ABSTRACT
The global debate on food security will dominate the international agenda in the twentyfirst century. It is currently being framed in terms of whether, and to what extent, food security can be guaranteed by market solutions. There are two parts to the argument: first, that comparative advantage allows for an optimal solution on a global scale via “free trade” in food; and second, that free trade in food is most efficiently organized by the crop-development industry. The premise, that food consumption is a market act, is so deeply entwined with the faith in global markets that critics of this conception of food security are cast as misguided, even immoral, folks who would let people starve before allowing multinational corporations to get on with their business. This global tension has intensified as the industry and its supporters present biotechnology as a solution to global hunger. For example, Nigeria’s former minister of agriculture and rural development recently castigated biotech opponents in The Washington Post: “To deny desperately hungry people the means to control their futures by presuming to know what is best for them is not only paternalistic but morally wrong.”2
