#: Urban Jonsson

[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader reveals in what ways the upcoming Food Systems Summit barely pays lip service to the real constraints to the people’s enjoyment of the right to nutrition. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].

-Somehow, there is a widespread belief that nutrition as a biological science and controversy do not mix. To the contrary, as Kuhn taught us, they go hand in hand. (Ted Greiner)

-If you (?) do not feed people, you feed conflict. (Secretary General Antonio Guterres) (…with all due respect, Sir, people have to feed themselves…).

Food sovereignty, agroecology and the right to nutrition: it is good to remember

1. While scattered references to ‘soberanía alimentaria’ in Latin America date back to the 1980s, La Vía Campesina is largely credited with advancing the concept of food sovereignty beginning in the mid-1990s. As the defunct General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later the World Trade Organization (WTO) made moves to include agriculture in free trade agreements, food sovereignty emerged not as an academic theory, but to represent the voice of “those whose lives and livelihoods are on the frontlines of the battle for control over the land, resources and seeds necessary for food production”. Importantly, food sovereignty also came about as an explicit rejection of the ‘food security’ framing promoted by FAO, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), agribusiness, and other members of the global political elite. It comes as little surprise that these actors would champion food security for, in their efforts to reduce hunger, they fail to question the human right (HR) and the political-economic structures within which these elites rose to power.

2. In 2007, the International Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali further outlined the intentions and scope of the food sovereignty claim, defining food sovereignty as:

The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations…. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations”.* (Nyéléni, 2007)

*: The 2015 Nyéléni Declaration for Agroecology, published following the forum, affirmsagroecology as a key element in the construction of Food Sovereignty.” Today, multiple grassroots and civil society organizations globally see agroecology as an evidence-based means to achieve the six principles of food sovereignty set out in the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration: focusing on food for people, valuing food providers, localizing food systems, putting food control locally, building knowledge and skills, and working with nature.

3. Since 2007, food sovereignty has been enshrined in the constitutions and/or national laws of Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nepal, Nicaragua, Mali, and Senegal. It has been championed by successive UN special rapporteurs on the right to food.

4. Rooted in resistance to neoliberal globalization and free trade, movements for food sovereignty and the right to nutrition are globalizing as well; the idea now inspires collective action among tens of millions of people all over the world. Communities invoking food sovereignty have created multiple pathways for legitimacy, from making claims on HR and democracy to expanding social structures, notions of citizenship, and mutual rights and responsibilities to one another and to the living planet.

All very nice and clear, but ‘ending hunger’ has become an industry in itself –accountable to no one

-Many international NGOs say “there are terrible hunger problems unfolding in X, so please send us money”. Who tracks what they do with the money?

-One of the major critiques of humanitarian assistance programs has been that food aid treats lives to be saved as bare life, not as lives with a political (silenced) voice. One can ensure that people are treated like dignified human beings, rather than like animals on a feedlot, by their having some say on how they are being treated.  (Jenny Edkins).

-Human rights are mainly about upholding human dignity, not about meeting physiological needs. Dignity does not come from, for instance, being fed; it comes from providing for oneself (George Kent) –yes, Mr Secretary General…

5. FAO’s website boasts that they have been working on ending hunger for 75 years. That should be an apology, not a boast.** The ending hunger enterprise has too much been about conferencing and publishing pretty texts, but not achieving goals. These seemingly abstract issues about which we write papers are matters determining the lives of millions of people. When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. The facts discussed here are more than enough to allow us to go negotiate (or struggle) for new more radical equitable/pro-poor/pro-women/human rights-based strategies on the highest of moral grounds. Those whose interests we claim to serve expect it from us.**

** If you hired some company to build a bridge, you would not view their taking 75 years and still not finishing the job as something to boast about. (G. Kent)

Hunger? Today, Big Food tells us what to produce, how to produce and what to eat, but…

We are still under a colonial logic. The poorest countries continue to be influenced by the richest in this regard. (Corina Muñoz, World March of Women)

6. Ultra-processed food and drink products are not modified foods, but formulations or ‘edible products’ mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’).*** All together, they are energy-dense, high in unhealthy types of fat, refined starches, free sugars and salt, and poor sources of protein, dietary fiber and micronutrients. Ultra-processed products are made to be hyper-palatable and attractive, with long shelf-life, and able to be consumed anywhere, any time. Their formulation, presentation and marketing too often promote overconsumption.*** (Carlos Monteiro, Geoffrey Cannon)

***: Breastmilk substitutes are ultra-processed foods, and this should be clearly stated on the container. As it stands, the few existing legal restrictions on their promotion are being bypassed by Big Food using new technologies. Health claims on the labels ought, for instance, not to be allowed.  (Keep in mind that the manufacturers trickily stick to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. There thus needs to be a clear declaration that the spirit of the law prevails over the letter of the law).  (Radha Holla)

7. The problem is that ultra-processed foods, as defined by the NOVA food classification system, are characteristically ready-to-consume industrial formulations of homogenized cheap ingredients obtained from high-yield crops, notably sugars and syrups, refined starches, oils and fats, protein isolates, and also sometimes from remnants of intensively reared animals. (On NOVA, see: https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/an-introduction-to-food-science/0/steps/163454) Such formulations are made to look, smell, and taste good or often irresistible, by use of sophisticated combinations of flavors, colors, emulsifiers, sweeteners, thickeners and other additives that have a cosmetic function.  Changing one problematic ingredient for another, such as less fat or sugar replaced by artificial sweeteners, does not make ultra-processed foods healthy. Reformulated ‘premium’ ultra-processed lines ‘enriched’ with micronutrients and fiber sold with health claims at higher prices could prove to be comparably more profitable, but would remain unhealthy products –yet the FSS says nothing about this (are they not part of the food system??). (iv)<br/>

(iv): Beware: The reformulation approach is a just a damage-limitation exercise to avoid criticism and to white-wash Big Food’s conscience making us think they are promoting healthy food –while we remain addicted to ultra-processed products.

8. Taxes ought to thus be levied on these products. This can be done at two stages: The first tax should be on ingredients exclusively used by ultra-processed food manufacturers, in particular cosmetic, texturizing, shelf-life and ‘taste-addictive ingredients’. The second tax ought to be on the products as sold to consumers. To contribute to the right to nutrition, the tax revenues earned must be sequestered and be sufficient to fund programs designed to support production and consumption of healthy food, to improve public health, and to monitor progress. All advertising and promotion of ultra-processed products must additionally be prohibited, and their labels are to include prominent warnings. (C. Monteiro, G. Cannon)

The hunger problem is frequently addressed by the powerful in terms that are inherently humiliating (G. Kent)

9. If people have no chance to influence what and how they are ‘being fed’, if they are fed ultra-processed products, prepackaged rations or capsules, their right to nutrition is not being met –even if they get all the nutrients their bodies need. Why is it that most people can be valued as competent persons, while those rendered hungry are regarded as little more than passive gaping mouths?

10. Bottom line, I have here only exposed you to two sides of the coin in relation to world hunger. But this coin has more than two sides… The two questions I ask you, then, is: Where does the upcoming Food Systems Summit address these issues, especially seen as key aspects of the right to nutrition? And if it does not, what are we to expect from its outcomes? Time to resist!

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com

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