1. Yes, as one of the SDGs says, the problem the world faces is not a problem of food production, but one of underconsumption by those rendered poor. But beware: We do not need to bring in the private sector to build up demand! The SDGs should thus here be asking: Is collaboration with the food industry necessary? Which industry? In the interest of whom? Just remember: ‘Money is not made with potatoes but with potato chips’. (Geoffrey Cannon)
2. We all claim to know that the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the public is an important element in the nutrition problems we face. Those who manipulate this less-obviously-seen-mechanism in society de-facto constitute an invisible government. In almost every act of our daily lives, eating and drinking included, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social behavioral patterns of consumers. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. (Edward Bernays, 1928) So why are the SDGs so weak on tackling this?
3. I wonder (and object to) why successive drafts of the SDGs keep focusing on long and short, too often vertically integrated ‘value chains’ in the hegemonic agro-industrial-global-nutrition-system. Should the SDGs not focus more on the causes of the chains of poverty that, for instance, lead us to those who receive 15% of the public sales price for their products? The SDGs need to address food systems as systems that work for us rather than exploit us, something that encourages health rather than undermines it. But do they?
4. Moreover, are the SDGs proposing strong enough concrete actions to counter the ecological tyranny of the agro-industrial agriculture model that is nothing short of a disaster in the making?
5. We,right to nutrition activists, are on the whole a clan happiest when breathing our views gently (or not so gently) into official ears. Mainstream public health nutritionistsareprofessionallylargely dominated by consultants, advisors and official committee membersused to acting in the ‘acceptable shadows’. (J. Rivers). But this is not what we ought to be doing just months before the SDGs fate is sealed!We may not like to admit that we also are among those who are manipulated. But we are.
The food sovereignty can of worms
6. Food sovereignty is understood as a precondition to food security. In spite of this, the SDGs act as if food sovereignty did not exist. Food sovereignty specifically rejects food systems in which decisions are made overwhelmingly by corporate/private entities and others removed from the very real and varied local food systems. Food sovereignty includes the right to nutrition, i.e.,the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through socially-just and ecologically-sensitive methods. It entails peoples’ right to participate in decision making of what to grow and defines their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems. So why would the SDGs be deaf and blind to this?
7. Having the freedom to produce, as well as having access-to and consume a nutritious diet is key to food sovereignty. Hunger, malnutrition, food insecurity and their associated health consequences are not equally distributed across social groups or indeed nations suggesting that not all people have such freedoms. (Amartya Sen) This relates food sovereignty to the empowerment of individuals and communities so they achieve control over their lives, get voice and influence and participate in decision-making processes –very much in line with human rights (HR) principles. Improving food sovereignty means dealing with matters of governance, of national economic priorities, of trade arrangements, of market deregulation andforeign direct investment, of fiscal policy, of climate change mitigation and related adaptation policies. A critical area of policy for food security and healthy diets is traditional local agriculture. While a return to full subsistence farming is unrealistic, policy makers have identified a need to support local production as the core of a food system that improves the capacity of farmers and fishermen to develop sustainable farming and fishing methods. In practice, governments have found this challenging due to international pressure to develop export crops. Export-oriented agriculture does not raise national incomes; it has been demonstrated as not effective in reducing income inequalities. (People’s Health Movement)
8. The ‘primary raison d’eˆtre of peasant farming is livelihood and labor, not only food; yields are more closely dependent on social relationships. Here, sovereignty means not only the right to produce, but also to control production. Food sovereignty is a principle and an ethical lifestyle that does not correlate with an academic definition, but arises from a collective, participatory process. (P. McMichael)
9. Four key areas can be pointed out to SDG drafters for investments to improve food sovereignty and diet-related health:
• Investment in domestic/traditional agriculture aimed at strengthening infrastructure and markets including now negotiated investments by international aid development agencies.
• Investment in processing and preservation technologies for traditional foods to improve access and convenience of healthy, safe and yearlong food options.
• Community education (including HR learning) and support of programs for traditional food cultures.
• Technical support for policy makers involved in trade negotiations to help ensure social, HR, nutrition and health goals are integrated adequately into trade agreements; includes support for staff from local public interest civil society groups that represent consumers and food producers.
To live a life without malnutrition is a fundamental human right…Nutrition improvements anywhere in the world are not a charity but an individual, household and social right. (Ricardo Uauy)
10. There is a continuous risk in the ‘international community’ of reducing the right to food to the right to be free from hunger. Powerful nations and international agencies under their influence promote programs such as food assistance and cash transfers that deal with human rights as minima. These powers get away with bypassing the HR commitments they do not like to recognize that they have made. They want to limit rights to minima thus leaving aside all obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the right to food. (Flavio Valente)
11. The International Convention on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights only mentions access-to-food as the fulfillment of the right to food, whereas the-right-to-produce-food is much more fundamental to fulfilling the right to food. That is, rather than having a market-access-right-to-food, the more fundamental right to produce food requires stabilizing the world’s small-producer population, responsible for 50% of the world’s food at the same time as it constitutes about 50% of the world’s hungry. To reframe the question of rights in this way invariably relates hunger to land grabbing, to the denial of small-producer rights to their land and livelihoods, and links the challenges to be overcome to producer rights and productive capacities (including infrastructural needs). This normative shift is what some activists term ‘new generation’ rights.*(La Via Campesina)
*: New generation rights are significant in political and moral terms, but they lack formal status so far. Local movements have to keep pressuring states with direct action and legal means to slow or regulate land grabbing, because political elites have reason (kickbacks, debt relief and brokerage deals) to resist such pressure. Now, under the cover of foreign aid, and of food security concerns, they cooperate with donors to license large-scale land grabs.
12. The current terms of our opposition,therefore, centrally include defending peasants ‘ways of life’ on the land against intruding market forces that have precipitated so many crises(e.g., food surplus dumping).
Better late than never,now, peasants mustrecognize the false claims of the neoliberal ‘food security’ approach. (H. Saragih, La Vıa Campesina)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho ChiMinh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org