Globalization and Malnutrition: Geographical Perspectives on Its Paradoxes

Abstract

This chapter maintains that the food system is one of the most important globally embedded networks of production and consumption; its integral connec-tions with the petroleum industry and global security confirm its significance. The chapter establishes the complex nature of mapping and measuring malnutrition. It reviews significant shifts in the incidence of malnutrition but argues that disag-gregating statistics is vital to understanding trends. Changes in theorizations of the problem of malnutrition and associated solutions are then considered, including conceptual shifts from food security to food sovereignty. The global food chain is embedded in contentious political, economic, and scientific debates. Volatility in local food prices are influenced by global factors: oil prices; energy policies; dietary changes, foreign direct investments associated with " land grabs " or financial speculation. The chapter concludes with a call for a fundamental rethinking of global food provisioning to establish a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable system. The current food system has evolved in response to specific historical, political, and economic circumstances; it is not a natural system but a socially constructed one which reflects patterns of power and privilege. It is a dynamic system which has changed dramatically in the past and will in the future (Rosegrant et al. 2012). Goodman and Sage (2013) assert that " there is almost nothing more geographical than food in the ways that it intimately interlinks production and consumption, nature and society, bodies and landscapes, the global and the local, and indeed spaces, places, and everywhere in between " (p. 3).