English Last Thursday (17th) the Landworkers’ Alliance brought together organisations and individuals from across the UK food justice movement for an online ‘People’s Food Summit’.
The event was a response to the widely criticised UN Food Systems Summit, which is due to take place later this year. Concerns over the UNFSS’s priorities have abounded, with La Via Campesina – of which LWA is member organisation – co-signing a letter together with 173 organisations from 83 different countries to the UN Secretary General raising concerns over the level of corporate involvement in the event.
As the European Coordination Via Campesina expressed in a letter to the UNFSS organisers: “Civil society organizations, and in particular organisations of food producers (peasants, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, rural women, pastoralists, agricultural workers, etc.) have been marginalised in the process, despite addressing this problem since the moment the “summit” was announced.”
The ‘People’s Food Summit’ was an attempt to give people a more progressive and inclusive space to discuss the pressing issues faced by the global food system, and highlight the need to adopt food sovereignty as a guiding principle for addressing these issues.
Boycotting corporate control
“We are boycotting the erosion of democracy within UN systems that excludes the participation of civil society and is legitimising the corporate capture of the UN Food Systems Summit” said Dee Woods, Food Justice Policy Coordinator at the LWA. “The UK Food Sovereignty Movement will be joining the global civil society mobilisation to challenge the UNFSS and reclaim people’s sovereignty over food systems.”
Friends of the Earth’s Kirtana Chandrasekaran – a long-time advocate of food sovereignty – also highlighted that the UK will be one of the leading voices at the UNFSS, and that its position means it has a responsibility to voice real alternatives to the corporate status quo.
Dr. Catherine Chong, co-founder of Farms to Feed Us further remarked how “the UN Food Systems Summit is missing the opportunities to engage with small-scale food producers and farming and food civil societies” adding, “How could we support the Summit when the integral members of the food system are excluded from the agenda?”
Yesterday’s People’s Food Summit brought together over 50 invitees and representatives from across the food and farming sector, including representatives from Nourish Scotland, Friends of the Earth, Food Sense Wales and the Food Ethics Council. The Summit centred discussions around a rights-based approach to food justice, a reinvigoration of the UK food sovereignty movement, and the need for a more inclusive food system.
Right to Food
MP for West Derby, Ian Byrne – who is involved in the UK Right to Food movement – also attended the Summit, and highlighted the urgent need to enshrine food as a human right in the UK.
He spoke about the shocking demand for food banks around Liverpool and how poorly people’s basic needs were being met. He highlighted that in the UK – the 5th richest country in the world – it is immoral that so many people are still going hungry. He therefore called for a holistic, grassroots movement pushing for a Right to Food: “Where we are now as a society is completely unsustainable, and it needs to change.” he observed, “Hopefully we can now begin to systematically change the failures of our food system.”
Decolonising the food system
During the discussion, Kirtana Chandrasekaran also criticised the UNFSS’s nature-based solutions approach, explaining how this is a deeply neocolonial project designed to allow wealthy countries to offset their environmental damage to poorer countries. In response to corporate greenwash tactics, she pointed towards the need for an agroecological approach to system transformation: “Agroecology for food sovereignty is a framework for transformative change – it is as much about gender justice and racial justice as it is about the Right to Food.”
Patrick Mulvany from the Food Ethics Council further stressed how the UK is responsible for the colonisation of our food systems, and that the UK has a moral obligation to amplify the voices of food producers in the majority world. “I think it’s absolutely imperative for there to be a collective voice of progressive civil society organisations once again in the UK promoting food sovereignty, biodiverse agroecology, and being in solidarity with other farmers organisations across the world in the struggle for food sovereignty” he stated, “I think there is a need for a renaissance of the UK platform of food sovereignty, to fill a void which is apparent to all the people on this call.”
The People’s Food Summit was an invite-only event, however the Landworkers’ Alliance do plan on holding a public event in the near future. Please contact Dee Woods at dee.woods@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk, if you would like to be involved.
