Shed Industrial Farming Systems And Pave The Way For Sustainable Food And Farming Futures

Whether it is in Asia, Latin America and Africa, the policy pressure to transform food and farming, which actually is a euphemism for corporate control over food, is growing at an alarming rate

Sometimes I wonder. If the global food system is broken, as everyone seems to be saying so, and if so then how come no serious effort is being made to fix it?

An Earth Talk column in the prestigious journal, Scientific American, rightly mentioned that “people won’t be able to feed themselves without destroying the planet – unless we can transform the global food systems on the scale of the industrial revolution.”

While this may make sense to many among the educated elite, a careful perusal shows the solution suggested by way of transformation of the food system on the scale of ‘industrial revolution’ is actually what has led to the broken food systems.

More of the same therefore is not the way to fix the broken food systems.

Presently, our food systems destroy more value than they create, borrowing from the future to realise profits today, observes researchers at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics.

Quoting Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the researchers say that the hidden environmental, social and health costs of agri-food systems were more than $10 trillion globally in 2020. Transforming the food systems therefore – and that too in a sustainable, just and equitable manner -- will cost much less in comparison.

And as Dr Steven Lord of the Environment Change Institute, University of Oxford, who led the team studying the cost analysis for the Global Policy Report published by UK’s Food Systems Economics Commission, said: “If the food system continues business as usual it will produce trillions of dollars of avoidable economic costs that will limit future economic growth and development.”

The analysis, released in January, points out that while obesity will increase globally by 70 per cent by 2050, food systems will continue to emit a third of the global greenhouse gas emissions, and by the end of the century push the temperature rise to 2.7 degrees. The detailed report makes interesting (and often shocking) reading and provides a future scenario that lists out the benefits accruing from a sensible transition. But the catch here is the word ‘sensible’ and I am not sure how close to that the world can transform the food and farming systems to.

Before we move any further, let’s also look at what the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, had to say: “Global food systems are broken – and billions of people are paying the price.”

Speaking on another occasion, he added that emphasis must therefore shift to people over profit-oriented private companies.

It is the push towards profit-oriented companies that is actually what the world is witnessing in the name of transformation towards a sustainable food future.

Whether it is in Asia, Latin America and Africa, the policy pressure to transform food and farming, which actually is a euphemism for corporate control over food, is growing at an alarming rate.

While the need is to strengthen diverse and resilient farming system, which means increasing transition to agro-ecological and integrated farming systems as well as to ensure a guaranteed income for farmers, I find a subtle and hidden effort to bring corporate agriculture through the back door.

In India, after the withdrawal of the three contentious farm laws, it isn’t that the effort to extend the reach of corporate control over agriculture is dead and buried. At any given opportunity, and through any appropriate mechanism, the effort to create an enabling environment for corporate farming is rarely missed. Whether it is through enhanced budgetary support for digitalisation or newer technologies or formulating a national agriculture code or the proposal to set up a National Council for Agriculture and Rural Transformation (NCART) or more recently seeking approval for a draft national policy framework on agriculture marketing, the underlying objective is crystal clear – to lay the foundation for a corporate take-over of farming. By the time you wake up to realise the implications of these policy initiatives, the ground would have been prepared for the final assault.

What is being missed in the process is the realisation that all these parameters being introduced one by one are actually responsible for the broken food systems that the world finds itself in. The flawed prescriptions also flow from the corporate thought process.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), which began as a jamboree for the rich and beautiful, has now emerged as a policy platform for the governments. It will therefore be very interesting to know how the WEF view the broken food systems and how does it aim to fix it.

My attention was drawn to a paper, entitled: “Our food system is broken. Here are three ways to fix it.”

This 2018 paper (though outdated, it tells how WEF perceives the challenge) starts by looking at food systems as a business. In the absence of a CEO for one or a few multinational companies that can control the food and farming system, the article does acknowledge that the food system is unequal, unsustainable, unstable, and in need of transformation. It lists the radical ways to change the way we think and act on food.

The WEF article talks of how a CEO would look at supermarkets if he/she were to go shopping. There are a lot of empty spaces on supermarket shelves ‘dedicated to making foods precious little nutritional value attractive and appealing’. It has been nearly six years since the article was written, and there is hardly any space available now on the supermarket shelves.

And look what we have got to fill the empty shelves: a meta-study now shows that nearly 89 per cent of the processed foods lying on the supermarket shelves are unhygienic and of poor quality. If this is what the processed food industry has provided to the masses, it’s time to correct That’s one part of the broken food system that needs to be urgently fixed.

Talking of the power and who makes profit, and the kind of food systems leadership that the world needs, the authors finally say: “We members of the Global Future Council on the Future of Food Security and Agriculture of the World Economic Forum know which one we favour. The benefits are simply too great to ignore.”

We also know what and how the Global Future Council of WEF is engaged in and what it has in focus when it comes to providing food systems leadership. Whether the WEF likes it or not, the fact remains that the global food systems are broken for the same reasons that the multinational companies are trying to now aggressively promote.

The world needs to move away from industrial farming systems, and let’s not regret later since pushing for more of the same will end up in further destroying the planet.

Knowing this, India needs to be doubly cautious in laying out a strong pathway for a sustainable food and farming futures.

Instead of the usual cut and paste, it is time to demonstrate a vision that leads to healthy environment, healthy food and wealthy farmers.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)