Concluding Conversation:
Building Blocks for a Just Food System
3:30 – 4:30 pm
Room 127
Moderator: Allison Tait, Community Economic Development Clinic
Liveblogged by: David Lebowitz & Margaret Hsieh
3:41pm – We are getting started here in 127. Allison points out that the concluding conversation is aptly named “Concluding Conversation.” Food policy is, according to YLS Dean Robert Post, a Victorian parlor.
Here to talk about some practical take-away points from the conference are Jun Borras, Olivier de Schutter and Andy Fisher. Each panelist will suggest one or two steps that can be taken to bring about food production patterns that will honor the right to food and human dignity.
3:45pm: Jun Borras is speaking. His main point is that we should support social movements that are fighting for human rights to food and access to and control over natural resources. However, it’s important to realize that there are different social movements that use human rights in their discourse. We need to differentiate which ones are more promising and thus deserve our support. “Transformative” movements may be the most promising — they question the fundamental logic of current patterns of food and energy production.
The question of global land-grabbing is also a huge issue. The convergence of the energy and food crises has precipitated the energy sector’s movement into the land sector, giving rise to today’s land-grabbing phenomenon. Land-grabbing occurs precisely in areas of the world with the most hungry persons. We should support “people’s counter-enclosure movements” to fight dispossession of poor people. We shouldn’t wait for land grabbers to come into our communities, but should proactively enclose our own commons.
3:50pm – The crowd applauds Jun Borras. Now it’s Professor de Schutter’s turn.
He points out that we are both consumers and citizens. We need to question our consumption choices and seek information about them. Lack of awareness about the impact of our lifestyles in developed countries is extremely problematic. The model of civilization on which the development of renewable energy is premised–that business as usual should be allow to continue going on–is insufficiently questioned. For example, the vegetable oils we consume every day come at the expense of indigenous peoples and access to forests in poor countries.
We should join organizations, write letters, sign petitions, etc. The right to food should be no different than the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, etc. — there should be the same level of public outrage. He agrees with Jun Borras about the importance of social movements, and points out that many of these movements are not sufficiently united. Groups that work on food sovereignty, agro-ecology, right to food, and workers’ rights “should form coalitions more than they have.” Even kinds of advocacy that might not normally be seen as traditional “right to food” work should be included.
He ends by saying that he is not depressed at all, but optimistic about the future. Prof. de Schutter thanks YHRDLJ for organizing the conference. The audience applauds.
[Andy Fisher -- 3:55]:
There’s been enormous interest in food policy change in the past few years. We need to strategize and institutionalize so that food policy change doesn’t become the “flavor of the month.” We need to find continuous resources and funding for food programs. In universities: permanent provisions for local purchasing, discipline in food studies, books published on food, classes integrated throughout the school and across disciplines on food, faculty who have expertise in food. We need to build the human capital to institutionalize community food security and institutionalize food security as a permanent discipline that collaborates and works with the social movement. These changes need to come form the bottom up, because they won’t happen otherwise.
[Tait: 4:00] — We are now taking questions.
Q1: What lessons are there to be learned from attempts to secure right to healthcare around the world? What can we learn from those attempts and social situations that we can apply to our attempt to get a right to food? Can capitalism and the right to food coexist?
A1 [Fisher]: There have been debates whether the right to food is a useful framework for the US. The questions around capitalism and the right to food — these are the right questions, and Fisher is going to leave it at that.
Q2: There have been several sustainable food initiatives at UConn. Community garden at UConn last summer was successful. The only dining hall at UConn that has turned a profit for the university was the one that uses local foods. All the coffeeshops at UConn are now fair trade.
Q3: An essential ingredient of food movements is building relationships. Relationships are an antidote to just using price as a market signal. Relationship builds a much larger channel, and serves as an antidote to all the advertising pumped out by the food industry. Community food systems are built on webs of relationships. In terms of policy, the focus of policy should be how to build containers for relationships — how to build policies that are inclusive, flexible, include a broad range of skills and people. Need a lot of flexibility, because every community is different. E.g., patterns between Vermont and Central America, although many differences. We need a revolution in building community relationships similar to the computer revolution. How do we do that? A good source of models might be the open-source software community, which has been building a lot of collaborative technologies.
A3 [Fisher]: How do we build food systems up to scale so they are operating on a more significant and substantial scale?
Q4: The entire US system needs to move away from a dedication to cheap corn and corn syrup. We’re not going to have the economic room for alternatives if we don’t move the corn out of the center.
A5 [De Shutter]: Food policy has a focus on price without enough concern about how food is produced and what kinds of human and environmental impacts there are. Unfortunately, the whole system is based on this and it’s difficult to reverse. There needs to be a paradigm shift. There’s no concrete plan of action with a timetable, so governments don’t know how to implement. It’s important to change the system, but we should do this piece by pice and identify concrete steps to be taken. One way: re-localize the food systems by having local authorities pay a major role: territorial approach to food systems. In addition, this may be more feasible, because local authorities might have more important role to play. This is the reason for De Shutter’s moderate optimism.
A5 [Borras]: There is something new in the convergence of energy and food sectors that changes the configurations in the agrifood complex.
Q6: The Administration both gets it and doesn’t. In the food movement, we’re good at creating grassroots alternatives that build energies within communities. These alternatives are doomed to be islands, however, unless we can use them to unite for broader policy changes. Very little money is going towards alternative food systems, whereas tons go towards that benefit large agribusinesses. Is the right to food the appropriate guiding principle for making these strategic alliances?
A6 [De Shutter]: The right to food paradigm is useless if it cannot provide concrete strategies. We need to be well equipped to deal with concrete issues. De Shutter’s work consists of looking at technical dossiers and answering how specific policies can be transformed to meet the needs of the poor. “Lawyers are powerless.” They lack the expertise. They need economists, specialists, etc. to be effective: they need to form coalitions. But human rights activities and lawyers also have things to contribute. The right to food is about an obligaiton to provide justifications, to revise detrimental policies, etc. If not made operational, the right to food can be dismissed.
A6 [Fisher]: Those models (community food projects, etc.) are models that can show the way and hold alternatives to monoculture of economic, social, and political pathways. We need to build coalitions to unite the different groups. If we are going to transform the food system to something democratic and sustainable, there needs to be a broader social movement, change in legislation from WTO down to city councils. It’s going to take a lot more than the community garden initiatives.
Q7: Would like to make a brief comment. Talking about rights to land is too narrow. We need to talk about the right to food in a way that links together consumers, producers, and societies as a whole. The right to food is the tool we have to achieve solutions. Unfortunately, different groups (like farmers, those who work in nutrition, etc.) don’t see each other as allies. Ministers of agriculture know about commodities but not nutrition — how can we expect them to defend the right to adequate food? We need to address the food problem in a holistic manner.
[Allison Tait 4:30]: Thanks to everyone who has helped with and participated in this conference.
