Steering normative waters from ethical shores. (Thinking Aloud).

FAO has constitutional obligations to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living, to secure improvements in the efficiency of the production and distribution of all food and agricultural products, to better the conditions of rural populations, and thus to contribute to an expanding world economy and ensuring humanity's freedom from hunger. It is also mandated by the international community to provide the instruments and mechanisms for an international forum in which to address and act on the balancing of interests, while aiming to protect and enhance global public goods that are relevant for food and agriculture. And it has an ethical obligation to ensure that its actions are responsible, transparent and accountable, as well as to provide a forum for debate and dialogue on ethical issues and unethical behaviour with respect to food and agriculture.

These instruments and mechanisms can be employed to build a more equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system that addresses the issues and challenges described above. It would be efficient, safe and solidary, while respecting the diversity of value systems. Building such a system does not and should not mean merely creating a blueprint--a detailed plan that risks becoming an end in itself. Instead, it must be a participatory process, as well as one that evolves overtime, in response to new scientific data, changes in goals and objectives, and new ethical issues raised by FAO and its partners, A more equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system must incorporate concern for three widely accepted global goals, each of which incorporate numerous normative propositions: improved well-being; protection of the environment; and improved public health.

An equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system would work towards the reduction and eventual elimination of poverty by enhancing economic efficiency and effectiveness in food and agriculture worldwide. In so doing, production efficiency (the most efficient means of producing a given good) must be balanced with distribution efficiency (the most efficient means of distributing goods). Moreover, efficiency cannot be judged solely in terms of relative cost within a particular economic system. It must include study of the system of rights, privileges and institutions according to which efficiency is defined. Similarly, effectiveness cannot be defined merely as the ability to accomplish a particular task; it must be measured in terms of the appropriateness of the means selected in light of ethical concerns, such as fairness and justice. Efficiency and effectiveness cannot be promoted at the expense of economic interdependence, individual freedom, human rights or State sovereignty, but must contribute to these goals. An ethical food and agriculture system must help citizens, communities, nations and the world progress from a global economy towards a truly global society where interdependence would be recognized as inescapable; each individual would be granted personal autonomy and dignity, and States would be able to maintain their sovereignty. Such a system must move from free trade, in which powerful interests are able to impose their rules in the marketplace, to an ethics-based trading system that comprises a participatory mode for establishing and implementing rules.

From a global perspective, food is not currently produced in places or ways that best conserve natural resources. In the past, global agricultural production tended to mirror the dietary patterns and living standards of local populations. This pattern is rapidly changing worldwide, with increasing urbanization, market penetration and international trade. To maintain an equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system, biological efficiency--through enhanced production, processing and distribution of food and agricultural products--and agrobiological diversity must be reconciled with economic efficiency, allowing food to be produced with minimum resources, limiting the pressure on the environment and making food affordable for the poor. Careful consideration needs to be given to the management of the trade-offs between the objectives of food security and environmental protection. Integrated pest management and resource management in agriculture, forestry and fisheries should not be considered luxuries; i f an equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system is to be passed on to future generations, they are necessities.

Despite some improvements over the last several decades, far too large a portion of the world's population suffers from poor health brought on by hunger, malnutrition, poor diet and unsafe food and water. These problems diminish peoples ability to participate fully in the daily affairs of their community, nation or the world. Moreover, large-scale industrialization of agriculture and food processing poses new health threats when it is not properly monitored and controlled. In an equitable, ethically-based food and agriculture system, issues of hunger, malnutrition, diet and food safety would be aggressively addressed, so the world would rapidly reach a stage where everyone had access to an abundant, nutritionally adequate and safe diet.

Achieving this will require: policies that provide incentives for distributional changes to reduce inequalities in access to food; scientific research to develop more efficient, safer means of food production, processing and distribution; rural development to promote and develop sources of clean drinking-water and encourage the use of safe food-handling practices; and the use and enforcement of adequate safeguards and safety standards in the No single set of principles is sufficient for building a more equitab'e and ethical food and agriculture system, given that it is the conflicts and contradictions among these very principles that are at issue. But individuals, States, corporations and voluntary organizations in the international community can help for progress to be made through the following actions:

No single set of principles is sufficient for building a more equitab'e and ethical food and agriculture system, given that it is the conflicts and contradictions among these very principles that are at issue. But individuals, States, corporations and voluntary organizations in the international community can help for progress to be made through the following actions:

Creating the mechanisms necessary to balance interests and resolve conflicts by establishing fora in which controversies can be discussed and resolved. For example, the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture has been successful in providing a forum for discussing difficult issues, including compatibilities and complementarities between plant breeders' and farmers' rights.

Supporting and encouraging broad stakeholder participation in policies, programmes and projects. Diverse standpoints should be represented on all international bodies. New means for participation by non-governmental organizations and interested and informed citizens should be devised.

Encouraging individuals, communities and nations to engage in dialogue and, ultimately, to do what is ethical. Incentives that will encourage behaviour that promotes the values presented above (e.g. fair trade) are desirable, while incentives to engage in unethical behaviour must be removed. This process will be an iterative one, learning from past experiences with particular incentives and modifying future incentives to avoid unintended consequences.

Developing and disseminating widely the information and analyses necessary to make wise and ethical decisions. Timely, relevant, accurate information must be accessible to all stakeholders, reaching diverse audiences through various media.

Ensuring that decision-making procedures in international food and agriculture policy, as well as the content of deliberations, are well understood and open to public scrutiny. No matter how democratic and fair decisions are, without public scrutiny or awareness of them, their fairness and appropriateness cannot be judged. Such scrutiny and understanding of decision-making processes, as well as the content of actual decisions, will contribute to the development of a more ethical, robust and effective global food and agriculture system.

Fostering the use of science and technology in support of a more just and equitable food and agriculture system will require the reconciliation of expert knowledge with indigenous knowledge and with diverse, deeply-held cultural beliefs concerning priorities and values as well as appropriate action. In particular, it must be recognized that while science may inform us about levels of risk in a given undertaking, it cannot tell us whether a risk is worth taking. This question can only be addressed through dialogue among parties likely to be affected.

Ensuring that programmes, policies, standards and decisions always take ethical considerations into account so as to lead to enhanced well-being, environmental protection and improved health. It must be recognized that these goals are not always congruent. Consequently, even if all parties agree on the ethical goals, an ongoing dialogue must take place to reconcile those goals in particular settings. That dialogue must necessarily involve negotiations and compromises, as well as different means of resolution in different places.

Developing codes of ethical conduct where they do not currently exist. In a diverse and interdependent world, considerations for ethical conduct must be clear to all. Just as is now common in various professions, those individuals, States, corporations and voluntary organizations involved in building an equitable global food and agriculture system need guidance as to what constitutes ethical behaviour. Codes of conduct can provide that guidance.

Periodically reviewing ethical commitments and determining whether or not they are appropriate, in the light of new knowledge and changes in circumstances. The world today is changing rapidly. What is taken to be true today may be found to be false tomorrow. What is considered ethical today may be considered unethical tomorrow. Thus, no definitive blueprint for ethical behaviour and action is possible. What is necessary is that ethical positions be reviewed regularly to see how they might be improved on the basis of new evidence, new requirements and new demands.

Poor nations, says a landmark publication of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ethics and Agriculture, must be able to determine their own future rather than having it defined for them by donors. Within nations, poorer citizens must be the architects of their own destiny. True national security can only be secured by providing all citizens the wherewithal to live their lives with dignity and justice. It is not possible to create a world that is equitable, just, legitimate and democratic solely via appeals to self-interest. Markets are human institutions, creating self-interested individuals who compete under highly restricted conditions and who may attempt to insulate themselves from the core goals of society at large. Even if markets are enthusiastically embraced, institutions must be designed in order to ensure freer and fairer competition. Among other things, efficient markets require organization, planning, well-defined property rights, rules of exchange, and a clear and e nforceable distinction between the public and private sectors.

But markets are just one means of distributing goods. There are certain things that all societies agree should not be bought and sold in the market. Human beings. Votes. justice. Divine grace. The guarantee of survival. All societies have a notion of "public goods", determined in terms of what members of a community or society commonly see as desirable. Individuals maybe affected differently by the policies that societies adopt to ensure the adequate availability of public goods. Something that is considered a good in the sphere of health is not necessarily a good in the sphere of agricultural production. It is the contradictions among the different spheres, that are source of conflicts, negotiations and compromises in all societies. Thus, their solutions should be sought not by enforcing conformity to a single concept of justice but by mediating among many different concepts. These conflicts may not be avoided, but institutions can be devised to contain and limit them.

Achieving food security requires an abundance of food, access to that food by everyone, nutritional adequacy, and food safety. At the world level, there is abundant food, yet there are distribution and access problems resulting in some 800 million people not having enough food. For some, access to food can be assured by providing direct access to land. For the burgeoning urban populations, access depends on good farm-to-market, roads, farm production that is well above subsistence levels, price structures that provide incentives to produce for the market, accurate market information for producers, food processing industries to transform raw products into storable foods, and employment that permits people to earn enough to purchase food. In places where full employment is lacking, consumer subsidies, either through grants of food or monetary grants to purchase food, are also essential to ensure access to food. To guarantee adequate food supplies for a growing population, investment in research -- an endless ta sk, as the agricultural environment is continuously changing -- as well as the conservation of agricultural land, forest and water resources are needed.

Food must also provide a nutritionally adequate diet. Today, some twelve million children die annually of nutrition-related diseases. Far more are chronically ill. Food must be safe to eat; microbial contaminants are common, especially in urban areas, where food must travel long distances before consumption. The poorest are the most likely victims but, as world food trade expands, consumers in wealthy nations are also being affected by food-borne diseases.

Globalization of markets and technological developments have increased the interdependence among nations and cultures. Time and space have imploded; fences between nations have been lowered. But interdependence does not imply equity, equality of opportunity, justice or even compassion. There is no automatic process by which markets can ensure the realization of these widely held values. Nor can markets be the universal solution, reconciling all values by economic means indeed, markets do not concern people's shared values or collective rights and duties as citizens; rather, they concern their roles as producers and consumers. In other words, people's ethical obligations must be worked out through political processes and not be reduced to market administration.

Thus, the challenge to develop institutional means to ensure losses through market forces does not violate basic rights, bring widespread hunger or cause the immiseration of individuals, families, communities or States. Although there have been proposals to redress the grievances, of losers, these have rarely, if ever, been brought to fruition. An alternative approach could be the expansion of civil society beyond the nation State, allowing all citizens to feel responsible for all people, and for the earth as a whole and their participation in the democratic control of the market. Members of this global civil society would devise better means for peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring global financial stability, managing the global environment and global markets, establishing global standards and promoting sustainable development.

The realization of such goals, however, is often blocked by a lack of jurisdiction, participation and incentives. Even if these obstacles can be overcome, the goals must be achieved without creating bloated bureaucracies; indeed, these would destroy the very processes they were designed to foster. Nor should progress in attaining global goals require discarding national sovereignty. The global economy will acquire its long-term justification only if it is a means to further fundamental human values. States cannot be accountable solely to foreign investors, fund managers and domestic exporters. Fundamental values cannot be actualized by an elite or decree: because they are sometimes contradictory, values require democratic deliberation, dialogue and discourse. Thus, all States need to develop new means of democratic participation in the fundamental decisions that affect people's lives.

Globalization underscores the importance of the diversity of "place". To say that a process is global is not to say that it happens in exactly the same way everywhere. Rather, it means that it "acts at a distance". Thus, FAO is global only to the extent that it can act at a distance; that is, a decision made in Rome--a distinct. local, place--can affect people 10,000 kilometres away. A place continues to be local in character, with a local culture, ecology and economy. Thus, both losers and winners are always geographically and socially placed; it is never a matter of those who are global and cosmopolitan versus those who are local and parochial. Rather, it is a matter of those who, for a variety of reasons, can act at a distance and those who cannot. When conflicts emerge over access to natural resources, they are not caused by disputes between global and local forces. They result from disputes between those able to act at a distance and those unable to do so. Often, such external interests are able to encro ach on weaker communities, leading to impoverishment and marginalization Sovereign as States are, they have not always been good stewards of such resources.

All too often States have been used by an elite in collusion with external actors to crush community opposition. Capacity of weaker communities to defend their rights in the face of encroachment by their own State or other foreign actors must be strengthened, requiring institutionalized mechanisms of self-restraint for both States and transnational companies. At the same time, it will require giving a greater voice to weaker communities through participatory management of natural resources. Global development policies make little sense if they are not viewed through the lens of national and local development policies. What is needed are social mechanisms allowing the development of far messier plans that achieve their rationality by employing the wealth of intelligence and creativity emerging from democratic participation. Participatory management cannot be an afterthought, tacked on after a policy or project has been designed and is ready to be implemented. It must: be a central element from the very incepti on of a project. One way to pursue this goal is through "collaborative management", whereby the relevant stakeholders are. substantially involved in management activities. Such a system would be flexible and adaptable to differences in places and times, with partnership among affected communities, nations, the private sector, civil society and international, organizations.

Globalization simultaneously homogenizes and fragments cultures. We need not all follow identical paths to development, nor arrange our values in the same way everywhere and for all time, nor treat cultural diversity as an obstacle. Homogeneity does not ensure social solidarity any more than heterogeneity guarantees conflict. We need to promote consensus on values and practices without imposing a stifling uniformity, enhancing respect for pluralism among, as well as within, nations and at the level of institutions. Dialogue and debate need to be pursued within cultures to allow for their evolution.

The first global conference on the environment affirmed the imperative "to defend and improve the human environment for present and future generations". This is not a commitment to specific individuals who do not as yet exist, but an obligation not to impose unending and onerous duties on them. We need to: conserve options that they might wish to pursue; ensure that the planet is not left in a worse condition than when we inherited it; and conserve the legacy of the past so that future generations might have access to it Our duty can be examined through the lens of sustainability, which environmentalists often define as "avoidance of use", while some in agriculture define it as "production without reducing soil fertility". Sustainability is often so broadly or narrowly interpreted that it provides little guidance for action. Indeed, some highly exploitive systems might be sustainable for centuries. A more balanced approach might define agricultural sustainability as a form of stewardship that attempts to resp ect nature, conserve resources, engage in agriculture and achieve equity and justice, Such an approach would also recognize that no agricultural practices are without potential for irony and tragedy; no human plans are perfect.

Degree of food deprivation: Charting hunger, 1996-1998

Degree of food deprivation

Group  Description

1      Low prevalence and low depth of
       undemourishment

2      Moderate prevalence and low depth
       of undernourishment or low
       prevalence and moderate depth of
       undernourishment

3      Moderate prevalence and moderate
       depth of undernourishment

4      High prevalence and moderate depth
       of undernourishment or moderate
       prevalence and high depth of
       undernourishment

5      High prevalence and high depth of
       undernourishment

       Not assessed: countries with
       populations under 1 million or
       insufficient data

To get the most accurate picture possible of how hungry people are,
FAO has combined the estimates of both prevalence and depth of food
deprivation into five groups, cited above, country by country. The 23
countries in group 5 face the greatest challenge, where historic
instability and conflict, erratic weather, poverty, agricultural
failure, population pressure and fragile ecosystems are matched by
deep, widespread and persistent hunger. While the World Food Summit
target is to reduce-to half by 2015--the overall number of
undernourished people around the world, significant improvement could
also be achieved by concentrating first on essening the depth of
hunger. In this scenario, a country with a higher prevalence of
undernourishment and a daily dietary energy deficit of over 300
kilocalories per person would strive to reduce the depth of hunger a
top priority, which may not allow it to report an immediate decrease
in the number of undernourished people, as these undernourished were
not as hungry as they had been nor as susceptible to nutrition-related
health risks.
Comparison of Pre-war Food Consumption in Four Countries (quantities per
head per week)

                                        roots &
                            cereals     tubers      sugar      fats

                   Denmark  4 lb        4 lb 10 oz  2 lb 5 Oz  1 lb 3 oz
                      Java  5 lb 4 oz   6 lb 1 oz   3 Oz       1.5 oz
(in present day Indonesia)
               New Zealand  2 lb 11 oz  1 lb 14 oz  2 lb 1 Oz  14 oz
        Dominican Republic  2 lb 14 oz  11 lb 2 oz  10 Oz      3 oz

                            peas &     fruit &
                            beans      vegetables  meat

                   Denmark  1 oz       5 lb 1 oz   2 lb 15 oz
                      Java  1 lb 1 oz  2 lb 8 oz   5 oz
(in present day Indonesia)
               New Zealand  1 oz       5 lb 15 oz  5 lb 15 oz
        Dominican Republic  13 oz      3 lb 15 oz  1 lb 4 oz


                            milk

                   Denmark  4.5 U.S. quarts
                      Java  negligible
(in present day Indonesia)
               New Zealand  4 U.S. quarts
        Dominican Republic  0.5 U.S. quarts

Based on FAO chart prepared in 1946, comparing pre-Second World War food
consumption in four countries

The philosophical and normative dimensions of the idea of ethics in agriculture continue to be a fascinating source of discussion. The FAO Web site www.fao.org is a ready and compelling resource. The Chronicle would welcome your ideas.