Rundale

By Rebecca Vining and Criostóir King

Many of us in Ireland are familiar with the emotive notion of “feeding the world”. Images of malnourished and starving bodies in the Global South have flooded our media for decades. Think, for example, of Bob Geldof and Band Aid’s 1984 humanitarian fundraiser for Ethiopia, or President Mary Robinson’s 1992 trip to famine-stricken Somalia. Or more recently, those who attended Catholic primary schools will remember being confronted every Lent with the image of a starving African child on the Trócaire box; an image critiqued by rapper Denise Chaila for its representation of Black people as helpless victims. Despite the ubiquity of such images, we rarely learn about the structural injustices that cause such hardship.

The role of Irish agriculture in this noble act of “feeding the world” is often discussed in mainstream conversations around environmental policy. Industry stresses the role of Irish exports in providing “nutrition” to millions of people around the world. Efforts to green Irish agriculture are often met with arguments about the need to feed the world’s rising population, emphasising that our food is produced more sustainably than in other countries, and that a reduction in exports would let the gap be filled by less sustainable alternatives. Ireland is thus positioned as a benign intervener whose superior knowledge and technology can help to feed the world sustainably – a deeply colonial framing used by, among others, Israel.

The argument goes that Irish farmers have an important role in solving world hunger in a sustainable way. As well as evoking the many economic grievances of farmers, reactionary forces may ask: why should we restructure agriculture here while the global demand for food is rising and we are uniquely placed to meet that need sustainably? Instead of unrealistic and utopian fantasies about herd reductions and other environmental regulations, surely we must defend farmers’ livelihoods by fulfilling the noble task of expanding production and creating new markets.

Yet debates around the reduction of agricultural emissions rarely reckon with how agri-food is much more about making a profit than it is about feeding the world. Once we delve a bit deeper, the notion that industrial-style agriculture is needed in Ireland to feed hungry mouths elsewhere unravels. Since Amartya Sen’s landmark Poverty and Famines, many have identified the root cause of hunger as structural violence, not under-production. Ecological destruction, hunger, and ever-increasing inequality within agriculture are not side effects; they are fundamental components of capitalist agriculture. There is a need for us to confront the true problem: a global agri-food system that treats food as a commodity, rather than a basic human right. If we build a more just agri-food system, one that prioritises people over profit, Ireland – and the world – can feed itself.

Unravelling the notion of “feeding the world”

Efforts to “modernise” Irish agriculture gained momentum in the 1970s. Agri-food export expansion was viewed as crucial for developing economic independence from Britain, and promoted through accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Farm Modernisation Scheme. In the 1990s, Irish dairy was further industrialised by expanding processing for export. Some Irish farmers with the means to adapt have benefitted from modernisation, but others struggle to make a living from their work or have been forced to leave the industry. Since EU accession in 1973, the number of farmers in Ireland has dropped from 250,000 to 85,000, income inequality remains a problem, and those in less profitable forms of farming are often reliant on other forms of income.Nevertheless, the mantras of productivism and modernisation still dominate, with Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh recently promising to continue helping farmers to “scale” their “businesses” during the European Election campaign.

In the current era of heightened ecological crises, narratives of modernisation are increasingly about environmental sustainability. Dairy multinational Kerry Group PLC asks applicants to its graduate programme to rise to the challenge of delivering “sustainable nutrition to over 2 billion people”, and offers them the exciting opportunity to contribute to “feeding the world while protecting the planet”. For Kerry Group, reconciling the rising demand for food with growing sustainability challenges is seen as a difficult task to be overcome through technology and innovation.

Similarly, a recent study by the Irish government’s Climate Change Advisory Council examined how Irish agri-food expansion can “feed the world”. It makes the case for Irish dairy in meeting the increased demand from so-called “emerging economies” more sustainably than local alternatives. For these stakeholders, it is not just that the Global South needs our superior produce to meet their nutrition requirements, but also to address the global climate crisis. In such framings, the Global South is not only incapable of feeding itself, but also unable to do so sustainably.

This portrayal completely sidesteps questions of structural injustice, such as why countries in the Global South are reliant on food imports in the first place. Agriculture in former colonies has been dominated by cash crop production and export for centuries – see, for example, Conor McCabe’s work on Irish cattle exports from the colonial era to present. However, the last century has seen the expansion and intensification of market-led intensive agriculture globally, resulting in the solidification of the Global North’s market dominance and the destruction of food systems in the Global South. Lands that once supported small-scale agriculture for local consumption are now used to grow cash crops for export.

Meanwhile, Irish export expansion has been successful not because other countries have always craved Irish milk powder or because our dairy industry is more innovative, but because European milk derivatives undercut local production elsewhere. EU subsidies and unfair trade agreements give Irish producers an unfair competitive advantage over local producers in the Global South. State and industry representatives also actively seek out and create new markets for Irish agricultural outputs. In West Africa and China, for example, Bord Bia, with its budget of €57 million in 2024, works tirelessly to “grow the sector’s footprint” through aggressive marketing campaigns. These include strategies like responding to decreasing demand for infant formula with “adult specialist dairy powders”.

Perhaps if neoliberal agri-food had made any progress whatsoever towards resolving world hunger, one could argue that its associated injustices might be worth it–but it has not done so. The total amount of food in the world has increased, yet improvements in the number of people able to access that food have been modest at best. Even this slight downward trend in the number of hungry people has been reversed recently, with an increase of 122 million from 2019-2022.

What then, does it mean to “feed the world”? Rather than adopting the deeply colonial position of the expert innovators who will save passive victims of hunger in the Global South, we need to recognise how the capitalist agri-food system both creates and profits from food insecurity, while also undermining the ecological basis of food production. Seen in this light, improving access to food and working towards ecological sustainability need not be antagonistic goals. There are alternatives which prioritise justice for both people and ecosystems.

Alternative futures: Food sovereignty

Sustainability targets, when implemented as part of an eco-modernist green transition, put pressure on an already strained system. New environmental regulations have led to a growing resentment towards environmentalism among many farmers, who report feeling scapegoated for the climate crisis. In a 2022 survey, Irish farmers ranked government climate change policies as the number one farming-related stressor, ahead of worries about the future of the farm and feelings of social isolation. This has helped fuel the rise of a reactionary rural politics, as outlined in a previous issue of Rundale.  

However, there are progressive alternatives. Food sovereignty is one such. A transnational Indigenous- and peasant-led movement, food sovereignty defines food as a basic human right, rather than a commodity, and further outlines the rights to dignified work for food providers, to democratic control over food systems, to locally produced and culturally appropriate food, to traditional knowledge and skills, to land, and the rights of nature. Food sovereignty moves beyond food security, which is purely about food access, by recognising the structural and political causes of hunger. The movement involves a “transcendance” of neoliberal agri-food and the development of new systems grounded in agro-ecology, autonomy, and reciprocity.

Such interventions are sorely needed in Ireland, where we are unable to feed ourselves a balanced diet due to the high level of specialisation in beef and dairy. Over 80% of our fruits and vegetables are imported, even though many of our top imports – apples, onions, carrots, potatoes, cabbage – can be grown in Ireland. On the one hand Ireland has been called the most food-secure nation in the world, while on the other, 41% of parents report reducing their own food intake in order to provide for their children. Access to healthy, affordable food is of the utmost importance. This year, Ireland’s predominant food sovereignty organisation, Talamh Beo, launched their Local Food Policy Framework, which outlines some of the policy and economic supports needed to build local food systems in Ireland.

Yet food sovereignty movements do not aim solely to provide enough food for families to survive. They aim to completely transform the socio-political relations of the agri-food system, calling for an international trade order based on compassion and collaboration rather than competition and coercion. For Ireland, that will involve shortening the food supply chain and expanding agro-ecological practices, but it will also mean rejecting our export-driven agri-food model and building care into our relations with land, food, each other, and our descendants. It will require participation in transnational solidarity networks, such as in the global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement which links Israeli food exports to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians or workers’ rights movements that build alliances across the food supply chain and with migrant landworkers.

What do countries truly need if they are to reduce the number of people with insufficient access to food? Is it a never-ending wave of cheap, highly-processed foods, or is it the restoration of rights to land, democratic control over food systems, and access to sustainable livelihoods in small-scale agriculture? Shipping cheap food from Global North to Global South is a temporary fix, and in many cases actively harmful; it is not the solution. Perhaps the real issue here is not that we are unable to feed the world and protect ecosystems, but that we cannot do both while still maximising profits. We need to confront the root cause of both hunger and ecological crises: a profit-oriented global agri-food system. If we build a new agri-food system that allows it to, the world can feed itself