30. Shortcomings of the SDGs

WN Guest editorial

The nutrition problem the world faces is one of under-consumption by those rendered poor. But beware, we do not need to bring in the private sector to build up demand! The SDGs should thus be asking: Is collaboration with the food industry necessary? In the interest of whom? As Geoffrey Cannon said: ‘Money is not made with potatoes but with potato chips’.

We all know that the manipulation of the organized habits of the public is a key element in in the nutrition problems the world faces. Those who manipulate this mechanism in society de-facto constitute an invisible government. In our eating and drinking, we are dominated by a small number of persons who understand the social behavioural patterns of consumers. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. So, why are the SDGs so weak on tackling this?
I wonder (and object to) why successive drafts of the SDGs keep focusing on long and short, too often vertically integrated ‘value chains’ in the dominant agro-industrial global nutrition system. Should the SDGs not focus more on the causes of the ‘chains of poverty’ that lead us to those who receive 15% of the public sales price for their products? The SDGs need to address food systems as systems that work for us rather than exploit us, but do they? Moreover, are the SDGs proposing strong enough concrete actions to counter the ecological tyranny of the agro-industrial agriculture model that is nothing short of a disaster in the making?

We public health nutritionists are a clan happiest when able to breathe our views gently into the officials’ ears. Our profession is dominated by academics, consultants, advisors and official committee members used to being most active in the ‘acceptable shadows’ of lobbying. But this is not what we ought to be doing months before the SDGs fate is sealed. We may not like to admit that we also are among those who are manipulated. But we are.

Food sovereignty, a still unnecessarily contentious concept to many colleagues, must be considered a precondition to achieve food security. In spite of this, the SDGs act as if food sovereignty did not exist. Food sovereignty specifically rejects food systems in which decisions are made solely by corporate/private entities and others removed from the day-to-day realities of local food systems. Food sovereignty includes the right to nutrition –the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through socially just and ecologically sensitive methods. It entails peoples’ right to participate in decision making of what to grow and defines their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems. So why would the SDGs be deaf to this?
Having the free choice of what to produce, as well as having access-to and consume a nutritious diet is key to food sovereignty. Hunger, malnutrition, food insecurity and their associated health consequences are not equally distributed across social groups or indeed nations. This relates food sovereignty to the empowerment of individuals and communities so they achieve control over their lives, get voice and influence as they participate in decision-making processes. Improving food sovereignty means dealing with matters of governance, national economic priorities, trade arrangements, market deregulation and foreign direct investment, as well as fiscal policy and climate change mitigation. A critical area for healthy diet policies is traditional local agriculture, not exactly subsistence farming, but support to local production as the core of a food system that improves the capacity of farmers and fishermen to develop sustainable farming and fishing methods. In practice, this is challenging due to international pressure to export crops and seafood. Export-oriented agriculture does not raise national incomes; it is simply not effective in reducing income inequalities. (People’s Health Movement)

The ‘primary raison d’eˆtre of peasant farming is livelihoods, labour and social relationships –and this means the right to control production. Food sovereignty is about an ethical lifestyle that does not correlate with an academic definition, but arises from a collective, participatory process. (P. McMichael)
Four key areas can be pointed out to SDG drafters for investments to improve food sovereignty and diet-related health: (i) investment in domestic/traditional agriculture aimed at strengthening infrastructure and markets including investments by international aid development agencies; (ii) investment in processing and preservation technologies for traditional foods to improve access and convenience of healthy safe food options; (iii) community education and support programs for traditional food cultures; and (iv) technical support for policy makers involved in trade negotiations to help ensure social, nutrition and health goals are integrated adequately into free agreements (including support for staff from local public interest civil society groups that represent consumers and food producers).

In the words of Ricardo Uauy, to live a life without malnutrition is a fundamental human right…Nutrition improvement anywhere in the world is not a charity but an individual, household and social right. But we still live under the spell of ‘the international community’ of reducing the right to food to the right to be free from hunger. Powerful nations and international agencies under their influence promote programmes such as food assistance and cash transfers that deal with human rights as a side thought. These UN member states get away with bypassing the commitments they do not like to recognize, but that they have solemnly ratified. (Flavio Valente)
The International Convention on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights only mentions access-to-food as the fulfilment of the right to food, whereas the-right-to-produce-food is much more fundamental to fulfilling the right to food. That is, rather than having a market-access-right-to-food, the more fundamental right to produce food requires respecting the world’s small-producer population rights since they are responsible for 50% of the world’s food but, at the same time, are about 50% of the world’s hungry. To reframe the question of rights in this way relates hunger to land grabbing, to the denial of small-producer rights to their land and livelihoods, and links the challenges to be overcome to producer rights and productive capacities. Where do the SDGs stand on this?
As for now, local social movements will have to keep pressuring states with direct action and legal means to slow land grabbing, regulate corporations and confront political elites that vehemently resist such pressures. The terms of this opposition also include a defence of peasant ‘ways of life’ on the land, against the forces of the market that keep precipitating so many food crises. Peasants must now recognize the false claims of neoliberal ‘food security’. (La Vıa Campesina) All this is significant in political and moral terms. Should the SDGs not be the vehicle to give this new paradigm a formal status?

Claudio Schuftan, People’s Health Movement, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org

PS: Note that I have not even mentioned the genetically modified foods can of worms which the IMF magazine called Frankenstein foods. (F+D 50:4, December 2013)