Food Crisis, the International Food Regime, and Endless Agrarian Modernization in the MENA Region

Episode 185

Food Crisis, the International Food Regime, and Endless Agrarian Modernization in the MENA Region


The agrarian and food crisis in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have re-emerged vigorously to the attention of global development agencies and governments in coincidence with the Russia-Ukraine war. The food crisis has  been interpreted through a number of tropes, including Malthusian, environmentally determinist, security and development economics approaches. Within the dominant mainstream discourse, the MENA region is often depicted as a homogenous geographical area characterized by dryness, infertile lands and poor water resources. How did imperialism, colonialism and the Cold War influence the MENA food systems? What were the effects of agrarian modernizations, trade liberalization and neoliberalism on the agricultural systems in the region? These are some questions that this presentation tries to answer using a geographical and historical-comparative analysis, through a food regimes lens. Understanding contemporary social relations dynamics cannot be limited to the recent period. Agriculture and food in the MENA region are anchored in the history of power relations ruled by flows of capital and the shaping of ecological transformations during the longue durée of capitalism and its corresponding modes of control and regulation.


Giuliano Martiniello is Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at the Faculy of Law, Political and Social Sciences, Université Internationale de Rabat and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut. Prior to joining UIR, he was Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut (2015-2020), Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University (2011-2015), and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal (2012-2013). He got his PhD in Politics at the School of Politics and International Studies of the University of Leeds (2011). He is broadly interested in the political economy, political sociology and political ecology of agrarian and environmental change. His research interests include land regimes, food and farming systems, large-scale land enclosures and contract farming, conservation and deforestation, rural social conflicts and agrarian movements in Africa and the Middle East. He has published articles in a number of top-ranking international journals such as World Development, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Geoforum, Land Use Policy, Food Secuirty, Globalizations, Agrarian South: a Journal of Political Economy; Third World Quarterly, Review of African Political Economy, among others. He is Contributing Editor of the Review of African Political Economy and Associate Editor of Agrarian South: A Journal of Political Economy. He is co-editor of the book Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, London, Zed Books (2018). 


This episode is part of the CAORC and Carnegie Corporation of New York program "The Maghrib From the Peripheries: Property, Natural Resources and Social Actors in the Maghrib". It was recorded via zoom on the 19th of October, 2023 by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS).





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Edited by Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

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Suggested Bibliography


Riachi, R., & Martiniello, G. (2023). Manufactured regional crises : The Middle East and North Africa under global food regimesJournal of Agrarian Change23(4), 792810https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12547

 

Bush, R. and G. Martiniello, 2017. Food riots and protest: agrarian modernizations and structural crises, World Development, 91, 193-207.

 

Bush, R. (2016). Family farming in the Near East and North Africa (Vol. 151) (pp. 1–29). International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG).

 

Ayeb, H., & Bush, R. (2019). Food insecurity and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian questions in Egypt and Tunisia. Anthem Press.

 

Ajl, M. (2021). Does the Arab region have an agrarian question? The Journal of Peasant Studies, 48(5), 955–983. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1753706

 

Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and peasants in the modern Middle East. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612800

 

Davis, D. K. (2007). Resurrecting the granary of Rome: Environmental history and French colonial expansion in North Africa (Vol. 58). Ohio University Press.

 

El Ghonemy, M. R. (1993). Land, food, and rural development in North Africa. Westview Press, IT Publications.

 

Friedmann, H., & McMichael, P. (1989). The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis, 29(2), 93–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb00360.x

 

Henderson, C. (2019). Gulf capital and Egypt's corporate food system: A region in the third food regime. Review of African Political Economy, 46(162), 599–614. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2018.1552583

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