//THE FOOD WE WANT IS IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE//
The UN Food Systems Summit happening this September is presented as a 'people’s summit' and a 'solutions summit' that will serve to 'launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 SDGs, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems' (UN Food Systems Summit Website). Yet the summit’s plan, direction and participants present us with a profit-centered agenda that puts corporations above people’s rights, small-scale farmers’ voices and our climate.
On the 22nd of April, the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty launched a campaign called #Hungry4Change with the aim 'to demand food systems which put people’s fundamental rights above profit, our planet over corporations, and our sovereignty over monopolies, people’s movements and civil society organisations' (PCFS website).
We used protest statements posted online under the hashtag #TheFoodWeWant to form a manifesto that served as a base for this digital fanzine. With it we aim to give more insight and create a better understanding of corporate capture in food and agriculture.
//THE FOOD WE WANT
is organic and non-gmo.
"Biofortification is the process of increasing a few nutrients in crops through plant breeding, whether using conventional techniques or biotechnology. From Peru to Tanzania to Indonesia, governments are accepting these crops with open arms. National agriculture research agencies have made biofortification a priority and donors are putting a lot of money into it. The argument that this is a cheap way to address malnutrition seems to have won governments over. But do they really address health problems? Who is behind them and what is their agenda? Could they actually make things worse?"
Biofortified crops or biodiversity?
The fight for genuine solutions to malnutrition
is on.
Grain
4 June, 2019
“Climatic uncertainties and an ongoing dependence on institutional networks surrounding biofortification and nutrition interventions reveal the disconnect between narrowly defined large-scale, development and nutritional and agricultural science and finance networks defining the nutrition problem as a lack of nutrients and the realities of underlying social, economic and environmental conditions to food-related challenges. These challenges cannot be resolved solely by scientific achievement and awards, but could be better addressed by acknowledging the inherent gender considerations embedded in food production, provision and marketing in rural landscapes.”
Sweet success? Interrogating nutritionism in biofortified sweet potato promotion in Mwasongwe, Tanzania.
Sheila Rao
2018
THE FOOD WE WANT
is healthy, not junk.
"The act of eating is rooted in the symbolic signification systems of the different peoples and communities. It is deliciously connected to memory, knowledge and culinary acts, as well as to personal and collective tstories, identities and territory. The permanence of gustatory memory from childhood is the concrete evidence that food is more than just a nutrient. Thus, eating shall not be restricted to the nutritional aspect, but also embrace its multiple dimensions. It is quite unlikely to find products that do not appeal to health, with nutrient addition, vitamins and all the other market communication strategies on supermarket shelves. That has been the duty of publicity. The consumer gets dependent on industry and marketing advices, which use medical backing from doctors, specialists and nutritionists."
Biofortification: A threat to food security and sovereignty?
FBSSAN
17 May, 2017
THE FOOD WE WANT
is indigenous and locally-produced.
It is in the hands of people.
"The Summit’s concept paper perpetuates the same Green Revolution narrative — it is dominated by topics like AI-controlled farming systems, gene editing, and other high-tech solutions geared towards large-scale agriculture, as well as finance and market mechanisms to address food insecurity, with methods like agroecology notably absent or minimally discussed."
We Should All Be Worried About
The United Nations Food Systems Summit.
A Growing Culture
2 May, 2021
"The pandemic has provided the agrochemical industry, for instance, with the perfect cover to further expand their reach, especially among smallholder farmers, who provide up to 80% of food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and are responsible for keeping many traditional, climate-resilient breeds alive. Instead of promoting people-centered agroecology to address food security concerns amid the pandemic, the FAO is even strengthening its partnership with big agrochemical industry lobby group CropLife International to make agri-food systems more dependent on costly technologies that harm the environment and bankrupt farmers and small food producers.
Resist a World of Hunger!
Struggle for Land and for Food Sovereignty!
People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty
October 18, 2020
"The WEF – an organized global platform in which the world’s corporate giants, plutocrats and heads of states converge to promote the corporate agenda in the guise of “improving the state of the world” – aims to cement its dictate through the recalibration of our food systems and agriculture. By positioning themselves as indispensable actors in accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, they are, in reality, attempting to further their own interests in amassing super profits. A clear indication of this is their financing of the 2030 Agenda as the first area of focus specified in the UN-WEF strategic partnership framework and the appointment of an agribusiness representative as the Special Envoy for the Summit.
Stop the corporate hijack of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit!
People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty
April 24, 2020
THE FOOD WE WANT
puts farmers first.
“'The rural peoples feed the world, yet neoliberal actors always sideline their voices and situation in reforms to our food systems. They are among the world’s hungriest and poorest. Which is why more than anything, we are hungry for change! Food sovereignty now!' said PCFS global co-chairperson Sylvia Mallari. Mallari said the UN Food Systems Summit will be a missed opportunity unless people’s food sovereignty is put at the core of food and agriculture policies. She stressed the summit’s relevance especially considering the current global hunger crisis coupled with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. 'However, we expect no less than the dictates of big agribusinesses to dominate the summit with Kalibata and her ‘corporate accomplices’ working behind the scenes,' she said.
Int’l coalition decries ‘corporate accomplices’ as ‘food systems champions’ of UN summit (October 5, 2020).
People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty website.
"(...)while the 2008 food crisis and UN summit triggered internal reform leading to the introduction of civil society into the CFS, governing powers expanded an industrial farming model to serve global markets at the expense of small-scale farming systems and farmers' rights to produce food primarily for territorial and local markets. La Vía Campesina aptly called this model 'agriculture without farmers,' given its goal of replacing local farming knowledges and territorial markets with proprietary technologies and global value chains. AGRA, as elaborated below, served as a model for the UN's capitulation to the WEF.""
UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems. Frontiers.
Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael
13 April, 2021
"Against the backdrop of the pandemic, a host of neoliberal pitches swarm official talkshops and lobbying mechanisms. Leading TNCs and some governments are pushing for policy rollbacks on land rights, pesticide regulations, seed rights, and rural peoples protection among others. Popular technology-driven proposals like Big Data, blockchain, biofortification etc., are being touted as silver bullets to the current crisis. At the very least, these glaze over real systemic solutions that address root causes of the global food crisis – poverty, inequality, and unsustainability. On the other hand, rural peoples organizations, CSOs and allied forces continue to push systemic solutions that will not only halt but reverse the rise in global hunger. It’s more imperative now that food producers and those at the margins are put at the helm of changing the system. It’s us who are truly hungry for change – a radical change towards just, equitable, and sustainable food systems.
#Hungry4Change: Advancing our right to just, equitable, and sustainable food systems! World Hunger Day 2020
People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty
1 October, 2021
THE FOOD WE WANT
is not linked to deforestation, nor land grabbing.
"Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, 'food insecure' governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmland as an important new source of revenue. As a result, fertile agricultural land is becoming increasingly privatised and concentrated. If left unchecked, this global land grab could spell the end of small-scale farming, and rural livelihoods, in numerous places around the world.""
Seized: The 2008 landgrab for food and financial security
Grain
24 October, 2008
"We believe it is essential to oppose the corporate capture of food systems because global agribusiness supports the imposition of financial and market paradigms to food production and distribution. This logic created the 2008 food crisis and has continued to negatively affect small-scale food producers and people, in general, all over the world. Nowadays, a small number of corporations aim to control data, agricultural land, water, seeds and other resources, and through this to control our food systems for private profit and global domination. destructive practices include large-scale grabbing, the concentration and privatization of land, water and other resources, industrialized farming, fishing and livestock production, overexploitation of nature (including the exploitation of human beings), the autocratic and greedy use of new technologies, and the implementation of large scale infrastructure projects based on foreign direct investment and unsustainable public debt.""
A Summit Under Siege
La Via Campesina
2020
THE FOOD WE WANT
does not poison farmers, the soil, nor the water.
The food we want does not destroy the planet.
"Dominant food and agricultural systems pose just as great a threat to the planet as they do to humans. The industrial food system is one of the largest contributors to climate change. The IPCC 2019 report on Climate Change and Land estimated that up to 37% of greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems in total. (...) Global food and agricultural production are also the number one cause of deforestation, decreasing biodiversity, and loss of topsoil. Cataclysmic loss of biodiversity documented in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services will further affect human health through declines of critical ecosystem services ranging from pollination of crops to avoidance of pandemics arising from spillover of wildlife diseases into human populations."
UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems. Frontiers.
Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael
13 April, 2021
"Sustainable approaches to farming can ensure the right to food for all, mitigate climate change and promote employment and social stability. By contrast, industrial agriculture, focused on increasing productivity above all else, not only overheats the planet, but is also responsible for soaring biodiversity loss, and frequently brings human rights abuses in its wake. On the frontlines of the hunger crisis in the global south, communities know why they are struggling to feed their families and why their crops are failing. They’ve been pushed to the bottom of global supply chains that put the interests and profits of huge, multinational agribusinesses and industrial farming above people and the planet."
Why civil society organisations will boycott the UN’s Food Systems Summit unless there is a radical redirection away from corporate interests
Catherine Gatundu
22 March, 2021
//THE FOOD WE WANT IS IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE//