Security for Whom? Changing Discourses on Food in Europe

After the CAP reform of 1992 a (partial) consensus had been progressively reached in Europe among stakeholders over multifunctionality, an approach combining liberalization – which would make agriculture more reactive to market signals – with the principle of rewarding farmers for the positive impact of their activity both on the environment and on society. The mid-term review of CAP done in 2003, almost fully decoupling production from subsidies, has brought out scenarios of agricultural restructuring based on a dualism between mass agriculture, more and more integrated into global markets and aligned with the agribusiness and the retail chains, and agriculture for rural development, more and more diversified, integrated with the territory, adopting sustainable processes, developing new models of entrepreneurship based on internalization of operations (processing, selling to consumers, producing feed for animals), on more intense communication toward citizens, consumers and tourists, and on an active search for market niches and hybrid market coalitions. The food crisis has changed radically the policy agenda and the public debate on Agriculture. Having occupied a central position in the media, the issue has suddenly unified aspects formerly held separate – food security in the world, internal food prices, climate change, biofuels, sustainable agriculture, food quality, GMOs – into one discourse. It has unified the concerns for real income erosion of low and middle class families with the concerns for the hunger in the world. It has put into question the power of supermarket chains and their monopolistic behavior. It has made more acute the dilemmas emerging within the alternative food movements, related to the links and trade-offs between alternative food products price, small farmers’ incomes, consumers’ incomes, sustainability, consumption styles. The paper, after an outline the current situation in the EU in relation to food availability, food provisioning, food security issues, and the policies that are in place to foster food security for Europe, will analyze how, for effect of the food crisis debate, discourses about food and agriculture and discourse coalitions are changing, and which effect they have had or may have on policy arrangements at national and at EU level. In particular, the paper will analyze how main actors (EU commission, member states, NGOs, food movements, farmers’ unions, agribusiness, supermarket chains, scientists) articulate their positions and their strategies on issues such as the degree of protection of internal markets, the level of public support to agriculture, research and technology policies, models of agriculture, consumption styles. The paper will also discuss how actors belonging to the ‘mass production coalition’ use issues such as world hunger, internal food prices, climate change, the oil crisis to refurbish the image of industrial agriculture and its legitimization. A concluding section will discuss the prospects for alternative food networks in the new scenario and will outline some principles for a research agenda.