Food and Power: the Political Economy of Food Security in Nicaragua

Despite increased production of basic grains in Nicaragua in recent years, household food insecurity is still widespread, with nearly one-third of rural households being chronically food insecure. After Ortega’s return to presidency in 2007, the government has approached food security as a central policy goal and has used a food sovereignty framework to shape decisions. However, given the resistance internationally and domestically to food sovereignty, this raises interesting questions about Nicaragua’s ability to chart its own course in the globalised world of food. This paper approaches the issues by looking at the claims of both trade-based food security and food sovereignty advocates to see how Nicaragua’s proposal to merge the two has been implemented. This approach shows the limits to incorporating food sovereignty goals into mainstream neoclassical food and rural development policy. Obstacles that exist domestically and internationally for Nicaragua have curtailed its ability to follow this path. As a result it seems unlikely that household food security will improve drastically under the current programme, unless significant changes are made in domestic policy and administration, and in the rules and practice of international trade regimes. Relevance to Development Studies Although the 2008 global food crisis has served as a poignant reminder of the injustices that cause food insecurity and hunger, rural poverty and deprivation have existed in much of the world unabated for decades. The global political economy of food security has changed drastically, however, insecurity is still widespread and is destabilizing to the formal project of ‘development’. This research, therefore studies the political economy of food security in Nicaragua to highlight the impacts that insecurity has had on rural development and inequality, and development projects being implemented to try address the problem.