The Security of Food Production: What Does the Future Hold?

This paper examines the threats and vulnerabilities of the emerging network of global food systems to characterize present challenges to food security. Over the past few decades, local, regional, and national food and agricultural systems have increasingly become intertwined in an emerging global food network, a complex web of relations that include the production, harvest, processing, transport, and consumption of food. The emerging shape of this global food network does not map onto many of the traditional political science models of the world such as developed and developing countries. By analyzing the issues of nutrition, food safety, and global environmental change as they relate to this global food network, I explore how processes of globalization are reshaping food systems in ways that have significant impacts for human and national security. These changing relationships and challenges have broad implications for all those involved in food production, distribution and consumption, but particularly for those who live and work in areas such as California which are closely connected to other parts of the world.