Path to security & stability

Earlier this month, I argued that stability starts with food, and sketched a Maslow-style hierarchy linking food affordability, jobs and income and predictable trade to social, economic, and geopolitical stability.  

Over the past weeks, including discussions around the Munich Security Conference, that argument has only sharpened.  

At Munich, the Food Security Task Force made explicit what we have long sensed: Food security is not peripheral to security policy. It’s central.  

Food insecurity drives instability, conflict, displacement and inequality. And more uncomfortably: Food can be weaponised.  

Through blockades, the targeting of farms and ports, economic coercion, and, increasingly, cyber and bio risks that disrupt modern value chains.  

This led me to refine the Maslow pyramid for stability. We’ve expanded it from basic social, economic, and trade outcomes to a full framework showing how affordable food, resilient farmers and production, reliable systems, and resilient trade flows together create strategic stability. 

1) Natural system stability 

Healthy water, nutrient and carbon cycles are the precondition for everything above.  

2) Food affordability & accessibility

People must be able to eat (reliably and affordably). Food insecurity drives social unrest, wage pressure, and political instability. The social contract starts with people being able to eat. 

3) Farmer & worker livelihoods (food as a public good) 

Resilience isn’t an abstraction discussed in boardrooms. It’s the farmer who can continue producing through climate and price shocks, and the worker who can still afford a healthy diet. If livelihoods fail, the productive base of the food system weakens and with it long-term supply security.  

4) Logistical & trade resilience (food as critical infrastructure) 

Storage, logistics, early warning systems, market transparency, and, now also cyber and biosecurity ensure the system functions under stress. Think of it as energy grids and data networks: without it, the rest of the pyramid is vulnerable.  

5) Social & political stability (outcome) 

Not a “shield”, not a security claim but a downstream outcome when the lower layers hold.  

This brings me back to the uncomfortable question I raised in my last post: If food is strategic infrastructure, why are we still treating supply security primarily as a competitive advantage rather than a shared one?  

If stability starts with food, what shared investments (in data, storage, early warning, or farmer support) could we make together to strengthen the systems we all rely on?