Human rights: Food for a rigged thought ‘HR and food systems’
HRR 772
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about what a illegitimately controlled food system is doing to us. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–The famine of jobs and the famine of purchasing power are becoming even more serious famines than the famine for food. (M.S. Swaminathan) [Since agriculture provides most job opportunities, the import of food by countries rendered poor is equivalent to importing unemployment].
–Yes, malnutrition can explain why some people find work and escape poverty while others do not. (Martin Ravallion)
The global food system is not broken; it is rigged! It is doing what it was designed to do (Stuart Gillespie)
1. It was designed in a different century for a different purpose; it was to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine. The food system has since become increasingly commoditized and financialized. It is now destroying more than what it creates; a lot more. Over the last fifty years of neoliberalism, it has become split with power imbalances and been captured by a handful of transnational corporations that seek to maximize profit at all costs. These costs are monumental, as the most profitable (ultra-processed) products are also the most dangerous for people and planet.
2. Companies do not pay the price for these harms; we do. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations, made to make money, not to nourish us. Moreover, Big Food has translated its huge commercial and financial power into political power. It is too late for incremental changes now; no more tweaking at the margins: We need a radical overhaul. (Stuart Gillespie’s new book, ‘Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet’, 2025)
3. We pay many times over for the unhealthy diets we eat:
- the cost of (food) products,
- the cost of the ill-health they cause over time,
- the cost of the emissions used in producing them,
- the cost of the environmental harms of packaging, and
- the cost to remedy all this.
4. Large corporations profit many times-over from driving the problem:
- from selling the antidote (or cure), and
- from marketing a whole new array of products that help with the side effects caused by taking the antidote.
5. We need to shine a harsh light on the way power, in its various guises, has been used to drive commercial gain at our expense. (S. Gillespie)
6. Literally, hundreds are studying the social and psychological causes of overfed people –I ask you: To what avail when we do not stop Big Food?
Food and nutrition are the fuel that goes into human capital development (Steen Jorgensen)
7. Focusing on the sheer dayliness of hunger, hunger is beyond the reach of the invisible hand. Hunger is the result of a chain of social, political and economic injustices that people are too often unaware-of. But, somehow, people learn to cope with hunger –do not ask me how …and why they have to continue to take this injustice.
8. Let me try to help you understand: The legacy of structural adjustment programs led to economic models focused on export-oriented industrial agriculture, often at the expense of food self-sufficiency. These policies have increased dependency on food and agrochemical imports, limiting countries’ flexibility to implement context-specific and sustainable food security and nutrition strategies. Exporting raw agricultural commodities while importing processed food and inputs has perpetuated unfavorable terms of trade for them. (“We are price takers, not price makers”, the late President Nyerere said). This undermines the ability of governments to reinvest in domestic food systems and reinforces cycles of debt and dependency.
9. Moreover, the growing influence of foreign direct investment and the financialization of agriculture (including land grabbing) have reshaped food systems in ways that prioritize profit over sustainability and equity. This trend further marginalizes small-scale food producers and local food economies.
10. And then, agricultural subsidies in wealthier nations disproportionately support high-input, industrial monocultures. These subsidies distort global markets and discourage biodiversity, while undermining more sustainable, farmer-led systems. There is an urgent need to redirect subsidies to support agroecological approaches and strengthen local food systems.
11. Despite their central role in global food production, smallholder farmers often face limited access to financing, extension services, and market opportunities –all part of the above ‘model’. These challenges are compounded by weak infrastructure, land tenure insecurity, and inadequate policy support. Add to this volatile prices and weak collective bargaining power that prevent fair returns and discourage investment and exclusion from relevant policy dialogues. This is why we need to ensure that financing mechanisms prioritize the voices and leadership of small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples, and grassroots communities.
12. Globally, smallholder farmers thus confront a complex set of challenges that hinder their ability to invest-in and practice sustainable agriculture. Constraints are particularly tough for women due to their lack of secure access to land, credit, agricultural extension on top of other major major barriers they face.
13. As relates to the climate crisis, keep in mind that, despite their vulnerability, smallholders invest significantly from their own resources in climate adaptation, receiving insufficient external support. (Kristine Yakhama)
We will go nowhere if food remains predominantly a humanitarian and not a human capital development issue
14. Countries have limited options to address the structural drivers (social determination) of food insecurity* and malnutrition. Every dollar spent on excessive debt repayments is a dollar not spent on feeding the hungry and fostering development. Addressing the debt burden is critical to breaking the cycle of hunger and instability. Countries facing food crises and conflicts should not be forced to choose between repaying debt and saving lives. (Pat Mc Mahon)
*: Some have suggested implementing debt-swap programs where debt relief is tied to investments in food security and nutrition programs. Debt swaps can be directed toward projects like school feeding programs, agri-food systems development, or nutrition interventions. For example, funds might be used to support local farmers, enhance food supply chains, or provide meals to populations made vulnerable. (P. Mc Mahon)
Solutions? First, break out of your silo
—Technical fixes are little more than bad faith: save a stunted (‘bonsai’) child today and the day after tomorrw the child will be starving again. Saved lives must be sustainable lives. (David Werner) Take nutrition rehabilitation; it does neither prevent the recurrence of malnutrition nor its appearance in siblings.
15. Nutrition has always operated at the interface between food and health; it has always demanded interdisciplinary thinking and action. If we allow ourselves to be locked into these two silos only, we lose our strength.*** The inconvenient truth of this story is that most change comes from collective claim holders’ mobilization for action. So, connect, do not compete. “My crisis is bigger than yours” is not a starting discussion point. It will never work in the long run, especially when it is clear that crises interact and overlap. We need to see (and seize) the common ground –across food, health, climate, education, and other pertinent domains. (S. Gillespie)
***: Remember that the big fish are upstream; downstream, people are hungry (or obese and diabetic). (Sunil Mewhra)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–“Human rights, rather than being the major guiding principle to assuring adequate access to food, are relegated to only one track of what is a ‘twin track’ approach that combines the longer-term ‘progressive-realization-of-the-right-to-adequate-food’ with short-term direct-action-to-immediately-tackle-hunger-for-the-most-vulnerable” (without explicit consideration-of and attention paid to HR). (World Food Summit 2009) [read this again; the sentence is heavy: not my fault].
—If breastfeeding did not exist, and someone invented it, the Nobel Committee would be forced to award a double Nobel Price, one for medicine and one for economics. (Keith Hansen)