Oldal 196 [196]
OCR
194 DOROTTYA MENDLY — MELINDA MIHÁLY humans) are domestic animals, and agriculture is among the causes of the endangerment of the vast majority of endangered species (Potts et al. 2017). In addition to the data selected above, a wide range of statistics confirm that the current operation of our food systems should be understood as a key factor in the ongoing ecological crisis, at a global level (Ritchie — Roser 2019b). This suffices to establish that the expected global food shortage and the 21stcentury crises directly related to it will elevate food supply to the rank of the most crucial problem of the century. In this chapter, an attempt is made to outline the problems of this complex area via a global framework with the help of a brief historical survey and the presentation of the basic concepts. Next to be discussed are humanity’s occasional, pragmatic and systemic solutions for the issue of nutrition. It is a basic principle of our approach that the problems of food must be deliberated at the systemic level so as to arrive at real solutions. It is therefore important to take stock of the compatible systemic alternatives that might easily be combined and to integrate them into the set of solutions to global concerns. Framing the problem How can one identify the problem so as to ensure that it is understood in the most profound way possible? Is it suitable to start out from the simple and palpable experience of the recent drastic rise in food prices? The answer is only partially positive. While for lower social classes, rising prices mean the narrowing of their opportunities to access food, if one employs Jason Moore’s observant approach, it is clear that the relative cheapness of food cannot be taken for granted, nor is it self-evident. Moore’s research has confirmed that food as a cheap resource is the special characteristic and supporting pillar of a form of social-economic organization. His main statement is that capitalism is a historical form of organizing the economy, society and the environment and that this depends on the availability of four cheap resources (Moore 2016): cheap energy, raw materials, labor and food were necessary for the evolution of this historical form of society (and environment) in the first place. Thus, the recent and considerable rise in food prices - among other factors — indicates the crisis of capitalism as a complex historical system. Moore’s reasoning fits the main theses of critical social theories in several regards. The main achievement of all these theories is recognizing that the key to the problems lies in the structures that support the accumulation of capital. Therefore, any adequate critique must focus on the systemic nature of food systems and on all aspects through which the global food system props up global capitalism. A cardinal point of the food system is agriculture, with its diverse possible modes of operation. At present, it is safe to declare that industrial (intensive) agriculture is the dominant mode of operation worldwide. Its basic feature is that it is deeply embedded in global capitalism’s modes of production and in global trade. Although its foundations already emerged with early colonization and its conditions were created by industrialization, the model did not become truly dominant before the second half of the 20" century. Mechanization, monocultural production, large-scale livestock farming, and the extensive use of external resources (various chemicals and fossil fuels) transformed agriculture according to the dictates of the capitalist mode of production. Albert Thaer famously characterized
