The Conflicted Nature of Food Security Policy: Balancing Rice, Sugar and Palm Oil in Indonesia

Abstract

Given the multiple problems presented by food policy, food security presents a complex dilemma for policy-makers. This paper examines the contradictions presented by competing food security, food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty framings, the challenge of policy-making across multiple levels amidst competing agendas of agricultural commodity production and production for self-provisioning populations, and the need to balance economic development with sustainable food production. From an analysis of rice, palm oil and sugar cases in Indonesia, we conclude that the conflicted nature of food policy needs to be understood in terms of the way specific material and ideational, actor-specific and structural factors working across scale shape outcomes in a highly uneven fashion. We find that this produces a policy field highly resistant to single analytical approaches, opening up the wide range of internally conflicting, related policy questions encompassed by food security-related policy.