So, the crux of the debate lies over whether a country should aim to produce all its own food for its population and import as little food as possible. How far do you agree or disagree with that?

So, the crux of the debate lies over whether a country should aim to produce all its own food for its population and import as little food as possible. How far do you agree or disagree with that?

The argument for countries to strive for 100 percent food self-sufficiency — internally producing all national food needs and minimizing fatalities of foreign imported foods — hinges on issues of national security, economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and the hard facts of geography and climate. I hear you, food sovereignty can be very seductive as an overall policy desire; but this position – that I cannot agree with mostly – is based on a worry that in fact some sort of compromise between producing enough for domestic most of the time and international exchange if efficiently regulated makes more sense and is likely to be much safer, sustainable and much fairer for all but a handful of nations.

The strongest argument for national food self-reliance relates to security and strategic stability. Food-importing nations, meanwhile, are especially susceptible to the weakest links in global supply chains and urgent needs for delivery of food; sudden shock from geopolitical conflict, natural disasters and climate-induced consequences can almost overnight push entire populations — including vulnerable groups — into food insecurity. The unprecedented global crises of the last few years showcased in stark high definition how fragile even seemingly resilient supply chains can be when operating under duress, providing absolutely real legitimacy to the case that anything approaching a channelised and competitive production capacity onshore should be treated as an essential part of strategic national infrastructure by any rational government.

The preservation of cultural and agricultural heritage factors only add weight to the argument in favour of domestic food production. The knowledge of traditional farming communities, rearing to crop varieties and their combined agricultural expertise are irreplaceable cultural resources — which once lost through economic marginalisation brought by unchecked import competition, are extraordinarily hard to rejuvenate. Economic analysis systematically undervalues the important societal and ecological role sectors of domestic farming that are likely not economically viable today but could play a valuable role in rural communities as well as in the biodiversity of cultivated landscapes.

However, there are several necessarily interlinked reasons why the case for pursuing complete or near-complete food autarky as a desirable governing policy objective in its own right is ultimately unconvincing. Most tellingly, total food self-sufficiency is a physically impractical and inescapable reality for many of the worlds countries. Regardless of how vigorously such a policy is pursued, small island states, densely urbanised economies and countries with arid conditions, little agricultural land or an insufficient fresh water supply cannot provide the full nutrition range required by their populations. Pressuring those countries to reduce food imports would only ensure that people in these nations suffer from malnutrition — a result which is contrary to the goal of food security at the heart of such policy.

However in countries where there is some (but still not enough) land with good farming potential, the economic argument for throwing everything at complete self-sufficiency holds force. Perhaps one of the most empirically robust theories in international economics: Comparative advantage shows that countries should produce anything they are able to do easily and trade for things they cannot with their neighbours, this will yield a higher aggregate welfare A nation located on fertile soils, with plentiful rain and technological advances in agricultural practices can produce some crops at a fraction of the price of another nation trying to produce this same output in less-than-ideal climatic conditions. Let us see how much better are both the nation trading according their strength mutually for nutrition and wealth than they each alone in self-sufficiency.

The environmental costs of a compelled production in the domestic market are no less important. Growing food crops in climates or locations to which they are climatically or geographically poorly adapted requires substantially larger inputs of water, synthetic fertiliser and energy than do the same crops when grown in their optimum natural environment. The ecological costs they emit however — depletion of aquifers, degradation of soil and increased greenhouse gas emissions to maintain energy-intensive artificial growing conditions – are often many multiples more than the environmental impact associated with importing equivalent food from better suited producers, even factoring in international shipping carbon costs.

An alternative and more supportable as well as realistically possible policy structure is strategic food security — maintaining adequate domestic production to supply basic caloric and nutrition needs in true emergency situations, diversifying import sources to prevent risky over-dependence on sole suppliers, investing in agricultural studies and infrastructure to maintain the capacity for long-term production potential, being actively implicated within international food market exchange for the very large portion of consumption demands that homegrown production cannot efficiently provide. This balanced strategy captures the true national security advantage of producing at home but avoids the economic folly and environmental destruction that total self-sufficiency obliges.

To summarise, given both the economics and the environmental impacts of agricultural production, as well as its potential to contribute to carbon emissions, it is entirely reasonable to invest in domestic food production capacity for security, cultural and resilience reasons; but striving towards achieving total food self-sufficiency and minimal imports is not feasible even for most countries and certainly not economically or environmentally desirable. A well-crafted balance of smart domestic production and regulated international trade achieves more food security and greater human welfare than either extreme alone can provide.