The theme for last week’s World Food Day was ‘From crisis to stability’. Between 2005 and 2008 the price of food staples rose to a 30 year high, the price of rice trebled, and food riots broke out in countries all over the world as people found it increasingly difficult to obtain enough food to feed themselves and their families. In June 2008, as a response to the global financial crisis, prices crashed, falling 33% in six months, but began to rise sharply again in 2010.

Food accounts for the majority of many households’ budgets in the global south, making them extremely vulnerable to any fluctuations in price. According to the World Development Movement, 44 million people in developing countries have been driven into extreme poverty since the price spikes of 2010. Through the images of famine in the Horn of Africa we can see the results of this crisis being played out on a tragically large scale.

In Ethiopia, food prices rose by 41% in the month of May alone this year. While the crisis in East Africa has been exacerbated by drought and conflict in Somalia, like many famines its roots lie in the economic choices we’ve made as a global community. The WDM offers a very clear explanation of how ‘food speculation’, has helped to create this new volatility in food prices, and create a healthy profit for banks and traders in the process. After this speculative bubble burst in 2008 and the price of crops collapsed, food prices for consumers were kept artificially high, as companies such as Cargill limited supply by ‘hoarding’ of stocks of grain.

Other short term factors have also been important, such as the transfer of land away from the production of food to the production of agro-fuels and cattle feed, and rising energy prices, which have increased the day to day costs of farming. The huge instability caused by the combination of these factors has lead to a worldwide movement for ‘food sovereignty’.

La Via Campesina is a global movement of small scale farmers and peasants which has lead this charge, and defines food sovereignty as:

…the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It develops a model of small scale sustainable production benefiting communities and their environment. It puts the aspirations, needs and livelihoods of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

The argument is that small scale farmers are capable of feeding the world – if given the chance. Under President Lula da Silva (2003-2010) Brazil halved the proportion of its population who go hungry people and slashed its poverty rate from 12 percent to below 5 percent. This was done through the introduction of agricultural reforms aimed at connecting consumers to local smallholder farmers and widening access to food for the poor. This month, Lula was jointly awarded the 2011 ‘World Food Prize’ in recognition of the success of these policies.

La Via Campesina are also fighting the power of corporate agribusiness and transnational companies, as well as globalized, export focused agricultural policies. It has had some success in Latin America, for example in March 2009 the Venezuelan government expropriated Cargill’s major rice-processing facility and temporarily took over a plant owned by Polar, Venezuela’s largest private food producer.

Central to the idea of food sovereignty is the prioritizing of local food production and consumption. Globally, we need to regulate the futures markets so that they work in favour of small scale farmers instead of financial speculators, but also to try and break the stranglehold of transnational companies over agriculture. One great way to do this locally is to support small-scale local producers through food co-ops. The main principle behind food co-ops is that by pooling resources and ordering in bulk direct from local suppliers a group of people can buy good food at more affordable prices.

However, as well as personal savings, there are many additional benefits of foods co-ops, including: a reduction in carbon emissions through the transportation of food; less waste through unnecessary packaging; support for local producers; and more money retained and circulated in the local economy. Importantly, it also helps to break the dominance of large transnational companies in food markets and integrates with La Via Campesina’s view of food sovereignty – locally produced food being consumed locally.

Read about “Scoop” - People & Planet’s student food co-op project – here.

The weekend before last was one of the most exhausting but inspirational 72 hours that I’ve experienced; it might seem strange in the light of  what we now know about just how much our “leaders” let us down over the last few weeks, but my visit to Copenhagen at the time of the climate conference energised me enormously and re-igniting my hope that a just and sustainable future is possible. (more…)