MixedMedia

For the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of writing a monthly round-up of news related to the field of ‘deliberative democracy’ – participation as conversation, you might say. All of the recent news about a “food crisis” – which smacks of disingenuousness in the face of years of trade liberalization – got me thinking how public deliberation might play a role informing the policy debates. For that, we need active citizens.

The world’s growing food crisis highlights a modern challenge to democratic governments: participation in relief and development activities. Not only do citizens in many advanced industrialized nations have low levels of knowledge about foreign affairs, the aren’t particularly interested to do something about it. And so modern “disasters” – economically engineered rather than naturally occurring threats to humankind – result in sudden and dramatic changes in the quality of life for millions, if not billions, of people around the world (see commondreams.org’s The World Food Crisis).

Some theorists have argued in the past that deliberation isn’t good for activists, because it forces compromise when what their constituents need are clear victories that deliver the goods. The other side argues that a “win” isn’t sustainable unless it has buy-in from the broader public and a larger constellation of stake-holders. The latest global food crisis – which has precipitated rioting in the streets around the world and engendered political hand-wringing in the North and outrage in the South – surfaces many cross-cutting issues that illustrate the paradoxes of our age. Here are a few worth talking about:

• Agricultural subsidies and tariffs: when we “protect” local productive capacity by stimulating local investments while raising the costs of cheap agricultural imports, are we raising a defense against the shock of spiking food costs?
• Genetically modified foods: Do GMOs offer a way out of the food crisis? Proponents are vehement about the positives while opponents argue for greater local control of crop production.
• U.S. Leadership: The U.N.’s World Food Program faces a budget shortfall of $755million, in part due to declines in U.S. funding as well as its habit of not paying up.
• “Peak oil” and biofuels: One reason for the dramatic spike in food costs has been the growing market for alternative energy sources, namely “biofuels” – is this a devil’s bargain?

These are only a smattering of the issues brought into sharp focus by the latest food “shortage” crisis – and as ever, crystalizes the role an engaged public can play in setting public policy priorities, foreign and domestic.