Framing Food Security and Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

This chapter addresses current problems of food security, which is considered as one of the most important factors in development strategies to alleviate poverty, by examining relevant policies on agriculture and by discussing different ways to frame food security strategies. The commonly applied framing of development strategies–including strategies for food security–has been the enhancement of market function, even though actual approaches have been changing with the recognition of unexpected results such as environmental degradation and nutrition problems. Implementation of these policies has caused a decoupling of production and consumption. As a result, agricultural policies that represent the production or supply side have been implemented apart from nutrition policies, which are relevant to the consumption or demand side. In other words, because agricultural policies and nutrition policies have their own framings and because these framings are not integrated, many problems have occurred. It must be considered how decoupled production or supply can be combined with consumption or demand. In this connection, people’s understanding of value that should reflect the shadow price must be transformed. Psychological strategies of providing proper information must be implemented with the SDGs, which are assumed to combine selected aims and targets based on particular contexts by stakeholders such as national governments, local municipalities, private companies, and international organizations.