BY OLIVIER DE SCHUTTER
For the past six years, it has been my responsibility to report to the United Nations (UN) on how well people’s right to food is being upheld. The picture that has emerged is a troubling one: the ability of millions to produce or access adequate food has been imperilled by dysfunctional global food systems.
These systems are efficient only from the point of view of maximising agribusiness profits and producing huge volumes of exportable cereal commodities.
They are highly inefficient on every other count: almost 1-billion people are still hungry and undernourished, while 1.4-billion are overweight and obese; millions of small-scale farmers are unable to live from food production; and the natural resource base on which food production depends is being rapidly degraded.
This catalogue of poor outcomes raises questions about why we would freely choose a system whose benefits accrue to so few at the expense of so many. The answer is: we haven’t. Our food systems have emerged by default, by diktat and by virtue of the effective veto power of agribusiness to any reform running against its interests. The greatest deficit in the food economy is the democratic one.
Food democracy must start in cities and municipalities. By 2050, when the world population will have reached 9.3-billion, about 6.3-billion of these inhabitants will live in cities. It is vital that these cities identify logistical challenges and pressure points in their food supply chains and develop a variety of channels to procure their food. READ MORE
Source: BusinessDay Live
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