Food security is often understood as just being a technical issue. Although this understanding receives wide acceptance, its accuracy is open to question. The word security now has extremely negative connotations. Activities carried out in an effort to render something safe are also considered a way to put every aspect of life under restraint and control, thus integrating them into market processes. And the issue of food security, usually approached as a technical-hygienic problem, is no longer exempt from discussions about security regimes.
It would thus be more correct to start our discussion with a definition expressing the how the issue of food security is generally understood, then to ask why this issue cannot be approched only with a technical perspective and finally to try to understand the situation in our country from this framework.
Food security is an approach dealing with the processing, preparation, transportation, storage and presentation to the end consumer of foods in a way that prevents biological, physical and chemical factors from causing foodborne diseases. The fundamental aim is to ensure the sanitation of food, beginning from the sowing of seeds to the serving of food on the table, and to make sure that foods thus conserve their nutritious qualities. Secure food, on the other hand, is defined as food rendered suitable for consumption after being purified of any tainted and infectious elements. And everything is done in order to ensure these constitute the technical aspects of food security.
This definition, which limits the issue to a technical framework without taking many issues into consideration, each of which constitutes real threats to food security. For example, public policies that have massively liquidated family farming in the last 15 years are not regarded as a problem. Family farming and peasant agriculture, the backbone of which is carried out by women, however, is crucial for ensuring food security in the face of industrial agriculture undergirded by national and international policies.
There is also no attention paid to the privatization of commonly used water via hydroelectric power plants constructed nearly on all rivers, thus leading to the disruption of food production activities of people living in those places and to the subjection of these activities to corporate interests. Again, liquidation of public institutions regulating agricultural activities, inadequacy of subsidies provided to farmers (for example, even in the context of staples such as cereals and legumes; the focus not on improvements in production but on agricultural policies based on facilitating imports), abandonment of agriculture in the last 15 years by approximately one fourth of the rural population, i.e. 6.6 million people and their migration to cities1, are not deemed issues of food security.
The actors and conditions of the production of food items, precarious working conditions or subcontracting work in the food sector are not even mentioned.
Causes and factors
The prevalent understanding of food security in our country tends to have a superficial approach that dwells not upon the causes but upon the factors of the issue at hand. It is an approach that is far from dealing with the issue and how it might look in the future. Its grasp of matters is embedded in a “now” defined by the market. This is not just the case with public institutions which are supposed to ensure food security; it is also the case with academic circles and consumer organizations that have authority in this area and should exhibit different perspectives, and also with various non-governmental organizations operating both in the areas of the food sector and food security. For example, despite the fact that the geograhical region in which our country lies will be confronted with a very serious drought in the next 30 years due to the current climate crisis, it cannot be said that this issue has even been dealt with in food security congresses with the significant participation.2
The lack of attention to political issues creating difficulties for food security, some of which we have tried to refer above, is not an attitude particular to our country. But there are some issues of food security which have not been studied yet, and it is safe to say that this is something rather particular to our country.
Risky locations and topics for food security studies
In food security studies, there are some locations which are impossible to research. For example, there is no information about the kind of problems experienced in our prisons in terms of food security. To put it concretely, there is no study trying to answer the following questions: How are the qualities of food items obtained by prisons determined in technical specifications? How are these specifications prepared? How is it understood whether the obtained food items contain the qualities stated in the specifications? This is a matter that can only be understood through laboratory analyses. In what kind of laboratories are these analyses carried out? Which food products were analysed last year or in the previous year? What is total number of analyses? What is the fate of non-conforming products? Tons of food items can be purchased via tenders. These foods are submitted to the prison administration not all at once but in part and at certain time intervals. During the delivery period, how is it controlled that these food items contain the qualities stated in the technical specifications of the tender? How do convicts and prisoners with diseases like celiac disease receive nutrition?
In the face of burning questions like torture, maltreatment and isolation, problems of food security in prisons might seem trivial, but this is not so. The most significant factor influencing a person imprisoned for years is what s/he eats and how s/he eats it. The lack of any study on this issue is in fact a dramatic situation.
The leading risky topic is the Kurdish question
Agriculture is an activity where plant and animal production are simultaneously carried out. It becomes gradually evident that it is a craft rather than a science, not a homogeneous activity that can be executed in the same way everywhere. Comprehension of the relations between plants and animal species living in a certain regions thus gains critical importance. Acquiring products and securing life is possible only by taking care of these relations.
The southeastern region’s agriculture-based economy has largely been devastated. Starting from the 1980’s when armed conflicts began, forced evacuation of villages and migrations caused more than three million people to leave their land. If one considers the fact that these abandoned areas constitute 16% of the total agricultural area in Turkey, the colossal loss of potential in plant and animal production would be better understood.3
These people have been dispossessed, having been forced to leave behind their homes, lands, animals, pastures, gardens, trees, i.e., nearly everything they had. Alongside other aspects, this is also an issue of food security. For there is a close relation between the abandoned, (forcibly) evacuated villages and various unhealthy chemical materials contained in foods served up in front of us all. Whatever its original reason(s), the abandonment of villages has decreased self-sufficiency and diversity in food production; agriculture is corporatized and we end up having to feed ourselves with unhealty food produced with a lot of chemicals in a market controlled by a few companies.
Another risky topic is the destructive foreign policy pursued by the AKP government to support the war in Syria. It goes without saying that the fragmentation of all the productive infrastructure of Syria would cause a problem of food security, just as was the case when the US caused the same problem in Iraq. For instance, particularly in big cities like Basra and Fallujah, there is very serious heavy metal and radioactive material pollution in hundreds of residential areas in Iraq. The food production system in Iraq has been irretrievably devastated and the same disruptive process is now being experienced in Syria. Geography is destiny. The climate crisis, whose violence will gradually increase in the following decades, will make boundaries meaningless. There will be massive population movements. Therefore, it is a profound illusion to suppose that it would be enough to ensure food security only in our own country. But unfortunately, this is what we now have as the prevalent understanding.
Focusing on a concrete example by briefly touching upon the subject of pesticides might shed some light to the larger picture.
Pesticides are hazardous chemicals used in agricultural production. They leave some residues in foods and these residues give rise to various health problems. This is why it is necessary to inquire into whether there are some pesticide residues in food products. In this respect, the primary institution in our country is the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock. The Ministy of Health, another competent authority, is in charge of controlling pesticide residues only in water.
An example about the general situation: Pesticides
The country-wide control surveys conducted in the last three years by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock report that the rate of food products exceeding the pesticide residue limits allowed in food legislation is %2.5. It is stated that, for example, in Antalya, which is one of the highest-ranking cities in fruit and vegetable production, 12.583 food samples were analysed in 2013 and 11.893 samples in 2014 with the purpose of detecting pesticide residues, and that the rate of food containing pesticide residues were %2.01 and %2.50, respectively.4 However, a scholarly research using the same years as base contradicted the statement by the Ministry.5
In the scope of this study, (figures in parentheses indicate the number of samples analysed), tomatoes (163), peppers (82), cucumbers (82), marrows (25) and strawberries (39), i.e., 400 food samples in total were analysed in 2013. It is specified that 21% of these samples contained pesticide residues exceeding the limit values stated in the relevant legislation. Similarly, tomatoes (106), peppers (53), cucumbers (37), marrows (22), strawberries (21), aubergines(16) and oranges (54), i.e., 309 food samples in total were analysed in 2014 and it is specified that 25% of these samples contained pesticide residues exceeding the limit values stated in the relevant legislation.
There is no unity of method in the Ministry’s laboratories for pesticide analyses; there are hundreds of pesticides that can leave residues in foods, but the number of pesticides whose residues are researched is not the same in every laboratory. In addition, the inclusion of pesticide analyses of export products into the domestic control work understates the residue problem. These are the most salient reasons for the differences between the Ministry’s statement and the results obtained from the study.
A more specific example: Glyphosate
Glyphosate is the most commonly used pesticide in the world. However, as is the case in many other pesticides, glyphosate also has the risk of contaminating other products, seeping into the water table or leaving residues in foodstuff. Put up for sale in the form of various formulations, glyphosate is defined as a chemical disrupting hormonal system and causing diverse health problems. Babies and children are more susceptible to such hazardous effects.
According to the data presented by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, 305 tons of glyphosate were used in 2001, and by 2013, this figure multiplied by 15 times, approximately reaching 4500 tons. As long as there is an increase in the use of this chemical, characterized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a carcinogenic, the risk of food and water sources to be contaminated with glyphosate will also increase. Glyphosate can retain its poisonous effect in soil for six months and for three to four months if it contaminates water sources. Nonetheless, the government has not conducted any research about the residues it is leaving in food, soil and water; glyphosate residues are not looked for in routine pesticide analyses. Unfortunately, we have no proper date about this chemical, which is now being heatedly discussed all over the world.
A futile method in ensuring food security: Exposing companies
For several years, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock has been announcing to the public those companies that have been determined to make inappropriate products. However, a comparison of all exposition lists announced by the Ministry between 2011-2015 shows that the names of some firms always appear in different years. In other words, these firms continually commit an act, which constitutes a crime in accordance with legal legislation, or pay the penalty and continue to make inappropriate products. Exposing companies as a punishment technique is only a show and has no real consequences.
Current neoliberal economic understanding is based on speed, which means legal regulations and implementations that slow down the production-consumption process are seen as obstacles. However, ensuring food security requires a slowly operating system. Depending on the characteristics of the food product in question, determining if there are potentially risky components can sometimes last for days. Exported goods are extremely loosely controlled in our country or worse, there is not even any control, as was the case last year in the scandal of exported baby food with genetically modified organisms.
To conclude, the government now does not have any regulative or controlling function with regard to public health and environmental health. By extension, its competence in ensuring food security has also vanished. So, what kind of issues must be taken into consideration and what must be done?
Suggestions
1) For exported and domestically produced food stuffs, monitoring and control programs must be carefully planned. The Ministry must not only announce its general evaluations based on analysis results, but also all data sets that form the basis of analyses. This would enable us to make a proper evaluation of both the general situation and all institutions at work in this area.
2) Family farming must be supported.
3) An independent unit must be formed in order to deal with the relations between climate crisis and food security and to produce situation assesments about this matter.
4) Future-oriented peaceful plans and policies must be arranged for dealing with the inevitible migration that will begin as a consequence of the imminent drought and the prospective destruction caused by the wars in Iraq and Syria.
5) A study must be made in order to reveal the situation of prisons in terms of food security. It is important that the study be carefully planned so as to take into account the health problems of current prisoners and those released from prisons.
6) A peaceful solution must be found to the Kurdish question. This issue is crucial for us to be able to overcome problems of food production and food security that are being caused by the climate crisis. It is crucial not only for our country but also for neighboring countries.
* I would like to thank Demet Şahende Dinler for her review of the article and valuable suggestions.
2 Final Declaration of the 5. Food Security Congress
http://www.gidaguvenligikongresi.org/Sonuc_Bildirgesi.pdf
3 People Force to Migrate within the Country: Kurds in Turkey – A Kurdish Human Rights Project Report 2002. http://www.khrp.org/khrp-news/human-rights-documents/doc_download/49-ku…
4 http://www.tarim.gov.tr/Sayfalar/Detay.aspx?OgeId=66&Liste=BasinAciklam…
5 Pesticide Residues in Food, and Health. Report by the Center for Food Security and Agricultural Research. http://bianet.org/biamag/bianet/165871-gidada-pestisit-kalintisi-ve-sag…