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FOOD SUPPLY AS A GLOBAL CHALLENGE 195 agriculture as an industry which aims to create profit by producing vegetable- and animal-based products (Ángyán 2003). This means that agriculture — which by its nature, is also the functionally diversified management of the environment and the landscape (as it can provide a variety of ecosystem services and possesses both cultural and recreational functions), is degraded to “agribusiness” with one single goal, which it shares with every capitalist undertaking, the production of profit. Since this mode of production effectively serves mass production, the profit is primarily realized on the global market. Therefore, the produced food items enter the system of global capitalism as commodities. Everyone is familiar with such examples as cheap Brazilian chicken or Chinese garlic (they are cheap, because the environmental and social costs implied by their production are not being paid). But these are only a few typical examples of a globalized system. The detrimental impacts of the system on human health, the environment and the living creatures in it have lately gained an increasing amount of attention. It is, however, important to consider the historical dimension, for systematic processes are relatively easy to define in time and space. Although the production and trade of food was also a key factor in the earliest phases of globalization — just think of the classic examples of sugar or cotton (Mintz 1986) — up to the mid-20" century, agricultural production followed the traditional model worldwide. Despite a few environmentally harmful practices at its core, such as plowing, it was more environmentally friendly in several regards. It produced practically no waste. The remains of plants and diverse by-products were utilized, so it was a closed circulation of matter and energy, while the system accommodated some of the other (biological and social) functions of the space used for agriculture (Ângyän 2003). Evidently, the traditional model of agriculture could not have existed without the special economic structure and social forms which supported it. Like in all other cases, the production, processing and trade of food were embedded in a complex social and economic system and functioned accordingly. The traditional peasantry, the social order resting on communities of peasants, has gradually been disappearing in the wake of changes in historical capitalism (van der Ploeg 2008). The explosive breakthrough of the so-called “ Green Revolution” in the 1960s, due primarily to the influence of Norman Borlaug’s activity, meant the worldwide spread of industrial agriculture, primarily under the banner of food security. Despite serious objections, the mentality represented by Borlaug remains fairly influential to this day. Several arguments for food security claim, or imply, that industrial agriculture has and will have no real alternative. The “no alternative” type of argument is in accord with the political and economic doctrine of neoliberalism, which has been developing since the 1970s and 80s and which has achieved dominance all over the world. These intertwined parallel processes have kneaded the social-economic order — including food provisioning — at nearly every point of the globe into what can be seen today. The modern agriculture that emerged from the changes not only jeopardizes the existence of indigenous and local communities, but is destructive to the ecosystems and the biosphere, not to mention the issue of food security, which has received growing publicity in the recentlyevolving global crises.
