CSO Intervention on Food System

Thank you Chair. The current health pandemic has highlighted our ruptured food system and the need to create a better, more resilient, climate and pandemic proof food system. Lest we all forget, it was local farmers and fisherfolk who fed most of us during lockdown when trade was suspended across and within countries.  

We, representatives of peasant groups, indigenous peoples and civil society organizations present in this 35th APRC, call out the uneven partner relationships in our food systems. Smallholder farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, stewards of our diverse food systems are to be included at the table, not just on the menu. We demand to be at the table as co-equal actors and decision makers in localizing Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition. In light of the impending global food crisis amidst current health and economic crisis, we ask:

·       FAO and member states to provide platforms and mechanisms to enable community (producers/consumers) to define and secure their own food systems and agroecology in accordance with the FAO’s 10 elements of Agroecology. Our experiences during lockdown point to the value of relocalization of food systems, at the hands of communities, as a key strategy to secure our food, nutrition and health. 

·       FAO and member states to arrest the drivers of disruption of sustainable food systems and vulnerability, such as uneven trade agreements, including land-grabbing. There is a need to revisit agriculture trade agreements to enable local economic recovery and ensure sustainable food system for the wellbeing of people and society.  

·       FAO and member states to place a premium on programs and services that protect and sustainably manage resources and the environment for long term food sovereignty and resilience of food and agriculture system. This includes protecting and securing peri-urban and urban agriculture and food systems and halting the unabated extraction of resources and disregard of the environment, the base of our food system. Mining, mega-dam construction, deforestation, air and water pollution makes us more vulnerable to food and health crisis. 

·        FAO and member states to strengthen the role of local governments in implementing sustainable food systems and nutrition as part of current pandemic response, recovery and climate action. In particular, 1) enable local governments and other government public agencies to directly procure from groups of small-scale food producers, 2) include local, healthy produce in relief packages, instead of corporate, processed food and 3) support the advancement of Community Supported Agriculture to shorten the value chain from food producers to consumers.  There are a number of positive experiences during this pandemic to build upon. We recommend collecting these experiences to inform policy actions.

We must act together. The current health pandemic also provides us with an opportunity to change for the better, we can have a better normal. We must address our unsustainable food production and consumption patterns and place the wellbeing of people – farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, consumers – and the environment at the center, to ensure our collective public health and wellbeing.