People Must Become the Policy Makers

“Americans import Danish sugar cookies, and Danes import American sugar cookies. Exchanging recipes would surely be more efficient.” – Herman Daly, economist.

In today’s globalized world, the number of miles a typical piece of food travels before it gets to its final point of sale averages 1,000 to 1,500 depending on which of many studies one is reading. Nearly one-fifth of oil and gas consumption in the U.S. is used to power our industrialized food system. This doesn’t just include fuel for shipping food, but also growing it (tractors, pesticides, fertilizers), processing it (factories, refrigeration, packaging materials), and distributing it (warehouses, stores, and restaurants). Between 7.3 and 10 units of fossil-fuel energy are required for each unit of food energy we consume. Which means far more energy is used up getting a meal onto our plates than we will actually gain from eating it.

There is endless madness going on in our corporately controlled food system, with widespread harmful repercussions. But there is also a huge and vibrant movement of people who are throwing their weight, passion, and wisdom into creating and reclaiming healthier and more just ways to nourish ourselves. As small farmers, and as community members choosing local farmers to put the food on your tables, we are all connected to something much larger then an exchange of groceries. We are together taking part in a global movement of people addressing how we grow healthy food in right relationship with the earth, as well as the equal right of everyone to this food, and the dignified livelihoods of those who harvest, process, and prepare it.

“Food sovereignty is not just about food and medicine but about reclaiming our reverence for life.” -Gerardo Marín, Rooted in Community.

Within the US, the term is not yet common, but food sovereignty is the clarion call of farmers and food producers in many parts of the world. Food sovereignty goes beyond food security. It is concerned not only with ending hunger, but also with the ways in which we produce and distribute food. Fundamentally, it insists that people, not corporations, should have the power to make democratic decisions about their food systems. Six widely accepted principles of food sovereignty (articulated at the Nyéléni forum on food sovereignty, Mali, 2007) include:

1) Declares everyone’s right to sufficient, healthy, culturally appropriate food;

2) Values food providers –women and men, peasants and small-scale family farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, forest dwellers, indigenous peoples, and agricultural and fisheries workers, who cultivate, grow, harvest and process food;

3) Localises food systems, putting providers and consumers at the center of decision making; rejecting policies that give power to remote and unaccountable corporations; and rejecting inequitable international trade;

4) Promotes local control over, and access to, land, territory, water, seeds, livestock, and fisheries;

5) Builds on local knowledge and the skills of food providers and rejects technologies that undermine these (eg: genetic engineering); and

6) Works with nature, seeking to heal the planet so that the planet may heal us and rejects methods that harm ecosystems.

“The only way we’re going to…change the most basic attitude of policy-makers…is for you and me to become the policy-makers, taking charge of every aspect of our food system – from farm to fork.” – Jim Hightower, former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas.

 

from here