social problem unit 1 qu.iz
34 contexts.org
the scarcity fallacy by stephen j. scanlan, j. craig jenkins, and lindsey peterson
For the first time in human history, the world is home to
more than one billion hungry people. New data from
the United Nations suggest that a higher proportion of
the Earth’s people are hungry now than just a decade
ago, the reverse of a long and otherwise positive trend. Ph o to b y G et ty Im ag es , C h ri st o p h er Fu rl o n g
35winter 2010 contexts Contexts,Vol.9,No.1,pp.34-39. ISSN1536-5042,electronic ISSN1537-6052.©2010AmericanSociologicalAssociation. All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce, see http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2010.9.1.34.
The conventional wisdom is that world hunger exists primarily
because of natural disasters, population pressure, and shortfalls
in food production. These problems are compounded, it is
believed, by ecological crises and global warming, which
together result in further food scarcity. Ergo, hunger exists sim-
ply because there isn’t enough food to go around. Increase
the food supply, and we will solve the problem of hunger on
a global scale.
Scarcity is a compelling, common-sense perspective that
dominates both popular perceptions and public policy. But,
while food concerns may start with limited supply, there’s much
more to world hunger than that.
A good deal of thinking and research in sociology, build-
ing off the ideas of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen,
suggests that world hunger has less to do with the shortage
of food than with a shortage of affordable or accessible food.
Sociologists have found that social inequalities, distribu-
tion systems, and other economic and political factors create
barriers to food access. Hunger, in this sociological conception,
is part of the broader concept of “food security,” which the
World Bank describes as the inability to acquire the food neces-
sary to sustain an active and healthy life. A central sociological
element of this is “food poverty.”
the (recycled) rhetoric of scarcity The idea that hunger is due to scarcity has roots in Thomas
Malthus’s classic 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Pop-
ulation. Malthus predicted widespread
suffering and death from famine would
result from the planet’s inability to feed
itself, stemming from its failure to cope
with exponential population growth.
Malthus turned out to be wrong—food
production grew much faster than pop-
ulation—but his arguments have been recycled over generations,
and today, especially with ongoing threats to Earth’s carrying
capacity, they have come to define conventional wisdom on
hunger in the mainstream media and general public as well as
for policymakers.
Food scarcity has long been the focus of agencies such as
the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Agency for International
Development. Each uses some version of the scarcity argument
to shape food security and development policies in collabora-
tion with global agribusiness and food scientists. In such
arrangements, concerns about hunger are viewed as produc-
tion, marketing, and logistics problems that have solutions in
the market-based policies of the global food system.
Fighting hunger from this approach means the top priority
is reducingscarcity.This ismostoftenaddressedby increasingfood
yields with new technologies and by shipping food to more
places more efficiently. The underlying goal in this approach is
tofacilitatewhathasbeencalledthe“supermarket revolution”—
a term used by the World Bank to describe the growing reliance
of global citizens on large-scale agricultural industries and com-
modity chains to obtain their food.
This supermarket model has created steady growth in the
global import and export of food. But it can also produce its
own problems and be counter-productive. What’s worse is that
the increased prices that often accompany market-based pro-
duction make food less affordable for those in need. Further-
more, increased production may do nothing at all to guarantee
more food. For example, the market model has increased use
of crops for biofuel, which shifts agriculture away from produc-
ing food. In an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, Earth Policy
Institute president Lester R. Brown noted that the same amount
of grain needed to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon gas tank with ethanol
could feed a single person for a whole year.
The bigger problem with emphasizing food supply as the
problem,however, is thatscarcity is largelyamyth.Onapercapita
basis, food is more plentiful today than any other time in human
history. Figures on the next pages reveal that over the last sev-
eral decades food production (represented here in a common
staple, cereals) and the average daily food availability per capita
havegrown,outpacingwhathasbeenthemost rapidexpansion
ofhumanpopulationever.DatasuchasthesefromtheFAOreveal
that even in times of localized production shortfalls or regional
famines there has long been a global food surplus.
The problem is ensuring access to this food and distributing
it more equitably. A 2002 New York Times headline proclaiming
“India’s Poor Starve as Wheat Rots” dramatically, if tragically,
illustrates this point. Starvation amidst plenty has occurred in
many a famine, as in Bangladesh in 1974 or Ethiopia in the
Pallets of canned goods at a food pantry in the Bronx.
Ph o to b y G et ty Im ag es , Sp en ce r Pl at t
Sociological research suggests that world hunger has less to do with the shortage of food than with a shortage of affordable or accessible food.
1980s. Even Ireland during the Great Famine exported vast
quantities of food. Hunger in contemporary world societies is
often no different. Markets are overflowing and even when
shortfalls occur in emergencies, the global surplus is more than
adequate to address such concerns.
Crop science can produce more food, and transportation
and storage improvements can distribute greater amounts of
it, but these don’t guarantee access for all—a scenario that
became quite evident with the 2007 global food crisis and
spikes in food prices. Indeed, the global supermarket revolu-
tion can actually be devastating and counterproductive on the
local level when prices increase and make food unaffordable
for hundreds of millions of people.
Scarcity, in short, isn’t the problem, and giving it undue
attention reinforces many of the myths that get in the way of
understanding hunger. In World Hunger:
Twelve Myths, food scholars Frances Moore
Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset have
elaborated on this, addressing the problems
of misplaced focus. Blaming population
growth, food shortages, or natural disasters
sidetracks attention from the challenges of
the global food distribution system, the
authors argue. They warn that free markets,
free trade, food aid, or even green revolu-
tion technologies, for example, can all be
barriers to obtaining food when inequalities
are deeply ingrained. Rather than food
scarcity, then, we should focus our attention
on the persistent inequalities that often
accompany the growth in food supply.
beyond scarcity The basic statistics about world hunger
are staggering—and revealing. Some 96
percent of hungry people live in developing countries and
according to Unicef nearly a quarter of them are children. The
U.N. World Food Programme notes that in developing coun-
tries, the poorest citizens spend upwards of 60 percent of their
income on food. By way of contrast, according to a New York
Times editorial the poorest Americans only spend between 15
percent and 20 percent on food. With declining disposable
income, those who already may eat only two very simple meals
each day now may have to cut back to one.
These statistics reveal a clear link between poverty and
hunger. Two-thirds of the countries in the world with the most
severe extreme poverty—rates greater than 35 percent—also
have child hunger rates of 35 percent or more. As evidenced by
the prevalence of hunger in the world’s 77 low-income food
deficit countries (LIFDCs) as designated by the FAO, poverty is
inseparable from hunger and should thus be considered its pri-
mary root cause. No wonder the 2000 U.N. Millennium Summit
concluded that the most serious problem confronting the world
ispersistentpovertyand itsconnectiontohunger.Theprevalence
of hunger in LIFDCs is particularly impor-
tant because these countries are not only
among the world’s poorest by World Bank
classification standards but are also net
importers of basic foodstuffs because they
are unable to produce amounts to meet
theirownneeds.Thismakes themmoreat
risk in that they lack sufficient foreign
exchange inthe internationalmarketplace,
something further exacerbated by global
pricespikes like thoseexperienced in2007.
Asevidenceof theprevalenceof food inse-
curity inLIFDCs,23ofthe25countrieswith
the highest rates of child hunger in the
world are also designated as LIFDCs (the
exceptionsbeingBurmaandMaldives)and
theycontinuetobepredominantwelldown
this list. Without guaranteed entitlements
orotherassistance,hunger iscertaintoper-
sist among these most vulnerable nations,
36 contexts.org
200
400
600
800
1000
1200 million
c.1996 c.2001 200920082007c.2004c.2002c.2000c.1999c.1998c.1997
Estimated hungry population in the world
Source: U.N. Food & Agriculture The time periods are three-year reporting periods as presented by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) from various years, with the exception of 2007–2009, which are from press releases specific to those years. The trend line is a two-year moving average for these figures. Missing years indicate periods where SOFI didn’t report clear estimates.
Estimated percentage of the world that is hungry
c.1996 c.2001 200920082007c.2004c.2002c.2000c.1999c.1998c.1997
Source: U.N. Food & Agriculture
12.5
13.0
13.5
14.0
14.5
15.0
15.5 percent hungry
The Turkana tribe in Kenya distributes food aid from Oxfam with a democratic voting process.
Ph o to b y G et ty Im ag es , C h ri st o p h er Fu rl o n g
37winter 2010 contexts
where addressing it is least affordable.
Moreover, most of the LIFDCs are in Sub-Saharan Africa,
where very little progress on hunger has been made over the
last couple of decades—children, for example, fare only slightly
better now than in 1990, child hunger having declined only
0.5 percent. In contrast, the remaining regions of the world
have made much larger gains; East Asia and the Pacific, for
example, have reduced child hunger 16 percent. Stagnation
in the African subcontinent can be attributed directly to its per-
sistent and pervasive poverty and underdevelopment, which
creates further problems with conflict, health crises, and polit-
ical instability, among other problems that contribute to hunger.
The developing world isn’t alone in its hunger and poverty,
though. Demand on food pantries in the United States is
increasing according to a 2009 survey of
food banks by the organization Feed-
ing America (formerly America’s Second
Harvest). Evidence of poverty and loss
of employment income as a primary
cause of food insecurity can be even
more evident in stark contrast to the
relative well-being of U.S. citizens or elsewhere in the indus-
trialized world. Here, food scarcity isn’t even (or shouldn’t be)
a consideration. In difficult times and tight budgets, as free-
lance journalist and senior fellow at the policy and advocacy
organization Demos, Sasha Abramsky, found in Breadline
U.S.A., families keep gas in the car to get to work, prescriptions
filled, and the heat and lights turned on but often cut their
food budgets, with the hope public or private assistance will
help put dinner on the table.
Poverty, though, is only one form of inequality. Gender,
ethnic, and other types of stratification have contributed con-
siderably to hunger as well. Women are disproportionately
likely to suffer from hunger, and in fact constitute approxi-
mately 60 percent of the world’s hungry. This is particularly
troubling given that women do as much as 80 percent of the
world’s agricultural labor, working land that in more than a
few places they may not be legally entitled to own.
As we have found in our own work, countries with more
gender inequality (especially in education) have the greatest
degree of child hunger. Gender inequality also influences
women’s health and access to contraception as well as limits
their opportunities in society, potentially condemning them to
lives where childrearing is their only opportunity for social sta-
tus. In this context, large numbers of children may not be a
cause of scarcity so much as a consequence of poverty and
powerlessness.
Ethnic inequality can also contribute significantly to world
hunger, especially in countries with marginalized minorities
and a history or present situation of ethnic violence. Such
“minorities at risk,” as social movements scholar Ted Gurr calls
them in People versus States, have long been threatened with
hunger. Eritrea, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and the Sudan
are among many such places. While contributing to rampant
militarism and armed conflicts, ethnic discrimination also silently
marginalizes minorities to less desirable lands and occupations.
The effects of ethnic discrimination then go beyond immedi-
ate violence, creating market disruptions, dispersed labor, and
land degradation that destroys what for many is their only
chance to produce or earn money for food.
Further exacerbating the effects of these social inequali-
ties, international food aid—initiated by the US government in
the 1960s to remove surplus grain from domestic markets and
assist military allies—has long been ineffective and misdirected.
According to Public Law 480, U.S. aid must travel in U.S.-
flagged vessels and depends on market surpluses. The results,
critics contend, is that the major beneficiaries are not those in
need of food but U.S. shipping companies, agri-business, and
countries with geopolitical value for the United States.
2600
800
2800
3000
1961 1985 20031995 200019901980197519701965
Global daily caloric availability per capita
2400
2200
Source: U.N. Food & Agriculture FAOSTAT database
15,000,000
800
20,000,000
25,000,000
1961 1985 20072000199519901980197519701965
Global population and cereal production
5,000,000
10,000,000
Global cereals production (100s of metric tonnes)
Global population (1000s of people)
Source: U.N. Food & Agriculture FAOSTAT database, U.S. Census International database
Scarcity, in short, isn’t the problem. Giving it undue attention reinforces myths that get in the way of understanding hunger.
Studies of who gets food aid partially support this criticism.
In an article in Food Policy aid specialists Daniel C. Clay, Daniel
Molla, and Debebe Habtewold, for example, found no relation-
shipbetweenneedandfoodaid inEthiopia.Foodaidwas instead
allocated to areas where organizations had stable operations,
to favored ethnicities, and to female and aged heads of house-
holds regardless of need. Tina Kassebaum, a senior research sci-
entist at Strategic Research Group, has found that program aid
(bilateral U.S. donations) is unrelated to a country’s share of child
hunger, while emergency/project aid (multilateral World Food
Programme donations) is targeted at needy countries.
Making matters worse, emergency food delivery, which has
become one of the most visible forms of assistance to those in
need of food, has been corrupt on many fronts in recent years.
According to Michael Slackman at the New York Times, in Egypt,
the government subsidizes flour so that it can be baked into
breadandsoldcheaply tothepopulation.However, theaid is rou-
tinely diverted into the black market and sold at a much greater
profit while corrupt inspectors are bribed to certify that it has
gone to assist the hungry. In the Democratic Republic of Congo,
a 15-year civil war has been fought between the remnants of the
Hutu guerrilla force that perpetrated the 1994 Rwandan geno-
cide and other parties. In refugee camps, food is often used as
a weapon—camp guards allocate it to those who will keep
order, not to those most in need, while also having connections
to widespread use of rape. Grim reports such as these have
appeared in media outlets such as The Guardian, The Gazette
(Montreal), and the New York Times who further note a key tac-
tic in this battle has been attacking food aid and relief convoys,
leading to threat and withdrawal of relief agencies, thus further
compounding hunger as refugees and internally-displaced per-
sons flee for safety, left to fend for themselves. Similar patterns
have occurred in Darfur and other conflict-ridden zones.
Some argue that corruption is a product of scarcity, and
that if food did not have to be delivered to areas where it was
in short supply such fraud would not exist. This argument is
true to a point, but such disruptions in the food distribution
chain are much more attributable to conflict and inequality,
with power and powerlessness at the core of the problem.
Corruption is simply another barrier to access—especially in
times of acute conflict. Indeed, the poor and powerless are
ultimately those most affected by these failures in the systems
designed to help them.
Poverty, inequality, conflict, and corruption are all crucial
contributors to world hunger, then. But what may be even more
important and difficult to understand is how these can all fit
together, reinforce one another, and even intensify the impacts
of more basic food crises or the limits of various natural
resources—that is, of scarcity itself. Environmental scarcity can,
for example, be both a cause and a consequence of the inequal-
ities associated with hunger. Entrenched poverty can contribute
to further conflict and environmental destruction. This limits food
access and reinforces a feedback cycle causing more conflict,
which in turn creates more scarcity, and so on. As we’ve learned
from Oxford economist Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, hunger
can be a product of a vicious cycle in which violent conflicts
borne of corrupt and repressive government, poverty, and eth-
nic marginalization reinforce one another.
addressing hunger Addressing world hunger is difficult and complex. To do
it properly, we must get beyond the limited rhetoric of scarcity
and instead focus on the inequalities, social conflicts, and
organizational deficiencies at its roots.
To get at inequality, policy must give attention to demo-
cratic governance and human rights, fixing the politics of food
aid, and tending to the challenges posed by the global political
economy. At the very least, food must be upheld as a human
right. In Freedom from Want, for example, political scientist
George Kent places hunger squarely in
the discussion of politics and the global
human rights system. In his view, for
hunger tobeadequatelyaddressedthere
must be worldwide recognition of food
as a fundamental human right bound up in international law. It
is only in this way that that both moral and legal accountability
for failing to meet the needs of those not empowered to ensure
their own food security can be established. Connecting this to
our own work, we have found that democratization and
increased protection of political rights reduces child hunger, par-
alleling a reduction of ethnic and gender inequality. Recognition
of this fundamental human rights premise could elevate hunger
to a higher level in international discussions and ultimately ren-
der it a non-issue, safeguarding it from the negative impacts of
inequality, conflict, and politics.
Upholding this principle would also protect vulnerable
38 contexts.org
“Eating is a right!“ declares a young woman on the eve of 2009’s World Food Day.
Ph o to b y A FP /G et ty Im ag es , Fr ed
D u fo u r
At the very least, food must be upheld as a human right.
citizens in industrialized countries who are finding it increasingly
difficult to afford food as prices increase, real wages decline,
and unemployment grows. Moreover, plans emphasizing nutri-
tion and health, such as school feeding programs or those that
target women, infants, and children, could be justified on the
grounds of human rights and equal protection for the deserv-
ing poor entitled to assistance.
Asecondfocusshouldbeensuringthat international foodaid
actually gets to those in need, overcoming the problems of inef-
ficiency and corruption that have long plagued such efforts. For-
tunately, the news here is not all negative. Over the last decade
international aid has moved toward less politicized emer-
gency/projectaid.Studiesoftheimpactofthiskindoffoodaidhave
revealedarelatively favorablepicture,Still, thiskindofaid,atbest
atemporarycorrective,canbeimprovedbyattendingmoredirectly
to the underlying conditions of poverty and inequality.
There is, for example, a longstanding debate over in-kind
aid versus cash assistance. Oxfam International argues that the
developed world should not dump cheap, subsidized food aid
that undermines local food production and markets in the devel-
oping economies it purports to help. A better solution would be
to provide direct cash assistance to promote food purchases in
localor regionaleconomies.Recognizingthatmanypoordepend
onlandfor their income,suchanapproachwouldchannelmoney
to those who need it most, rather than to global agri-business
and shipping companies profiting from food aid politics (this is
amoreecologically soundpracticeaswell). If reformedandeffec-
tively managed with minimal corruption, this approach could
have a huge impact at minimal cost.
Leading up to the 2009 G-20 meetings in London, World
Bank president Robert Zoellick noted that it would cost less
than one percent of the current U.S. stimulus package to save
a generation around the world from poverty and its conse-
quences, including hunger. An influx of money could stabilize
hundreds of countries throughout the world, not just with
regard to hunger but politics and social conditions as well.
Fiscal challenges are further complicated by the fact that
they are intricately connected with the global political econ-
omy, a third focus area. A number of ideas exist for making
the globalized world more equitable so that ending hunger is
a significant positive outcome. Strategies should empower soci-
eties and individuals to become more food-sovereign (able to
exercise power over their food decisions).
Promoting sustainable agriculture with an emphasis on
local food systems and empowering farmers to compete in
their own markets is one such dimension. It will reduce ecolog-
ical scarcity and go far toward ensuring food security, and ulti-
mately food sovereignty, while having the added benefit of
injecting additional money into local communities.
Effective long-term solutions through development of pro-
duction capabilities, however, won’t succeed unless ethnic and
gender inequality are reduced or better yet, eliminated. Freeing
ethnic minorities from the fear they will face violence if they
come to aid distribution stations or, better yet, providing them
with the tools to produce their own food and economic suste-
nance, will contribute greatly to reducing hunger. Too, providing
women with control over childbearing, giving them access to
education, allowing them the right to own land and businesses,
and facilitating their economic activities with micro-credit and
other innovations will significantly reduce hunger. Investing in
the well-being of women and reducing gender inequality not
only can improve their lives but benefit entire countries.
The challenge, in short, is to create a more equitable and
just society in which food access is ensured for all. Food scarcity
matters. However, it is rooted in social conditions and institu-
tional dynamics that must be the focus of any policy innovations
that might make a real difference.
recommended resources Laurie DeRose, Ellen Messer, and Sara Millman, eds. Who’s Hun- gry? And How Do We Know? (United Nations University, 1998). A social scientific treatment of the causes and conceptualization of hunger as well as appropriate responses to it.
Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. The State of Food Insecurity in the World (FAO, various years). An annual assessment of world hunger, including the latest figures and most recent policy discussions.
Amartya Senn. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford University Press, 1981). A presentation of “enti- tlement failure,” the seminal theory for understanding global hunger as connected problems of distribution, access, and the human causes of famine.
James Vernon. Hunger: A Modern History (Belknap Press, 2007). A useful historical account of evolving conceptions of world hunger.
Stephen J. Scanlan is in the department of sociology and anthropology at Ohio
University. He studies comparative social change with an emphasis on food insecurity
and development.J.Craig Jenkins and Lindsey Peterson are in the department of
sociology at The Ohio State University. Jenkins specializes in conflict and its effects on
social change,while Peterson studies stratification,movements,and political sociology.
39winter 2010 contexts
Sorting at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
Ph o to b y A FP /G et ty Im ag es , R o m eo
G ac ad