joint statement calling for urgent action on food security. Accordingly, the fallout of the war in Ukraine in the third year of the ongoing global pandemic has resulted in food inflation and food shortage which especially threatens the poorest segments of the lower and middle-income countries. In fact, issues such as food crisis, food insecurity and food inflation have been on the global economic agenda since the previous crisis in neoliberalism, namely, 2007–8 global financial crisis. Even though the pandemic and the political conflicts have severely impacted the food security of the working classes worldwide, it would be wrong to consider the global food crisis as a conjunctural issue stemming from fluctuations in demand and supply. As questioned by Henry Bernstein in the introduction of his celebrated book Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change (2010: 2), ‘[W]hile more than enough is produced to feed the world's population adequately, many people go hungry much or all of the time’. Global food crises under neoliberalism, including today's food crisis, reflect the contradictions of global value relations formed under the corporate food regime since the 1980s, and they cannot simply be resolved through demand–supply management (Araghi, 2009b).

In this essay, I aim to examine the global food crisis and food insecurity from a social reproduction lens by unpacking the internal relationship between the subsistence crisis of the small-scale food producers of the Global South under the corporate food regime since the 1980s and the risk of hunger the working classes of the world are currently facing. I argue that food insecurity indicates a crisis of social reproduction for the classes of rural and urban labour. The term classes of labour refer to ‘the growing numbers depend – directly or indirectly – on the sale of their labour power for their daily reproduction’ (Panitch and Leys, 2001, as cited in Bernstein, 2007) who have been dispossessed of sufficient means to reproduce itself (Bernstein, 2010: 110) due to the capitalist development in agriculture. The corporate food regime of neoliberalism has transformed rural livelihood through agricultural policies such as the removal of state subsidies for small-scale farmers, privatization of agricultural state economic enterprises, trade liberalization and rising control of agribusiness firms on agricultural production. These have resulted in the dispossession and proletarianization of small-scale farmers of the Global South; increasing market dependency of small-holding farmers to access means of production and social reproduction; and a subsistence crisis of the classes of labour. Today's food crisis and food insecurity of the classes of (rural and urban) labour are the expressions of the structural shifts, including the development of capitalism in agriculture; the commodification of the production, circulation, distribution and consumption of food; and dispossession, impoverishment and proletarianization of small-scale farmers of the South. Therefore, its analysis necessitates attention to the internal relationship between the social reproduction of those who cannot consume and those who cannot produce enough and healthy food (Bernstein, 2014).

To reveal the continuity between the crisis of social reproduction of the producers and consumers of food, the essay begins with a discussion on the crisis of social reproduction experienced by small-scale farmers and patterns of proletarianization by paying attention to the formation of classes of labour in the agrarian South under neoliberalism. It then analyses today's food insecurity as a structural crisis of social reproduction by critically interrogating the policy recommendations of the international organizations. Finally, the essay concludes by arguing for the internal relationship between the precarious conditions of producing and consuming food under the corporate food regime of neoliberalism.

Crisis of social reproduction for the classes of rural labour under neoliberalism

The concept of social reproduction refers to the daily and intergenerational processes involved in producing, maintaining and reproducing labouring populations, such as the provision of food, clothing, housing, healthcare, education and basic safety (Bezanson and Luxton, 2006: 3). Capitalist social reproduction is based upon the interplay between the states, markets and households whose relationship may complement and/or contradict each other. Changing forms of the relationship among the states, markets and households bring different regimes of social reproduction having peculiar contradictions and crisis tendencies under various phases of capitalism. For instance, neoliberalism brought a new social reproduction regime based upon state and corporate disinvestment from social welfare and externalization of care work onto families (i.e. women). Yet, neoliberal regime of social reproduction also brought a shift from the ‘male-breadwinner/female caregiver’ model of household under the state-managed capitalism of the 20th century to the ‘two-earner family’ through the feminization of paid workforce (Fraser, 2017). Furthermore, social reproductive contradictions and crises are endemic to capitalism as such since, on the one hand, social reproduction is a necessary condition for sustained capital accumulation; on the other hand, capitalism's need for unlimited accumulation destabilizes the patterns of social reproduction on which it relies (Fraser, 2017: 22).

The social reproduction of the rural populations under different phases of capitalism and the question of how the conditions of production and social reproduction of the peasant households are determined by the operations of capital and of the state (Bernstein, 1977) require particular attention. Capitalism as a system in which the direct producers’ access to the means of production, to the means of labour and to the basic conditions of their survival and self-reproduction is mediated by the market (Wood, 2009), has restructured the ‘imperatives of social reproduction’ (Mezzadri et al., 2021) for the peasantry who traditionally ‘reproduce themselves through their own labour’ (Bernstein, 1977: 61). For Bernstein (2010: 4), development of capitalism in agriculture has changed the social character of small-scale farming in two respects. First, it has led to the commodification of subsistence by transforming peasants into petty-commodity producers who are obliged to produce their living through integration into broader social divisions of labour and markets. Secondly, petty-commodity producers are subject to class differentiation, leading to the class formation of the classes of small-scale capitalist farmers, petty-commodity producers and wage workers.

The development of capitalism in agriculture and proletarianization of the peasantry have taken various forms and processes under different phases of capitalism. Yet, as warned by Lenin ([1899] 1974) and Kautsky ([1899] 1988), it is a contradictory process, and there is no unique law of agrarian development under capitalism (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2009: 10). While defining the dispossession and proletarianization of the peasantry as a historical path of development of capitalism, both Lenin and Kautsky highlighted their persistence by paying attention to the processes through which capital dominate agriculture and transform not only property relations but also forms of exploitation. In the contemporary Marxist literature, the development of capitalism in agriculture and the transformation of the peasantry is analysed as a process of permanent primitive accumulation by referring to the ongoing strategy of capitalism to dispossess small-scale producers and to integrate non-capitalist strata (Luxemburg, 2003) into capital accumulation process.

By interrogating the linear analyses of agricultural modernization, the food regime analysis unveils how key historical contradictions of capital accumulation processes have penetrated and transformed the production, circulation, distribution and consumption of food (cf: Friedmann, 1993; McMichael, 2009). Accordingly, different food regimes reflect different forms of power relations embedded in ‘cross-scale agrarian transformations’ which include ‘the exercise of, and subordination to, episodic hegemonic political–economic projects within the state system – embodying changing trade, investment, and financial strategies in the global food system’ (McMichael, 2021: 218). In this context, the first food regime (1870s to 1930s) combined colonial tropical imports to Europe with basic grains and livestock imports from settler colonies whereas the second food regime (1950s to 1970s) gave priority to national regulation and authorized both import controls and export subsidies to manage national agricultural policies (Friedmann, 1993: 31; McMichael, 2009: 141). Even though the integration of farmers into markets, the transformation of peasants into petty-commodity producers and the commodification of subsistence were initiated under the second food regime of post-World War II; this process indicated a ‘relative depeasantization’ (Araghi, 2009a: 130) as the small-scale farmers of the agrarian South were able to benefit from the protectionist policies such as the price supports, subsidies and financing of agricultural inputs by the state. The Third Food Regime, the corporate food regime since the 1980s, has deepened commodification and institutionalized market and property relations privileging agribusiness ‘in the name of production “efficiencies,” “free trade,” and global “food security” … [and] institutionalized subsidies for Northern energy-intensive agribusiness production and export of artificially cheapened foodstuffs’ (McMichael, 2012: 682) at the expense of both farmers of the Global South and the global food security.

The corporate food regime of neoliberalism has transformed rural livelihood in the Global South through policies such as the decline or removal of state subsidies for the small-scale farmers, privatization of agricultural state economic enterprises, decreasing price support schemes, rising control of agribusiness firms on agricultural production, the diminishing availability of institutional credit mechanisms for small-scale farmers and the expropriation of farmland for non-agricultural purposes such as mining and energy investments. The most immediate impact of these transformations on small-scale farmers has been the rise of input prices and the fall of crop prices. This has led to an increase in the market dependency of small-scale farmers for their reproduction and, therefore, a subsistence crisis, as defined by Bernstein (1977) as ‘simple reproduction squeeze’. Simple reproduction squeeze under neoliberalism has been manifested in the form of rising production costs relative to farm incomes as a result of the rural development models, which have encouraged more expensive and market-based means of production (especially input prices such as seeds, tools, fertilizers, etc.) due to the pressures exerted by commodity relations (Bernstein, 1977: 65).

Classes of labour rely on the combination of multiplicity and highly fragmented forms of rural and urban, waged and unwaged work to cope with highly precarious means of livelihood and the crisis of social reproduction. First of all, even though a significant portion of the dispossessed farmers of the Global South have migrated to the countries of the Global North or urban centres and constituted the most precarious segment of the urban workforce, this has not been a straightforward process, and a considerable part of the population in the Global South is still rural. Unable to meet the conditions of social reproduction merely through agricultural production, rural populations in the Global South have developed specific survival strategies, one of the most important being diversification of income sources in agricultural or non-agricultural activities. Therefore, the classes of rural labour under neoliberalism include ‘rural labour beyond the farm’ (Bernstein, 2010) supplied by both fully proletarianized, landless workers and marginal and poor farmers who cannot reproduce themselves merely through farming. Secondly and relatedly, under neoliberalism, there is a need to overcome the dualistic analysis of the workforce such as urban/rural, agricultural/non-agricultural, wage employment/self-employment and landowning/landless (O’Laughlin, 1996; Pattenden, 2018) as these categories mostly overlap within the proletarian households as a means to cope with the crisis of social reproduction. Classes of labour under neoliberalism have been formed through the ‘unlimited supply of surplus labour’ (Veltmeyer, 2013: 81) generated by the neoliberal transformation of agriculture who pursue their reproduction increasingly in insecure and oppressive waged and unwaged employment across different sites of the social division of labour. Finally, classes of labour capture the multiplicity of proletarian conditions along the lines of gender, race and caste. As a matter of fact, since the 1980s, the global labour markets have experienced widespread feminization and racialization due to capital flows and the dispossession, proletarianization and migration of the small-scale producers of the Global South (Ferguson and McNally, 2015).

Food insecurity as an expression of the social reproductive contradictions of capitalism

Globally, the number of people facing acute food insecurity and the risk of hunger has risen dramatically during the last three years. As shown by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 193 million people across 53 countries were acutely food insecure and in need of urgent support in 2021 (FAO, 2022a) whereas almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 (FAO, 2022b). In the reports and policy programs prepared by international organizations such as WFP (2022), World Bank (2022a), IMF and WTO, factors that have triggered the global food crisis are the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis. To stop hunger, WFP calls private sector companies, high net-worth individuals, influencers and celebrities for technical assistance, knowledge transfers, financial contributions and raising their voices against global hunger. In its response to the rising food insecurity, World Bank announced 30 billion dollars of assistance for a period of 15 months to encourage food and fertilizer production, enhance food systems, facilitate greater trade and support vulnerable households and producers in several countries in Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, in their Joint Statement (World Bank, 2022b), WFP, WB, IMF and WTO call for urgent action to address food insecurity and support vulnerable groups and countries through emergency food supplies, financial support and increased agricultural production. Along with the call for the international community to help support urgent financing needs, the Statement urges the governments ‘to keep trade open and avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people’. For these international organizations, food insecurity is seen as a supply-side issue whereas food security is expected to be achieved through the trickle-down effects of agricultural growth led by the private sector (Vercillo, 2020: 237). Therefore, their reports have serious shortcomings not only in suggesting wrong solutions but also in failing to address the structural reasons behind the current global food insecurity.

First of all, even though the ongoing simultaneous global crises and conflicts such as the pandemic and the wars in Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Libya and Ukraine have intensified the global food crisis, they are the expressions of the structural contradictions and crises of capitalism (La Via Campesina, 2022). On the one hand, the pandemic hit a world already suffering from growing social and economic inequalities and the devastating impact of the global financial crises which started in 2007–2008. Therefore, the pandemic represents the acceleration of the degenerating economic, political and social contradictions of neoliberalism (Saad-Filho, 2021; Yalman, 2021). Furthermore, the pandemic-initiated crisis, as a crisis of social reproduction (Mezzadri, 2020), has unveiled the social reproductive contradictions (Fraser, 2017), which are endemic to capitalism as such and which have been governed by financialization under neoliberalism. The commodified world food system, from its production to distribution, circulation and consumption under neoliberalism, revealed its contradictions and fragilities under the pandemic to an unprecedented degree. On the one hand, the agrarian capital faced significant challenges, especially during the first months of the pandemic, due to the factors such as the slow-down of commodity flows; on the other hand, the classes of labour – small-scale producers and consumer households – faced challenges such as the micro-food crisis of difficulty in selling and buying products (Pattenden et al., 2021; Stevano et al., 2021). These were the direct reflections of the commodification of the means of production and social reproduction under the corporate food regime. On the other hand, it is obvious that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has aggravated global food insecurity as Ukraine, the leading exporter of grain, has seen a drastic decline in its exports. Therefore, the relationship between the war and the global food insecurity is directly related to the production of food for long-distance trade and dependency of the circulation, provision and consumption of food on international markets.

Secondly, however, international organizations such as WB, IMF and WTO consider free trade as a solution even though the transformation of food into a commodity produced for long-distance trade, along with long value chain, is among the main reasons behind the global food crisis. Under the corporate food regime of neoliberalism, food has been transformed into a commodity produced and traded for profits through the policies of trade liberalization, which have undermined the role of governments in ensuring the conditions of production for farmers and of social reproduction – that is food security – for the classes of labour. These policies have given agribusiness increasing control over food production and distribution through programs such as privatization, market access and the removal of restrictions on imports. Globalization of agriculture and food was promoted under two arguments: (i) it would increase food production as global corporations are more efficient than small-scale peasant farmers (ii) it would make food cheaper and, therefore more accessible for the poor. As a result, for the purpose of promoting free trade under IMF and World Bank guided economic reforms and the WTO discipline, the countries of the Global South have been urged to dismantle their ‘outdated’ and inefficient policies promoting self-sufficiency in food grains production and their domestic systems of procurement of food grains and distribution at controlled prices. Accordingly, they would benefit from specializing in non-grain crops in which they had a competitive advantage by increasing their exports and importing their staple food products (Patnaik, 2009; Patnaik and Patnaik, 2017). Overall, the product compositions in many countries of the South have shifted from staple food products to the crops prioritized by agribusiness and this has resulted in dependency on imported staple food products.

The global food crisis has proven the argument that free trade would bring food security wrong. On the one hand, industrial food production is less productive as it is extremely resource and energy intensive; on the other hand, one third of the world's food comes from small farms (Ritchie, 2021), whereas agribusiness produces commodities such as fertilizers, pesticides and cash crops. Furthermore, as food production has increasingly become dependent upon these inputs produced and circulated by agribusiness, global financial crises since the late 2000s have directly led to the rise of food prices. Rising food prices do not benefit farmers as the cost of production also increases (Shiva, 2016b: 90–95). Therefore, rising food prices have not only hit low-income urban and rural consumers of food but also small-scale producers within the classes of labour. Overall, under the corporate food regime, nutrition and food security of the masses in the South is directly affected by international factors such as market fluctuations, foreign exchange rates, terms of trade, or conflicts. Therefore, as depicted by La Via Campesina (2022) and food sovereignty movement, the current food crisis is structural as the mode of organization of the system has transformed countries into food import-dependent countries and food into a commodity produced for long-distance trade.

Thirdly, the commodification of food and the market dependency of classes of labour in the processes of production and social reproduction is inherently gendered. As agriculture and food systems become increasingly commoditized, production, provisioning and preparation of food which operate through gender division of work, tend to shift (Vercillo, 2020: 237). On the one hand, the ecological impacts of transformations such as land expropriation for off-farm investments and the dominance of resource intensive corporate agriculture such as biodiversity loss, water pollution and soil deterioration have limited women's access to the means of production and triggered a shift from subsistence to market dependent forms of rural livelihood. This has left rural women who have traditionally been ‘the subsistence farmers of the planet’ (Federici, 2004) at the mercy of the market for both production and consumption of food. As argued by Shiva (2016a), corporate production and distribution system has been a significant impediment in women's access to the conditions for producing food. On the other hand, the relationship between women and food security needs to be situated in the context of women's paid and unpaid work (Stevano, 2019). As mentioned above, the neoliberal regime of social reproduction is characterized by simultaneous disinvestment from social welfare and feminization of the precarious paid workforce (Fraser, 2017). In this context, women in the classes of labour have been forced into informal, marginalized and extremely low-waged forms of paid labour and precarious conditions of reproducing the household due to the limited access to healthy food, housing, etc. Furthermore, in many cases, limited access to rural commons (such as land, water and firewood) has led to intensification of reproductive work of classes of rural women, especially the time and effort spent on preparing food, caring for dependents and producing basic goods and services at home. This, in turn, affects women's labour force participation (Naudi and Rao, 2018; Rao, 2018). Therefore, under food insecurity, women in the classes of labour who have traditionally been responsible for feeding their family through their unpaid care work face the triple burden of (i) intensification of reproductive work, (ii) limited income and time stemming from their heavy working conditions outside the home and (iii) rising food prices.

Conclusion

In this essay, I examined the global food crisis as a structural expression of the social reproductive crisis of capitalism that cannot be solved through policies of demand and supply management within the free market logic. In fact, while more than enough is produced to feed the world's population, millions of people face the risk of hunger and malnutrition (Bernstein, 2010: 2), and this is an expression not only of the fluctuations in food prices but also of the situation of food within the global value relations. Food crises indicate neither a simple mismatch between the world's population and the food output nor a conjunctural implication of price fluctuations, health crises, or global conflicts. Instead, they are embedded in the contradictions of production and social reproduction under capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular. As put by Araghi (2009b), the global food crisis is a manifestation of accumulation by displacement and the neoliberal restructuring of global value chains. This global dispossession and displacement have created under-reproduced rural and urban classes of labour who have lost non-market access to their means of production and social reproduction.

All in all, even though hunger and malnutrition are considered merely as implications of poverty and unequal relations of distribution, they indicate a more complex crisis of social reproduction for the classes of labour which include the millions who cannot buy and who cannot produce enough and healthy food. Therefore, its analysis requires attention to the continuity between the precarious conditions of producing and buying food under corporate, industrialized agriculture.