What is happening right now is we have a handful of global agrifood
corporations that are really shaping the industrial food system.
And that is constraining not only the foodsovereignty movement, but that is
constraining how we can imagine and how we can think about the future.
Welcome to the Ecopolitics Podcast.
This podcast series tackled some of the big questions in the field
of environmental politics for university students in Canada.
My name is Peter Andrée from Political Science at Carleton University.
My co-host for the series is Ryan Katz-Rosene from Political Studies at
the University of Ottawa, though he won't be joining us for today's episode.
Today our focus is on sustainable food systems.
Food issues, and agricultural issues have come up in quite a few of our
podcast episodes so far, because they're a really important way that
people interact with the environment.
Food is also so important for people in terms of day-to-day sustenance.
And so our livelihoods and how that interacts with the natural processes and
with animals and plants and the natural world is a big ecopolitical question.
And food systems have a huge impact on issues like biodiversity
destruction, climate change, and a number of other environmental
issues as we'll get into today.
We're getting into these issues with two experts in the field of food politics: Dr.
Helena Shilomboleni and Dr.
Sarah Martin.
Helena Shilomboleni is a PhD from University of Waterloo and she's
now based in Nairobi, Kenya.
She's currently doing a postdoctoral fellowship with the CGIAR research
program on climate change, agriculture and food security.
Welcome to the Ecopolitics Podcast, Helena.
Thank you, Peter, I'm delighted to be here.
Great.
Well, we're delighted to have you here.
And with us as well is Dr.
Sarah Martin from Memorial University located in St.
John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Sarah's research specializes in the global political economy of food and agriculture.
It explores questions about the governance of food and agriculture
at the local and global scale.
She previously worked as a cook and a chef and a meat cutter in a variety of settings
from institutional cafeterias to high-end restaurants, to remote logging camps.
And all of that work led to a particular interest in how food
politics is practiced in the everyday.
And the tensions found within the global political economy.
Welcome to the Ecopolitics Podcast, Sarah.
Hey, thanks Peter.
I'm really happy to be here and part of this conversation.
Thank you.
Great.
Well, I'm really happy to have both of you here and I just want to get right into it.
So Sarah, let me start with you.
For students new to thinking about how food systems and the environment interact,
how would you sum up the big picture of where global food systems are at?
And to what extent they are sustainable as we know them today?
And then what do you see as the major challenges affecting the sustainability of
our increasingly globalized food systems?
Those are great questions, and big questions.
So let me try to break that down a little bit.
First of all, there's lots of different food systems and they
have lots of different capabilities or capacities for sustainability.
And of course we can think about sustainability in multiple ways.
So I want to talk about sort of two systems, two sort of food
systems that have different capacities for being sustainable.
So let's go from the least sustainable or I would argue the
least sustainable to what I would argue is the most sustainable.
The least sustainable food system is the one that most people who live in
the global North are dependent on.
And that's what we typically call the industrial food system.
And increasingly folks in the global South are dependent on this system as well.
So what is a industrial food system or what are the characteristics
that make a food system industrial?
It's I would say it's the same characteristics that make it
unsustainable at multiple scales.
So, first of all, an industrial food system is input-intensive
crop monocultures, and industrial scale feed lots.
So think about animals and those big feed lots we have, or thousands and
thousands of chickens in one barn.
Those now dominate agricultural landscapes.
And these agricultural systems are specialized, right?
So they're single.
They have like a single focus, like they just grow chickens
or they just grow canola.
It's a large scale commodity.
It's usually internationally traded.
So those are crops like corn or canola or palm oil.
And industrial means that there's a uniformity to these processes.
Second, an industrial food system, it centers uniformity in
specialization, and there's a reliance on industrial and processed inputs.
So for example, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the use of processed
animal feed, rather than grazing or chickens foraging for insects outside.
And the intensity of this system, whether it's the inputs or the actual production,
leads to water and land degradation.
So for example, chemical fertilizer and manure flows into rivers and lakes.
And there is a financial cost to all these inputs.
So industrial agriculture requires large amounts of capital or money
often in the form of credit debt to support its ongoing production model.
So, large tractors, expensive seeds and other inputs, large tracts of
land, which means it's limited.
It's limited to those who have capital.
So in the industrial food system, once the food is grown, it is
processed and manufactured into food.
And that has another number of sustainability issues as well.
Highly- or ultra-processed foods is key to the industrial food system.
Manufacturers just don't make much money by selling a single potato,
but they make lots of money from selling a bag of potato chips.
And these processed foods require high energy inputs in the
manufacturing and transportation.
Finally, I would say, well it's, I think this would be generally recognized.
One of the most important characteristics of the industrial food system is
that it's reliant on petrochemicals.
From fertilizer, from chemical fertilizers to power retractors to
manufacturing plastic packaging, to moving, distributing the food.
It's estimated that these fruits systems contribute somewhere between 20 to
almost 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.
So that's the industrial food system.
On the other end of the scale we have-- we can look at food systems.
One that is diverse.
One that is not wholly reliant on petrochemicals.
And one that has more of a focus on human and animal labour rather than on machines.
And we can turn to agroecology for that.
So what is agroecology?
Agroecology is a science of applying ecological concepts and principles
to the design and management of sustainable food systems.
Right.
So sustainability is at the center of agroecology.
It recognizes that there are ecological concepts, not just economic concepts
and principles to managing food systems.
So the characteristics of that are, a diversity, right?
So there's multiple different crops grown at the same time.
There's intercropping, there's mixed farming with animals and plants together.
It's not specialized, it's not singular.
And it's also labour intensive rather than capital intensive.
It's often also local and small-scale.
So those would be the two big ends of the scale of sustainability
that I would want to describe.
Thanks so much, Sarah, for kind of laying that out, to start with those two
different paradigms, if you will, and two different approaches to agriculture.
And before we go to Helena, I just want to ask you one follow-up question.
We have spoken on one of our other podcasts with a senior vice president
of a large food manufacturing company who I think would respond to what
you've just characterized-- I don't know if he would completely disagree
with it, but he would also point out that it's the large-scale industrial
system which has allowed a lot of food to be available cheaply for people.
And so if we think about sustainability as including that social dimension, a lot
of the food security that we experienced in the world right now comes from arguably
this large scale industrial system.
Though it may not though it may have some costs associated with it,
environmentally speaking and otherwise.
I wonder if you can just comment on that, you know, cause he also said.
I'm not sure you can expect the smaller niche small-scale operations that you're
talking about that maybe are more labour and human intensive, the agriculture,
ecological operations to supply the volume at price that people currently
have say in the food system in Canada.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And So I think we can agree.
I think we can agree if we look at California and the wildfires that
climate change is an urgent issue.
And we can't do things the way we have been doing though.
And for sure, this productivist paradigm of the industrial food
system has fed a lot of people.
And yet it's also produced and contributed to the crisis, the environmental
crisis we find ourselves in right now.
And so, number one, we have to think differently about this.
And then number two, there is research out there that shows the vast
majority of people around the globe are fed by small-scale agricultural
producers, or fishers, or pastoralists.
So the estimates are somewhere around 70% of the global population
are fed by small-scale farmers.
And those small-scale farmers use around 30% of the world's resources--
or agricultural resources to do that.
On the other hand, there is the same research shows that the
industrial food system feeds about 30% of us, very well, I would say.
But it uses up around 70% of the agricultural resources.
And so yes, it is absolutely a fact that the industrial food
system feeds people, but that I would say is the wrong question.
Does the industrial food system feed people?
Yes.
A simple answer.
Does the industrial food system feed people well?
Not particularly.
Does it sustain the environment?
Not particularly well.
Is there alternatives?
Yes there are.
So I think our hypothetical senior person from the corporation, I think would agree
that there are a lot of problems with the industrial system, as we know it.
And that there's a huge scope for improvement.
And, the sense we got from our interview with, with him is that
that's also where things are going.
But I found it very interesting your second point about, that most
people around the planet are actually not fed through that system, but
through smaller scale production systems and local food systems.
I think, you know, I came across an interesting stat a number of
years ago that most food doesn't cross international borders.
And so I think this is a good place to bring Helena in.
Helena, your work has focused to date on food and agricultural systems of Africa.
And I'm wondering if you could say what role do African farmers
play in the industrial, the global supply chains talked about by Sarah?
And then I wonder also to what extent they are part of the the smaller
scale agroecological paradigm, if you will, or maybe something in between.
And of African farmers who are the smallholders?
I know that a lot of your work focuses on smallholder farmers, so I wonder if you
can describe that a bit and talk about what role that group of farmers plays
in feeding people, in Africa and beyond.
Yes.
Thank you so much for the question, Peter and I really listened to
Sarah's insights with great interest.
Maybe let me start by describing who are Africa smallholder farmers, as well
as their role, they play in feeding people in Africa and beyond as well
as the challenges that they face.
First of all there are a few key factors that characterize smallholder
farmers or more accurately, let's say small-scale producers.
Namely that the size of the land they occupy is considered small
for their production and region.
Their use of mechanization is fairly limited.
And they mainly rely on family labour for production.
So smallholder farmers in Africa do play an important role in Africa's food systems
with some estimates showing that they meet up to 80% of the population's food needs.
But while these smallholder farmers grow food to feed a significant proportion
of the continent, they do so under difficult conditions, namely the impact
of climate change, they have limited economic opportunities and they are
often vulnerable to land disposition and other socioeconomic factors.
So then the question of what role do African farmers play
in global supply chains.
It's relatively small and we do see small pockets of farmers participating in niche
markets of the global food supply chains.
For example, coffee producers in coffee or cocoa beans, or horticulture
produce such as fruits and vegetables as well as fresh cut flowers.
But while farmers grow a diversity of food.
Most of their production is primarily dedicated to staple crops.
So cereal crops, such as maize, roots and tubers, as well as rice in some regions
of the continent, such as West Africa.
And in fact, many countries on the continent have in place
input subsidy programs to support increased production of this staple
crops to feed Africa's growing population, particularly in cities.
And we see in the, the last decade and a half, really, there has been a growing
emphasis for Africa to modernize its agricultural sectors and to accelerate
the adoption of improved technologies, such as hybrid seeds, fertilizers,
irrigations, some of the industrial based models that Sarah was describing.
And so this approach in Africa really entails integrating farmers into global
supply chains, primarily as consumers of this technological inputs and services.
And this has been evident with activities of the African Green Revolution, which
has emerged in the mid-to-early 2000s, primarily as an agricultural development
initiative, funded by donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
and the Rockefeller Foundation.
To address challenges of low productivity and to increase rural incomes
through investments in technology transfer and integrating smallholder
producers into market value chains.
So since this time, multiple other initiatives under the African Green
Revolution have emerged, with largely the same purposeand being implemented
by a consortium of partners, comprising African governments, the private
sector and philanthropists, as well as multilateral institutions.
Among them is the Grow Africa partnership of the World Economic Forum and the
African Union development agency, which was launched in 2011 as well as the
G7's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which was formed in 2012.
So what is really striking or important about this initiative is that they are
facilitating the entry of agricorporations into African agricultural markets,
mainly to sell their product as well as to integrate African production
systems into the global supply chain.
So for example, agricorporations, such as Syngenta, which merged with ChemChina
and Monsanto, which is now acquired by Bayer, have embedded themselves
into these various agricultural development partnerships and frame
some of the technologies that they are developing such as GM crops as
pro-poor and as gifts donated to the agricultural development in Africa.
So these agricorporations also increasingly label their products
as part of climate-smart agriculture solutions, which can improve agricultural
productivity, enhance farmers adaptive capacity to climate change, and
contribute to mitigate agricultural effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
So some companies are even rebranding their technologies, such as transgenics
and chemical fertilizers and biochar and so on as not only climate smart,
but really imperative to addressing climate change and food insecurity.
Helena, there is so much to unpack in what you just said.
And I just want to go back to where Sarah opened us up by suggesting there's
kind of at least these two paradigms, with a lot in between admittedly: the
industrial agricultural model of large scale, high-input, high-output, and
often high consequences, environmental consequences, including in the industrial
agricultural model and food system.
And then we have what she presented as the small-scale agroecological,
more eco-friendly but often local animal and human labour and so on.
And what you began describing are that a lot of Africa's farmers, feeding
up to 80% of the population, are more likely on that smaller scale
and with the small-scale practices.
And Sarah presented that as perhaps the more sustainable in
the big picture for the planet.
And yet what you're suggesting is that there's a whole move to have them
move from where they are now to become more part of the industrial system.
And I think there's a couple of things we need to understand in the middle there.
One is that perhaps that small-scale system, for many of Africa's farmers, is
it perhaps not as sustainable or idyllic as the, you know, the sort of dualism
that Sarah's set up would suggest?
Are they having a lot of challenges, either meeting the food needs of the
population and/or having sustainable livelihoods for themselves?
Like what is the impetus that is leading all of these organizations
to want to invest so heavily?
That's the one question.
And then the second one is, you also suggested that maybe some of
the ways that these companies are characterizing their interventions
is not exactly along the industrial model that Sarah was presenting.
I mean, they're trying to create a pro-poor version of that model.
And I just wonder if you can give us a sense of what that looks like.
What's different in the model that they're proposing?
Thank you so much, Peter, again for these two questions and to go to the
first question of what is the impetus to really move farmers to, say, integrate,
be more integrated in the global food supply chain is really, we do have very
compelling calls, both from African governments, from development research
organizations, and many actors, yes.
Who are in fact saying that African smallholder production system cannot
meet the challenge to even first of all to feed themselves adequately,
but even more importantly perhaps, to feed Africa's growing cities.
And we know globally, either through the industrial food model that
Sarah was describing, as well as the more agroecological models of
food system, really, we still face significant challenges in the ability
of people to access adequate food.
And the challenge is even more pronounced for people to afford healthy diets.
So according to the new State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,
which is the SOFIreport by the UN Fod and Agriculture Organization, together with
the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and other UN based agencies.
Healthy diets are unaffordable for more than 3 billion people in the world.
Now we know that most of the number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet
are of course, in poor countries in Africa, in Asia and in Latin America as
food access is so closely tied to income and people's ability to purchase it.
So in Africa, for instance, the SOFI report that I just mentioned
earlier, shows that some 965 million people or over 57% of the population
cannot afford a healthy diet.
But however, I want to emphasize that this is a global challenge and
we see pockets of hunger and lack of access to healthy diets in Canada
and in wealthy countries as well.
So I think these compelling statistics that we have such inadequacy to meet our
food needs really is also driving, as I mentioned, this impetus to integrate
African smallholder farmers, more into global value chains, not only to intensify
their productivity, yes, through the use of improved technologies, improved
inputs and so on, but as I've mentioned to be able to feed Africa cities.
It sounds like the Gates Foundation and some of the other agrochemical companies
that have all been getting involved in trying to increase productivity in Africa.
You mentioned that they sort of have a pro-poor approach, and I just wonder,
do you see any signs, maybe just put it most simply that they are suggesting
some strategies forward that truly are pro-poor and maybe even climate smart,
taking that at it's face value compared to the more intensive and probably more
destructive and less sustainable model that Sarah was describing earlier?
These initiatives have arguably been pro-poor because we see greater
investment and towards staple crops that African producers and consumers
do eat such as orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, some roots and tubers and so on.
But we also say that some, some other traditional crops have been
neglected, such as millet and sorghum.
But overall really, they, we also see critique that even then there is still a
narrow focus on cereal and staple crops, but really less emphasis, or there has
not been as diversified investment to really get us to this kind of healthy
and nutritious diet that I was referring to that the SOFI report suggests.
Okay, thank you very much.
And I think it is getting clear for me in my head that you know,
going back to the original dualism that's Sarah set up the industrial
versus the agroecological model.
It sounds to me like what you're describing is that small-scale producers
in Africa are being encouraged towards the industrial model, albeit with
some changes and with some attention to the particularities of their,
you know, locally appropriate foods, which might not be maize and the
wheat that has grown largely in the industrial food system, and the rice.
And yet still the efforts don't go all that far.
And there's still blinders towards an input-intensive, probably.
Maybe output intensive ideally, System that is not fully ecological in the
way that some of the advocates for an agroecological system would argue.
I'd like to switch gears a little bit here because we are interviewing right
now and recording this podcast in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And we've seen a lot of maybe the strengths and also the weaknesses of our
food system emerge in the last number of months as we've gone through the pandemic.
Both of you have raised issues that speak to the resilience of food systems in the
face of these kinds of external shocks in terms of the virus itself with COVID-19.
And then we've also seen the effects on food system workers around the world.
And in terms of the economic impacts of lockdowns and
disruptions to supply chains.
Helena, what have you seen a rise in the context of the pandemic that speaks to
the sustainability of our food systems?
Again, the impact of COVID-19 on Africa's agricultural and food system
is a great concern for the continent.
The immediate impact is of course, that millions of people in major African
cities, such as Nairobi, Lagos, and Kinshasa who rely on the informal sector
for their livelihood, with estimates showing that this is up to two thirds of
the population, have been left without income due to their abrupt loss of jobs
that often provided daily earnings.
And in some countries where informal markets really provide, you know,
it's the source of food for most low income populations, these
markets have been completely closed or saw reduced operating hours.
This has really made it difficult for low income urban dwellers who depend on these
systems to access critical food supplies.
And in rural areas where agriculture is the main source of people's livelihoods,
disruptions to the transportation systems as well as logistics have made it really
difficult for producers, not only to get access to important agricultural
inputs, but it has also disrupted their ability to transport their projectsto
more lucrative markets in cities.
And they have also faced higher transportation costs.
And we have seen these in Nairobi where I am.
And so just to answer your question, really, the COVID pandemic has put a
further strain on Africa's agricultural systems, which were already facing
unfavorable climate change patterns, including higher frequency and
intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods as well
as market and price volatility.
And then even in the horn of Africa and East Africa, we have also recently
seen desert locusts, which have completely devastated production systems.
So I think so maybe speaking more specifically the question of
sustainability, it's a really challenging, and I think this also gives us a chance
to think about, okay, when, when we are cut off from say the global supply chain,
what can we do in the local context that we have so that we are not so vulnerable
so that when there is a disruption to the supply chains, and our agricultural
activities do not come to a complete halt.
I can hear from your response that it's a hugely challenging context.
As you say the agricultural and food systems are already so vulnerable.
They are now being impacted by climate change and other situations like the
locusts and who knows how that fits in with larger environmental change.
And then you throw the pandemic on top of that, which throws so many
people out of their livelihoods, disrupts transportation systems.
It sounds like a hugely challenging situation for the producers themselves
and the policy makers who are trying to wrestle with it as well.
Sarah.
I'd like to turn to you.
What have you seen arisen in the pandemic that shows cracks in the food system
from a sustainability perspective?
Thanks Peter.
Again, it's a huge question.
Yeah.
So I think food systems are a reflection of two important dynamics.
First, the political economic structures.
And second the environmental infrastructures on which it depends.
And together these two dynamics come together in a food system.
So what I would argue is that the political economic systems really
shape environmental sustainability.
So many scholars who examine food systems, they think about the food system
as a hourglass rather than a chain.
And I think this is a really important way to think about food systems, especially
in regard to the pandemic, because we see these headlines that say the food system
is broken, the food chain is broken.
And it's like, when we talk about the food chain, it sounds like it's a
whole bunch of links that are equal.
And it's not.
If we think about the food system as an hourglass, we started thinking
about these cracks differently.
So how does that hourglass work?
At the top of the hourglass where it's wide you have a lot of feeders, right?
The producers, the fishers, the pastoralists, the farmers.
In the middle, where it's pinched, you have a number of large corporations--
often monopolies or oligopolies-- that shape what the people on the
bottom, who are the feeders, the consumers actually can have access to.
And so, even though we talk about the food chain and we saw lots of headlines
about this food chain being broken, I would say, who is producing this
idea of the food chain being broken, especially in the context of the pandemic?
The pandemic has just illuminated the cracks that were already there.
And what happens is for example, Tyson, which is a large meat packer in the
States, took out a full page ad in the Washington Post and said, Oh my
goodness, the food chain is broken, we need support from the government.
And when in fact what is actually happening is Tyson has a huge amount of
control, they make tons of profits, and they're putting their workers, during
the pandemic on the line, and their health and the health of the animals
that they work with is in question.
I am concerned that the longterm, social and environmental policies that
could slow environmental degradation and could assure worker safety are
being set aside in this emergency, and the people who are being listened
to are large corporations who have a particular interest in not necessarily
supporting environmental policies and not necessarily supporting workers' rights,
but in fact, exploiting those resources.
And on the one hand, we have research that it shows that work, especially
on environmental racism, that poor racialized people have less access to
quality foods, and that is worsening.
On the other hand, we have research that shows that the wealthy have a much higher
impact and a negative one on environment.
So while the pandemic is an emergency, it is also widening cracks that
are already in the food system.
And they're in highlighting inequality that has been on the go for decades.
Thanks, Sarah, your response really brings into the forefront the
political economy of the food system.
I'd like to turn now, back to Helena.
Helena earlier on, you did a great job of laying out the position of a
small-scale producers in Africa and talked about how a number of actors, including
the Gates Foundation and agrifood corporations or input corporations in
particular have been working to "assist", we'll put that to in quotes, these
farmers to develop a new direction.
But I also know that in your work that you've examined other
organizations that are also working with small-scale farmers and perhaps
pushing them in other directions.
And I'm thinking specifically of organizations associated with La Via
Campesina, the world's largest social movement comprised of small-scale peasants
and fisherfolk from around the world.
I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about, if you want, these two
different trajectories that are being proposed for African farmers, how African
farmers see them and how you think they fit in with the future that lies ahead?
Thank you for that one.
That's a great question Peter.
And first, let me just speak briefly to the work of La Via Campesina in Africa.
This movement first came on the continent in 2004 when African
based peasant organizations and movements have joined the movement.
So we see this, for example, through ROPPA, which is the network of West
African peasant organizations and producers as well as the national union
of Mozambican peasants, which were really two of the first Africa- based
movements that joined La Via Campesina.
But in 2011 Africa's food sovereignty groups consolidated
to establish the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, AFSA.
As well as to promote agroecology as their preferred production
model on the continent.
So today the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa comprises
40 member networks who are active in 50 countries on the continent
representing some 200 million people.
So the African Food Sovereignty Alliance and its members really has made important
contributions to raising the profile of food sovereignty and agriculture
in Africa, particularly in some key regional and international policy
spaces, such as the Committee on World Food Security, the Conference of the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well
as to the Sustainable Development Goals Centre for Africa among others.
However, the African Food Sovereignty Alliance really has seen limited
access to critical policy spaces at the national level and regional levels
in Africa where important agricultural decisions are made and implemented.
And this really speaks to a broader challenge facing agrarian social
movements in Africa, where we see that overall they lack political agency and
financial financial autonomy needed to operationalize food sovereignty, let
alone make this model an alternative to mainstream industrial agricultural models
that some of its allies envision it to be.
So earlier I was talking about initiatives from the African Green Revolution that
are funded by organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
that really received massive amounts of funding, it runs into billions
and billions of dollars, and really have that kind of political clout in
Africa and really the kind of influence they have completely paled to what
Africa's agrarian social movement or food sovereignty really can do have.
And so then as a result of that, you know, some of we say that some food sovereignty
groups in Africa really engage in actions and strategies that even run counter
to the principles of food sovereignty, such as collaborating with some of
these green revolution initiatives.
Really again, due to that agency constraints that they face as well as
the environments in which they operate, where the powerful actors are unconducive
to the social movement's radical claims.
And so the best thing they do really is to form these alliances that are
largely apolitical and in some ways, even help Africa smallholder farmers
gain access to agricultural inputs and technologies promoted by the African
green revolution initiatives and so on.
And this is even more emblematic to how Africa's own smallholder
farmers are responding.
Because when they are so constrained when they have so little access to resources
and such limited support from their governments and institutions, really,
they would work with whoever that can give them support for that day, whether it's
to help them increase their productivity, whether it's to help them link to markets,
at the ground level for them is really about, okay, who can help us increase
productivity who can help us gain access to markets, which are so, so important.
You know, African farmers do have to increase their productivity and
they do have to be linked to markets because oftentimes this is the only
source of livelihood that they have, you know, so they do have to sell their
produce to the markets because then they also have to end money to send
their kids to school, to buy medicine, to buy all kinds of other materials.
And there is really no way they can be entirely self-sufficient.
What I hear you describing is limited agency and limited voice
for Africa's small-scale farmers.
And I think that their ability to shape their futures is quite constrained.
They have a lot of people, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many
others on that track who are encouraging them to go into one direction, La Via
Campesina and some of the social movements wanting to propose a different direction.
And they seem.
Sounds like they're a bit stuck in between, taking support where
they can get it from day to day.
And as a result, having a limited ability to shape their own futures.
I'd like to turn to Sarah now.
And if you can briefly talk about what does this move, this call for
food sovereignty in the food system?
What have you seen that it looks like in Canada?
I think it's really fascinating.
So I think that there's there's a political choice we can make.
So I've talked a lot about powerful actors within the food system.
Helena just talked about the food sovereignty movement
being constrained in Africa.
And I think we can make a choice to think about power in particular way.
So when we think about the food movement in Canada, I would argue that it's
actually made a fairly significant contribution in the sense that it has
been going on since the mid nineties, 1990s, and it takes a long time for
social movements to make an impact.
But I would suggest that the food sovereignty movement has shaped public
policy, national public policy in Canada, and contributed to the fact
that we now have a national food policy.
And that's a recent development.
And I think when we when we look at social movements, we can make a choice to think
about the power a little bit differently.
We have to track the power over a long, long period of time.
So that it can look insignificant to the 1990s.
It can even look insignificant in the 2000s, but when you actually shape
national policy, I think that you can see how the food sovereignty movement
has actually made a difference.
So I think that there's a really powerful discourse of food sovereignty and
Peter, you're very familiar with this.
You've done tons of work in this area.
That I think it's important as academics for us to illuminate
the kind of power social movements have, how they operate and not only
identify how they're constrained as Helena has done, but also identify
the inroads and power that they have.
As you've pointed out, Sarah, I have done some work in this area
and I just want to fill in a couple of gaps for our listeners.
One is this idea of food sovereignty, many will be familiar with it, others may not.
The short form we might say is the ability of people or peoples to shape
their own food systems, according to their own priorities, which often include
environmental and social priorities rather than have that based purely in
markets, which is the other guiding hand in our food system relations.
And you also pointed that we Canada now has a national food policy in it,
and it is worth pointing out this is a recent development as of the last year.
What's significant about it, it is the first time that our Canadian
government has tried to bring, and I would emphasize the word tried there,
but nonetheless, bring an integrated view to the relationship between how
we produce food in this country and who gets food and who consumes food
and how healthy that food is for them.
And along the way, there are a number of new programs that were created as part
of the national food policy supporting Indigenous and Northern communities with
their food production and processing and community freezers and those kinds of
thing, supporting small-scale, local food efforts in other parts of the country.
and you know, it's far from perfect, the first iteration of Canada's
national food policy, but nonetheless, as you point out Sarah, it was pushed
for by social movement actors and what's realized in federal policy in
a way that's really a step different from what the government had been
doing for the last 50 or 60 years.
So we're nearing the end of this podcast.
And I want to end with giving each of you a chance to talk a bit about
what you see as the paths forward.
What do you see as potential solutions to some of the food system
challenges you've raised today?
You're both critics of the systems that are in place, critics of
some of the initiatives trying to improve the system from the point
of view of some food system actors.
And I just wonder where you see from your critical vantage point the brighter
lights or the possible solutions that you think needs more attention and effort.
So I'll pass it to you first to Helena for this final question.
Okay, thank you, Peter.
I think possible path forwards in Africa would really entail increased
funding and investment towards national agricultural research systems.
As this will be crucial to addressing some of the food system challenges that
the continent faces that I have raised.
So really there is no place for that, to have strong national systems
that really take this work forward.
But currently many of these institutions continue to face numerous challenges,
including low levels of public investments, dependence on external donors
and philanthropists who make demands or drive the agenda so on, as well as just
generally volatility in funding flows.
So really they cannot have a consistent agriculture and research development
agenda that they can really drive.
So anyways, even in a recent report by the International Panel of Experts on
Sustainable Food Systems and biovision which really look at where funding flows
go in Africa, really the authors have found that the amount of development
aid channeled into agricultural research, education, and extension
has stagnated over the last 10 years, representing only 14% of agricultural
aid in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2017.
But the report also found that agroecology, you know, and alternative
forms of food systems that Sarah has described about that I've also talked
about, really remain marginal within many funding initiatives by donors.
One that of course, is agroecology, and we see that as many as 85% of the
project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and more than 70% of
projects carried out here in Kenya's research institutions were limited
to supporting industrial agriculture and increasing its efficiency via
targeted approaches, such as improved pesticide practices, improved seeds and
so on, livestock vaccines, as well as reductions in say post-harvest losses.
This investment of course are important, I'm not denying that, but when we
see such a huge discrepancy and such limited support to some of these
alternative food systems that even Africa's own social movements and
farmers are calling for is problematic.
And really, we need to change this.
But of course it's hope I'm hopeful that there's a handful of donors such
as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the International Fund
for Agricultural Development who are starting to explicitly recognize
agroecology as a key solution for building sustainable food system.
So there is some recognition there, which is important.
And the important point to start the conversation but I think more than
anything too, we also need research to continue to document the evidence
that is coming from agroecology, as well as alternative solutions.
I think the path in Africa is that really there's an emphasis and
there's a lot of support for agrobased agricultural models, which is fine if
we can feed people more effectively and adequately, but there are also
other models and I think those are the models that also deserve to be given a
chance, they deserve to be supported.
And I'm really glad that this conversation is starting to happen.
Thanks Elena.
So what I'm hearing from you is on the one hand.
Invest in national agricultural research infrastructure.
On the other hand, that research infrastructure has not always been
pursuing a diversity of pathways.
And what I'm hearing you argue for is that we need a wider array of paths being
identified and pursued going forward.
And particularly that those associated with this agroecological
model deserve attention.
They may not solve everything, but they deserve the time of
day to really be worked through.
And this is really something that even students in Canadian context can think
about, you know, whether they might like to play a role in that moving forward
in terms of their own research energies.
So that's really helpful and inspiring.
I'll turn it over to you, Sarah.
What do you see as some of the pathways forward and do you have any advice
for listeners who might be charting their own paths in all of this?
Yeah.
Thanks Peter.
It's a great question.
So I agree with Helena 100% on this.
The way I'm thinking about it is that, you know, we need to reimagine and
also carefully reflect on sustainable food systems that support health,
that supports social justice and the environment on multiple scales.
And so while I started out with this idea of like, there's this industrial
system, and then there's this amazing agroecology, sort of a romantic
view, that it's all perfect that, you know, of course it's not this kind
of binary, there's multiple, multiple ways that food systems can operate.
With the environment changing because of climate change, we need everyone to
be re-imagining and thinking differently about our food and our food systems.
Ursula Le Guin says to oppose something is to maintain it.
You must go somewhere else.
You must have another goal.
And then you walk a different road.
And here is the opportunity, not only within this environmental, this climate
emergency, not only within the context of a pandemic, but we have an opportunity
to have the industrial food system step back and let's see what grows.
Let's see what Indigenous food sovereignty looks like.
Let's see what Newfoundland Labrador food sovereignty looks like.
Let's look at, what Toronto food sovereignty looks like.
Let's have a democratic system where we all have a voice and we can
all use our imaginations to think about and work towards a better,
more socially just food system.
Thank you, Sarah.
And thanks for those inspiring words from Ursula Le Guin.
What I take as the key ideas from the two of you, you know, that the
global food system is very complex.
It has many systems.
It looks quite differently in different parts of the world.
In Africa, where Helena brought our gaze, we see the complexity and the
challenges and how small-scale producers have the least control and least
say in what those systems look like.
And yet what I'm also hearing from both of you is around the world people are
experimenting and exploring, and that we basically have to open that up in
the context of a climate emergency.
This is a time to keep exploring multiple alternative pathways and not
just narrow in, on one narrow set of technologies, because almost inevitably
in this day and age that suits particular players in the food system and it
may not benefit us all collectively.
And so I hear that to democratic plea at the end of your your words
as well, Sarah, so thanks for that.
So I'd like to thank both Helena Shilomboleni and Sarah Martin for joining
us today on the Ecopolitics Podcast.
We welcome from listeners your feedback on this episode, check out the website to
see the many other episodes in the series.
And have a great day to our listeners.
Bye-bye