Ellen Messer

Conflict, food insecurity, and globalization

Abstract In this article, we examine the links among food insecurity, globalization and conflict. We summarize and critically evaluate existing studies on conflict as a cause of food insecurity; food insecurity as a cause of conflict; and the relationship between conflict and globalization. Next, we analyze country-level, historical contexts that implicate export crops, e.g. coffee and cotton, in triggering and perpetuating conflict. These cases suggest that it is not export cropping per se, but production and trade structures, and food and financial policy contexts that determine peaceful or belligerent outcomes. Export cropping appears to contribute to conflict when prices fluctuate, destabilizing household and national incomes, and when revenues fund hostilities. Furthermore, in these scenarios, governments have not focused on reducing hunger and poverty or promoting equity. We conclude by considering how globalization, more broadly conceived to include human-rights norms, might contribute to peace and food security.

Local Notions of Healthy Eating and National Dietary Guidelines: A Comparison in Vulnerable Salvadoran Communities

This study presents an assessment of local definitions and perceptions concerning healthy eating through a study in four resource-poor border communities in El Salvador. The study included focus groups, key-informant interviews, and observations of the food environment. Local definitions of healthy eating elicited through focus groups were compared to the national Salvadoran dietary guidelines recommendations. The comparison revealed several areas of overlap (including the importance of dietary variety, fruits, and vegetables, among others) and omissions (mention of limiting sweets/candy, salt, sugar, and alcohol). Focus group participants expressed concerns over the origin of their foods and whether food contained harmful chemicals. These conversations also revealed the contradictions between nutrition knowledge and preferences for foods classified as unhealthy. This article concludes with a discussion about barriers to healthy eating identified in the focus groups and through the food environment assessment.

Food Aid and the World Hunger Solution: Why the U.S. Should Use a Human Rights Approach

The United States government has been the worlds largest donor of food aid for decades, and since 1990, with the end of the Cold War, its overall purposes and explicit policies are directed to alleviate world food insecurity and hunger. Yet many assert that a human rights approach would be the best way to reduce food insecurity and hunger. This study posits that the security concerns of U.S. foreign policy and the political–economic interests of U.S. stakeholders deflect the program from a human rights approach that would more sustainably and effectively reduce world hunger and meet the food needs of hungry people. Referring to case studies of post-2000 U.S. food-security programs in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, the study finds these distortions directly affect the management of the U.S. food program and influence the ways recipient countries use and abuse food provided by the American people.

Household-level dietary quality indicator for countries in nutritional transition: application to vulnerable communities in El Salvador

OBJECTIVE To develop a household-level diet quality indicator (HDQI) using the Salvadorian dietary guidelines to assess the dietary quality of households in vulnerable communities in El Salvador. DESIGN The Salvadorian dietary guidelines were reviewed and eighteen HDQI components were identified (nine foods and nine nutrients). The components were evaluated using a proportional scoring system from 0 to 1, penalizing over- and under-consumption, where appropriate. The HDQI was validated in consultations with experts in El Salvador and by statistical analyses of the study sample data. Dietary variety and energy, nutrient and food intakes were compared among households above and below the median HDQI score using Students t test. SETTING Vulnerable, border communities in El Salvador. SUBJECTS Households (n 140) provided food consumption information using an FFQ and sociodemographic data. RESULTS The mean HDQI score was 63·5, ranging from 43·6 to 90·0. The indicator showed a positive, significant association with the dietary variety components. The statistical associations of the indicator with the energy and nutrient components were as expected. CONCLUSIONS Based on the indicators demonstrated face validity and the results of the expert consultations, the indicator is suggested as a good measure of diet quality for households in El Salvador.

Understanding and responding to the links between conflict and hunger

Rising food prices in the late 2000s sparked protests, sometimes violent, around the globe. These public expressions of outrage were only the tip of the iceberg. Many countries have a legacy of food wars. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 14 countries faced severe food insecurity as a result of conflict, civil strife, forced displacement, or damage from past wars. Armed violence leads to ongoing cycles of food loss which have an impact on food availability, access, and nutrition. In turn, food insecurity can contribute to conflict, although the exact sequence tends to involve complex factors, including environmental scarcities and identity-based competition for access to and control over what are perceived to be limited resources. Policy attention is urgently needed to address these dynamics. Efforts to meet the immediate needs of vulnerable populations, to raise agricultural production, to build resilient food systems that contribute to global food and nutrition security, and to protect low-income people with safety nets must not lose sight of conflict legacies, especially in Africa. Programme-implementation strategies must proceed in a manner that will dampen, not heighten, conflict potential.

Cultural Factors in Food Habits: Reflections in Memory of Christine S. Wilson

Nutrition and anthropology have a long history of collaboration in studies of food and changing food habits. Adopting Christine Wilsons (1973) Handbook of References as a starting point, this analysis considers changing nutrition and anthropology institutional contexts for food and culture studies, the increase in available data bases, the ways politics enter into anthropological and nutritional studies of food, and positive versus negative orientations toward the value and significance of cultural dimensions of food habits. A final section considers some new ways anthropologists and nutritionists are collaborating on studies of the construction and health implications of transcultural diets, with special reference to Mexico.

“The Heirloom Tomato is ‘In’. Does It Matter How It Tastes?”

Abstract A resurgence of interest in more traditional, authentic and distinctive foods is reflected in the popularity of farmers’ markets, with the premise that locally grown produce is superior in flavor and other sensory and culturally valued characteristics to similar fare from the global marketplace. In this arena, heirloom tomatoes (heirlooms) are increasingly popular with their diverse appearances and tastes. But heirlooms are also idiosyncratic, with splits, cracks, irregular shapes and sizes, and uneven flavors and textures that create production obstacles for growers and selection challenges for shoppers. Through online surveys and telephone and in-person interviews with Massachusetts farmers’ market consumers and vendors, we explored the relative importance of organoleptic properties, particularly flavors and mouthfeel, that influence consumer selection and farmers’ production priorities for heirlooms. Results, reported as attribute rankings and related preference indicators, suggest that shoppers generally lacked familiarity with the names and flavor profiles of different heirloom varieties. Findings suggest that, despite premium product prices and shoppers’ declared importance of taste, they were often inclined to overlook flavor and textural qualities in deference to visual appeal and greater varietal selection, and the authors question how much taste really matters to their popularity and to the overall viability of these heirlooms.

A Tribute: Thomas J. Marchione, Anthropologist, Food-Security Specialist, and Human Rights Advocate

The papers in this special issue of Food and Foodways offer a kind of festschrift, celebrating the multiple professional accomplishments and human rights-based approaches of Tom Marchione, professional anthropologist and “Food First” human-rights advocate. Tom began his lifelong, community-based research into the factors favoring food security and respect for human rights in the 1970s, as a Peace Corps volunteer and then Caribbean Food Research Institute professional. His publications, “Food and Nutrition in Self-Reliant National Development: The Impact on Child Nutrition of Jamaican Government Policy” (in the first issue of the journal Medical Anthropology (1977), and “Factors Associated with Malnutrition in the Children of Western Jamaica” (in the Nutritional Anthropology (1980) reader that inaugurated this new subfield), defined his evidence-based, food-must-come-first position, which he later elaborated with Norwegian human rights activists Wenche and Asbjorn Eide, providing a critical overview of the human rights-related causes of food insecurity that helped define Food as a Human Right (1984) and clarify how a human rights-based approach to food could guide policy in the post-Cold War era (Marchione 1996, 1999, 2000, 2009) and in particular country cases (see his Malawi case study, Marchione 2007). In the mid-1990s, on sabbatical from USAID and working with us at Brown University’s World Hunger Program [WHP], Tom designed the model that quantified “food from peace,” effectively demonstrating the food losses due to wars in Africa that could have been produced had violent conflicts been absent (Messer, D’Costa, and Cohen 1998; Messer, Cohen, and Marchione 2001). As my WHP colleague, Tom also offered a constant check on policy perspectives; he knew how to make our academic literature reviews and findings “count” in the food-policy arena. In the 2000s, as he retired from USAID service, he desired to make the findings from his life experiences in the technical and policy arena accessible to others, to demonstrate that rights-based policies produce better food-security outcomes and impacts (see Marchione 2007). He conceived