[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about what needs to be done to counter the neglect of the right to food. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
Pertinent questions that need to be posed
1. Is it indispensable to revalorize agrarian politics, i.e., transform the political economy of agrarian economies? Well, it is not so important to focus on the shrinking numerical size of farming populations or on agriculture’s dwindling macroeconomic contributions to national economies in relative terms, but important is to focus on the politically immense role the sector plays in terms of an alternative future and the right to food that are to be seen as so different from the current dominant agrarian world view and perception. (La Via C.)
2. Is it true that at least a critical mass of agriculturalists are now committed to improving food security and committed to fulfilling the right to food and food sovereignty so as to help reduce malnutrition through agriculture? Well, a critical mass is, just, …critical. In all truth, there is more ‘energy’ around this topic by more partners than I have ever witnessed. And clearly, this represents a shift of interest compared with earlier years. But unfortunately, some of the same problems of the early years are still around. Most agriculture investments are still wholly focused on increasing production and on (usually large) farmer incomes.*
*: These agriculture projects, especially the large capital-intensive or export-oriented ones, end up doing harm, i.e., they actually exacerbate malnutrition and food insecurity. We have had much evidence of that in the past. I am glad to see that, in the newer initiatives, the harm-to-people issue is receiving at least some attention. (Alan Berg)#
3. Challenged as they are in meeting people’s dire needs, are agricultural planners and managers often resentful of efforts by others (us) to burden them with people’s nutrition, the right to food and the environment? Well, to them, nutrition is still largely perceived to be someone else’s problem. (A. Berg)
4. Given where we are right now, the transition towards an agroecology based on food-being-a-people’s-public-good will have to be progressive –and the progressive realization of the right to food will, at least, have to include implementing an agrarian reform and, do not forget, will require serious considerations on access to water issues –…and water has too often been privatized. (Shalmali Guttal)
5. This said, as activists, we need to democratize the agricultural economy (i.e., the political economy of agrarian economies) and this will need a different/additional training from those struggling for the transition to agroecology; the needed actions are different, more in the structural realm.
In reality, people in countries rendered poor are not suffering-from or dying-of hunger –but are suffering from neglect!
6. It is frustrating to recognize that malnutrition is the result of the bigger picture of a ‘stunted human development’ as current development policies are not able to sufficiently influence national governments and so-called development agencies to move in the direction of people’s rights. (Andrew Tomkins)
7. Take, for example the cost-of-living crisis**; it follows and intersects with a series of crises –and it will not be the last. On that basis, it is vital that we take up the challenges it poses to human rights (HR) –not only in our abundant denunciations, but in practice! (Aoife Nolan)
**: “I have a doubt: Is everything expensive or is it that I am poor?” (sarcastically, from a cartoon of ‘Mafalda’ by Quino)
8. In this context, the main challenge we now face to break the neglect is to succeed in splitting the alliance between private corporations and governments so as to bring the latter effectively on the side of the mass of farmers and consumers (claim holders). Evidently, it can be expected that the implementation of proposals that strongly criticize and go against the recent UN Food Systems Summit will bring about a strong resistance by large corporations. The latter having been the main engine behind the Summit, they will certainly mobilize all their resources for exploiting current weaknesses of the system so as to make sure that nothing changes to stop them. (IPES-FOOD)
We have been left stuck with Multistakeholderism and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in food and nutrition –wither HR
9. The visible part of the PPPs iceberg lets us see that:
- Multi-stakeholder initiatives have been presented as participative and democratic mechanisms in which all claim holders with their food issues are invited to participate at national, regional or global level. (But are they?) At world level, they include initiatives such as the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the Scaling Up Nutrition Initiative (SUN) and the Food System’s Summit (check them out in Google). All are strongly dominated by large private corporations, in contradiction with the democratic image a carefully designed communication campaign attempts to give them. They all seek to frame the global debate mainly on food production.
- A large number of PPPs that have been set up at local, national, regional or world level (with all their pros and cons) are aggressively used to define and direct activities in the area of commercial agri-food systems [google, for instance, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) or the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)].
- The funding of global food governance has included monies coming from the World Economic Forum (WEF) that played a central role in the Food Systems Summit and in the orientation of the debate around the future directions of the global food system.
10. And the less visible part of the iceberg shows us that:
- The increasing concentration and accumulation of resources that provide the means for the private sector to exert its influence through a vertical integration ‘from seed to supermarket’.
- Lobbying and connectedness between business leaders and high-level government officials is occurring (e.g., through ‘revolving doors’ that allow professionals from corporations to be recruited by administrations and high-level government officials to end their career in large companies). These mechanisms de-facto orient policies and public investments.
- Research and reserchers is being influenced and sponsored to align science and innovation with private interests.
- Donations to political parties and leaders to change their decisions in favor of private interests are rampant, in particular regarding trade agreements and investments, as well as in the domain of development assistance and public policies.
11. We are left with a couple more questions actually pertaining to us
- Are public interest civil society organizations and social movements united enough in global food governance platforms so as to change the ever-regressive decisions selectively depicted above?
- or are they (we) still divided and are thus ‘ruled’? …Food for thought.***
***: Mind you: The mechanisms used by those who control global governance are subtle and are used by private interests to increase their grip on global food governance. (Hunger Explained)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Post script/Marginalia #-As I knew so little about nutrition science, I was in no position to judge anything except in the broadest context. And in this innocence, Ihad no choice but to ask different kinds of big picture questions. Curiously, sometimes this turned out to be an asset since there were others thinking some of the same thoughts in those early years. But what has now emerged as something of an accepted sub-discipline in nutrition was not around in those days. I did pick up a little nutrition along the way. To the extent I know anything about nutrition, I guess you can say, I was self-educated. But not without lots of help from colleagues who over the years allowed me to pester them, often barrage them, with questions. (A. Berg) …Do you need more self-education?