The MDG Hunger Target and the Competing Frameworks of Food Security

This paper explores the effects of global goals on policies and ideas in development. The paper analyzes the consequences of the Millennium Development Goal hunger target on international development priorities and discourse. We argue that while the target did little to mobilize support to hunger as a global priority, it had more important implications for reshaping food security strategies. It reframed the narrative of hunger around under-nutrition targets that could be reached through narrowly focused and targeted interventions. Since 2000, strategies adopted by high-profile and well-resourced global initiatives emphasize short-term achievements of results, technological solutions, and the important role of the private sector. This contrasts with the 1996 World Food Summit consensus that conceptualized food as a human right, and food security as a multi-dimensional challenge emphasizing social, economic and political change. Although global goals focused on outcomes are intended to be neutral with respect to the strategic means to achieve them, the hunger target reframed the hunger challenge as a consumption issue amenable to short-term, technology-driven solutions. Left out of this frame are the long-term solutions to access, dependence on wage exchange, smallholder production, and social transfers. The choice of indicators also contributed to this simplification, marginalizing issues of vulnerability and instability in access, nutritional quality, and the host of social and political constraints. The target illustrates the power of target setting in framing the international development policy discourse.