The UN People's Food System Summit is TODAY!
Over 880 million people in the world went hungry in 2020. The number of hungry people increased since 2015 and was exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately many of those going hungry are also essential workers marginalized because they are undocumented, African Americans, Latinos, poor, many women.
Today is the UN’s People’s Food System Summit. The idea of having a world wide food systems summit is exciting as it means that the UN recognizes the importance of food systems and the need to ensure that everyone has access to safe and nutritious food. According to its website, the purpose of the summit is to:
“... serve as a historic opportunity to empower all people to leverage the power of food systems to drive our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and get us back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.”
However, the summit organization and decision making process was not transparent. This lack of clarity, and concerns about the involvement of the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation and large transnational Agri-Food business while social and civil society organizations and movements weren’t invited to participate, has many non-government organizations and peasant groups deeply concerned about the outcomes and the success of the summit to support human rights and food sovereignty. Action Aid clearly explains their concern with the summit.
Due to their concerns, the civil society groups are boycotting the UNFSS and holding a counter-mobilization to emphasize the lack of inclusion of the “people” and to bring attention to food sovereignty and agroecology as required to transform the global food system to feed all the people healthy food on a equitable basis while helping to reduce the effects of climate change.
There are many solutions to the problem of hunger and many ideas of how we should return to full social and cultural life after the pandemic. Many solutions return us to “normalcy” where there is a wide separation between rich and poor and access to resources. This week at pre-summit webinars, I heard many comments about making food accessible in terms of cost reduction through cheaper production processes where we already produce, world wide, enough food for everyone to have sufficient healthy food.
I hope you can attend either of the events: the UNFSS or the People's Autonomous Response to the UN Food Systems Summit. If you can’t make either, please help your local economy thrive and be more sustainable by buying from local growers, farmers, and processors.