Constestation of the corporate food regime in FAQ : the case of the small-scale fisheries guidelines

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An important instrument in global fisheries governance is the Code of Conduct of Responsible Fisheries (the Code), this ‘voluntary collection of principles, goals and elements for action’ was approved in 1995 and produced with the involvement of civil society and the private sector (FAO, 2001). An important achievement of SSF-representatives was article 6.18: which ‘recognized the important contribution of small-scale fisheries to employment, income and food security’ and stated that states should protect the sector and where appropriate grant access to traditional fishing grounds. The FAO provides technical assistance for its implementation, and progress on the implementation is reviewed in COFI. An overview of important events for small-scale fisheries in FAO is collected in a timeline in table 5.1.

Contestation of the Corporate Food Regime in FAO:

The Case of the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines

Master Thesis Political Science – International Relations

Brita Trapman

Supervisor: dr. R. J. Pistorius

Second Reader: dr. H. A. B. van der Heijden 27 June 2014

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Abstract

This thesis elaborates on the question how paradigmatic approaches that contest the current structuring of the world food system received support in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In addition it seeks to complement food regime analysis. Food regime analysis offers a way to understand the structuring of the current global food system and the opposition that it generates, but it lacks a profound understanding of how such opposition advances beyond social movements to global organizations. This thesis examines how changes in the organization, involving the increased opening up of decision-making mechanisms to civil society participation, and the evolvement of the relevant discursive concepts, which have broadened and become increasingly multidisciplinary, led to an increased support in FAO for paradigmatic approaches that contest the current structuring of the world food system. The findings from the literature are tested and complemented by a case study on the adoption of the Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines by FAO’s Committee on Fisheries. This thesis concludes that (1) the amount of civil society pressure on an institution, (2) the extent to which an institution is inclusive of the perspectives of marginalized populations, (3) the framing on topics under discussion, and (4) the extent to which financial and trade interests of powerful countries are at stake, determine the extent to which alternative developmental approaches can be supported in a global organization.

Brita Trapman - 6116647 britatrapman@gmail.com Number of words: 21.615

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Foreword

Never before had I thought that I would write my MA thesis on fisheries issues. But when I came across this topic a new world opened for me. It was very motivating to realize how important the contribution is that the social sciences can offer to understand the problems that small-scale fisheries face today, and also personally this topic appealed to me. Being a granddaughter of a man that was born in a small-scale fishing community in Norway and who later represented Norway’s fisheries interests as a diplomat in Germany, this topic is of interest and of importance to me. During this thesis I learned a lot but all the more did I learn what I do not yet know about the fisheries sector. During the career that now lies ahead of me I am inspired and motivated to continue learning about- and working on fisheries issues.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Robin Pistorius for his valuable guidance and advice, and Hein-Anton van der Heijden for taking the time to read and assess this thesis as a second reader. I would like to thank the Slow Fish campaign director Michèle Mesmain for providing me with the right contacts just at the right moment during this project, and I would above all like to thank the eight interview respondents that I consulted for this thesis for their amazing openness and willingness to help me further. I wish all these inspirational people, all the best with their work in the interest of small-scale fishers. Finally I would like to thank the people close to me for believing in me and supporting me throughout this process.

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2.2 Food regime analysis, the first two food regimes and de-peasantization 17 2.3 The third food regime: elevation of the market but generating opposition 19 2.4 Paradigms of development: a breakdown of consensus about the CFR 21 2.5 A typology of discourses 24 2.6 Origins of the opposition: a ‘double transformation’ at the global level 26

2.7 Conclusion 28

3. Organizational context: FAO increasingly a multi-stakeholder platform 29

3.2 FAO’s origin, mandate and functioning 30 3.3 The committee on fisheries 32 3.4 FAO opening up for CSOs and their views 33 3.4.1 Varying degrees of FAO openness 33 3.4.2 A strengthened civil society and conducive FAO attitudes 34 3.4.3 The advancement of the ‘alternative developmental paradigm’ 36 3.4.4 Formality of the inclusion: not always caught up with informal inclusion 37 3.5 Consistency of perspectives in FAO 38

3.6 Conclusion 39

4. Discursive context: diversification and politicization of Development and Food

Security 41

4.2 The FAO’s susceptibility to its discursive context 42 4.3 Concept evolvement: diversification and politicization 43 4.3.1 Development thinking: more than economic growth 43 4.3.2 Food Security: from aggregate supply to consultation of the food insecure 44 4.3.3 Food security and development: coming together in holistic approaches 45 4.4 The operationalization of the concepts in the context of food regime analysis 46 4.4.1 The post-war period up to the 1970s: increasing productive capacity 47 4.3.2 Food Security in 1974 and after: the importance of access to food 48 4.3.3 Food security and globalization: a breakdown of consensus 51 4.4.4 Food Security: A political matter 51

4.5 Conclusion 52

5. Case study: How did the Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines get accepted in FAO 54

5.2 Discursive context: evolving fisheries concerns 55 5.2.1 Development of the fisheries sector: depriving communities and nature 55

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5.2.2 Fisheries management: disregard of social factors 56 5.2.3 Recognition of the social: ‘Back to the future’ 57 5.2.4 Fisheries concerns and different developmental discourses 59 5.2.4.1 Small-scale, artisanal, family fisheries? 59 5.2.4.2 Co-management 61 5.3 Organizational context: the FAO and fisheries 61 5.3.1 FAO and small-scale fisheries 63 5.3.2 The content of the SSF Guidelines: in line with the progressive discourse 66 5.4 Analysis of the process towards the Voluntary Guidelines 68 5.4.1 Socio-economic crises and their reactions 68 5.4.2 Strengthening of civil society and opening up of FAO 69 5.4.3 Experts and evolving context 69 5.4.4 Varied state support: different interests, framings and path dependence 70

5.5 Conclusion 71

6. Conclusion 73

6.1 Research Question 73 6.2 Findings: opened up organization and broadened discourse 73 6.3 The rise and evolvement of alternative paradigmatic approaches 75 6.4 Recommendations for further research 77

References 80

Appendix I: List of documents 83

I.I SSF meeting documents COFI 83 I.II Meeting reports COFI 83

I.III CSO Journals 84

I.IV Other documents 84

Appendix II: Interviews 85

II.I Interview Participants (in chronological order of the interviews) 85 II.II Interview Guide 85

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List of tables, figures and illustrations

Table 2.1: Typology of four political and social discourses 25

Illustration 3.1: FAO premises in Rome 31

Illustration 4.1: Cartoon World Conference of Fisheries Management 1984 49 Illustration 5.1: Cartoon of fisheries management 58 Table 5.1: Typology of four political and social discourses adjusted to fisheries 60

Figure 5.1: NGO/CSO Participation in COFI 63

Table 5.2 Timeline of Small-scale Fisheries at FAO 64 Figure 6.1: Overview of the dynamics that lead to support for paradigmatic

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Abbreviations

CEB Chief Executive Board of Coordination CFR Corporate Food Regime

CFS Committee on World Food Security COFI Committee on Fisheries

ECOSOC Economic and Social Council EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization GMOs Genetically Modified Organisms

IAASTD International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development

ICP Industry Cooperative Programme

ICSF International Collective in Support of Fishworkers IEE Independent External Evaluation

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development IFIs International Financial Institutions

IMF International Monetary Fund

IPC International CSO Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty ITQs Individual Trading Quotas

MDGs Millennium Development Goals MPAs Marine Protected Areas

SSF Small-scale Fisheries TNAs Transnational Actors TNCs Transnational Corporations

UN United Nations

UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNGA United Nations General Assembly

WFP World Food Programme WTO World Trade Organization

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1. Introduction

1.1 Research Question

According to Holt Giménez and Shattuck, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recently ‘became prime contested territory’ for proponents and opponents of the current structuring of the global food system (2011: 126). The FAO has received little scholarly attention (Phillips, 2006: 42), compared to for instance the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) (cf. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, 2008; Pender, 2001; McMichael, 2009b; Thomas & Evans, 2011). Of the studies that have been conducted on the FAO, most are historical and largely descriptive (Shaw, 2007; Shaw, 2009; McKeon, 2009). No account in the literature of political science and international relations has been found that offers a comprehensive understanding of how theFAO could become contested territory between opponents and proponents of the current structuring of the global food system. This thesis wants to address this gap in the literature and hence it will elaborate on the question:

How did paradigmatic approaches to development that contest the current structuring of the global food system receive support in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations?

1.2 Theoretical framework: Food Regime Analysis

In order to understand the context in which the FAO operates and the issues of the global food system that are the topic of contestation, this thesis will employ food regime analysis. A food regime can be defined as: ‘a rule-governed structure of production and consumption on a world scale’ (Friedman in: McMichael, 2009a: 142). Food regime analysis, first introduced in 1987 by Friedmann, is a method for the analysis and the characterization of the global food system, including the significant relationships and contractions in its capitalist processes (Holt Giménez & Shattuk, 2011: 110; McMichael, 2009: 163). Since its first formulation, food regime analysis has been applied to understand a variation of global phenomena related to food (McMichael, 2009a). Food regime analysis, according to McMichael does not

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only offer an interpretation of the evolution of the material food circuits of a given food regime but also of the evolving developmental models that legitimise and express these relations (2009a: 145). This thesis understands the different developmental models as epistemic frames or discourses that foresee different futures, and which entail different values, beliefs and approaches about how to develop towards these futures. McMichael (2009a) argues that in the food regime that is currently hegemonic, the Corporate Food Regime (CFR), the power relations and the supporting epistemic frame are contested. Counter movements challenge the importance that the CFR grants to market rule and economic growth, its subordination of agriculture to contribute to economic growth, and its unequal outcomes (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 119). These counter movements promote alternative developmental models, which foresee democratic, diversified futures in which agriculture should be developed as a foundational source of social and ecological sustainability (ibid.).

This thesis also wants to contribute to food regime analysis because it perceives a lack of attention in the existing theory to how oppositional paradigmatic approaches evolve beyond social movements and how they receive support in global institutions. McMichael (2009a) has focussed on the present food system, which he characterizes as the Corporate Food Regime, and on the opposition that this food regime has generated. He observes opposition in the form of social movements that promote a developmental model alternative to the dominant developmental model that legitimises the Corporate Food Regime. These social movements include groups such as consumer movements and the peasant movement La Via Campesina. He also identifies disillusion with the Corporate Food Regime in other societal domains, for instance in the UN-sponsored report that was published in 2008 by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 132). By drawing on Polanyi, McMichael offers an explanation for the generation of opposition to the dis-embedding forces of the Corporate Food Regime (2006: 408). How this opposition is consequently carried beyond social movements and how it evolves to other institutions and within these institutions is left unexamined.

The FAO, in which assumptions in line with the alternative developmental model now have appeared, offers a case where this can be examined. It is relevant to keep in mind that the FAO is relatively transparent and publically accountable, in

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contrast to transnational corporations (TNC’s) and more secretive organizations such as the World Trade Organizations (WTO), and is hence ‘at least a theoretical alternative to other global organizations/corporations that lack public accountability and transparency and that currently dominate food and agricultural processes’ (Philips & Ilcan, 2003: 435). In other words, if voices opposing the corporate food regime are to be heard at the global governance level, the FAO seems to be the first organization where this is possible. These public characteristics of FAO have implications for the generalizability of this thesis. If ideas evolved beyond civil society to FAO because of its transparency or accountability, this may not occur in institutions that are less accountable or transparent.

1.3 Focus on discourse

The ‘contested territory’ in this thesis will be understood as the contestation between the diverging models of development; this is in line with Holt Giménez and Shattuck (2011). This thesis will hence mainly focus on the discursive practices in FAO, including its normative activities and its role as a knowledge institution. Limited attention will be paid to the field projects and the funding activities. This focus has been chosen for several reasons. Firstly and most obviously, because these are the activities where the observed contestation takes place. Secondly and in conjunction with this, the role of the FAO as a normative actor has increasingly become more relevant in comparison to its other activities. While in its early years the FAO mainly conducted operational activities to improve productive capacity and infrastructure, from the 1980s onwards, its governance role became increasingly important. This was due to declining funding for its operational activities (FAO, 2007b: 53 – 54) while in the meantime social organizations increasingly pressured the FAO to take a more autonomous role in its fight against hunger (McKeon, 2009: 107). Governments have in addition started privileging the FAO’s governance role (ibid.). These discursive activities are finally what the institution and its member states explicitly propagate, it is plausible to assume that the perspectives that are expressed here are more visible than possible implicit norms and perspectives in field projects. Nevertheless, it definitely deserves recommendation for further research to examine the consistency between FAO’s normative work and its fieldwork.

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1.4 Research design: Case study of the Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines

The findings that are obtained from a literature study will be tested and complemented by a case study of the process leading to the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing

Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Alleviation (SSF

Guidelines), an international instrument that was adopted in FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI) in June 2014. These Guidelines have been chosen because they form the most recent example that is both delimited and concrete of how perspectives that contest assumptions of the Corporate Food Regime have received support in FAO from both executive staff members and from governing member states. A case study in the fisheries sector may not seem the most obvious case in the light of the theoretical angle, as the food regime analysis literature has mainly been focussing on the agricultural sector. However, global agriculture and global fisheries have sufficient parallels, which will be set forth in chapter 5, that justify the choice for this case.

A case study can be defined as ‘an intensive study of a single unit for the purpose of understanding a large class of (similar units)’ (Gerring, 2004: 341). The process leading to the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines is the ‘single unit’, which functions to understand more instances in which alternatives to the Corporate Food Regime were supported in FAO. The research design of a case study has been chosen because this thesis has tentative, theory-forming ambitions instead of theory-testing ambitions. Case studies have the advantage that they allow for a detailed study in which a multitude of factors can be included. For this case study, relevant documents have been analysed and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with various people involved in the preparation of the Small-scale fisheries guidelines.

1.5 Relevance

This thesis has both an empirical and a theoretical ambition. Empirically this thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of how the FAO reacts to the structuring of the current global food system its contradictions. Theoretically this thesis aims to elaborate on an underexposed aspect of food regime analysis in order to complement the theory with gained insights.

It is relevant to critically engage with food regime analysis, because it is a widely applied method (see for example McMichael, 2009a for an elaboration on the

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state of the food regime analysis literature). There are also good reasons to study the FAO as a site of global governance, as set forth by Philips and Ilcan (2003: 434 – 435). The FAO’s interventions on global scale inform us about a particular vision of how to ensure that the world is appropriately provisioned with food, as this is in brief its mandate. A critical examination of the FAO’s work may thus inform us about assumptions underpinning the current food regime (2003: 434). The rise of an alternative developmental paradigm in the FAO may indicate heightened criticism of the current world food system.

1.6 Outlook: the argument

This thesis shows that in line with McMichael’s argument, opposition against the CFR has strengthened and increased. This thesis will argue that the extent to which developmental approaches that contest the CRF are supported in global institutions, depends on the amount of civil society pressure on an institution (1), the extent to which an institution is inclusive of the perspectives of marginalized populations (2), the framing on the topic under discussion (3), and the extent to which financial and trade interests of powerful countries are at stake (4).

1.7 Structure: theory, organizational context and discursive context

In the next chapter, chapter 2, this thesis will elaborate on food regime analysis. It will determine what elements of the theory are useful for coming to an understanding of the contestations about the Corporate Food Regime in FAO, and where the empirical research of this thesis can complement the theory.

Subsequently, chapter 3 will engage with the organizational context in which the alternative paradigmatic approaches received support. It will elaborate on how the organizational lay out of the FAO determines how perspectives are formed, and courses of action decided upon. It will argue that the intergovernmental governing bodies of FAO have increasingly opened up for civil society and their views. The FAO is however, besides an intergovernmental platform also a knowledge institution that collects and disseminates expertise for the advancement of food security. This is done by the staff members of the impartial FAO secretariat, whose perspectives are determined by what is evidence based. The ‘technocratic’ understandings of how to achieve food security and development have however evolved over time. Chapter 4

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will elaborate on how these concepts became increasingly broad and multidisciplinary, having come to encompass also approaches that are not supportive of the continuation of the CFR. Up to now there has however been a limit to the extent to which the FAO Secretariat could support alternative developmental approaches, because powerful member states pressure FAO not to deal with financial and trade issues. Before this thesis arrives at the conclusion, chapter 5 will complement the findings by reporting on the case study of the SSF Guidelines.

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2. Different discourses of development: the Legitimation and

Contestation of the Corporate Food Regime

2.1 Introduction

In order to answer the central research question of this thesis - How did paradigmatic

approaches to development that contest the current structuring of the global food system receive support in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations?- it is necessary to provide an understanding of what the contestation is

about. Food Regime Analysis is a useful way to characterize the structure of the global food system and to conceptualize its dynamics and its contradictions. One of its most prominent theorists, Philip McMichael, moreover offers a characterization of different developmental paradigms that either legitimise or contest the continuation of the hegemonic dynamics of the current global food system. These paradigms and a more precise typology by Holt Giménez and Shattuck (2011) offer a useful way to understand the different positions about the future of the food system.

This chapter, will first set forth what food regime analysis is, what food regimes have been in place previously and how the evolving global food system has had the tendency to undermine small-scale food producers to the advantage of the large-scale food industry, which is important for understanding the opposition against today’s food regime. Secondly, characterizations of the current food regime will be set forth; McMichael’s Corporate Food Regime (CFR) will prove to be a useful concept for this thesis. Thirdly, the different discourses that either legitimise or contest the corporate food regime will be set forth. And finally an elaboration will be provided on the causes for the opposition to the CRF.

2.2 Food regime analysis, the first two food regimes and de-peasantization

Food regime analysis offers a way to characterize and analyse the global food system, it was first introduced by Friedmann in 1987 (Holt Giménez and Shattuk, 2011: 110). A food regime is defined as ‘a rule-governed structure of production and consumption on a world scale’ (Friedman in: McMichael, 2009a: 142). It specifies patterns of food circulation in the world food economy and as such it historicises the global food system and it ‘underlines the agrofood dimension of geo-politics’ (McMichael, 2009a: 140). The food system can be conceptualised as ‘global’ already since the end of the

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nineteenth century but the global circuits have deepened (ibid.: 145) and its parameters have changed. McMichael argues that the food regime can be simultaneously a historical concept that can identify food regime moments and an analytical tool to identify ‘significant relationships and contradictions in capitalist processes across time and space’ (ibid.: 163). By conceptualizing these contradictions it can explain crises, transformations and transitions (ibid.: 140). At least two food regimes are distinguished over the last two centuries. Disagreement among scholars exists about whether a third food regime is being established and if it is, what its characteristics are (ibid.: 152).

The first food regime spans from the 1870s to the 1930s and was British centred. It was characterized by agricultural production in the colonies and imports by Europe, which enabled its industrialization. The second regime was US-centred, it spans from the 1950s to the 1970s. Food circulation was reversed, US surpluses where brought strategically and selectively to postcolonial states under the name of ‘food aid’ in order to encourage industrial development there and secure loyalty against communism (ibid.: 141). This period of agro-industrial development of states in the global south is referred to as the Green Revolution. During this period technologies were adopted that dramatically increased cereal yields (Perkins, 1997: v), and transnational commodity complexes began to form. Transnational commodity complexes consist of specialized national farm sectors that are transnationally linked by global supply chains, for example the animal protein complex linking grain/carbohydrate, soy/protein, and lot-feeding (McMichael, 2009a: 141). The Green Revolution has been criticized for its unequal social outcomes and its damaging effects on the environment (cf. Weis, 2007; Friedmann, 2005: 250), but it has also brought results that others invoke to emphasize its success. These latter results include for example the fact that produced calories per head of the world population have increased by 25% since the 1960s, despite the fact that the world population has doubled since then (FAO in: Fresco, 2009: 379), and the fact that households nowadays spend less of their daily income on food than ever before (OECD in: Fresco, 2009: 379).

For the number small-scale food producers the post-war development of the food system has not been supportive, due to technology intensification, privatization, trade and regulations that favoured up scaling (cf. Thomas & Evans, 2011; Weis, 2007; McMichael, 1997). The availability of US surpluses firstly removed the

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incentives for subsistence farming for many. The farmers that moved from the land formed a pool of cheap labour, which made industrial development possible (Thomas & Evans, 2011: 473), and the production of basic food crops in developing countries was moreover largely substituted by the production of fresh, high-value export crops and with feed crops for meet to be consumed by wealthy global consumers (McMichael, 1997: 639 – 640). These developments have resulted in increased dependency on food imports today in large parts of the developing world (ibid.; Esposo Guerrero, 2010; par. 5).

The increasing privatization of agricultural inputs was neither supportive for the preservation of smallholder agriculture (Weis, 2007: 67). Industrial monoculture largely depends on the purchase and application of various costly inputs, producing commodities for sale (ibid.: 58). This was enabled by various technological inventions such as fertilizers, farm machinery, and plant protection chemicals, which allowed industrial capital to create a farming system that depended no longer on closed-loop cycles of nutrients, energy and managed diversity. Poor farmers in the developing world that are incorporated in the global food market are often vulnerable (Weis, 2007: 125). They suffer from issues such as price deflations of the basic food crops that they produce, influenced by large-scale industrial production elsewhere and the command of the best arable land by agro-export. Debt and adjustment programmes have exacerbated this because they reduced regulation, if that existed at all, that supported small farmers (ibid.: 125). In the EU and the US subsidy regimes were mostly supportive of large-scale farm enterprises (ibid.: 67; Friedmann, 2005: 246). Despite these unsupportive developments, small-scale food producers in the developing world are still responsible for large and significant proportions of the total food production (Altieri, 2009: 104 – 105).

2.3 The third food regime: elevation of the market but generating opposition

McMichael, one of the most important theorizers of food regime analysis, identifies the rise of third Corporate Food Regime (CFR), which has its origins in the late 1980s. The difference with the second food regime is firstly the ‘globalisation project’, which recalibrates development at the global rather than at the national scale (McMichael, 2009a: 152 – 153). And secondly, that it is being established through a process that reverses the gains of the welfare areas and elevates the logic of the

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market as the dominant mode of governance (McMichael, 2000: 23). The corporate food regime has deepened commodity complexes, incorporated new regions into protein chains, consolidated differentiated supply chains including a supermarket revolution for privileged consumers of fresh fruits, vegetables and fish, and generated ‘populations of displaced slum-dwellers as small farmers leave the land’ (McMichael, 2009a: 142). The powerful movement establishing this food regime is a continuation of the earlier movements that operated according to industrial rationality and capitalist competition (2000: 21). These movements see nature as ‘an unproblematic human laboratory’ and rural society as a residual domain, supplying labour (ibid.: 21). McMichael’s CFR has been widely applied to identify and understand various phenomena of the global food system (cf. Holt Giménez and Shattuk, 2011; Esposo Guerrero, 2010; Haroon Akram-Lodhi, 2008; Wittman, 2009).

McMichael’s corporate food regime has a specific purpose, ‘namely to focus attention on how instituting the full-scale dispossession of an alternative agriculture is licensed by the so-called ‘globalisation project’’ (2009a: 152). Phrased differently, how diversified, smallholder agriculture is increasingly replaced by globalizing large-scale, industrial agriculture and alternatives that are being formulated by the opposition that this generates. McMichael argues that the alternatives that are advocated by counter movements potentially offer genuine alternatives to ‘the corporate takeover of life’ (2000: 21).

Food regime analysis, besides offering an interpretation of the material food circuits that support global power inequalities, also offers an interpretation of the ideologies that legitimise these power relations. (McMichael, 2009a: 145). For understanding the support and the opposition to the corporate food regime, it is useful to look at it in terms of discourses (or paradigms or epistemes, McMichael uses the terms interchangeably and thus this thesis will do the same). In the different food regimes, different paradigms of development served as the ideological legitimation of hegemony (ibid.), these will be elaborated on now. The paradigms of development will be set forth now and consequently a more specified typology of different discourses will be set forth.

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2.4 Paradigms of development: a breakdown of consensus about the CFR

Different paradigms entail a certain frame of what development entails. During the first food regime the developmental model legitimising it entailed a dynamic between national agricultural and industrial sectors (McMichael, 2009a: 141). During the second food regime, this model of national economic development was projected into the postcolonial world (ibid.: 145), it stated ‘learn from, and catch up with, the west’ (McMichael, 1997: 646). The dominant ideology does however, not necessarily reflect what is going on in the real world. During the second food regime for instance, the ideology was of national development, while in reality the American support of export and the efforts to universalise American farming systems and dietary habits paved the way for agribusiness, shifting the organising principle of the world economy from state to capital (2009a: 146). During the third food regime McMichael identifies a breakdown of consensus on what constitutes development (McMichael, 2000: 23). The dominant paradigm reframed development no longer as national development (as during the second food regime) but as global development, stating: ‘find your niche in the global economy’ (McMichael, 1997: 646). As a reaction to the unequal outcomes of the corporate food regime and its corporate take over of food production, an alternative paradigm arose. The contradictory epistemes are deeply entrenched, based on diverging values and on non-compatible beliefs about how to sustain the world food system in the future.

Development can be defined as: ‘a process of change through which sustainable and equitable improvements are made to the quality of life for all or most members of society’ (Jentoft, 1990: 335). The different paradigms of development disagree about what equity means and about what brings about equity and sustainability. Beliefs in the human capacity to adapt the food system sustainably through technology (e.g. Fresco, 2009) are opposed to beliefs in the superiority of the self-repairing capacity of nature’s cycles and biodiversity (e.g. Altieri, 2000), and a belief in the distributive fairness of market functioning is held against the belief in communal organization to distribute food evenly (e.g. Wittman et.al, 2010).

Friedmann also elaborates on the role of non-material forces in food regime theory. She argues that food regimes are part of periods of stability in relations of power and property, ‘with unstable periods in between shaped by political contests over a new way forward’ (2005: 228). During stable periods, the workings of the food regime appear natural. However, in fact they are constituted by implicit rules guiding

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relationships, underpinned by unstated assumptions (ibid.: 232). Friedmann understands this complex of assumptions and implicit rules as a socially constructed

frame for interpreting reality (ibid.). These frames are the negotiated compromises

that emerged from contests among social movements and powerful institutions (ibid). When the regime stops working well, meaning that its actions do not have the expected consequences, the aspects of the frame become named or revealed (ibid.), in other words, they are no longer implicit but are made explicit. For instance the rising inequality despite the promises of overall growth of free trade.

McMichael distinguishes two contrasting paradigms in today’s CFR, one advocating its continuation, the other opting for reform. The ‘mainstream or official paradigm’ promotes capital and technology input and the development of agricultural value-chains that incorporate smallholders into the global markets, improving their performance through competition (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 132). Traditional peasant agriculture is regarded as a ‘remnant of history’ (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 124) or a ‘poverty baseline’ (ibid.: 124) that will eventually be overcome through this integration into the global market (McMichael, 2009b: 237). Progress is regarded as the transfer of rural people to urban centres (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 120). McMichael and Schneider argue that this developmentalist episteme ‘is unable to recognise the social, ecological and cultural functions and potentials of small farming practices and networks’ (2011: 124). The World Bank report of 2008 that after 25 years places ‘agriculture afresh at the center of the development agenda’ typically holds these assumptions (McMichael, 2009b: 235 – 236; Haroon-Akram-Lodhi, 2008).

Although industrial agriculture is associated with negative impacts on the environment (see for example Bernstein, 2013; Wittman, 2009), proponents of this official developmental paradigm eventually see the market as the best mechanism to limit burdens on the environment (Weis, 2007). It is assumed that more market functioning leads to greater efficiency of resources and land, which is environmentally friendly. Moreover, this developmental paradigm entails the assumption that less land is needed for agriculture if technology is intensified and as a consequence yields are increased, this in turn leaves more land available that does not need to be used for agriculture and can thus bear natural self-organising ecosystems (Weis, 2007: 164). This argument rests on a binary in which there are landscapes for

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human use and landscapes for nature (ibid.), which is not self-evident for certain forms of agriculture that work with ecological principles.

The alternative model of development can be said to make explicit the frame of the mainstream developmental model. It addresses the social control over systems of food production and consumption, the economic policies that structure the food system and de-peasantization as an unwanted development (Patel, 2009: 665). Increased export of agricultural products does not simply increase farmers’ incomes they argue for instance; it may also reduce production for home consumption and for domestic markets, which increases vulnerability to the volatility of the global markets (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 126). McMichael often speaks of the global peasant coalition La Via Campesina as an example of a counter movement that promotes the alternative paradigm. This movement raised the notion of ‘food sovereignty’, which they defined as ‘the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity’ (in: Patel, 2009: 665). In other words, self-determination through decentralized democratic control over food production (McMichael, 2009a: 163), allowing for diverse futures instead of the universal application of the Western model. Food sovereignty is not only desirable according to its proponents; it is necessary for a sustainable future (Patel, 2009: 665). The alternative developmental model moreover promotes production methods that minimize the burdens on the environment and which make use of nature’s natural dynamics, for example agro-ecology (McMichael, 2009a: 162). Agro-ecology is ‘the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agricultural ecosystems’ (Altieri, 2009: 103).

The vision laid out in the UN-sponsored report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), published in 2008, was in line with this alternative developmental model (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 133). The report considers ‘business as usual’ not an option and instead recommends support for smallholder agriculture through a shift to non-hierarchical development models, through democratising food policy, strengthening regional and local food supplies, through securing access to resources, information and market infrastructure and placing faith in farmer knowledge and natural and agricultural biodiversity (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 132.). This according to MicMichael and Schneider signifies a paradigmatic shift in comparison

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to the World Bank’s World Development Report that appeared during the same period (2011: 133).

2.5 A typology of discourses

According to Holt-Giménez and Shattuck a distinction should be made between discourses that do merely mitigate the negative externalities of the corporate food regime in order to sustain it and those that truly challenge the hegemony of the corporate food regime (2011). The latter did appear in FAO, and the authors argue that strategic alliances between different challengers of the corporate food regime do offer an opportunity for regime change (ibid.: 109). They provide a more spelled out and detailed typology of different discourses1 about the future of the global food system (2011: 117 – 118). The typology includes four discourses, two of which, the

neoliberal and the reformist discourses, aim to stabilize the corporate food regime and

two of them, the progressive and the radical discourses, aim for transformation. The neoliberal trend represents the market-based perspective of which the reformist trend is a weakened version that aims to mitigate the social and environmental externalities of the corporate food regime but without systematic changes (ibid.: 115). The progressive and the radical trends bring forward alternatives to industrial agro-food system. Where the progressive movement sees this largely within the economic and political frameworks of existing capitalist food systems, the radical movement (within which the food sovereignty movement is ranged) brings forward capitalist, anti-imperialist or anti-corporatist demands (ibid.). This typology shows how the neoliberal discourse can incorporate the language of its critics and become reformist, it may seem different but it is no real alternative. The four discourses are summarized in Table 2.1, which is a downsized version of Holt Giménez and Shattuck’s table (2011: 117 – 118).

1_{Holt Giménez and Shattuck (2011) refer to the different discourses as ‘trends’. Based on the} complementarity of their work to McMichael’s it has been assumed justified to use McMichael’s terminology instead.

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Table 2.1: Typology of four political and social discourses

MAINSTREAM DEVELOPMENTAL

MODEL:STRENGTHENING THE

CORPORATE FOOD REGIME

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENTAL

MODEL:TRANSFORMING THE

CORPORATE FOOD REGIME

Politics Neoliberal Reformist Progressive Radical

Model Overproduction; corporate concentration; unregulated markets and monopolies; monocultures (including organic); GMOs; agrofuels; mass global consumption of industrial food; phasing out of peasant & family agriculture and local retail Mainstreaming/ certification of niche markets (e.g. organic, fair, local, sustainable); maintaining northern agricultural subsidies; ‘sustainable’ roundtables for agrofuels, soy, forest products, etc; market-led land reform; microcredit Agroecologically-produced local food; investment in underserved communities; new business models and community benefit packages for production, processing & retail; better wages for ag. workers; solidarity economies; land access; regulated markets & supply

Dismantle corporate agri-foods monopoly power; parity; redistributive land reform; community rights to water & seed; regionally-based food systems; democratization of food system; sustainable livelihoods; protection from dumping/ overproduction; revival of agroecologically- managed peasant agriculture to distribute wealth and cool the planet Approach Increased industrial production; unregulated corporate monopolies; land grabs; expansion of GMOs; public-private partnerships; liberal markets; microenterprise; international sourced food aid; Same as neoliberal but with increased middle peasant production & some locally- sourced food aid; microcredit; more agricultural aid, but tied to GMOs & ‘bio-fortified/

climate-resistant’ crops.

Right to food; better safety nets; sustainably produced, locally sourced food; agroecologically-based agricultural development. Human right to food; locally sourced, sustainably produced, culturally appropriate, democratically controlled.

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The contestation at FAO according to the authors is between a reformist and a

progressive discourse. While the FAO used to be mainly reformist according to the

authors, parts of the institution have become central players in the progressive response to the food price crisis of 2007-08. In other words, while certain sectors within FAO promote measures that strengthen the Corporate Food Regime, with the mitigation of its worst externalities, others opt for alternatives to the Corporate Food Regime. Holt Giménez and Shattuck see the opening of the Committee for World Food Security in 2009 for civil society participation as a reason for this (ibid.: 126). However, as the next chapters will spell out, it is the result of a process that goes further back in time.

2.6 Origins of the opposition: a ‘double transformation’ at the global level

The globalisation project according to McMichael is contradictory and it strengthens certain actors while it disadvantages others, this generates opposition (McMichael, 1997: 645). McMichael invokes Polanyi’s concept of the ‘double transformation’ to conceptualize the opposition against the corporate food regime (2006: 408). Polanyi argued that the social protectionism that was established in the beginning of the twentieth century was a spontaneous reaction to the rise of capitalism (ibid.), because if capitalist markets were allowed to run rampant, they would eventually destroy both society and their own natural resource base (Holt Giménez & Shattuck, 2011: 113). Counter movements prevent capitalist markets from becoming so destructive. They arise in order to protect land, labour and money, and to re-embed these into society, by pushing governments to reform (McMichael, 2006: 408; Holt Giménez & Shattuck, 2011: 113). The corporate food regime and its institutions dis-embed land, labour and money on a global level and the global food movements can be seen as a global counter-reaction in the Polanyian sense to ‘‘re-spatialise’ the social and economic relations in the corporate food regime’ (McMichael, 2006: 408). This explains how under social pressure food regimes can undergo regulatory policy change (Holt Giménez & Shattuck, 2011: 113).

Food is according to McMichael particularly powerful in mobilizing counter movements because for many people it is more than just an item of consumption but a way of life, and hence it has deep material and symbolic power (McMichael, 2000: 31 - 32). Money is according to McMichael also a force that potentially threatens the

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hegemony of the market but it is more fictitious than food and hence the deterioration of food relations may generate more powerful decent than the volatility of currency relations (ibid.: 21). Food embodies ‘the links between nature, human survival and health, culture and livelihood’; this is why it has become ‘a focus of contention and resistance to a corporate takeover of life itself’ (ibid: 32). Food is thus a force to be reckoned with as a threat to the dominance of the market (ibid.: 21). In short, resistance against the globalisation project is generated because people are mobilized by its negative consequences for both material conditions and non-material values.

States may also undertake actions to contradict the corporate food regime, namely the corporate food regime is authored by competing and unequal nations (McMichael, 2000: 22). While some statist interests may have a large impact on structuring the world, such as the United States’ Cold War strategy after the Second World War, they may be challenged by equally legitimate entities, such as the EU who, recovering after the war, also aimed for a share in grain surplus markets in the third world (Esposo Guerrero, 2010: 11).

Social movements are not the only actors promoting the alternative developmental model. As has been indicated, it is also brought forward in for instance in the IAASTD report and in various parts of the FAO. McMichael argues that the alternative developmental model is gaining legitimacy ‘as the global food system’s contradictions, limits and injustices are revealed more clearly in the compounding of the energy, food and climate crises’ (2009a: 162 - 163), while simultaneously a legitimacy crisis of structural adjustment programmes has emerged in the early 2000s (McMichael & Schneider, 2011: 128). McMichael and Schneider suspect that these developments may have accounted for a renewed interest in agricultural reform in global institutions (ibid.). Thus, from this we can conclude that international organizations are not immune to the opposition of the counter movements because this would jeopardize their legitimacy.

This explanation for the rise of alternative models of development beyond civil counter-movements is rather sparse. It does not explain how the legitimacy of the alternative developmental paradigm has increased, it presents the international institutions as reluctant and reactive and it does not say anything about other possibly relevant actors such as academics. How different institutions relate to each other and how developmental paradigms are created and sustained or not is an underexposed element in McMichael’s elaboration on the corporate food regime. Through studying

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the discourses in FAO this thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of how opposition evolves from civil society to global institutions and contribute its insights to food regime analysis.

2.7 Conclusion

This chapter has elaborated on food regime analysis with the aim to provide an understanding firstly of the structuring and practices global food system, which have become the topic of contestation in FAO, and secondly, about different positions in the contestation. The current global food system can be characterized as the Corporate Food Regime, a food regime in which market rule is being elevated at the expense of rule by the state, which transnationally establishes a homogeneous model. The CFR is ideologically legitimized by a developmental discourse that privileges market expansion and economic growth while disregarding the social and cultural value of agriculture and food, and which dis-embeds food production from nature. Opposition against the CFR has arisen in sectors of society that have been materially, socially or culturally deprived by it. The opposition champions structures for food production and consumption alternative to the CFR, which are locally and ecologically embedded, decentralized and democratic.

The contestation between these developmental models has appeared in FAO. It has been argued however that a more profound understanding is needed of the evolvement of the alternative developmental model beyond civil society, to other institutions. Through this study of the FAO this thesis had the aim to contribute to that. The next chapter will elaborate on the organizational context that the FAO forms which sets possibilities and limits to what perspectives can be formed and how. This chapter will elaborate on how that organizational context has changed and what that meant for the formation of perspectives.

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3. Organizational context: FAO increasingly a

multi-stakeholder platform

3.1 Introduction

The previous chapter introduced the reader to the Corporate Food Regime (CFR), a concept that characterizes the structures of the global food system and its contradictions. It was argued that the CFR generated its own opposition because of its unequal outcomes and because of the commodification of nature and food, which, for many have deep symbolic and social value. This third chapter will examine how such opposition to the CRF is organized around FAO, and elaborate on the institutional context that is relevant for understanding how and why the alternative developmental paradigm moved beyond social movements and became relevant at the FAO. Institutions can be understood in the formal sense, covering rules and regulations, and in the informal sense, covering beliefs, norms and implicit rules (McMichael, 2009a: 152). This chapter will elaborate on formal and informal changes that have taken place in the organizational context of the FAO. The next chapter can be considered to deal mainly with institutions in the informal sense, as it deals with the discursive context of the FAO.

This third chapter will first elaborate on the origins of the FAO, its mandate and on how it functions, this is relevant to understand where the FAO’s policies are formed and where in the organization there are possibilities for contestation to arise. The explanatory examples that will be given in this chapter will be drawn from the fisheries bodies in FAO, in order to lay a basis for the case study on the Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines in chapter 5. Secondly, after the organizational lay out of the FAO has been explained, this chapter will set forth how this organizational lay out has increasingly been opened up for civil society and how as a consequence, civil society perspectives, that are often critical of the CFR, are increasingly heard and taken seriously in FAO. Consequently it will be argued how this opening up for other stakeholders than states has occurred both formally and informally.

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3.2 FAO’s origin, mandate and functioning

The FAO is the first and largest UN agency, established on 16 October 1945 during the first FAO Conference in Quebec, Canada (Gareis, 2012: 219). Specialized agencies are autonomous organizations working with the UN and each other through the coordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at the intergovernmental level. The Chief Executives Board of Coordination (CEB) is the place where the work of specialized agencies and the UN is coordinated at the intersectetariat level (Gareis, 2012: 26). Specialized agencies are inter-state institutions, resting on the basis of their own international law treaties with their own membership and organizational structure, and their own budgets (ibid.: 37). They are created for the purpose of contributing to the achievement of economic and social goals that in turn contribute to the maintenance of peaceful co-existence among states (ibid.). The idea to establish the FAO was brought forward in 1943 in Hot Springs, Virginia. It was initiated in light of the third of US President Roosevelt’s four essential freedoms: ‘freedom of speech; of worship; from want; and from fear’ (Rosenman, 1950 in: Shaw, 2007: 3). When established two years later, after a preparatory commission had laid the groundwork, the FAO’s mandate was to: raise levels of nutrition, secure improvements in the efficiency of production and distribution of food, better the condition of rural people, and contribute toward an expanding world economy and ensure humanity’s freedom from hunger (Shaw, 2009: 67). As will become in the fourth chapter, during the FAO’s existence in a changing world, it has decreasingly become straightforward how such a mandate should be carried out.

The FAO is governed by the Conference of its member states – numbering 197 at the time of writing (‘FAO members’, n.d.) – which convenes every two years to review the FAO’s work and approve of the ‘Program of Work and Budget’ (Shaw, 2009: 68). Different from the weighed voting system in the World Bank and the IMF, the FAO member states all have one equal vote in the Conference. The director-general is chosen for a six-year term, and also an FAO Council consisting of 49 member states from seven regional groupings is elected (ibid.). The council is assisted by technical committees, among which the Committee on Fisheries (COFI). The FAO’s course of action, its policies and its normative work are determined in these

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governing bodies. The technical work and the policy implementation are carried out by the FAO Secretariat, which operates through a number of departments, among others the Fisheries and Aquaculture department. The FAO is financed through assessed contributions of its members and through earmarked extra-budgetary funds from governments, development banks and private sources (Shaw, 2009: 69). ). Since the 1990s the budget has drastically fallen to the extent that the institution had had to cut 40% of its employees (ibid.).

Illustration 3.1: FAO premises in Rome

Photo: Brita Trapman, 26 May 2014

FAO’s activities comprise of four areas. Firstly, FAO functions as a knowledge institution, collecting, analysing and disseminating data that aid development. Secondly, FAO assists states with policy expertise and advice. Thirdly, FAO provides a meeting place where nations can convene and come to agreements about major agricultural and food issues, and finally, FAO issues thousands of projects in which it brings it’s knowledge to the field. These projects are financed by donor countries, development banks and other sources, and to a limited extent by FAO itself (‘Guide to Archives’, n.d.: par. 2). Over the years, the FAO has shifted

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from direct involvement in crop production towards a global governance role, meaning that it’s role as a platform for intergovernmental discussion has been elevated, also the field projects have increasingly moved from a focus on single crops to a systems approach (2009: 105 – 106).

In sum, the within the FAO there is a distinction between the governing bodies and the administration. In the governing bodies international policies and standards are discussed and agreed upon by states, and as will be set forth below, increasingly with the input of non-state actors. The secretariat is comprised of staff members that implement the FAO policies, provide national governments with policy advice and technical assistance, and conduct research. The staff members are trained in various disciplines, such as statistics, biology, economics, agronomy, etc. (interview, 26 May 2014). Half of the staff works at the headquarters in Rome; the other half is divided over five regional offices, eleven sub-regional offices, and seventy-four country offices, many of which are responsible for multiple states (Gareis, 2012: 219).

3.3 The committee on fisheries

The committees assisting the council are referred to as ‘technical’; this does not mean that they are comprised by technocrats, to the contrary, they are intergovernmental platforms where global issues that are relevant for the focus of the committee are discussed. The Committee on Fisheries (COFI) at the FAO Council is the only global intergovernmental forum where major international fisheries and aquaculture issues are examined and recommendations are made to all concerned; it holds biannual sessions (Shaw, 2009: 101). The committee was established in 1965 and simultaneously the fisheries division, which was already established in the early years of the FAO in 1946, was upgraded to a Fisheries department (Phillips, 1981: par. 6.3.5). These measures were taken in answer to the request of the Twelfth Session of the Conference in 1963 to the Director-General, to think about how the FAO in the future could get the status of become the leading international body in encouraging rational harvesting of food from oceans and inland waters (ibid.). While membership in COFI was originally restricted to a limited number of members, it has been opened up for all states that want to join since 1975 (ibid.).

COFI has two main functions. One is to review the programmes of work of FAO in the field of fisheries and aquaculture and their implementation, the other is to

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conduct general periodic reviews of fishery and aquaculture problems of an international character. These issues are to be appraised and it is examined what solutions and actions are possible together with states, FAO, inter-governmental bodies and civil society (‘Committee on Fisheries’, n.d.: par. 2). COFI has two subcommittees that also meet biannually, one sub-committee is on trade and the other is on aquaculture. The latter was established recently in 2001, reflecting the rapid growth of the sector and its growing importance (ibid.). In light of the growing importance of the aquaculture sector, the FAO Fisheries Department was renamed the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture department in the beginning of 2007 (FAO, 2007a: 68).

3.4 FAO opening up for CSOs and their views

Now that the basic organizational lay out of FAO has been explained, this chapter will now continue with elaborating on FAO’s increased involvement of non-state actors, which according to Holt Giménez and Shattuck (2011) led to the increased contestation of paradigms in FAO.

3.4.1 Varying degrees of FAO openness

Liese (2010) discusses the quantitative variation of the FAO’s openness to non-state transnational actors (TNAs) over time. She argues that the FAO has a long history of consulting with TNAs but that firstly, the access to FAO differs for different types of TNAs, secondly, that the TNA-involvement differs for different levels of the FAO’s work and that finally, the openness has varied over time (2010: 89). Two peaks of CSO involvement in advocacy and standard-setting can be observed, the first from the 1960s up to the World Food Conference in 1974 and the second from the 1990s onwards (ibid.: 92). FAO and Industry have decreasingly cooperated. The FAO used to have an Industry Cooperative Programme (ICP), which was composed of sixteen representatives of multinational corporations that consulted the FAO on various issues and took actively part in the 1974 World Food Conference. (ibid.: 93). The programme was established in 1966, but abolished again in 1978 when environmental movements arose that opposed industrial agriculture and distrusted multinationals (ibid.: 89). Hereafter, corporations never became as involved as they were during the ICP (ibid.: 94). Today, NGO/CSO involvement is growing both formally and

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informally in policy forums, and also research institutions are involved in the FAOs normative activities. Partnerships at the field level however, are largely lacking (ibid.: 94).

According to Liese, the varying degrees of openness of FAO are the result of the interplay of internal and external dynamics (ibid.: 96). The FAO sees the importance of cooperating with TNAs, due firstly to the increasingly complex problems that it has to solve which it cannot do alone and due to limited resources. As the next chapter will demonstrate, the increased complexity is also the result of changed, increasingly interdisciplinary understandings of the problems that the organization is mandated to solve. Beliefs among FAO staff members about the limited representativeness of public interest by corporations, and also their experience with public protest against engagement with corporations, explain the variation of access for different types of TNAs. The poor capacity to engage with TNAs at the field level explains the limited the engagement here (ibid.: 100 – 101).

3.4.2 A strengthened civil society and conducive FAO attitudes

McKeon (2009) describes how CSO involvement at FAO has grown and how FAO’s openness to civil society has qualitatively changed since the 1990s and what effect this increased openness has had on the development debate in the organization. McKeon’s concludes that civil society participation in FAO’s normative activities (activities of the FAO governing bodies) has increased since the 1990s and that a process of ‘de-impermealization’ has taken place at FAO. This increasing permeability is indicated for example by the large impact that the outraged civil society reaction to the pro-GMO 2003 State of Food and Agriculture had within the FAO (2009: 119). McKeon does not treat the non-profit sector as homogeneous but she recognizes differentiation and also contestation within the NGO/CSO sector between large NGOs and so called ‘people’s movements’ that directly represent small-scale producers (2009: 52 – 53). Contestation occurred within the NGO/CSO sector not so much about positions on certain agricultural issues, but more about the legitimacy of NGOs, about their right to lobby for sectors of the world population of which they had received no mandate and to which they could not be held accountable (ibid.). In line with McMichael, McKeon observes that the positions of these people’s movements, of which La Via Campesina is an example, had radicalized in reaction to

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various developments, including the intensified liberalization of agricultural trade that followed the adoption of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, the increasingly aggressive marketing on biotechnology, and finally, the continued reluctance of governments to take action on issues such as agrarian reform (ibid.).

McKeon observes furthermore that organizations representing small- and middle-scale food producers directly, on the basis of decentralized global consultations, have improved their networks and their lobbying capacity and hence gained influence (ibid.). A relevant institution to mention in this context is the International CSO Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC). The IPC is a mechanism established by civil society and NGOs together around the ‘World Food Summit: five years later’ in 2002. This mechanism has the goal of mobilizing and facilitating representation of small-scale food producers at FAO governing bodies (McKeon, 2009: 55; ‘About us’, n.d.: par. 3). The IPC’s efforts to built links between social movements and the FAO are considered highly successful, by IPC members themselves and by FAO staff members (2009: 113, interview 5 June, 2014). The IPC has also been instrumental for the facilitation of representation of fisher folk at COFI (McKeon, 2009: 112).

While the increased strength and organization of the people’s movements has contributed to their increased access at FAO, McKeon also acknowledges support among FAO staff as an important factor. Director General Jacques Diouf himself, who took office in 1994, recognized the importance of civil society involvement. In 1999 the FAO issued a Policy and Strategy for Cooperation with Non-Governmental and Civil Society Organizations. As it became clearer to him during the early 2000s that the lack of political will was a major constraint to beating the problem of hunger, his strategy came to involve the harnessing of civil society lobbying power (ibid.: 52). One interview respondent that had served as a staff member at FAO for over thirty years added to that, that today it is much more self-evident that civil society is included in decisions and practices, than it was for instance in the in the 1980s. Today there are office facilities for CSOs at the FAO head quarters and a whole unit headed by a senior officer handling civil society matters (interview, 5 June 2014).

As was mentioned above, the FAO’s inclusion of civil society is not only new; already from the 1960s up to the end of the 1970s the FAO was more open. McKeon also describes how more empowering approaches had been propagated during this time in the history of the FAO, through the Freedom from Hunger Campaign (FFHC),