Food Security and Aid

Describing the global food problem as one of 'food security' can ignore the way in which food is produced and distributed, instead encouraging countries to grow crops for export and import cheap food as aid. This leads to increased dependency on international markets and does little to address the underlying problems. Governments also often use 'food security' as a smokescreen to impose trade liberalisation and increased use of corporate controlled technologies. Hunger is fundamentally a political problem and addressing it means looking at the systemic causes of how power is shared, not just handing out more food.