Re-Conceptualising Comparative Advantage and Food Sovereignty: An Unconventional Approach to Global Food Security

Abstract

The thesis asks whether food sovereignty is a major threat to global food security, unlike the conventional definition provided in the literature which supports food self-sufficiency as the core of a country's food sovereignty. It seeks to do so through re-conceptualising the approach to comparative advantage. The thesis thus aims to prove the hypothesis, which states that global food security can be enhanced through food commodity specialisation using a newly devised approach to calculate multi-variable, multi-country production and trade comparative advantages.

First, the thesis investigates the geopolitical question of food sovereignty, where countries seek to ensure their own food security through self-sufficiency. While it is important that some food production takes place, not least to protect farmers' livelihoods, this research explores the possibility of doing so through commodity specialisation. It first develops the Food Sovereignty Index (FSI) that demonstrates how countries are vulnerable, or less sovereign, making them susceptible to fluctuations in food commodity prices and politically exposed to food riots.

Second, the thesis aims to understand if food commodity specialisation, through a re-conceptualisation of comparative advantage using quantitative means, can result in countries specialising in what they can best produce, in the process preserving food sovereignty and ensuring access to food. By extending analysis to 193 countries and three food commodities over a 53-year time period, it goes beyond existing limitations of international trade theories and the concept of comparative advantage, and points to wider applicability in the international economic order. This has been captured via the Production (PCA) and Trade Comparative Advantage (TCA).

Third, the thesis focuses in on MENA generally, and the UAE specifically. The connection between a drop in FSI rankings and the likelihood of a food riot in MENA is examined. In the UAE's case, the thesis shows how a country that is naturally disadvantaged in agricultural production could improve its food security through better diversification of food imports sources and better targeted agro-investments into countries that rank high not only on the FSI, but on the PCA and the TCA too. Show more