The Hard Task Of Government's Food Supply Management

Introduction

With the surplus in food shortages, concerns regarding global warming and the sustainability of the food supply have resulted in several governments attempting to take action. Several activists and scientists believe that countries should not wait for more problems to arise and governments should step in and help control the imperative systems of manufacturing that support the food supply (Fallows npg). With this comes an increasingly difficult role for the governments to maintain the country's food supply by importing and exporting food.

This role lies with implementing local food policies, establishing sustainable food chains, and maintaining civil and beneficial relationships with other countries. Along with the support of government-mandated policies, many people question the government's ability to efficiently record all of the exports and imports and, at the same time, enforce regulations and policies (Fallows npg). While this may not be the main priority of several nations, there is an additional need to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the earth and create sustainable, well-resourced chains.

Implementation of Food Policies

Many professionals have agreed that the United States has several local food regulations in place of one federal food policy. Each of the individual policies impacts a different part or section of the food chain that contributes to the ineffectiveness of the overall system. Betsy Haughton, a professor of public health nutrition that assisted the Knoxville, Tennessee government in coming up with several goals and policies that should be upheld in the community states that, “Each of these [former] policies and programs directly concerns at least one aspect of the food system… However, none comprehensively addresses the entire food system, leading to fragmented planning and implementation that may put one set of plans in direct opposition to another set of plans” (Haughton 181). Haughton explains one of the main purposes of policies controlling the food supply is assisting the government in creating plans for short and long-term solutions.

These short or long-term solutions are only hypothetical due to inadequate government control over regulations and policies. Several of the problems relating to food policies surface with the absence of important framework to guide decision-making, inconsistencies in goals, unforeseen interactions between different programs, fluctuation in the U.S. agriculture, finite natural resources and expanding global interdependence of world agriculture and food supply (Haughton 181). Just as policies can be ineffective they can also be costly. These policy promotions can often result in little exposure and/or sustainability. Even after prolonged periods of policy use, chronic diseases, such as obesity continue to rise (Mozaffarian npg). At the moment food supply policies and regulations have been created for very specific points in the manufacturing system, therefore being too ambiguous for the entire system.

Controlling the food supply chains

To control the food supply, the government must regulate the food chains of that country. Whether this is within one country or spread throughout several countries, the federal government has to keep an eye out for points of the chain that are ineffective and need improvement to make a more sustainable chain. The main challenge of any food supply chain is the traceability of the products within the chain. When products get mixed or switched within the complex network and there is little to no record of it, it can be hard to trace back the contamination (Smith 849). In 2012, the FDA listed almost 360 products that were contaminated by salmonella in peanut butter that should have been recalled (Fagotto npg).

The contaminated product then affected several other products and by the time they realized there was salmonella throughout the different products, it was too late to stop manufacturing and there had already been a large loss of profits. The goal is to ensure the safety of food at an earlier stage of manufacturing which poses a challenge due to the complexity of food supply chains and the variables that surround producing and shipping the food products.

Maintaining relationships with other countries

There is no doubt that trade has been relatively beneficial for countries and people trying to better their lives long term. According to the World Bank, developing countries made up 48 percent of the world trade in 2015, an increase from 33 percent in 2000, while the number of impoverished people was cut in half (Shen). This increase in the involvement of developing countries has led to better jobs and lower cost of goods, which ultimately stimulates the economy to the country’s advantage to help end poverty. At the United Nations Conference on Environment & Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992, representatives from several countries established that the development of sustainable relationships requires both the economic policies determined at a national level and international economic relations between countries (Global Diversity Outlook 4). When countries trade and receive imports they can then develop their own industries and supply jobs to people who need it.

From 2011 to 2020 the main priority of the UN and federal governments around the world have been to focus on international environmental law (Global Diversity Outlook 4). This category of laws pertains to the importance of biodiversity in the food supply. This is best affirmed by the Convention on Biological Diversity in Carmen Gonzalez’s, a professor of international environment and trade laws, perspective. She explains “The Convention on Biological Diversity requires members to take specific measures to protect biodiversity” (Gonzalez 9). Their views on the imperative need for biodiversity in meeting goals of food and health set by themselves and the UN. Through cooperation and collaboration, countries all over the world are trying to ensure the future food supply for generations to come.

Conclusion

The government policies at the moment are far too vague to benefit any country in the future. Gail Smith of the Royal Society proposed implementing and promoting more local food supply chains as a way of establishing more sustainable food chains. The regional local supply chains are oftentimes more sustainable than longer distance chains because they support organic farming and reduce emissions (Smith 849). Another way to create more sustainable supply chains is by combining trade with other economic, social, or environmental methods.

For example, several countries and cities that signed treaties like the Paris Agreement in 2016 and the Chicago Climate Charter in 2017 already committed to international and local efforts to reduce the rise in global temperature (Shen). Even though the government is met with a seemingly impossible task, through local food policies, food supply chains, and maintaining sustainable relationships with other countries that invest time and legislation, local governments will be able to see a difference in sustainability when it comes to the food supply.