Poverty and the Globalization of the Food and Agriculture System

Supporters of globalization argue that the process offers opportunities for poor people in developing countries to improve their livelihoods and grow out of poverty, whereas skeptics claim that globalization poses new risks to the well-being of poor people. The globalization of the food and agriculture system is at the center of this debate, because so many of the poor depend on agriculture as an income source and because the poor spend a large share of their resources on food. Assessments of the relationship between globalization and poverty vary dramatically, ranging from catastrophic to rosy, owing to the different scales at which assessments were made, different temporal perspectives, and different views on how well markets and other institutions (such as democracy, transparency, and participation) function for poor people. In fact, however, as globalization occurs, poverty may or may not decline, and the two phenomena may or may not be linked. After all, many other changes have occurred simultaneous with globalization, such as improved governance in some countries, the start of new conflicts and wars and the end of old ones, the broadening of civil societies’ reach and level of organization, improved infrastructure, and the transformation of domestic retail markets, and these changes may also affect poverty.