[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the malicious use of the terms sustainability and resilience by interested parties and possible ways to righting the wrongs. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—Much used are the terms, sustainability and resilience in nutrition parlance; they are bandied together so much, that their origins get lost.
1. What actually do these terms mean when used to refer to both large, corporate, industrial, as well as agroecological and small-scale farmers and fisherfolks systems? Massive amounts of funds, human expertise and institutional support are poured into generating data to show that industrial agriculture/food systems and their long food chains are sustainable and resilient, but the multi-dimensional current crises that the world has faced/is facing prove otherwise. In the meantime, the resilience and sustainability of agroecological food systems are being eroded by these industrial, corporate food systems –that ironically (if not tragically) are propped up in the name of building resilience…*
*: The discourse of ‘increasing resilience’ is simply not likely to prevent crises to recur in the long-term as is claimed, because it does not carefully consider the root causes of the development problems at hand. As for the concept of sustainability, it has become too abstract since environmental problems cannot be analyzed independently from their effect on human rights (HR) and on people’s livelihoods. The root of the problem is that, to be sustainable, development actually is to be about processes of popular involvement, empowerment and active participation that the currently dominant technocratic project-oriented view has simply failed to accommodate.
2. There are so many economic and political interests vested in defending and boosting industrial agriculture and food systems, that discussions about sustainability and resilience resemble smoke and mirrors as they obfuscate reality and use data from spurious data sources to present a distorted reality. Sustainability and resilience goals cannot be met by industrial, corporate, agroechemical intensive food systems functioning in parallel to agroecology and agroecological food systems. Period. A complete and profound transformation of current hegemonic food systems is necessary.
And here comes-in FAO’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS)
3. The CFS has not been able to assume the needed leadership position and has instead been relegated to a junior and even subservient role to the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and other global multistakeholder initiatives as this Reader has explained before.(#) CFS negotiations and deliberations are much influenced and pushed to respond to industry and their geopolitical interests so that its decisions (and ‘voluntary guidelines’) lose coherence with its core mandate. Such a lack of coherence and resolve results in fragmentation** that is moving the CFS towards institutional irrelevance –which is regretfully very dangerous for the millions of constituents and social movements CFS purports to represent/defend.
**: At the moment, we can actually see the above fragmentation and division across the UN system though. The time has come for all UN member states and social movements of the South (and the North) to come together to demand an equal say and act with one voice in multilateral fora in a way that builds trust at the bases while working together for common goals. So far, no other initiatives outside of the CFS offer this opportunity to participate. How can the CFS offer this forum and proactively work to increase the participation of more UN member states of the South? (Too many have not ever participated).
The CFS needs to be protected though –to the maximum extent possible– from geopolitical, economic and corporate interests
–Be warned: They want to take away from food sovereignty the category of a bona-fide human right.
4. UN member states from developing countries and particularly crisis-ridden countries in the South ought to be able to have at least this space at the CFS as one where their grievances can be addressed. It is very important that persisting and worsening conditions such as debt, climate change, spurious occupations, wars and conflicts be brought up to in this forum to be comprehensively discussed for their impact on the right to food and on food sovereignty.***
***: Food sovereignty and agroecology, small-scale business movements, and popular and solidarity-based economics: These are the issues that must be given active and special consideration, given the fact and ways in which powerful forces have made them historically peripheral. (Jaime Breilh)
5. Inclusivity at the CFS though has so far meant that we end up with policy documents that accommodate every member state and other behind-the-scene actors’ interests, and eventually offer no binding policy guidance of value to advance the right to food and food sovereignty.**** Member states of the South should not allow their muscles be flexed by the ‘you know which’ countries in UN fora. Social movements represented in the CFS need (and have) enough experts who are bold enough to challenge the status-quo and the bogus science and data that the corporate food industry produces and profusely and deviously uses. (Shalmali Guttal)
****: Here also we need to bring up that the strategy of going for the lowest common denominator in their resolutions –and even going below-already-agreed-UN-language on key HR issues– has not served the CFS (and the people!) well. It undoubtedly undermines the role and confidence in its (waning) convening power especially for those countries most at risk of food insecurity.
How to overcome this state of affairs?
6. First of all, more claim holders and duty bearers need to agree with the analysis above. Of high priority, then, is to actively find and follow novel ways to counter the industrial agribusiness system that is unabatedly promoting itself as sustainable and resilient by promoting an increasing number of false solutions to the climate and nature’s crises –these need to be called-out. [Note that even FAO is using this false narrative to promote further intensification (of livestock, or of genetically modified seeds, for example) ultimately undermining small scale production and the right to food].
7. Agribusinesses are responding to their obvious failure by reframing the narrative and misguiding our understanding of the problems they cause in Africa; for example, see https://agra.org/ (#). Companies and philanthro-capitalist organizations have exerted and exert enormous financial and political influence on governments and on other philanthropic organizations, and even on NGOs by devising and promoting false green-revolution-type solutions that perpetuate the decades-old neoliberal agenda. So, it is imperative to understand more deeply the structural nature and characteristics of these false agribusiness solutions.
(file:///Users/kirtanachandrasekaran/Downloads/FOEI_The-Agribusiness-model_ENG-1.pdf)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
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Postscript/Marginalia
(#): An a-posteriori critique of the UN Food Systems Summit (FSS): A view from Africa
In a nutshell, the analysis of the FSS reveals the following:
Policy incoherence: The national pathways and the promoted ‘compacts’ have added additional layers to the already confusing situation of multiple national policies and programs. In fact, all the FSS case study countries already have different instruments in place to guide their food policy processes whose implementation should be supported and not overridden.
External intrusion: The fact that most of these initiatives are promoted by external actors is an additional source of concern. External actors –the FSS Coordination Hub, FAO, AGRA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and others– are playing an undue role in shaping policy processes in many African countries. There is no accountability framework in place and, to make it worse, the nature of their involvement in decision-making is obscure to say the least.
A green revolution agenda: The proposed national pathways and compacts mostly contradict the rights and demands of civil society and peasant organizations. They prioritize the path of ‘modernization’ that accelerates environmental collapse and intensifies the exploitation of marginalized groups, depriving them of their rights. It is crucial to challenge the narrative of corporate-led industrial agriculture, emphasizing that small-scale family farmers are the backbone of Africa’s food supply thus promoting people’s agroecology as the route towards African food sovereignty is the way to go.
The erosion of multilateralism: The FSS is seen as the latest in a series of assaults on multilateral decision-making and government accountability. It is further seen as an attempt to sideline the CFS, the most inclusive global intergovernmental forum mandated to discuss and decide on food issues from a HR framework perspective. The CFS is the only space in the UN system that includes a clear, autonomous and self-organized mechanism for civil society participation, i.e., the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) of which the author of this Reader is a member.
Bottom line: What was left out by the FSS is, among other: supporting farmers’ seed systems and farmer-led agroecology, guaranteeing access to land, defending the full inclusion of women and youth in food systems, strengthening territorial markets and making sure that small-scale farmers can access them, (re)enforcing social protection interventions like crop insurance and/or minimum support prices, and deepening participatory and democratic policy-making processes. These are seen as the vital building blocks of a better food system.
Building genuinely just and sustainable food systems requires that fundamental economic assumptions be questioned, HR be protected, and power be rebalanced. Across the African continent, millions of peasants, family farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous communities, and agricultural laborers are actively engaged in feeding the majority of the population and fighting for biodiverse, climate-resilient and community-managed food systems. What is required now is to support and listen to these communities. Putting transformation, food sovereignty and agroecology into practice will mean confronting corporate power and building the strength of people’s movements. (A People’s Route to Food Sovereignty, CSIPM)