UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Where’s it headed?
March 31, 2021
SeedChange is concerned with the direction the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit 2021 is taking.
If sound food systems decisions are to be taken, we need the people at the heart of our food systems to be at the table. We need farmers, food producers, seed keepers and Indigenous Peoples at the table.
UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Where’s it headed?
SeedChange is concerned with the direction the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit 2021 is taking.
“It [appears] heavily skewed in favour of one type of approach to food systems, namely market-based solutions … it leaves out experimental/traditional knowledge that has the acute effect of excluding Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge. The business sector has been part of the problem of food systems and has not been held accountable.”
UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, wrote this about the upcoming summit, slated to happen this fall. This focus on agribusiness rather than people and planet health led the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to boycott the summit.
As a member of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism, we’ve signed a letter to the CFS to ask that they make progress on the following:
- Shifting away from corporate capture and re-grounding in individual and collective human rights and the experiences and knowledge of the people and Indigenous Peoples most affected
- Transformation of corporate food systems
- Defending democratic public institutions and inclusive multilateralism
Read the full letter here.
Learn more about the issues around the summit in this article in The Guardian.
Working for equitable food systems
When the power of food is usurped by corporations that put profits first, other considerations that are important to farmers and their communities—like making sure food is healthy, sustainable and accessible to all—take a backseat to priorities held by shareholders.
Farmers’ incomes deteriorate, diets worsen, and the planet suffers.
SeedChange works with farmers around the world to grow equitable food systems. Food sovereignty puts producers and democracy at the centre of our food systems. It recognizes food as a right and a public good, not as a commodity. It identifies sustainability as essential, and promotes the use of agroecology.
To realize food sovereignty, the people at the heart of our food systems must be at the decision-making table.