oughly 80% of the world’s grain supply travels by sea. When Russia invaded Ukraine, approximately 30% of that maritime supply was taken offline. No country on earth has been spared from the war’s economic fallout, but the price of food in particular has spiked to intolerable levels. Even more than a year into this crisis, however, few leaders have made the connection between their local economic hardship, overfull silos in Odesa, and the empty bulk carriers that should be sailing the seas with grain in their holds.
The problem is that food security is rarely considered a maritime issue. Except for fisheries (which account for 20% of global dietary protein), food security is not usually incorporated into maritime strategy, much less prioritized as a maritime security concern. Yet, it strikes at the core of every country’s national security, as food is fundamental to human survival. By overlooking this security challenge, maritime nations—particularly developing nations—risk compounding their growing vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing (IUUF). Failing to address food insecurity in maritime strategy can leave a state vulnerable to violent conflict, discredit the nation’s leaders, bleed money from coffers, and create instability, if not suffering, in the lives of the people.
Why this Matters
Like the invasion of Ukraine, the maritime impact of COVID-19, and disruptive maritime incidents like the explosion in the Port of Beirut or the drama of the EVER GIVEN being stuck in the Suez Canal, illustrate how fragile our maritime supply chains for food and critical resources really are. Unfortunately, however, with urbanization and globalization, most of the world has failed to recognize that we have created an inextricable link between food and maritime shipping. As a result of this blind spot, most states have not developed resiliency in maritime logistics to ensure continuity of food supply. We must correct this mistake; food security should be a core consideration of maritime strategy.
In general, failing to address food security can be disastrous. The so-called “Cod Wars” started in the 1950s and resulted in British fishing vessels clashing with the Icelandic Coast Guard, nearly leading to armed conflict. In 2008, food price spikes led to surges of sometimes violent unrest in at least 48 different countries. Governments were overthrown in Haiti and Madagascar. Many scholars and commentators argue that the 2011 Arab Spring protests were also accelerated, if not initiated by food insecurity. More recently, Kenya and Uganda have amassed troops at their borders, actually considering war over a half-acre rock in Lake Victoria with fishing rights worth $100 million.
Throughout history, states and individuals alike have turned to violence and crime when their food supply was threatened. In the maritime domain, food insecurity has been blamed for the prominence of piracy, not just historically, but in recent years across different geographies. Perhaps even more tragic than the onset of systematic crime is that illicit activity such as piracy may exacerbate the underlying problem by interfering with shipping, thereby disrupting humanitarian food supplies. Just in the last few years, this has occurred in Somalia and Yemen, among other places. This vicious cycle can, in turn, further limit access to food and drive prices up even higher, compounding suffering, violence, and insecurity.
The Vulnerability of Maritime States
Many maritime states – particularly developing states and island nations – are especially vulnerable to food insecurity. They often have limited domestic production capacity and rely heavily on shipping for their food supplies. Too often, however, the discourse around food in such states, turns to fishing. IUU fishing, which has gained an increasing amount of global attention, is estimated to cost an annual economic loss of US $36.4 billion. But in some major fish producing states—like Somalia which has battled famine for decades—fish is not actually part of the diet. So reducing the maritime consideration of food security to being about countering IUU fishing fails to even recognize the reality of the challenge. Seafood is not the only food at sea and in many cases is not even the majority of what is moving internationally.
Coastal, island and archipelagic states are also prone to being hit by natural disasters, which often cause both short- and long-term harm to food security. Many island nations rely on subsistence farming that is especially vulnerable to climatic events. After Tropical Cyclone Pam battered Vanuatu in 2015, the United Nations warned of the potential for long-term food insecurity. While the World Bank and others provided financial relief to mitigate these effects, relying on help from others has always been a risky proposition. These risks only stand to grow, as climate-related disasters are expected to increase in frequency and scale, with fewer resources and less time available for recovery. Vanuatu’s recent experience of two earthquakes and back-to-back cyclones highlights this concern. Similarly, when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, the storm destroyed crops and livestock, damaged irrigation systems and farm buildings, and caused significant soil erosion. Food production was severely diminished, leading to shortages and higher prices for basic staples like rice and beans.
But the effects are not only local. When one state’s production is diminished, it draws more heavily on food that may have originally been intended for elsewhere. And furthermore, when a state that normally contributes to the global agricultural market is forced to instead draw on that market, the sufficiency of worldwide supplies become a concern.
More effective strategy would help. Maritime strategy sets the vision and roadmap for how the maritime space functions and provides the answer to the question of why something is being done in the maritime domain. Every state on earth should have “ensuring ample food supplies for the entire population” as one of its leading strategic objectives. When questioned, for example, as to why grain bulkers get priority over other ships, the state can answer: “in order to achieve our objective of ensuring ample food for our people.” When there is enough food in the world to feed everyone but insufficient logistics to reach them, that is a failure of strategy—especially maritime strategy—and the policy required to implement it.
Enough with the Temporary Measures
While short-term solutions to ease immediate suffering should not be dismissed, food security is not a short-term issue. Because of the myriad ways in which states might find themselves grappling with food security, they must think long-term, and think strategically about it.
Coastal, island and archipelagic states in particular must shift their thinking about food security. Humanitarian assistance and temporary measures when things go wrong are not always available and, even when they are, outside help is usually inadequate. As noted in Food Security and Sociopolitical Instability, policy interventions aimed at temporarily augmenting food supply are ineffective in the long-term. Releasing strategic food reserves or implementing export bans or import subsidies merely kick the can down the road. Moreover, such interventions can be a distraction, shifting attention away from the structural sources of insecurity and diverting resources from longer-term initiatives such as investing in research and development.
States can develop maritime strategies that make the flow of food a national priority and explore every measure possible to limit the likelihood of food insecurity. Dry and cold storage, regionalized storage, bilateral and multilateral assistance agreements, relationships with shippers, and cooperative resilience measures with neighboring states are all examples of ways in which states can take a proactive approach to food security.
Maritime strategy is not a wish list, nor a list of threats or emergency protocols. Chasing threats (symptoms) such as piracy or IUU fishing, rather than addressing causes and implementing sound policy, is also a flawed strategic approach, even though it may be operationally necessary. A holistic conception of the maritime domain as it relates to food security should serve as a building block for a maritime strategy. Sound maritime security strategy should include a plan to protect and responsibly extract resources; ensure the nation is neither “sea blind” nor “wealth blind;” prioritize research and development related to food supplies; mandate public awareness of food resilience; and address contingency plans for when disasters, wars, or other supply chain disruptions occur. At the end of the day, a nation’s security is only as good as its strategy to protect itself. And everybody needs to eat.
The views presented in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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The Imperative to See Food as Integral to Maritime Strategy
Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash
April 13, 2023
Food security is rarely considered a maritime issue, even though much of our global food supply is moved by sea. This must change because food security is a major issue for many island nations and developing states, and is a concern for the rest of us as well, write Jamie Jones and Dr. Ian Ralby.
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oughly 80% of the world’s grain supply travels by sea. When Russia invaded Ukraine, approximately 30% of that maritime supply was taken offline. No country on earth has been spared from the war’s economic fallout, but the price of food in particular has spiked to intolerable levels. Even more than a year into this crisis, however, few leaders have made the connection between their local economic hardship, overfull silos in Odesa, and the empty bulk carriers that should be sailing the seas with grain in their holds.
The problem is that food security is rarely considered a maritime issue. Except for fisheries (which account for 20% of global dietary protein), food security is not usually incorporated into maritime strategy, much less prioritized as a maritime security concern. Yet, it strikes at the core of every country’s national security, as food is fundamental to human survival. By overlooking this security challenge, maritime nations—particularly developing nations—risk compounding their growing vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing (IUUF). Failing to address food insecurity in maritime strategy can leave a state vulnerable to violent conflict, discredit the nation’s leaders, bleed money from coffers, and create instability, if not suffering, in the lives of the people.
Why this Matters
Like the invasion of Ukraine, the maritime impact of COVID-19, and disruptive maritime incidents like the explosion in the Port of Beirut or the drama of the EVER GIVEN being stuck in the Suez Canal, illustrate how fragile our maritime supply chains for food and critical resources really are. Unfortunately, however, with urbanization and globalization, most of the world has failed to recognize that we have created an inextricable link between food and maritime shipping. As a result of this blind spot, most states have not developed resiliency in maritime logistics to ensure continuity of food supply. We must correct this mistake; food security should be a core consideration of maritime strategy.
In general, failing to address food security can be disastrous. The so-called “Cod Wars” started in the 1950s and resulted in British fishing vessels clashing with the Icelandic Coast Guard, nearly leading to armed conflict. In 2008, food price spikes led to surges of sometimes violent unrest in at least 48 different countries. Governments were overthrown in Haiti and Madagascar. Many scholars and commentators argue that the 2011 Arab Spring protests were also accelerated, if not initiated by food insecurity. More recently, Kenya and Uganda have amassed troops at their borders, actually considering war over a half-acre rock in Lake Victoria with fishing rights worth $100 million.
Throughout history, states and individuals alike have turned to violence and crime when their food supply was threatened. In the maritime domain, food insecurity has been blamed for the prominence of piracy, not just historically, but in recent years across different geographies. Perhaps even more tragic than the onset of systematic crime is that illicit activity such as piracy may exacerbate the underlying problem by interfering with shipping, thereby disrupting humanitarian food supplies. Just in the last few years, this has occurred in Somalia and Yemen, among other places. This vicious cycle can, in turn, further limit access to food and drive prices up even higher, compounding suffering, violence, and insecurity.
The Vulnerability of Maritime States
Many maritime states – particularly developing states and island nations – are especially vulnerable to food insecurity. They often have limited domestic production capacity and rely heavily on shipping for their food supplies. Too often, however, the discourse around food in such states, turns to fishing. IUU fishing, which has gained an increasing amount of global attention, is estimated to cost an annual economic loss of US $36.4 billion. But in some major fish producing states—like Somalia which has battled famine for decades—fish is not actually part of the diet. So reducing the maritime consideration of food security to being about countering IUU fishing fails to even recognize the reality of the challenge. Seafood is not the only food at sea and in many cases is not even the majority of what is moving internationally.
Coastal, island and archipelagic states are also prone to being hit by natural disasters, which often cause both short- and long-term harm to food security. Many island nations rely on subsistence farming that is especially vulnerable to climatic events. After Tropical Cyclone Pam battered Vanuatu in 2015, the United Nations warned of the potential for long-term food insecurity. While the World Bank and others provided financial relief to mitigate these effects, relying on help from others has always been a risky proposition. These risks only stand to grow, as climate-related disasters are expected to increase in frequency and scale, with fewer resources and less time available for recovery. Vanuatu’s recent experience of two earthquakes and back-to-back cyclones highlights this concern. Similarly, when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, the storm destroyed crops and livestock, damaged irrigation systems and farm buildings, and caused significant soil erosion. Food production was severely diminished, leading to shortages and higher prices for basic staples like rice and beans.
But the effects are not only local. When one state’s production is diminished, it draws more heavily on food that may have originally been intended for elsewhere. And furthermore, when a state that normally contributes to the global agricultural market is forced to instead draw on that market, the sufficiency of worldwide supplies become a concern.
More effective strategy would help. Maritime strategy sets the vision and roadmap for how the maritime space functions and provides the answer to the question of why something is being done in the maritime domain. Every state on earth should have “ensuring ample food supplies for the entire population” as one of its leading strategic objectives. When questioned, for example, as to why grain bulkers get priority over other ships, the state can answer: “in order to achieve our objective of ensuring ample food for our people.” When there is enough food in the world to feed everyone but insufficient logistics to reach them, that is a failure of strategy—especially maritime strategy—and the policy required to implement it.
Enough with the Temporary Measures
While short-term solutions to ease immediate suffering should not be dismissed, food security is not a short-term issue. Because of the myriad ways in which states might find themselves grappling with food security, they must think long-term, and think strategically about it.
Coastal, island and archipelagic states in particular must shift their thinking about food security. Humanitarian assistance and temporary measures when things go wrong are not always available and, even when they are, outside help is usually inadequate. As noted in Food Security and Sociopolitical Instability, policy interventions aimed at temporarily augmenting food supply are ineffective in the long-term. Releasing strategic food reserves or implementing export bans or import subsidies merely kick the can down the road. Moreover, such interventions can be a distraction, shifting attention away from the structural sources of insecurity and diverting resources from longer-term initiatives such as investing in research and development.
States can develop maritime strategies that make the flow of food a national priority and explore every measure possible to limit the likelihood of food insecurity. Dry and cold storage, regionalized storage, bilateral and multilateral assistance agreements, relationships with shippers, and cooperative resilience measures with neighboring states are all examples of ways in which states can take a proactive approach to food security.
Maritime strategy is not a wish list, nor a list of threats or emergency protocols. Chasing threats (symptoms) such as piracy or IUU fishing, rather than addressing causes and implementing sound policy, is also a flawed strategic approach, even though it may be operationally necessary. A holistic conception of the maritime domain as it relates to food security should serve as a building block for a maritime strategy. Sound maritime security strategy should include a plan to protect and responsibly extract resources; ensure the nation is neither “sea blind” nor “wealth blind;” prioritize research and development related to food supplies; mandate public awareness of food resilience; and address contingency plans for when disasters, wars, or other supply chain disruptions occur. At the end of the day, a nation’s security is only as good as its strategy to protect itself. And everybody needs to eat.
The views presented in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
