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*Food Summit image via the International Science Council*

The UN’s Food Systems Summit was held last week in New York. This sounds like it ought to be a good thing, given the sense of impending crisis around the food sector. But a lot of people aren’t happy about it. There have been protests by people who say they have been excluded from the process, critical op-ed articles, and pre-summit withdrawals by some invited stakeholders.

At The Counter Lela Nargi wrote a good explainer of what’s going on:

At the pre-summit, global leaders declared intentions to forge an international road map for the future of agriculture on a rapidly changing planet. They were “expected to step up and launch bold new actions, solutions, partnerships, and strategies” to vastly improve food and ag systems. “That’s where the decisions (were) made,” explained professor Molly Anderson about the decision to protest the pre-summit. “The cake (was) baked at the pre-summit and the summit will be the celebration where they eat the cake.”

‘Tech-heavy, corporate centric’

Anderson has some skin in this game. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), which has withdrawn its participation in the Summit, criticising ‘opaque methods of decision-making and a favoring of tech-heavy, corporate-centric private sector voices.’

At heart, this dispute is about competing values and visions of a food future. Anderson’s perspective is that the UN Summit is over-interested in tech food futures such as digitisation, gene editing, and precision agriculture, which “won’t help the poorest and hungriest people in the world very much, and will make the gap between the very poor and hungry and the wealthy even wider than it is now.” In contrast:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Canada’s Oilsands City Is Supporting Indigenous Food Sovereignty

July 24, 2020

How Canada’s Oilsands City Is Supporting Indigenous Food Sovereignty

A new Métis Cultural Centre in Fort McMurray aims to revive traditional practices in an urban setting.

COVER.Garden.jpg — ‘The garden has become a place where people begin to reclaim their land literacy,’ says the director Indigenous Research Partnerships at UBC, and that’s why projects like the Métis Cultural Centre are meaningful. Photo by Olivia Szostek, UBC.

Genevieve Noel was in the room when Fort McMurray city councillors voted unanimously last month to provide almost eight acres for a Métis Cultural Centre.

Noel, a Métis woman and designer, said she had goosebumps as the votes were counted. The $22-million project offers a chance to reconnect with her Indigenous identity, she said.

And that includes exploring Indigenous food sovereignty as a solution to food insecurity, climate chaos and loss of culture, she said.

“As we were reconnecting with Indigenous culture, it just was so evident to me that the wisdom of traditional Indigenous culture is the way forward. We really need to embrace the Earth and really reconnect,” she said. “The spirituality was another layer that I really appreciate.”

Noel and her husband Maginnis Cocivera are founders of Mindful Homes, a North Vancouver architecture firm that hopes to facilitate “a seamless transition to the post-carbon era in response to climate change.”The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

The firm has been selected by McMurray Métis to design the project.

“It’s an honour to work with them and help bring all these things back,” Noel said. “It’s really a nice healing process to bring community together, and we want to present the project that way, like we’re all moving forward together, we’re not leaving anybody behind, and people can learn to live together again in a more positive way.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

These Extraordinary Times: Indigenous Peoples and coalition building for agroecology and food sovereignty

September 19, 2019

These Extraordinary Times: Indigenous Peoples and coalition building for agroecology and food sovereignty

Members of a Euro-American motorcycle club work alongside citizens of the Athabascan Nation to launch a fish wheel in the Copper River, Alaska.

Above: Members of a Euro-American motorcycle club work alongside citizens of the Athabascan Nation to launch a fish wheel in the Copper River, Alaska.

This post is based on what Indigenous Peoples (IPs) have shared with me and urged me to build on in the nearly 30 years of work I’ve been honored to do with them, mostly in their communities and in the policy-making arenas of dominant societies.* During that time I’ve seen that, at the heart of IPs’ actions to assert their inherent right of self-determination and their food sovereignty, is the relationship that IPs have with their lands and territories. This relationship includes the millennial interdependence between IPs’ cultures and the biodiversity within their territories.

I’ve also seen and been part of IPs’ efforts to broaden and deepen relationships among themselves and with non-Indigenous allies, especially as trade liberalization, imposed development and other stressors increasingly threaten IPs’ agroecological foodways.

The various ecological and political crises now in effect are rooted in an economic system that relies on the rupture of relationships, including within human communities and between humans and the natural world that we’re a part of. A component of that economic system is industrial agriculture.

In this post I aim to elaborate my belief that, to build or spread food sovereignty, there is an increased need for diverse Peoples, communities and social movements to strengthen relationships and coalitions with one another. Our exchange of knowledges, strategies and practices will keep producing tangible results, and on the less tangible but equally important side, our solidarity will reinforce our resilience in the face of increasing unpredictability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Africa’s Sovereignty Over Food

March 9, 2019

Africa’s Sovereignty Over Food

Local food and seed systems must be rebuilt for Africans.

Africa is facing dire times. Climate change is having major impacts on the region and on agriculture in particular, with smallholder farmers —many of them women — facing drought, general lack of water, shifting seasons, and floods in some areas.

Smallholder farmers are often women because in the prevailing division of labor, women are generally responsible for food acquisition and diets. Smallholder farmers are facing the loss of agricultural biodiversity, deforestation, declining soil health and fertility, land and water grabs by the powerful, loss of land access, marginalization and loss of indigenous knowledge and generalized lack of essential services and support.

A cassava farmer in Ghana’s Northern Region. (Neil Palmer with CIAT via Flickr)

At the same time, economies are weakening and remain heavily dependent on foreign aid, with extractivist interventions from outside. There is a strong authoritarian orientation in governments in the region, with secrecy and lack of transparency and accountability, weak and fragmented civil society organization and top-down development interventions.

There has been corporate capture of key state institutions, decision making processes and functions. Seed and food systems have been appropriated for multinational corporate profit.

Unchecked Corporate Power

At present, corporate power is almost unchecked in agricultural input supply. The dominant narrative of agribusinesses being indispensable for feeding the world holds great sway on the continent, where corporations have captured policy making processes.

Although most seed on the continent is sourced from farmers’ own savings, sharing and local markets, this system is not recognized in policies and laws in most countries. Instead, farmer seed practices are marginalized and generally denigrated as poor quality and backward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Joel Salatin: The Rise Of Rogue Food

August 7, 2018

Joel Salatin: The Rise Of Rogue Food

A ‘food freedom’ revolt against the government is starting

This week, we welcome back Joel Salatin to the podcast. Labeled by The Washington Post as “the most famous farmer in America”, Joel has spent his career advocating for sustainable farming practices and pioneering models that show how food can be grown and raised in ways that are regenerative to our topsoils, more humane to livestock, produce much healthier & tastier food, and contribute profitably to the local economy.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Well, the government and Big Ag for starters. Joel refers to himself as a ‘lunatic farmer’ because so many of the changes he thinks our food system needs are either illegal under the current law or mightily resisted by the deep-pocketed corporations controlling production and distribution.

And this anti-competitive restriction and stifling of small sustainable food producers is only getting worse. While dismayed at this, Salatin finds hope in the burgeoning rebellion of the “rogue food” resistence breaking out:

I’m not optimistic at all about where the government and all its bureaucracy is headed. It is getting more and more stifling. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that Obama put through, it’s absolutely stifling. It’s size prejudicial. It’s putting an inordinate price pressure on smaller producers. That’s a fact all the way across the board. And the cost of compliance is escalating — the amount of paperwork, the amount of licensing, the amount of testing and procedural stuff that’s happening on farms — is through the roof.

So on the federal level, I think it’s getting worse. Now, I think what’s happening on the local level, the other thing that’s a pushback that’s happened, is what’s now known as the food sovereignty movement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beet the System! A Dialogue on Food Sovereignty, Inclusivity and Healing the Rural/Urban Divide.

March 15, 2018

BEET THE SYSTEM! A DIALOGUE ON FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, INCLUSIVITY AND HEALING THE RURAL/URBAN DIVIDE.

Can food and food sovereignty be the catalyst for a Commons Transition? For over 30 years, FIAN International has been advocating for the right to food sovereignty. Their work unites bottom-up grassroots movements and local administrations, with a special focus on inclusivity and enfranchising those who are most often left out. Mirroring some of the developments in the Ghent Commons Transition Plan and the ongoing work on Food as Commons, we felt that their ongoing work warranted a deeper exploration from a P2P/Commons perspective. To find out more Michel Bauwens from the P2P Foundation interviewed Astrid Bouchedor, Manuel Eggen, and Hanne Flachet from FIAN Belgium and Emily Mattheisen from FIAN International.

Dear Astrid and colleagues: first of all, can you introduce your work, i.e. what is FIAN, and what is the philosophy behind your publication Beet the System? Personal details about your individual engagements are also welcome.

FIAN Belgium is part of FIAN International, a human rights organisation advocating for the right to food and nutrition (RtFN) worldwide since 1986. FIAN consists of national sections and individual members in over 50 countries around the world.

Our mission is to expose violations of people’s right to food wherever they may occur. We stand up against unjust and oppressive practices that prevent people from feeding themselves and we support the struggle of individuals and groups who are determined to defend their rights.

FIAN is also collaborating with the peasants movements and other social movements to advocate for a transition towards sustainable food systems and food sovereignty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From grower to grocer: Building community food systems

January 19, 2016

From grower to grocer: Building community food systems

Across the UK the food sovereignty movement is growing. A budding plethora of networks are challenging the current corporate control of the food system and sowing the seeds of structured community food chains and holistic food economies.

What roles do these small food chains and alternative distribution networks play within the UK food sovereignty movement? And what further collaborations between the ground, the grower and the grocer are there to be cultivated and nourished?

Setting up shop

In 2001, a number of organisations came together to generate The People’s Food Sovereignty Statement which in part, calls for the development of “local food economies based on local production and processing, and the development of local food outlets .” Within this framework The New Leaf Co-op, a whole-food store and workers co-operative in Edinburgh, of which I am a founding member, is one example of a growing network of small businesses that are seeking ways to connect spade and spoon.

Consumer and worker food co-ops, markets and online food distribution hubs are cropping up around the UK. Their aim is to satisfy an increasing demand, from both producers and communities of eaters, to make accessible fairly grown, fairly traded and fairly priced local produce.

Under a food sovereignty framework, these small-scale grassroot outlets prioritise working with equally small-scale growers and producers (both locally and further afield), independent wholesalers and co-operative food networks.

Getting to market

The food sovereignty movement advocates for democratic control of an agr oecological food system by the communities who grow, produce, trade and eat food. Small-scale food economies cannot compete with agribusiness, supermarket conglomerates and the industrialised food system – nor does it aim to. Often unable – and in many cases unwilling – to meet the terms, conditions and pricing demands of supermarkets, co-op, hubs and online distribution networks provide a much more accessible and fairer way for small producers to sell their goods.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Andrianna Natsoulas on Food Sovereignty and the Commons

October 15, 2015

Andrianna Natsoulas on Food Sovereignty and the Commons

As part of our series on the 100 Women Who Are Co-Creating the P2P Society, the P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens interviews Andrianna Natsoulas from FoodSources.org

Q: You are mostly known for your work around food sovereignty, can you tell us a bit of personal history and how you decided to get engaged on that issue; then, how do think your work is related to the concept of the commons?

A: From a very early age I questioned the injustices of the world and looked towards collective movements for solutions. When I started university, I believed the only logical path was to study biology – the study of life. I then melded that into the local food, environmental and peace movements, all of which I was an active member in. I continued to approach solutions through a wide lens. For example, I studied fishing cooperatives to explore whether they could not only market fish, but also organize and represent small-scale fishermen in the policy arena. As I concentrated on fisheries policy, I saw global problems that were common to both fishing and farming communities. Then, I had the opportunity to collaborate with La Via Campesina, the movement that coined the phrase “food sovereignty” in 1996. And that was it. We all depend on food. Food is life. Food sovereignty is relevant in every corner of the world, and resonates with a common fundamental right.

Food sovereignty is a holistic approach to a global need. The seven principles of food sovereignty are as follows: Food: A Basic Human Right, Agrarian Reform, Protecting Natural Resources, Reorganizing Food Trade, Ending the Globalization of Hunger, and Social Peace and Democratic Control. Farmers are at the heart of the dialogue to actualize food sovereignty, yet its essence is inclusive, bringing together many sectors of society to protect a common good.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food Sovereignty

September 28, 2015

Food Sovereignty

‘Food sovereignty’ is fast becoming a lost concept; the right to have the knowledge and resources to grow our own food is an essential right. If we don’t have access to nutrient dense organic food, then where do we get the essential energy to heal our body, mind and spirit certainly not from the supermarket where the average ‘fresh food’, in Australia food often travels more than 1000klms from farm to plate? The value of the ‘sprout jar’, the home garden, or locally grown organics is vastly underrated, these are some of the rare places where we get not just food that fills but food that heals.

Organics combined with living soils works to redefine ‘sustainable agriculture’ as: ‘Our ability to build fertility as we improve production and reduce input costs’

One of the major global demands we face today is the heavily depleted state of our soil. The past few decades have seen an unprecedented demand on natural resources from modern agriculture, and this demand has proven to be unsustainable. Modern agriculture is artificially stripping the soil of its long-term nutrients to such extremes that we are essentially eating our grandchildren’s food and leaving behind an agricultural wasteland as a primary burden for future generations.

Current modern agricultural practice is based on a military approach where the first response to imbalance in the productive system is to kill something. In a biological system our first response is to add life, so that ‘Nature can do what Nature does best’, create balance in our productive systems.

One of the primary ways to do this is through the production of specialist compost that is rich in plant nutrient and has a high diversity of beneficial soil microorganisms. This diversity and richness supports the balance and vitality of the growing system by empowering the natural processes rather than overriding them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food democracy South and North: from food sovereignty to transition initiatives

March 18, 2015

Food democracy South and North: from food sovereignty to transition initiatives

When the idea of food sovereignty emerged twenty years ago, from the mobilisation of campesinos in Costa Rica and from the protest marches of small farmers in the Indian state of Karnataka, it had one important lesson to teach us: policies in the areas of food and agriculture should not be taken hostage to the exigencies of international trade. This idea was central to the establishment in 1993 of the Via Campesina, which was soon to grow into the largest transnational social movement in existence, now spanning 164 local and national organizations in more than 70 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and representing an estimated 200 million farmers.

As an antidote to the globalization of food markets, food sovereignty was very much a product of its times. The Uruguay round of trade negotiations launched in 1986 was nearing its conclusion, and at the request of major developing countries, agriculture had been placed at the centre of the table of the big bargain to be struck: food, it was becoming clear, was set to become the next frontier of the great mill of commodification, and farmers from the world over were asked to compete against one another — and let the least competitive disappear.

Food sovereignty was, first and foremost, a story of solidarity against adversity, of cooperation against competition. The trade negotiators wanted their farmers to compete: instead, rallying behind the new slogan, they decided to unite. A strange ballet of words occurred: those talking about trade « liberalization » were condemning farmers to new forms of pressure and coercion from the global marketplace and from the large agrifood companies that dominate it, while those speaking of food « sovereignty » meant in fact the opposite of food wars — they meant alliances across national borders.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

GRAIN — Right to land and seed

December 15, 2014

GRAIN — Right to land and seed.

“Food sovereignty” is the main political demand of the landless and peasant movement in Bangladesh in times of climate change and intensifying land conflicts. The concept of food sovereignty is based on the right to grow their own food, with own seeds and in an ecologically sustainable way of farming. The peasant movement fights for a revolutionary land reform and self-determined food production, in order to improve and guarantee the local and national food supply. One strategy to strengthen the demand for food sovereignty is the occupation of land by groups of small farmers. According to the law, landless farmers have a right to land which often isn’t enforced due to corruption and unequal power relations.

The capitalization of the agricultural sector is a threat for the local markets and self-sustained food production. Since the so called “green revolution” in the 1960s, there is a growing influence of international seed- and chemical-companies on the agricultural market in Bangladesh. The dependency on fertilizers, pesticides and modified seeds along with the infrastructural adjustments made by the state of Bangladesh and the World Bank have significantly changed the living conditions of small farmers. Higher production costs as well as lower productivity and fertility of the soil is the reason why many peasants end up in dept.

Around three fourths of those engaged in the farming sector are landless workers. Many would have the right to receive land through the “Kash land”-legislation. But corruption of local politicians and administration are immediate and structural obstacles that prevent landless workers from obtaining land-titles of state-owned or unused land.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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