Now’s the time to make it happen

It looks like it could be a magic moment for food activists! For once, three important ingredients for change in the global food system have come together simultaneously: vibrant world-wide people’s food movements building from the local level on up, cracks in the dominant corporate-controlled “wisdom” about how best to ensure food for all, and a new and exciting global space for decision-making on food issues. That’s right: the UN system that many people had given up on as a tired and toothless bureaucracy is proving instead to be part of the solution, and an important one at that. Let’s take a look at these three developments one by one. ...

This emergence has been happening among small farmers since the ‘80s, especially in the Global South, in reaction to neo-liberal policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Camouflaged by an inscrutable label—“structural adjustment”—that evoked something out of a chiropractor’s manual, these measures arrived on the tail of the food crisis of the ‘70s and provided the champions of the untrammeled free market with an opportunity to peddle their wares. ...

Since then, the food sovereignty movement has continued to spread, not only in the Global South but also in the North as communities have woken up to the impacts of the corporate-controlled food system. In the US, the annual conferences of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) testify to the rich variety of local initiatives underway coast to coast: municipal food councils, food banks, urban agriculture, community stores and more. The CFSC conference held in New Orleans in October 2010, witnessed the birth of a US Food Sovereignty Alliance, a step echoed in Canada just a month later.7 For its part, Europe is rife with community-supported agriculture initiatives, public procurement of local food by municipalities for schools and hospitals, local seed trading fairs, farmers’ markets, and regions that bind together in opposition to the introduction of GMOs. A process is now underway to bring these local initiatives together in a horizontal, Europe-wide food sovereignty movement. ...

The second development supporting change is that while people’s movements have been building up their strength, cracks have developed in the dominant global system they are opposing. Since late 2007, the food price crisis and social unrest in cities around the world have thrown into question the failed food security strategies applied up to now.

...When the [2008 global food]crisis erupted, a sharp divide emerged over how to fill the governance gap. On one side, the G8 threw up a veritable smoke screen of rhetoric about an elusive ‘Global Partnership on Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition’ (GPAFS), promising billions of dollars of new investment in agriculture (that somehow hasn’t quite materialized), and ever more advanced technological fixes for whatever ails society. An audacious alternative to the GPAFS was championed by a number of predominantly southern governments allied with civil society organizations and social movements. Their plan aimed to transform the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) based in FAO from an ineffectual talk-shop into an authoritative, inclusive UN forum deliberating on food security in the name of ensuring the global right to food. The challenge was to effectively fill the global governance gap rather than simply paper it over and allow wealthy states and corporations to stay in control. Better the UN than the G8/20, if it can actually be made to carry out its mission effectively.

...The link between social movement global policy advocacy and local struggles is fundamental. Applied to the land-grab issue, the rapidity with which land deals are proceeding adds even greater urgency. In the words of Ibrahima Coulibaly, the president of the National Peasant Platform in Mali ... “The only global level action that might make a difference in the immediate term would be If the CFS adopted a moratorium on land grabbing and mandated a mission to verify the situation.” ... As a national workshop on land tenure governance in Senegal held in December 2010 noted, the land-grab phenomenon has activated the interest of a range of official and civil society actors ... to initiate a real dialogue between the State, producers’ organizations, local authorities, and other partners. ... An important piece of the CFS reform is the commitment on the part of member governments to replicate at national and regional levels the multi-stakeholder approach that has been institutionalized in the global CFS. This commitment [needs to] be an instrument that social movements and civil society organizations can use to push for transparency and accountability on the part of national governments. And, conversely, participation in global policy discussions by governments that are held accountable to their citizens is the most important contribution one can imagine to attaining effective and equitable global governance....

There are cracks in the corporate armor, people’s food sovereignty movements have never been stronger, and there’s a new global forum where their experience and proposals can be brought to bear. Small food producers and civil society organizations have played a decisive role in opening up this space. Now let’s make it work to our advantage!