[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about why sustainably tackling hunger and malnutrition has failed so far and what is needed from here-on. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–“He that eateth honey, despiseth honey; but even bitter things seem sweet to the hungry.” (Proverbs 27:7)
You grow profit or you grow nutrition, you cannot do both (Stuart Gillespie)
–How can the right to food have FAO come up with ‘voluntary’ guidelines?? (Bill Jeffries)
1. Policy after policy to tackle hunger and malnutrition has been abandoned, derailed, watered down, delayed into extinction, lost in the system or forgotten altogether. They did never work, because they were never given the chance to work. Politics (bad political choices) got in the way of policy. The fact that there was a consensus on the need to act was never enough to drive real change. Political commitment lacked.* So, is now a better time to act? Yes, if we think we need to rectify a decades-long neglect. But, for that, we need to get to grips with the politics of how to deliver truly claim holder-sanctioned recommendations. (S. Gillespie)
*: We note that food industry reps and their trade associations meet with ministers a hell of a lot more than do CS organizations and social movement reps! We should be moving towards zero tolerance on this.
2. What is at play?
- Sustainability and agency in food security. The latter denotes “the capacity of individuals or groups to make their own decisions about what foods they eat; what foods they produce; how that food is produced, processed and distributed within food systems; and their ability to engage in processes that shape food system policies and governance”. (HLPE, CFS, FAO, 2020) On the other hand,
- Food sovereignty is 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 the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users. (La Via Campesina)
3. A defining characteristic of the food sovereignty movement, as distinguished from ‘developmental’ approaches to food issues such as food security, is the fact that it is not a theoretical construct emerging from the minds of technicians or scholars. It is rooted-in and built-up from peoples’ practices, practices that may form part of the inherited wisdom and values of tradition enriched by the experience and inventiveness of successive generations –or be born from resistance to intolerable situations (or often, a mix of the two). (Nora McKeon)
4. What is at stake?
Agribusiness the model to abandon –or to bring down…
5. Agribusiness is the business side of farming. It includes everything from growing crops to processing food. Like all other businesses, it has aggressively changed over time. New technologies (especially advanced) are applied on commercial principles. Agribusiness represents all providers of value-added activities in agriculture. It links input providers, producers, processors, and other services to consumers of crops, livestock, and other natural resources.
6. Agribusinesses and other investors want land to make more profits, urging governments to enable takeovers. Among other, this leads to land grabs that squeeze the rural poor worldwide. Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity. Powerful governments, financiers, speculators, and agribusinesses are opportunistically gaining control of more cultivable land. Cultivable land is being mostly used for cash crops… (Jomo Sundaram) [This is why human rights activists call for de-commodifying land and food].
Agroecology the movement to build
7. Agroecology pertains to the application of ecological principles to agricultural systems and practices. Bringing these principles to bear calls for new management approaches in agroecosystems. Its key aims are to reduce environmental impacts by practicing a sustainable farming that works with nature by caring for the relationship between plants, animals, humans and the environment, as well as caring for social concepts and principles particularly including self-management by claim holders actively participating.
8. Agroecology has justifiably become shorthand for the alternative approach promoted by social movements, given the boundless accumulated evidence demonstrating its multiple benefits over the past decade. Economic and geo-political interests seek to co-opt these agroecology movements’ transformative ideas and practices. Social movements are now adopting the term ‘peasant agroecology’ to distinguish the ‘real thing’ from fake imitations whose products are invading supermarket shelves. The list of constraints that family farms cannot address on their own is long –headed by land tenure security, regulation of markets and access to finance. This underscores the need for collective political action. One dimension of building political power is that of challenging dominant views of what is desirable and feasible, as a basis for staking commensurate claims at all levels needed. Peasant must proudly proclaim their adherence to a ‘food sovereignty’ agenda, denouncing the fake investment-friendly claims of agro-industrialization that leads in exactly the opposite direction. (N. McKeon)
9. The best agroecology training programs must thus also be exercises in political education. Why? Because proponents of the capitalist, globalized food system demonstrate almost boundless capacity to deny and reformulate reality. In this context it is important to identify and debunk key pieces of the dominant narrative scaffolding. A prime example of these, on which more work is needed, is the denunciation of the corporate private sector touted as an indispensable development actor, as well as the denunciation of public-private-partnerships as the only conceivable way forward. (N. McKeon)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com