The uneven distribution of hunger and malnutrition reflects wider inequalities of power in society. Yet power dips in and out of view in global food and nutrition policy debates. These debates tend to focus on the power of individuals (usually women) to feed families well, and on government commitment to food and nutrition security (Gillespie et al. 2013; Reich and Balarajan 2014; te Lintelo and Lakshman 2015), while overlooking power exercised at higher levels or in forms that are difficult to measure.
Although power is not the subject of the Global Nutrition Report, for example, the concept recurs throughout the 2016 edition, illustrating power’s integral role in nutrition outcomes: throughout the text are references to “female empowerment”; purchasing and political power in Brazil’s Fome Zero movement; the need for a “more political approach to nutrition” that could “help tip the balance of power to eliminate malnutrition in all its forms”; the power of policy makers and others to effect policy change; the power of marketing to children; and the power of the infant-feeding lobby in the process of Brazil’s passage of a law limiting the marketing of breast-milk substitutes (IFPRI 2016).
Power is inescapable in any analysis of hunger and malnutrition. Yet without systematic and purposeful analysis, key issues go missing from the conversation, such as the consequences of the central role played by transnational corporations in the global food system (Clapp 2012; Howard 2016).
Power in the global food system is now so concentrated in the hands of these corporations that they largely determine how and which food moves from producers to consumers. This system is often visualized as an hourglass: food is grown by millions of farmers worldwide, and every person in the world eats. But getting food from “farm to fork” is increasingly mediated by a few large commodity distributors, suppliers, retailers, and processing and packaging firms.
Three transnational firms - Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta - dominate commercial seed transactions globally (Howard 2009); another three - ADM, Bunge, and Cargill - are responsible for most international grain trade (Hendrickson et al. 2008). The biggest 100 firms control 77 percent of processed food sales worldwide, a share that is growing (Clapp and Scrinis 2017). Why does this matter? One key reason is that when food systems open up to global trade, people often turn to cheap processed foods, leading to the double burden of malnutrition (Monteiro et al. 2013).
Analyzing the role power plays in creating nutritional inequalities means making sense of its different forms, not all of which are quantifiable, and of the multiple levels and spaces in the food system where power is at play, not all of which are obvious (Gaventa 2006; Gaventa and Martorano 2016). Policy makers would benefit from such analyses - which can highlight gaps in thinking, areas for action, and possible allies - in formulating realistic nutrition policies and interventions.
Asking questions about power in the food system can help in diagnosing its inequalities and in identifying realistic opportunities for addressing them. For instance, is it realistic to expect billions of individuals to eat healthier diets when an onslaught of advertising and a glut of attractive, affordable new food items are urging them otherwise (Brownell et al. 2010)?
Similarly, is breastfeeding really just an individual choice? The decision to breastfeed or not is often dictated by other factors - whether maternity-leave provisions are in place for working mothers or regulations prohibiting breast-milk-substitute samples are enforced - that are beyond the control of new mothers (Rollins et al. 2016). Framing breastfeeding as an individual choice lets the multibillion-dollar breast-milk-substitute industry off the hook for its concerted efforts to get mothers to buy their products. Information on the benefits of breastfeeding alone is not a sufficient counterweight to this industry’s great marketing power. Thus initiatives encouraging breastfeeding would do well to target some efforts toward the spaces in which the producers of breast-milk substitutes make their decisions. For now, however, most behavior-change communications programs focus on changing individual behaviors rather than the structures that determine them (USAID/SPRING/ GAIN 2014).