The New Breadline (book review)
They often meander between manifesto-style “how to save the planet” approaches, are often far more academic than the academic who wrote the text thought they would be or generalize a place, (part of) a career or a topic to the point where I get itchy in my reading chair.
Jean-Martin Bauer’s The New Breadline-Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century is one of those rare books that you, the academic, should read, your students on different levels could enjoy and even family members who are still struggling to understand what your Ph.D. research was about will most likely find interesting and enlightening.
Bauer approaches the topic of humanitarianism and hunger from a unique vantage point: He has been potpourri of war zones and crises, worked for the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency tasked with food assistance, school meals and emergency logistics and as a man of Haitian ancestry addresses issues around racial hierarchies and power imbalances in the global aid system as well.
The book immediately is off to a good start, a nice autobiographical touch, clear writing suitable for “civilians” and facts about hunger that underpin Bauer’s arguments.
Trends were so encouraging that in 2015 the world’s governments publicly committed to eliminating hunger by 2030. But instead of being eradicated, hunger has surged because of escalating food prices, even as conflict and climate change continue to decimate livelihoods (p.6).Hunger has always been man-made and continuous to be so in the 21st century, one of the core messages of the book.
Excellent books have been written about the humanitarian crisis in Haiti and chapter 1, like all the chapters, manages to condense historical developments into a concise overview that does not lose the focus on food, food production, food aid and the messy relationship between Haitian elites and the Northern “allies” such as the US. The interconnectedness between growing food, importing food and the destruction of food through “natural” disasters quickly emerge.
A truly global introduction to the challenges of food systems
Bauer's journey through global food systems is a tour de force: Social exclusion and caste in the Sahel region (chapter 2), land grabbing and the emergence of agricultural land as another “asset class” for investors (chapter 3) and on to another long-standing country in crisis, the Central African Republic (CAR) (chapter 4). Chapter 5 takes us right into the Middle East before we return to Africa in chapter 6 to learn more the challenges of disarmament processes and food shortages in DRC & Congo-Brazzaville. The fact that Bauer has worked in all these places adds to the credibility of case studies that otherwise risk becoming a travelogue or canvas of hungry peoples.
In the second part we look at Covid’s impact (chapter 7) and how the pandemic affected Africa quite differently from other parts of the globe. The following chapter on indigenous food systems is a bit all over the place, but chapter 9 is reasonably critical of humanitarian technologies and their promises in the field.
The final chapter on food sovereignty ends in line with the previous chapters: A topical overview, focusing on positive stories and some ways forward rather than a comprehensive political critique of the food or humanitarian aid system. I would rather have such an ending than a grand narrative of “innovation” or “change” that seems unrealistic to attain, though.
The reflective aid practitioner sometimes takes a backseat
Despite my clear recommendation and its many strengths, The New Breadline ultimately misses a “5 out of 5” rating-partly because I am a picky academic…
Bauer is still employed by WFP so I can understand why the organization is taking a back seat in his analysis-there is neither a glowing endorsement, but, perhaps more importantly, also not much critical reflection on the organization, e.g. on David Beasley’s contentious communication and leadership style when he was Director of the organization.
And when he talks about his experiences with racism and inequalities he keeps it at a level where it can spark interesting discussions at a dinner party rather than shocking the guests into awkward silence because he used the n-word.
When he talks about “Susan” and “Sandra” in chapter 10 and their experiences in white country offices like Copenhagen, I would have liked to read a bit more about “Jean-Martin” as well.
He describes some of his experiences as “typical” for non-white persons in the UN system but does not address whether or how structural these issues are in the UN system, WFP or its country offices.
His recommendation to “hire more black managers” will probably get approving nods at the imaginary dinner party and we could still part as friends…
Even though my critical paragraph seems rather long it should not distract from a highly readable, accessible and important book about topics that really should not exist anymore: Hunger, malnutrition and the weaponization of food as some of the worst impacts of contemporary wars and failing global governance!
Bauer, Jean-Martin: The New Breadline-Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century. ISBN 978-0-593-32168-3, 290pp, USD 30.00, Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.
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