Staple Security by Jessica Barnes

Author:Jessica Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Duke University Press

Conclusion

Procuring, assessing, and storing wheat are part of a complex network of interactions that results in the Egyptian people having bread to eat each day. But while these practices have a shared outcome, their underlying logics are multiple. For national officials, these practices are designed to ensure that the government has enough quality wheat for use in the government-subsidized bread program (see chapter 4). For farming households, they are practices designed to ensure that a family has enough quality wheat for use in the production of homemade bread (see chapter 5). Within and between these levels, at each point in the grain’s movement through the country, there are a number of competing interests at play—between traders for whom rising international wheat prices are a source of profit and government officials for whom they pose a threat; between those primarily concerned about the quality of imported wheat and those who see cost as a more pressing consideration; and between those for whom grain in a silo is a strategic reserve and those for whom it is a mechanism of personal gain.

Different forms of knowledge underpin these contrasting positions. From the posting on a classified ad website to a trader’s Twitter feed, headlines in an Egyptian newspaper to laser cameras within a silo, there are many ways of knowing how much and what kinds of wheat are moving into and through the country. These knowledges can do multiple things—allow traders to make money, facilitate surveillance, or make people feel safe. They are both contingent and incomplete. The government is investing in computer systems to monitor grain in storage, but there are some stores, like those within farmers’ homes, about which it knows little. Inspectors employ laboratory tests to know the quality of wheat, but assessment is dependent on the sample of grain tested and the standards adopted. The press reports the government’s procurement of foreign wheat, but much of the process goes on behind closed doors. Thus both knowledge—and its corollary, ignorance—shape staple security.

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