Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

Dear HLPE colleagues,

please kindly find attached the CSIPM contribution for the consultation on the scope of the report on Building Resilient food systems.

Warm regards,

The CSIPM Secretariat

Building resilient food systems - HLPE-FSN consultation on the scope of the report – 

CSIPM submission

General points

  • CSIPM attaches great importance to this workstream, which is central to the goal of radical transformation of our food systems in a direction of equity, sustainability and respect for the right to food. We would have liked to see it situated at the end of the MYPoW, in order to draw on the outcomes of other workstreams and on four years of discussions regarding controversial, structural issues in the ‘Collaborative governance for coordinated policy response’ platform. Nonetheless the HLPE report on this topic can make an important contribution towards achieving the CFS vision.   
  • To do so, it is important to avoid the trap of ‘shock’-oriented thinking about resilience. The need is, rather, to address the structural causes of the multiple, interlinking crises and shocks that afflict the world today. Where do they come from? The question is how to prevent them, rather than how to tinker with their effects. What do we need to do to build a ‘shock-free’ world? Indeed, the HLPE added ‘enduring’ to the title of its periodic note on FSN issues precisely because fundamental food provisioning-related problems continue to be disregarded. 
  • In this regard it can be useful, as the HLPE has done in the past, to seek coherence between immediate responses to shocks and long-term transformation of food systems, and seek privilege short-term measures that build towards transformation.
  • It is equally important to avoid seeking ‘balanced’ analysis that accommodates all perspectives. The HLPE should lay out the evidence as it is, highlighting conflictual viewpoints rather than toning them down, and spelling out the foreseeable consequences of different policy directions. Who benefits and who loses? Then, it is up to governments to take decisions based on the evidence and, if they ignore it, to be held to account. It would be particularly important to highlight the implications of different policy choices for most affected countries and constituencies, whose voices need to be heard strongly in the CFS. 
  • We also suggest that the report be careful in adopting the slippery language of ‘trade-offs’. Some goals are not subject to trade-off reasoning – e.g. respect for human rights. Also, trade-off reasoning tends to be expressed in binary terms that excludes other possibilities. E.g. ensuring ‘fair prices for producers’ covering the costs of production does not necessarily translate into unaffordable prices for poor consumers.
  • We urge the HLPE to put ‘agency’ at the center of the report and identify those groups whose reinforced agency is most likely to lead in a direction of resilience rooted in equity and right to food. While the draft scope of the report refers to families and communities there is a curious lack of mention of organized groups/movements of small-scale food producers and other most affected constituencies who are fundamental actors in food systems and whose advocacy can build the political will required to fuel deep transformation.  

Issue areas to be included in the report’s scope

  • The right to food and all interlinked human rights should be the guiding principle of the report’s analysis and recommendations, being the guiding principle for the overall concept of resilient food systems and to its different components, at all levels. The work that is being carried out around the 20th anniversary of the voluntary guidelines on the right to food should provide rich material for reflection, as should a rights-based action plan on uptake of CFS outcomes and discussions in the Collaborative Governance for Coordinated Policy Responses. The concept of intersectionality (among vulnerabilities and among HRs), currently encountering difficulties in the Inequalities negotiations, should be clarified and consecrated. 

The report should explore how other UN institutions, especially but not limited to the three Rio Conventions, can best integrate the right to food approach and implementation of the right to food guidelines the into their work related food systems. Further suggestions should be developed how the uptake of CFS products can be ensured and improved by other UN institutions the same accounts for the inclusive way of participation in the CFS. To build resilient food systems it is paramount that the whole UN Systems is coherent on the right to food and friendly to participation of affected groups. The report should contribute to the debate how to establish this coherence and improve inclusivity.

  • Food sovereignty is a concept and practice that the CSIPM has been seeking to include in the CFS lexicon for years. Perhaps this report provides an opportunity to do so, and to clarify the meaning that is attached to the term now that numerous national and regional authorities are adopting it with quite different perspectives than those of the food sovereignty movement that launched it some three decades ago.
  • The issue of corporate concentration in globalized food supply chains, with a handful of transnational firms dominating the different areas of food provisioning - from input supply to staple crop production, food trade, processing and retail – was highlighted in the rationale for ‘building resilient and equitable supply chains’ in the 2022 CEEI note, but seems to have gotten lost in the draft scope. It is essential to include it in the finalized scope since resilience requires diversity, which cannot be obtained in the current conditions of power differentials.
  • Trade is one of the key ‘enduring’ issues identified by the HLPE (2017 CEEI note) but not addressed by the CFS thus far. While voices that resist changes in global trade regimes argue speciously that trade can only be discussed in the WTO, it is evident that the impacts of different trade regimes on FSN, particularly in most affected countries and on most affected constituencies, can best be addressed in the CFS given its inclusive composition and its mandate to defend the right to food for all. This point was made in the policy recommendations on Connecting Smallholders to Markets. The need for better protection for countries that depend on food imports was underlined in the HLPE note on COVID, and stronger regulations on food commodity markets was advocated in the note on the war in Ukraine. Trade issues, including food stocks, are being hotly debated in the negotiations on Inequalities. These issues were well-framed in questions 4 and 5 of the section on resilient food systems in the 2022 CEEI note, which should be included in the finalized scope of the report. The HLPE is invited to familiarize itself with the evidence that supports the advisability of reintroducing various forms of market regulation, and the work underway – led by La Via Campesina – to reframe global trade rules from a food sovereignty perspective.
  • Contribution of industrial food systems to climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and other land degradation. The report could take stock of the findings on the environmental destruction caused by industrial food systems and offer avenues to phase out from industrial agriculture, pesticides and chemical fertilisers’ dependence. As the legitimate science-policy interface on food systems it is important that the HLPE shows a clear and holistic picture of the impacts (not only climate-related but also biodiversity, human rights…) so that this evidence can be considered in other UN foras, such as the 3 Rio Conventions.
  • Financialization and governance of the financial systems is another key ‘enduring’ issue, cited already in the 2014 issues paper, that has not yet been adequately addressed in the CFS. The very first HLPE report (2011) discussed the role of speculation in connection with the 2007-2008 food crisis. The debt crisis affecting countries dependent on food imports, in particular, has been highlighted in the issues paper on COVID and in the report on Inequalities and is being intensely debated in the negotiations. The need for more stringent regulation of financial markets and for overall reform of financial governance is a key topic in the UNCTAD 2023 Trade and Development Report. 
  • Who is the ‘Private Sector’ and how to handle it? There is a deplorable haziness in use of the term ‘private sector’, not only in the CFS but in general. FAO’s strategy for private sector engagement lists various components of the sector, from small-scale farmers organizations to multinational corporations, without noting the essential differences in their interests and the logics of their operations. The CFS rai principles, instead, distinguish clearly between ‘smallholders and their organizations’ and ‘business enterprises including farmers’ and reiterates the fact that the former are the main investors in their own agriculture. It would be important for the HLPE report to clarify the differentiated implications in terms of building resilient food systems of supporting engagement by actors whose primary ‘bottom lines’ include reproduction of the family, maintenance of peace in the community, and transmission of territory to the next generation, and supporting engagement by those who operate in function of generating profits for shareholders.  
  • Following on from this point, we would like to underline the priority that needs to be attached to public sector financing and regulation. The idea of ‘incentivizing’ PS strategies and investments’, as suggested in the draft scope, needs to be re-examined in a right to food perspective in which democratically-determined public policy provides direction for investment, not the contrary, taking also into account the considerable evidence that critiques the effectiveness of corporate self-regulation. In the words of an African peasant leader (Mamadou Cissoko): We don’t want ‘responsible investors’. We want a legislative framework that protects us effectively and investors who are obliged to

respect the law”.

  • People’s access to and control over land, water, seeds is a fundamental basis for resilient and equitable food systems and for maintaining biodiversity. Relevant CFS policy outcomes include the VGGTs and the Policy Recommendations on Water for FSN. The UN declarations UNDROP and UNDRIP should also be recalled.
  • More resilient food production systems privileging agroecological approaches over industrial agriculture was a key recommendation in the HLPE issues paper on COVID and was advocated in the HLPE report on ‘Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition’. Unfortunately, the negotiations on this topic failed to maintain the clarity present in the HLPE report, and the concept of ‘agroecology’ is in danger of being reduced to a package of technical practices that can be co-opted by corporate technology and retailing. It is essential to revisit this issue in the current report since a broad understanding of agroecology – including its social, cultural, and political dimensions – is a fundamental basis for resilient and equitable food systems.
  • Territorial markets/food systems need to be strengthened and expanded, as recognized in the CFS policy recommendations on ‘Connecting Smallholders to Markets’ and the HLPE issue paper on COVID, which recommended shorter supply chains supported by investment in appropriate infrastructure. The draft scope seems to imply that both global and domestic food supply chains suffer from vulnerabilities, without recognizing that the fragilities of global industrial chains are inherent in their nature, whereas those of domestic food provisioning systems are a result of inadequate policy and financing support and can be corrected. More generally, we adhere to the comments made by Marc Wegerife in response to this e-consultation regarding the need to go beyond ‘supply chain’ thinking.
  • Gender equity and opportunities for youth. The report should showcase how gender transformative approaches offer great opportunities to build equitable and resilient food systems for all. Without a strong gender perspective in the report, resilience-building approaches may be gender-blind or worse, further marginalise women and gender diverse persons. The report must also integrate resilience building for future generations, including for young and future food producers, by considering land reform, and youth rights to land, water, seeds…
  • Democratic decision-making at all levels vs governance fragmentation and multi-stakeholderism. Multi-stakeholder initiatives do not address power relations between actors and nurture the false impression that “there is space for everyone around the table” and that it is possible to reach consensus between actors that are benefitting from the flaws of the food system and those that are negatively affected by it. Instead, experience and research indicate that – not surprisingly – in such a line-up the interests of the more powerful actors tend to prevail and the foundations of democratic governance are threatened. The HLPE report on the topic concurs that there is a risk for multistakeholder platforms ‘to reproduce existing power asymmetries and to strengthen the position of more powerful actors’. The multistakeholder narrative reposes on the dangerous misconception that the corporate private sector constitutes an indispensable ally in attaining public goals and can be counted on to ‘responsibly’ regulate its appetite for profit-making in the name of social, environmental and human rights objectives. This supposition has been questioned in research that has been building up for over a decade which demonstrates that corporations join multistakeholder platforms that align with their business interests and, correspondingly, that multistakeholder initiatives tend to be shaped with an eye to attracting private sector participation. The situation is aggravated by the increasing concentration of corporate power in agri-food chains over the past years, which is translating into increased influence on food governance. 
  • Monitoring and accountability. The report should highlight how clear regulations and accountability frameworks for holding private actors, including companies, accountable for actions that interfere with the public policy objectives that aim towards building resilient food systems.

Resources:

See the attachments: