Newsletters Nyéléni in English

The international Nyéléni newsletter is the voice of the international movement for Food Sovereignty. Its main goal is to strengthen the grassroots of the movement, by providing accessible material on key issues and creating a space – for individuals and organisations involved in the struggle – to exchange their experiences and share information.

Boxes

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Box 1

Multistakeholder governance: the corporate capture of global governance*

In 2009, the World Economic Forum (WEF) convened an international expert group to formulate a new system of global governance, the so-called Global Redesign Initiative (GRI) – a system of multi-stakeholder governance (MSG) as a partial replacement for intergovernmental decision-making [See also Nyéléni Newsletter n. 22]. The GRI program established, in 2010, 40 Global Agenda Councils and industry-sector bodies, setting up WEF’s framework for a MSG system.

What WEF means by multi-stakeholder is, first, that multi-stakeholder structures do not mean equal roles for all stakeholders; second, that the corporation is at the center of the process; and third, that the list of WEF’s multi-stakeholders is principally those with commercial ties to the company.

WEF proposals for MSG are a timely reminder that we need to take a new look at the current rules of engagement in international affairs. In my analysis, there are four options to control the drive toward MSG that is acting outside multilateralism:
1. To outlaw TNCs’ involvement in global policy-making and program implementation, as is done in the tobacco convention;
2. To rebuild the UN system, giving economic, environmental, and social decision-making the same legal mandatory status as decision-making in the Security Council;
3. To legally recognize the de facto status that civil society and TNCs have in global decision-making and design a new global institution that incorporates an appropriate political balance between these sectors and supplants the existing government-based UN system;
4. Governments should adopt a new Vienna Convention specifying the rules for how MSGs could operate as an adjunct part of multilateralism.
It is time for a broader range of other social groups, particularly those most adversely affected by globalization, to re-think how they believe global governance should work.

* This text is a short summary of Harris Gleckman’s article published in TNI’s “State of Power 2016” report.

Box 2

Multistakeholderism: a trap for peoples’ food and nutrition security*

Advocating multi-stakeholderism in the area of food and nutrition has been one of the main strategies for advancing a pro-corporate agricultural agenda that disempower small-scale farmers. One of the most advanced pilots of corporate-led multi-stakeholderism, promoted by WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), is the Global Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Redesign Initiative (GFANRI), established in 2010.

GFANRI has integrated several initiatives including the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the African Green Revolution Association (AGRA), the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition for Africa, the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF), the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security, and the Scale Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative.

These multi-stakeholder bodies advocate policies based on a belief that the liberalization of international trade can guarantee global and national food and nutrition security (FNS) with no need for specific global or national governance, and aim to:
1. Restrict the political mandate of the FAO to providing agricultural technical assistance;
2. Dismantle the Committee on World Food Security (CFS); and
3. Close the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN), the UN harmonizing body of global nutrition.

Throughout 2015, this strategy has advanced even more, with close allies of SUN seeking to increase its visibility and role within the CFS and UN Secretary General announcing he would nominate the new coordinator of SUN. The overall drive has been to progressively transfer governance from intergovernmental to multi-stakeholder spaces, strongly influenced, if not led, by the interests and agenda of the private corporate sector.

The peoples of the world must call on states to reject corporate capture and the logic of “multi-stakeholderism” and reaffirm people’s sovereignty and human rights as a fundamental step to addressing all forms of inequity, oppression and discrimination, and to democratize national and global societies.

* This text is a short summary of Flavio Valente’s article published in TNI’s “State of Power 2016” report.

Box 3

On the move to Dismantle Corporate Power

The global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity & for Peoples Sovereignty was launched by a network of over 100 organizations, movements and affected communities from all over the world during the Rio+20 Conference in 2012 in response to the UN corporate agenda to further the privatization, commoditization and financialization of nature.

The Campaign has built a Peoples Treaty which articulates the views, strategies and proposals undertaken by a diversity of social actors aiming to dismantle corporate power.
The Peoples Treaty is divided in two sections – the first outlines the successful implementation of social, political and economic alternatives that have liberated politics and territories from corporate greed and power.

The second part presents concrete and in depth proposals for an internationally legally binding system to bring TNCs to justice for their human rights violations and was presented prior to the historic vote in the UN Human Rights Council that established an ongoing open ended intergovernmental working group (IGWG) to elaborate a UN Treaty to regulate TNCs and other business enterprises.

The UN Treaty is an opportunity to establish obligations under International law for TNCs to respect all human rights; to establish an international court for giving access to justice and remedy for victims and to judge TNCs liability and impose sanctions to TNCs for their environmental crimes, as well to challenge corporate capture at UN level.
While TNCs are the object of the Treaty they are not, as perpetrators, in a position to define juridical instruments or sanctions they would be willing accept – unlike the voluntary guidelines and corporate social responsibility tools they helped define when invited as “stakeholders” by a UN more and more dominated by TNCs interests.

The recognition of Peasants’ rights, which is now part of language and object of the UN agenda –and also needs to be kept out of corporate takeover – is an inspiration to the movements working to control TNCs and stop their impunity. The convergence of both struggles empowers us to dismantle corporate power and build peoples sovereignty on a sustainable world free of all forms of exploitation.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Identifying the patterns: crimes and abuses by TNCs*

Transnational corporations (TNCs) have become leading actors in accelerating global trade during the last decades, thereby redefining modes of production and patterns of consumption, as well as prompting social and environmental consequences. There is an increasing number of cases of TNCs and other business enterprises severely restricting the enjoyment of all rights. These societal actors have been involved in offenses against economic, social and cultural rights, as well as breaching civil and political rights. Despite the principle of the indivisibility and interdependency of human rights, enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, TNCs have impeded the full realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition of individuals and communities, especially of those most disadvantaged and marginalized.

TNCs’ threats and offenses against the right to food and nutrition

TNCs and other business enterprises have the potential to adversely impact on peoples’ food sovereignty. Extractive industries, agribusinesses, programs for the compensation of CO2 emissions, tourism and megaprojects are some of the main causes of forced evictions and displacements of people from public lands, forests, grazing lands and mobility routes, which they use to collect or produce food [Illustrated by cases such as Mubende and Benet in Uganda, el Hatillo in Colombia, GuaraniKaiowá in Brazil, and Sawhoyamaya in Paraguay].

In addition to denying people access to productive resources, business activities also negatively affect the access to natural resources and harm ecosystems, which are crucial for communities to feed themselves and their families. The spreading of agro-chemicals not only destroys crops and poisons animals but also harms the health of agricultural workers and food consumers.

The human right to adequate food and nutrition is further jeopardized by TNCs’ labor practices, based on the subcontracting of cheap workforce. Agricultural workers, for instance, are victims of modern forms of slavery, forced labor, non-payment of wages, illegal detention, and unsafe working conditions. On top of that, rural women workers are severely discriminated, with unequal pay, social marginalization and sexual harassment. The human rights defenders and trade unionists that raise their voices against these injustices are physically and psychologically harassed and criminalized through private armed forces and are prevented from a due process of law.

TNCs’ commercial practices also severely harm peoples’ right to food. By dumping their products on small food producers’ markets, they impede the economic subsistence of farming communities who are unable to compete with the prices of imported products. To maintain low costs and high profit, these products may be unsafe, causing physical and mental diseases to the consumers, including diabetes, obesity and depression. Breast milk substitutes, highly-industrialized and with elevated levels of added sugar, are an example of such harmful products.

Additionally, the access to adequate food and nutrition is harmed by price-fixing cartels, buyer cartels or other cartels, when companies manipulate food and agricultural prices, rendering basic food products too expensive for many families. The abusive loan conditions imposed on small farmers, as well as the speculation with land and other natural resources, which cause food price volatility, further contribute to the impoverishment and high rates of suicide of small farmers – one finds such cases in countries like India, Belgium and France. Finally, TNCs’ complicity with States in food blockades during armed conflicts has deadly consequences by impeding entire populations from accessing food, as in some communities in Colombia.

The hurdles to stopping impunity

Unfortunately, the victims of such human rights offenses are often left without any effective legal remedy. Meanwhile, a great number of TNCs continue to operate with gross impunity. A series of structural hurdles to stopping impunity and achieving remedy for victims have been observed. Amongst them, one finds the lack of regulation, monitoring, investigation and sanction of businesses in the countries where the harm takes place, due to States’ lack of will or capacity.

Many States lack effective criminal, civil and administrative mechanisms capable of holding national and transnational companies liable for human rights offenses and abuses. Furthermore, where mechanisms are available, the implementation of protective judicial decisions is often undermined by undue corporate influence on the authorities responsible for implementing them.

Home and host States’ reticence to regulate TNCs and other enterprises of transnational character and to provide effective remedies to victims of corporate human rights abuses have prompted the elaboration of different international regulatory frameworks. However, these frameworks fail to include clear and obligatory international standards on the duties of States regarding crimes and abuses by TNCs and other business enterprises, ignoring their territorial and extraterritorial human rights obligations.

How states are failing

States have failed to regulate, monitor, adjudicate and enforce judicial decisions regarding abuses perpetrated by TNCs, towards ensuring the liability of the involved companies and enable individuals and communities to access effective remedies. The undue influence and lack of cooperation of States where the parent companies of TNCs are headquartered, impedes States from effectively complying with their obligation to protect human rights and to enforce judicial decisions.
Furthermore, the home States of TNCs – or those where controlling legal entities are based – very often fail to comply with their extraterritorial obligations to protect and respect human rights, by influencing the drafting of laws that are favorable to the investments of their “national companies”, which cause harm to human rights beyond their national borders.

An additional hurdle to stopping impunity and achieving a remedy for victims stems from the complex nature of global supply chains, where manufacturing and services are subcontracted at different levels. Currently, difficulties exist in determining the liability of the diverse legal entities involved in human rights abuses, such as the companies in a parental-filial relationship, a contractual relationship, a supply chain relationship or those who have a business link with the company directly involved in an abuse [It was the case of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh].

Last but not least, the inclusion of arbitration clauses in investment and trade agreements, such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) [For instance, in the case of the Tran-Pacific Partnership (TTP) trade agreement], has opened the door for companies to present claims against States when the latter decide to suspend the implementation of such agreements in order to protect the human rights of their citizens. The arbitration tribunals, as private justice mechanisms in which the application of human rights and the access to traditional justice systems are fully excluded, are blocking the compliance of States with their international human rights obligations, causing systematic violations to these rights, including the right to food and nutrition [Such as the case of Chevron vs. Ecuadorian citizens on alleged oil pollution].

Corporate impunity and States’ non-compliance with their international human rights obligations have spurred civil society to claim for an international binding instrument (treaty) [Such as the Treaty Alliance, which is comprised of a large and growing group of human rights organizations, platforms, social movements and affected communities]. An Intergovernmental Working Group at the UN level is, since 2014, in charge of drafting such an instrument to regulate TNCs and other business enterprises with regard to human rights. This will hopefully oblige States to regulate and sanction activities of TNCs and other businesses in their or in other countries’ territories where they exercise jurisdiction [Extraterritorial Obligations Maastricht Principles, 2011, Principle 9, “Scope of jurisdiction”]. With such a future treaty, human rights-minded individuals and civil society groups aim to put an end to such corporate impunity and ensure adequate remedy for the affected individuals and communities.

* Ana-Maria Suárez Franco and Daniel Fyfe. This article was first published in FIAN’s “Right to Food Journal 2015”, vol. 10.

Newsletter no 25 – Editorial

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Blocking the path of corporate governance of food systems

Illustration: Daniel Pudles, danielpudles.co.uk

From our oceans and seashores, crossing our lands and reaching deep into the minerals of our earth, there is a dangerous threat dominating our current political and economic relations around the world: the so-called private corporate capture of policy-making public spaces. For decades, civil society and social movements have been struggling to democratically strengthen these spaces in order to achieve the so needed peoples’ food sovereignty. But this process is under a severe threat these days.

In this Nyéléni Newsletter, we raise our voices against the growing power transnational corporations (TNCs) are gaining and the negative impact this is having on people’s lives. In times we witness the reproduction of colonial relations, where private actors – especially TNCs – have weakened and blurred the role of states, particularly within intergovernmental policy-making spaces – including the UN – every attempt to establish a global “multi-stakeholder governance” must rapidly be ruled out.

Water, seeds, land and other essential natural resources are becoming, more and more, part of the business of a small group of TNCs. This “corporatization” has been developed within the context of global initiatives such as the Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), spearheaded by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This represents a growing privatization of the governance of peoples’ food systems and nutrition, and initiatives based on this GRI logic, such as the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN), Coastal Fisheries Initiative (CFI) or the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition for Africa, are definitely “no-go” solutions for the peoples.

Such initiatives also represent the erosion of the role of states at international political fora – and therefore of people’s sovereignty, as they put private speculation above public interests. This leads to a kind of “corporate colonialism”, where even seeds’ genetic mapping – as proposed by “DivSeek” – happens to be a form of dispossessing peasants.

On top of that, the absence of public policies and states’ commitment to their human rights obligations have led to the TNCs pursuing their activities with impunity. As echoed in this edition, crimes committed by TNCs against communities in Nigeria or the privatization of cities in Honduras, show the urgent need for states to start urgently regulating TNC’s actions. This is also why civil society call for an international binding instrument to fully regulate and sanction TNCs’ activities as a very first step to protect and reaffirm peoples’ sovereignty globally.
Together with social movements and civil society organizations, we must work to reinvent and rebuild public policy spaces at the local, national, regional and international levels. Only through a strong linkage between these spheres, can peoples’ sovereignty be exercised worldwide.

Sofia Monsalve, FIAN International

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 24 - Forests, foraging and the commons

Voices from the field 1

Collection practices reflect the community’s strategy of sustainable land use

Mr. Somneuk Buddwarn, Ban-Thap-Heua-Parak-Moo Community, Nayok District, Trang Province, Thailand

Ban-Thap-Heua-Parak-Moo Community is located in Southern Thailand and majority of the local residents are small-scale family farmers. The practice of collecting local forest products is an important source of livelihood for food and supplemental income. Depending on the season, forest pakria (a type of bean), different types of mushrooms, honey and bamboo shoots are the more common products collected from the forest.

Collection practices reflect the community’s strategy of sustainable land use and governance, and villagers have to respect and abide by rules and norms when gathering forest products. Land is governed through collective ownership in this community. Majority of the land is devoted to chemical-free, multi-crop farming primarily for local consumption and markets. Monoculture is unacceptable to local residents and large tracts of land are used to grow trees that can be used by villagers for houses and other needs, and to avoid illegal logging of local forests.

According to Somneuk, social and ecological sustainability in land and forest use are important, and local communities living in the area for several decades have proved that people can live in harmony with forests and nature. But they are worried about state officials’ negative perceptions that local villagers cannot coexist with forests and nature.

Based on this prejudice, the government is attempting to separate local communities from nature, as is evident in the national forest master plan introduced by the military government shortly after the coup in 2014. The plan enables government authorities to confiscate local villagers’ lands and evict villagers without due process. An urgent challenge for the people of Ban-Thap-Heua-Parak-Moo is to build knowledge and awareness among state officials to understand what local communities mean by sustainability and their ways of life that are harmonious with nature.

Voices from the field 2

“No means no”

Chief Joseph Chio Johnson, Senior Elder, Jogbah Clan, District No. 4, Grand Bassa County – Liberia

For the past three years, my people and I have met with the Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO) Company to discuss their plan to take over our land and turn it into an oil palm plantation. We have met with the company more than twenty-five times and every time we have said ‘No’ to their request for land. We met with Her Excellency President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2014 and begged her to tell the company to leave us alone.

The company has continued to meet with us and insist that we give up our land. On November 3, 2015 we said to them, we no longer want to meet with you: for us ‘No means no’.

The company says it wants to help us ‘develop’. But when I travel through their plantation, the people who live and work there are no better than us. I see their children washing their dirty clothes in the stream and I see their wives fetching water from the stream nearby to use for cooking. Most people in the camp live in thatch huts; few of them live in houses with metal roof.

I am glad we still have our land. We grow our own food. With our land, we will always have our freedom and dignity. I don’t want their development that will leave my people and me landless.

Photos and more information (including a petition to help the Jogbah Clan to protect their territory) here.

Voices from the field 3

The Montoro Act: a Death sentence for village life?

Daniel Boyano Sotillo, Garden of the Well Collective, Spain

The “Rationalization and Sustainability of Local Government Act”, known as the “Montoro Act” – which has been in force since January 1, 2014 without prior dialogue and consensus with the affected administrations – will have a devastating effect on rural populations and territories in Spain.

The current rural crisis will now deepen as this law encourages the covert looting and expropriation of Local Municipalities and smaller local authorities, as well as the Open Councils* and Neighbourhood Councils – true examples of real democracy. The Open Councils for example are forms of social organization developed to manage natural resources used by neighbours. These councils do not belong to the state or to markets but instead have managed and regulated local resource systems through community assemblies and direct participation for many many years.

According to this new law Provincial Councils and their “Management Consortiums” will be responsible for the administration of public forests, common lands and water, hunting, mycology and timber resources. These consortiums are already working with large construction and services companies that seek only to extract financial benefits. The government currently calculates it can make up to 21 million euros from around 4 million hectares of rural land at a national level. It is estimated that the same law will destroy the local economic fabric, as it will result in as many as 200,000 less jobs across rural Spain.

We owe it to our ancestors, society, nature, and our own moral values to fight against this authoritarianism as an organized civil society. We must ensure the continuity of smaller local authorities and their heritage, as well as Open councils, Neighbourhood councils, and voluntary Associations of services that guarantee the participation of society through direct democracy.

* More on Open Councils here in Spanish.
– Sign against the Montoro Act here in Spanish.
– Campaign: This town is not for sale here in Spanish.

Voices from the field 4

When foraging all respect certain collective norms

Ms.Kusuma Kampin, Huaykontha Community, Lom Sak District, Phetchabun Province, Thailand

“We know what, when and how to collect from the forest. Normally we collect different types of mushrooms during rainy season, bamboo shoots in early rainy season and, bamboo worms and local vegetables in the summer” said Kusuma, when asked about the practice of gathering products from the local forest.

Gathering forest products is still an important source of food and livelihood for villagers in Huaykontha community. It is primarily for food and small family income. There are no written “rules” for gathering practices, but all villagers are required to respect certain collective norms, for example: not taking all bamboo shoots and leaving at least one shoot to grow; making holes in the bamboo to get the worms, but never cutting down the bamboo.

Huaykontha is located in a disputed area where governmental officials have accused villagers of illegal encroachment and settlement in the forest, but where villagers claim they have been residing since long before the land was designated as a sanctuary. Since the military coup in May 2014, villagers have faced increased threats and intimidation from government officials, who have tried to limit land access and use by villagers, particularly in agricultural lands, and introduced harsh punishment for collecting forest products. However, because of strong community cohesion and cautionary measures (including regular monitoring of the movement of officials in the area), the villagers are able to continue their traditional practices.

The arrival of outsiders to gather local forest products is also a challenge worrying the Huaykontha community. Outsiders gather for commercial purposes and in destructive ways that degrade and deplete the forest, and give government officials justification to accuse community residents of destroying the forest and impose severe punishment. According to Kusuma “these people come and go but we live in the community, their practice creates lot of problem to us. The role of the state should be to protect and uphold the way of life and livelihood of local villagers but they never do that. They always see us as criminals. They never try to understand that our way of life is sustainable, this is the problem.”

Voices from the field 5

I learnt to be the spokesman for the forest

Jean François Mombia Atuku, RIAO General Coordinator, Democratic Republic of Congo

My early childhood was spent on the Congo river. I used to love taking my dugout and travelling the river from one end to the other. And just as the children of the forest knew all the trees and varieties of plants, I knew every little part of the river in the most intimate detail.

I love the river but I also love the forest, which is why I like to defend it against the threats posed by companies of all sorts that are working in the utmost impunity in my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. I learnt to speak on behalf of the forest when I was working with the Pygmy communities in the village of Boteka.

In all the provinces of the Congo there is serious pressure on natural resources, and communities are facing serious threats to ensure their families have food on the table. Companies are destroying the forests and the fields and very nutritious species such as caterpillars are in the posses of becoming extinct. Yet these caterpillars are the basis of these communities food and play an important cultural role in their lives.

People in our villages live mainly from agriculture, but in recent years, it has become difficult to practice this agriculture as much land has been stolen from our communities to be given to multinationals such as Unilever and Feronia. We need to get this land back otherwise it will be even harder to feed our populations. The struggle of RIAO and its members is very important to stop the inequalities and put an end to colonialism in the fields of the DRC.

Voices from the field 6

Woodlands is not just planting and harvesting

Vincent Magnet, Nature sur un Plateau, Limousin, France

My name is Vincent, I am 40 years old and I work as a volunteer for a local association. Nature sur le Plateau works in the Millevaches Plateau, a medium-sized, hilly granite mountain. It has very few inhabitants and is located in central France. Our territory currently has a lot of forest (54%). Woodland has replaces the moors as a result of the rural exodus. This woodland takes two very different forms: deciduous trees have sprung up and masses of softwood trees (conifers) have been planted in monocultures. At present, massive woodland clearance is taking place in both.

There is a general lack of knowledge of woodlands and forests and how to manage them correctly. Our association proposed to our local officials that an area of four hectares of public softwood land be made available for the association for a long time. This would be done so that it could be managed in several ways and thus show the local population that woodlands do not simply boil down to planting and harvesting.

There are many arguments in favor of having continuous, mixed (deciduous and softwood) woodlands without systematic clear cutting:

• Ecologically speaking, by cutting down old trees here and there, we can keep the forest in place and maintain its biodiversity. The small forest aisle is quickly filled by saplings underneath. It has been proven that mixed and stratified perennial forests are much more resilient to different risks (storms, pests, drought, disease).

• Economically speaking, it is always better to cut down old and higher-quality trees. A tree’s volume increases at a faster rate in the second half of its life and the material is better. Without clear cutting, forests do not have to grow from scratch every time, thus wood is continuously and permanently produced.

• Finally, from a social point of view, the collective stewardship of woodlands creates many jobs that are both well perceived and well paid. Job-creation in local wood-related industries can also quickly generate genuine local wealth whilst still preserving the quality and the diversity of the forest ecosystems.

Boxes

Newsletter no 24 - Forests, foraging and the commons

Box 1

Why are the commons important for food sovereignty?

The commons refer to forms of wealth, capacities, spaces and resources that are used, managed and governed collectively for the benefit of many. These can include farmlands, wetlands, forests, pastures, hill slopes, streams, rivers, lakes, seas, coastlines and associated resources.

Farming and grazing lands can be communally governed, although the rights of families to cultivate specific parcels of land are recognised and respected, as are grazing rights of pastoralists. Similarly, small-scale fisherfolk do not own coastal lands, fisheries or sea beds, but these commons are crucial for their livelihoods. Commons are often culturally determined, and many communities regard seeds, wild foods and herbs, fish, animals and traditional knowledge as commons.

In every part of the world, agricultural, forest, fishing, marine, pastoral, nomadic and indigenous communities have developed and practiced systems of sharing, collectively governing and regenerating their natural commons.

The commons are integral to food sovereignty. Commons include not only physical ‘resources,’ but equally important, social-political relations among different food producing communities and valuable knowledge about habitats, genetic resources, migratory routes (for fish and livestock), resilience to disasters and shocks, etc. As savers of seed and living libraries of knowledge about local biodiversity and food systems, women are often more closely connected to the commons than men.

When commons are destroyed or privatised, local people lose access to important environments for foraging, gathering, grazing, hunting, fishing and regenerating biodiversity. Indigenous peoples either completely lose their ancestral domains, or have to follow severe restrictions in what they can harvest from forests, fields and waters.

The commons are continually threatened by mining, oil and gas extraction, industrial agriculture, dams and private property regimes (also called “enclosures”). Forests, pastures and wetlands are converted to industrial monocultures or luxury properties; water sources are diverted to feed tourism, energy and manufacturing industries; and trade-investment deals provide corporations access to biodiversity and knowledge, enabling biopiracy and undermining the autonomy of indigenous peoples, small scale food producers and women. Natural resources are commodified and privatised, long-standing local practices of community resource use and governance are dismantled, and local communities are denied access to the very ecosystems that they have nurtured and which sustain them.

Today, threats to the commons are greatly multiplied by the food, finance and climate crises, all of which are being used as opportunities by states, corporations and financial institutions to deepen their control over natural wealth. Most at risk are land, forests, water, genetic resources and knowledge, which have tremendous value for producing food, regenerating biodiversity, ensuring soil fertility and sustaining life. Defending the commons is a critical strategy for building food sovereignty.

Box 2

Forest products in Cambodia

Rural communities in Pursat province, Cambodia have been organizing to protect their forests, farmlands, streams, ponds and common lands from industrial agriculture plantations, dams and timber extraction for the past 20 years. Protecting them is crucial to protecting the biodiversity on which their lives and livelihoods depend.

Although they grow rice and vegetables, and raise poultry and livestock, much of their food, medicinal herbs and plants, and household use items come from the local forests, water bodies and commons. The traditional rural diet is extremely seasonal and closely tied to cultural practices designed to protect the local environment and strengthen community solidarity. Seasonal flooding and environmental changes result in different types of fish, vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, shoots and herbs becoming available throughout the year. Fishing, gathering wild fruits, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, herbs, and trapping edible insects and spiders remain common ways of meeting family food needs. Forest products are also important for household use and income, for example, bamboo, rattan, honey, resin and palm sugar.

In some areas, local residents identified 18 types of wild fruits, four types of resin, 13 types of mushrooms, 36 types of roots/herbs/vines, and 14 types of wild flowers/shoots/leaves. They further identified six varieties of high value hardwood trees and 13 varieties of ordinary trees that make up the forests in their areas. According to local people, all varieties of natural trees, plants and grasses (such as bamboo) are crucial to nourish the ecosystems that are critical to maintain and regenerate biodiversity.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 24 - Forests, foraging and the commons

In the spotlight 1

The importance of forests, wild plants and the commons to people’s and communities’ food sovereignty

Indigenous peoples have lived in harmony with Mother Earth for thousands of years — depending on her for our food, shelter and medicines — making us part of her and not her master. The earth is populated by trees of every type which give life and strength. The earth is root and source of our culture; it is our guardian mother who looks after all which exists. For this reason caring for woodlands, forests and wild plants through our traditional knowledge and as common goods are of huge importance to our peoples and communities.

Forests are pharmacies

The forest provides us with herbs and plants which cure our sicknesses — plants which since time immemorial have occupied an exceptional place in the lives of our peoples — we should remember that more than 25% of modern medicines come from plants from the the tropical forests.

Forests are habitats for plants and animals

Jungles and tropical forests have taken more than 60 and 100 million years to evolve and are believed to be the most complex and ancient ecosystems on earth, being home to more than 30 million species of plants and animals. This represents half of the fauna of the planet earth and at least two thirds of her vegetative species — on top of this they provide all that is required to maintain our world. The forests are vital ecosystems for life, considering their protective, regulating and productive functions for Food Sovereignty.


Forests regulate our climate

Jungles and tropical forests absorb water like a huge sponge. Trees in tropical forests extract water from the ground and free it into the atmosphere in the form of clouds and mist. It is well known that trees absorb carbon dioxide which we exhale, and provide the oxygen we need to breath. Deforestation is regarded as the second of the principle causes of climate change. Climate change is already having negative impacts on our lives and lands — for example through the loss of biodiversity or water shortages — provoking a forced displacement of our peoples towards other regions of our country and resulting loss of our rights.

As Indigenous Peoples and local communities we understand that nobody loves what they cannot learn to understand — so to protect our environmental space human beings must love it and to love it they must know it and understand it. We, our communities have all the liberty to use what mother earth has gifted to us, but never using more than what is necessary and never damaging her. In our oceans and seas we fish what is necessary, in our forests we cut just what is needed — and thus we know the value of our lands, territories and natural resources — our commons — because without them we are nobody and there is no Food Sovereignty for the world.

Mother Earth contains our memories and receives our ancestors – as such she requires that we honour and return with tenderness and respect the gifts she has offered us. For this reason it is important to transfer to our own future generations our Traditional Knowledge in caring for Mother Earth so our peoples can continue to benefit from her generosity.

Taina Hedman, International Indian Treaty Council

In the spotlight 2

Māori food sovereignty

The role that the seas, fish, marine life and coasts play for Māori [Māori consists of many different tribal groups with distinct identities] of Aotearoa/New Zealand is inter-related and essential to our culture, economy and identity, which cannot be separated. Like many Indigenous Peoples across the world Māori feel strong historical and contemporary connections to all our surroundings. Our histories have been handed down by our ancestors and maintained through an oral tradition of storytelling. Tangaroa is our god of the ocean who we acknowledge in our prayers before we undertake anything related to the seas. The gifts of the ocean provides us with many different things — fish provide sustenance, nutrition and an economic asset; shells provide materials for tools, musical instruments and adornment; marine life such as whales, stingray and dolphins have historically provided pathways for our ocean travellers and are our ocean guardians. Like other Indigenous Peoples we traded amongst ourselves and other visitors and absolute food sovereignty was ours to maintain.

Impacts on Māori food sovereignty

Since 1840 Māori food sovereignty was impacted through various laws and practices that came with British colonisation. Although the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 no longer exists it impacted Māori food sovereignty by changing our rights to cultural practices such as shellfish harvesting. Māori had to prove we continually used a part of the foreshore or seabed since 1840. One challenge for us was that shellfish harvesting would only be for specific occasions like formal gatherings or bereavement and not a day to day thing. Māori sustainable practices also meant that shellfish were only taken at certain times of the year to allow for new stocks to grow. Shellfish harvesting would not be continuous and very hard to meet the criteria under the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Since 2011 this law has been taken over by the Marine and Coastal Area Act (Takutai Moana) 2011. This law is supposed to balance the customary interests of Māori with the interests of all New Zealand citizens. Under this law Māori must apply to have our customary interests recognised and have until 2017 to lodge an application. The challenge will be how everyone’s interests are balanced.

Local Māori markets: White baiting

Fisheries are an important part of the current Māori economy and form an integral part of how we connect to our environment. Currently, we are in white bait season and traditionally we know that when certain trees are in bloom the white bait are plentiful. As seasonal harvest, white bait is greatly sought after by the greater and provides a welcome resource to feed our families and boost local short term cash flow. However, growing tensions have arisen where some Māori take the view that this resource should only be used for the sustenance of our families, whereas others are taking more and more to sell in local markets. An impact here is that the white bait resources are quickly depleted. Māori food sovereignty therefore has a significant connection to the local Māori economy and when looked at from a national scale has potential to bring back part of the Māori food sovereignty we once enjoyed many years ago – but with it comes compromises that will need to be resolved if a seasonal resource like white bait is to be sustainably managed into the future.

Future Māori food sovereignty

Current Māori food sovereignty has developed from localised individuals or groups, who have maintained and developed traditional approaches to food sovereignty, through to large Māori owned companies. In either example there is absolute connectedness of Māori traditions and values like kaitiakitanga (stewardship) and mauri (life force), which provides guidance and regulation to help sustain the natural resources. We are aware that we cannot rely solely on seasonal resources and have looked towards ways of harnessing larger scales of food production. We are becoming more innovative and look for opportunities to increase sustainable development. One opportunity is the Crown-Māori Economic Growth Partnership ‘He Kai Kei Aku Ringa’ (food at the end of my hands) between government and Māori businesses that can be used as a vehicle to strengthen Māori sustainable development in natural resources. This collaboration will involve all levels of society to inform the process and learn how to achieve our goals, from grass roots to national governments and international fora. One useful international forum could be the World Committee on Food Security, which could be connected to local markets through the Civil Society Mechanism.

Anaru Fraser, International Indian Treaty Council

Newsletter no 24 – Editorial

Newsletter no 24 - Forests, foraging and the commons

Forests, foraging and the commons

Illustration: Iwasaki Kan’en, Herbario, 1830

About 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries. Most survive on subsistence farming, artisanal fisheries and/or nomadic herding and many are landless, working as seasonal labour on farms, plantations, in fisheries and industry. Their daily food needs are met primarily through local production, foraging, hunting and fishing — often by women — on small farms, common grazing lands and in woods, forests, streams, rivers and lakes. Reduced access to these ecosystems or decrease in the foods gathered in these environments can result in hunger and acute malnutrition.

Forests, fields, hill/mountain slopes, wetlands and water bodies — which include rivers, streams, ponds, lakes and seas–are integral to the lives, cultures and economies of rural communities all over the world. They are crucial repositories of biodiversity and literally sustain life. The food, water, fibre, fuel, medicinal plants and roots, wood, grasses, leaves, resin and other materials they provide are the only safety nets that rural populations have in times of hardship. But even in good times and among rural communities that are not poor, wild foods – foods that are foraged, hunted and fished — are significant components of local, traditional diets, and non-timber-forest products (NTFPs) and marine resources are important sources of supplemental income.

Many communities — especially indigenous peoples — have sacred or spirit forests, which house the sources of local rivers and streams. Forests and woods are important catchment areas: protecting forests thus also means protecting the communities’ water sources. Forests are important spaces for local education and knowledge: children learn the value of plants, animals, poisons and medicines by accompanying their elders to forests. The demarcation between forest and agricultural lands is often blurred in swidden cultivation: fields that are not planted become forests, and vegetable gardens and orchards are often planted in forests to ensure hospitable growing conditions. Similarly, coastal and marine communities worship the sea as the source of all life and have elaborate social-economic rules to protect sensitive eco-systems. Here too, children learn the value of different types of fish and marine resources, and how to harvest them respectfully and sustainably. The cosmo-visions of indigenous peoples all over the world respect nature as parents who give and nurture life, and teach peoples and communities to live in harmony with nature.

These practices and the eco-systems that shape them are increasingly under threat from intensifying demands for farmlands, forests and water sources by investors, corporations, and speculators, as well as from changing weather and precipitation patterns because of climate change. The conversion of diverse natural landscapes to industrial agriculture and aquaculture, and energy intensive human settlements destroy crucial ecosystem functions such as recharging aquifers, retaining soil nutrients, sequestering carbon and balancing natural cycles, and accelerate climate change. They exacerbate inequality of access to land and natural resources among communities and between men and women. Local communities are squeezed onto smaller and less fertile parcels of land and compelled to rely on smaller resource bases for food and income. Fresh water reserves are monopolized by industry and the wealthy, creating and exacerbating water scarcity, sparking conflicts among local populations over water, forest products and the commons. Particularly affected are the rights of indigenous peoples to control, use, administer and preserve ancestral territories.

Protecting and regenerating diverse natural environments and ways of eating and living in harmony with these environments are essential elements of food sovereignty. Equally important, they are a direct form of resistance to the commodification and financialisation of nature, and to capitalist markets.

Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 23 - Food justice and food sovereignty in USA

Voices from the field 1

Food Justice 2.0

LaDonna Redmond, Founder and executive director of The Campaign for Food Justice Now

I became a food activist because my son Wade developed food allergies at a very early age and I wanted to get the healthiest food I could for him. I really wasn’t any different from any other mother in my community. I wanted the best for my son. But that food—the best food—was not available in my neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. I live in a community where I can get a semiautomatic weapon quicker than I can get a tomato. The public health issue of violence is connected to the public health issue of chronic diet-related diseases.

For me food justice 2.0 is really about the narratives of people of color. The food justice movement tells the story of colonialism and the impact of historical trauma on communities of color.

We understand that the importation of African slaves to the United States provided the labor for what we now call our industrial food system. At the core of what I believe to be the problems in our community, particularly when we talk about the accumulation of wealth or the lack of health, is really a conversation around slavery. We have not reconciled the event of slavery or its impact. For us, food justice is not just about nutrition. It’s not just about growing the food. It’s about dignity. It’s about being visible.

We can be successful if we’re able to recognize that we have never had a just food system in the U.S. and we must join together and create a narrative where all of us can sit around a table and create the food system that we need. Reclaim your kitchens. Reclaim your stove and your table. Cook your food. Make your food. Know where your food comes from.”

Adapted from “Food + Justice = Democracy” presentation at TEDxManhattan, 2013.

Voices from the field 2

Community empowerment and resilience in Detroit

Malik Yakini, Founder and executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

In Detroit, we currently have a population of about 700,000 people, which is down from 1,900,000. The city has been considerably depopulated as a result of the decline of the automobile industry and both the 1950s and 1960s white flight and more recently, black middle-class flight. We have massive unemployment, which is estimated to be anywhere between 18 and 20 percent. There are no major grocery store chains in Detroit. That leaves the majority of the population to get their food from gas stations and convenience stores. Much of the so-called food in those stores is in Styrofoam containers, boxes, and packages. The geographic footprint of the city is about 143 sq. miles. Of that 143 sq. miles, about one third of the city is vacant due to the depopulation and also the intentional disinvestment in the city of Detroit.

The reality of it is that Detroit and Detroiters are being spanked. And one of the reasons we’re being spanked is because of the 50 year and beyond struggle for black empowerment in the city of Detroit. About 80 percent of the city’s population is African American and we live in a metropolitan area that is one of the most highly racially polarized areas in the United States. We are now seeing many urban areas throughout Detroit being gentrified. We see young white hipsters moving into the core of the city and we see long-time residents being displaced. All of this is happening against the backdrop of one of the most insidious things that has happened in the United States and that is that the elected officials of Detroit have been disempowered by the appointment of an emergency manager by the governor of the state of Michigan. Effectively, the vote of the people of Detroit has been taken away.

Our organization has been working towards community empowerment and resilience. We are also concerned about creating democracy, the type of democracy where people are actually making decisions that impact their own communities and their own lives…We are fighting all of these struggles against the backdrop of these twin evils: capitalism and white supremacy, which manifests not only within the dominant industrial food system but also within our food movement and within the food sovereignty movement. We are concerned that we are all engaged in this work of divesting ourselves of internalized racial oppression. In fact, it’s not auxiliary to the work. This is the work.

Adapted from presentation at “Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue” conference at Yale University in 2013. More info, here.

Voices from the field 3

Farm workers, a new sort of apartheid

Rosalinda Guillén, Executive director of Community to Community

I am a farm worker that now understands that we are but one small but very, very important component of a system. I am connected to the history of slavery in the agricultural industry of this country because we are the new slaves. I can say as a Mexican American, there is a new group of slaves making the agricultural industry very rich in this country.

In many of the communities where we are working in the United States, we learn how to live in a sort of apartheid system, an economic apartheid, a social apartheid, and of course a racial apartheid. We are hidden, we are silent, we work.

The average lifespan of a farm worker in the United States is still only 49 years. That is what it takes to keep up the production that is required by the agricultural industry so that you can have your berries and fresh vegetables. And some of us die before that age. Antonio Zambrano was killed by the police in Pasco, Washington for throwing a rock out of his frustration at the poverty he was living in and the disrespect and treatment he and his family have been receiving for many, many years.

To us, ag policy means that pesticides are still being used. Ag policy to us means that the piece-rate wage is the legal, institutionalized wage theft process that almost every farm worker in this country must use in order to receive a paycheck. That is why our lifespan is 49 years of age: piece-rate wage system and pesticides. Stop and listen, we are the canaries in the mine. The agricultural industry is unleashing chemicals into the fields of California that are going to be used all over the country and it will come back to you, the consumer. Listen to us, the farm workers.

We make the road by walking. We don’t know what that road will look like but we have to walk together and we have to live well as we’re making that road. That means we all have to give our commitment. The road we walk together must lead to the table where you can sit with your family and eat your food, knowing your dinner on your plate is free and clear of all exploitation of humans and of Mother Earth.

Adapted from presentation at Food First 40th Anniversary Panel in 2015.

Boxes

Newsletter no 23 - Food justice and food sovereignty in USA

Box 1

Definition of food justice

Food Justice refers to a wide spectrum of efforts that address injustices within the U.S. food system. Weak forms of food justice focus on the effects of an inequitable food system, while stronger forms of food justice focus on the structural causes of those inequities. For example, reformist projects for food justice work to provide food access in underserved communities to alleviate food insecurity and/or strive to improve food and labor conditions within the industrial food system through niche markets (e.g. organic and fair trade certification).

Progressive forms of food justice take this a step further by producing food (typically with organic, permaculture and/or agroecological methods) and working for more equitable access to food-producing resources such as land, credit and markets, and for better wages and working conditions for all farmworkers and food workers (not just those benefitting from niche markets).

Radical food justice focus on redistributive, structural transformations in the food system that build political power in underserved, exploited and oppressed communities—including people of color, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people—and works to dismantle the laws, regulations, institutions and cultural norms that entrench corporate, monopoly and white, male privilege in the food system. Radical and progressive forms of food justice overlap with food sovereignty, a concept of international origin defined as people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

Box 2

The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance: Nourishing food justice

Resistance to the legacy of structural racism in the United States is an historical pillar of what we call “Food Justice.” The struggle for food justice takes place in the thousands of underserved rural and urban communities across the country—communities that are reeling from the negative impacts of the corporate food regime. The agrofood monopolies of this regime poison our workers and our environment with toxic chemicals to produce the cheap, processed food making us sick. Over 50 million people in the U.S.—mostly food and farm workers, women, children and people of color—are food insecure and suffer from devastating diet-related diseases. In the United States small-scale, family farmers now constitute less than 2% of all the registered farmers in the country… we have more people in prison than we do on the land.

Food justice in the U.S. takes many forms to address these inequities head-on. Underserved communities are farming on vacant urban lots and roof tops, a new generation of young farmers are growing organic food for their communities, farmers markets and community supported agriculture and local food policy councils are flourishing and policy advocacy on issues such as migrant labor, environmental justice, GMO labeling and public health are becoming more powerful.

In the last decade, the food justice movement has grown rapidly in the U.S. among communities that believe that our food system should serve—not exploit and poison—people of color. Many believe that radical food justice can be a path towards liberation. Thanks to the militant work of grassroots organizations, food justice is also being embraced by socially conscious consumers who demand chemical-free food, fair wages and dignified working conditions for workers. Everyone believes our family farmers should be paid fairly for the food they produce. Many are working to turn their local food systems into engines of economic growth under the control of underserved communities. All of us seek an end to corporate control over our food. Food should be for people, not monopoly profit.

It’s no coincidence that with the rise of Food Sovereignty movement, Food Justice has also emerged as a concept, a form of resistance and as a political proposal on a global scale. The growing convergence between the two is the result of international exchanges and connections between local organizations with global social movements, especially La Via Campesina International. In part this is because on one hand, the creation of Via Campesina and the rise of food sovereignty have influenced scholars, NGOs and grassroots organizations. Also, with the advance of globalization, racism in the food system is worsening around the world.

The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance
The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), is a broad-based network of 33 grassroots organizations and NGOs committed to building the collective power of the Food Justice and Food Sovereignty movements. The USFSA was born when farmers groups and community, labor and food security organizations met to discuss long-term actions to highlight the root causes of the 2008 global food crisis (that had been largely brought about by U.S. companies and U.S. policies). That summer was the first meeting held by this working group in Washington, D.C. They called for a stronger policy agenda that included fair prices for farmers and consumers; equity in the food system; sustainable agriculture; workers’ rights and the Right to Food.

In 2009, the Working Group on the Global Food Crisis brought even more people to Washington D.C. working in grassroots food justice organizations. Out of that gathering, participants launched a series of two year initiatives to support a campaign to end the food crisis.

In October of 2009, a small sub-set of allies organized the First Food Sovereignty Prize in Des Moines, Iowa during the annual conference of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). The Food Sovereignty Prize became an important strategy to disseminate the concept of food sovereignty in the U.S. by highlighting the work of grassroots organizations. During the CFSC conference, members of the Working Group discussed a long-term vision and strategy that was based on the creation of a broader alliance with different sectors in the U.S.

Then, the group mobilized of resources to support farmers’ leadership in national agricultural anti-trust hearings organized by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This was followed by holding a People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice and Food Sovereignty at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan in 2010.

The need for a national alliance between migrant workers, farmers, urban families and NGOs to tackle the issues of food justice and food sovereignty became clear at this gathering. For two days grassroots organizations, farmers and NGOs from several cities in the U.S. as well as representatives of Via Campesina International from Honduras, Palestine, Haiti and the Dominican Republic met to discuss how local organizations could join a political process to radically democratize the food system, rooted in a global agenda set by social movements. Four months later, in October of 2010, the USFSA was launched at the CFSC conference in New Orleans.

Looking ahead
Since the launching of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, food sovereignty and food justice in the country faces a new set of challenges. In the name of “fiscal austerity”, the National Congress threatens to cut thousands of families from food stamps and other social programs. Seven states in the U.S. have passed “gag” laws that prohibit the documentation and dissemination of wrongdoings by agribusinesses. A growing police state has declared war on young people of color. But also, signs of a new wave of popular, mass movements for #BlackLivesMatter, Climate Justice and actions against Monsanto have emerged and are growing fast.

This October, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance will hold its III General Membership Assembly and the VII Food Sovereignty Prize in Des Moines , Iowa, October 13-15th. As we reach our five-year milestone, we are committed to our mission to build the global struggle for food justice and food sovereignty by steadily building trust and nourishing the leadership of working class families and communities of color to reclaim their lives and their bodies from structural racism. By bringing together NGOs and grassroots organizations in a broad alliance with different social sectors in the U.S. and abroad, the USFSA is an important space in the defense of justice and sovereignty.

For more information on the USFSA contact Saulo Araújo and Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau, WhyHunger.

Box 3

Black lives matter

The food justice movement is a reflection of the rise in social and political resistance against structural racism. Contrary to mainstream claims of a “post-racial society,” an alarming rise of institutional violence against young African-Americans and people of color in the United States has accompanied the food, fuel and financial crises. Movements for justice and liberation like #BlackLivesMatter are making it impossible to ignore the problem of racism any longer—on the right and the left.


On August 8, progressive presidential candidate and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared in Seattle to talk about social security and Medicare but was interrupted when two members of the local chapter of #BlackLivesMatter took the stage. August 9 marked the one-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of the police and the protesters were asking for four and a half minutes of silence in recognition of the four and a half hours the police kept Brown’s lifeless body on a Ferguson street. They criticized Sanders and other progressives for failing to tackle racism. Many people in the predominantly white crowd became angry with the protesters and demanded that they let the senator speak but Sanders left the stage. He later released a written statement in which he said he was “disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.”

Ever since the event took place, there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not the protest was positive for #BlackLivesMatter. Some believe it was necessary in order to hold white progressives accountable for the issue of structural racism. Others are confused as to why Sanders was targeted since he has always been a supporter of civil rights. This protest, however, was not just about Sanders: it was about all progressives failing to take on the fight against racism. While Sanders may have been disappointed by the outcome that day, this experience will ultimately be valuable to him. It showed him what is important to the people, giving him the opportunity to address those concerns and gain support. #BlackLivesMatter is forcing progressives to have the uncomfortable conversation about racism and is pressuring political figures to take action. They are making it clear to candidates and to the public that we cannot move forward politically without addressing the violence of structural racism.

Read the full news story here.

The perspective of an indigenous man who was present at the event, here.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 23 - Food justice and food sovereignty in USA

In the spotlight 1

Racism and capitalism

Our modern food system has co-evolved with 30 years of neoliberal globalization that privatized public goods and deregulated all forms of corporate capital, worldwide. This has led to the highest levels of global inequality in history. The staggering social and environmental costs of this transition have hit people of color the hardest, reflected in the record levels of hunger and massive migrations of impoverished farmers in the global South, and the appalling levels of food insecurity, diet-related diseases, unemployment, incarceration, and violence in underserved communities of color in the global North.

The U.S. food movement has emerged in response to the failings of the global food system. Everywhere, people and organizations are working to counteract the externalities inherent to the “corporate food regime.” Understandably, they focus on one or two specific components–such as healthy food access, market niches, urban agriculture, etc.–rather than the system as a whole. But the structures that determine the context of these hopeful alternatives remain solidly under control of the rules and institutions of the corporate food regime.

Neoliberal globalization has also crippled our capacity to respond to the problems in the food system by destroying much of our public sphere. Not only have the health, education, and welfare functions of government been gutted; the social networks within our communities have been weakened, exacerbating the violence, intensifying racial tensions, and deepening cultural divides. People are challenged to confront the problems of hunger, violence, poverty, and climate change in an environment in which social and political institutions have been restructured to serve global markets rather than local communities.

Notably, the food justice movement has stepped up–supported largely by the non-profit sector – to provide services and enhance community agency in our food systems. Consciously or not, in many ways the community food movement, with its hands-on, participatory projects for a fair, sustainable, healthy food system, is rebuilding our public sphere from the ground up. This is simply because it is impossible to do one without reconstructing the other.

But as many organizations have discovered, we can’t rebuild the public sphere without addressing the issues that divide us. For many communities this means addressing racism in the food system. The food movement itself is not immune from the structural injustices that it seeks to overcome. Because of the pervasiveness of white privilege and internalized oppression in our society, racism in the food system can and does resurface within the food movement itself, even when the actors have the best of intentions. Understanding why, where, and how racism manifests itself in the food system, recognizing it within our movement and our organizations and within ourselves, is not extra work for transforming our food system; it is the work.

Understanding how capitalism functions is also the work, because changing the underlying structures of a capitalist food system is inconceivable without knowing how the system functions in the first place. And yet many people trying to change the food system have scant knowledge of its capitalist foundations.

Luckily, this is changing as activists in the food movement dig deeper to fully understand the system behind the problems they confront. Many people in the global South, especially peasants, fishers, and pastoralists, can’t afford not to under- stand the socio-economic forces destroying their livelihoods. Underserved communities of color in the global North–there as the result of recent and historical waves of colonization, dispossession, and exploitation–form the backbone of the food justice movement. Understanding why people of color are twice as likely to suffer from food insecurity and diet-related disease– even though they live in affluent northern democracies–requires an understanding of the inter- section of capitalism and racism.

Activists across the food movement are beginning to realize that the food system
cannot be changed in isolation from the larger economic system. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the challenges we face and what will be needed to bring about a new food system in harmony with people’s needs and the environment, we need to understand and confront the social, economic, and political foundations that created–and maintain–the food system we seek to change.

In the spotlight 2

Reform or transformation?

The global food crisis has pushed the U.S. food movement to a political juncture. A sixth of the world’s population is now hungry–just as a sixth of the U.S. population is “food insecure.” These severe levels of hunger and insecurity share root causes, located in the political economy of a global, corporate food regime.

Because of its political location between reformist calls for food security and radical calls for food sovereignty, food justice is pivotally placed to influence the direction of food-systems change. How issues of race and class are resolved will influence the political direction of the food justice movement’s organizational alliances: toward reform or toward transformation.

Recognizing that today’s industrial food system is unsustainable, the U.S. food movement calls for quality, environmental sustainability, and safety of food as well as for the reaffirmation of environmental values and community relationships associated with halcyon days of a reconstructed agrarian past. These make up what Alkon and Agyeman (2011a) refer to as the “dominant food-movement narrative.” Grounded in the social base of predominantly white, middle-class consumers, this narrative has become an important reference in the mainstream media. However, it also tends to render the food histories and realities of low-income people and people of color invisible.

Community Food Security (the “good food movement”) frames food-system inequities in terms of food production and acquisition rather than structural inequality, resulting in an emphasis on enhancing food skills and alternative means of food access for low-income households, coupled with a Washington D.C.-focused lobbying effort for increased forms of food aid and support for community food systems. The CFS movement strives to mainstream food security into the existing food system.

The food sovereignty movement seeks to dismantle global markets and the monopoly power of corporations at local, national, and international scales, and advocates redistributing and protecting productive assets such as seeds, water, land, and processing and distribution facilities. While anti-hunger and food-security advocates often prefer affordable access to bad food over no food at all, this puts them at odds with food-justice and food-sovereignty groups who distrust these large agrifood corporations (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 215).

The Food Justice movement (FJ) overlaps broadly with CFS, but tends to be more progressive than reformist in that it addresses specifically the ways in which people of color in low-incomecommunities are disproportionately and negatively impacted by the industrial food system. Caught between the urgency of access and the imperative of equity, the food-justice movement shifts, overlaps, and bridges with the efforts of the CFS and food-sovereignty movements, attempting to address racism and classism on one hand while trying to fix a broken food system on the other.

While moderate food system reforms–such as increasing food stamps or relocating grocery stores–are certainly needed to help vulnerable communities cope with crises, because they address proximate rather than the root causes of hunger and food insecurity, they will not alter the fundamental balance of power within the food system and in some cases may even reinforce existing, inequitable power relations. Fixing the dysfunctional food system–in any sustainable sense–requires regime change. Food system change will come from powerful and sustained social pressure that forces reformists to roll back neo-liberalism in the food system. Much of this pressure could come from the food movement–if it overcomes its divides.

Solving the food crisis requires dismantling racism and classism in the food system and transforming the food regime. This challenges the food-justice movement to forge alliances that advance equitable and sustainable practices on the ground while mobilizing politically for broad, redistributive structural reforms. This pivotal praxis may yet produce a new, powerful food movement narrative: the narrative of liberation.

References:
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman. 2011a. Introduction: The food movement as polyculture. In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, 1-20. Food, Health, and Environment; series ed. Robert Gottlieb. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gottlieb, Robert, and Anupama Joshi. 2010. Food Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.