Trade Policy, The Right to Food & COVID-19 – and that’s just starters for Michael Fakhri, 4th Rapportuer on the Right to Food

Michael Fakhri was appointed as the UN’s 4th Rapporteur on the Right to Food in May 2020. In this conversation he talks candidly about his initial plans and the impact of COVID-19 on them. His first report, due in September 2020, deals with the importance of trade policy, the need to change the way trade in food is managed and the institutions responsible. He reflects on the impact COVID-19 has had on our understanding of key workers, schools’ role in caring for children, and his future plans. The first of these is to focus on the planned UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 to promote an inclusive, rights based approach.

As we end our conversation he draws an analogy with the BBC TV series character Dr Who, who is periodically reborn in a new body – like the UN rapporteurs – each building on their predecessors work but in their own way as each defines how they fulfil their role. For Michael, one need is to be a fearless organiser connecting those different constituencies that need to work together – from health, environment, civil society, government and business – to ensure the right to food for all now and into the future.

You can find the annual thematic reports of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food here.

Over 50 countries spent over $700bn/year on farm support in 2017-19 says OECD. How? And what have responses to COVID-19 been?

Some 54 countries* collectively spent, on average, over $700bn a year supporting agriculture between 2017-19 according the over 500 page Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2020 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – see Figure 1 below. In this interview, Martin von Lampe, lead for the report, explains what’s happening. He also discusses how things have changed over the last 30 years, what they believe would make the spending more effective in addressing the health, environmental and livelihood challenges in the future and the early impact of COVID-19 (see Figure 2 below which summaries the types of responses to Covid-19).

The OECD Monitoring and evaluation page here, provides access to the underlying data as well as to the related policy brief for the 2020 report. To compare your country go here.

The Agricultural Outlook 2019-2028 has also just been published. Its projections cover consumption, production, trade, and prices for 25 agricultural products for the period 2020 to 2029. In its view “The weakening of demand growth is expected to persist over the coming decade. Population will be the main driver of consumption growth for most commodities, even though the rate of population growth is projected to decline. Per capita consumption of many commodities is expected to be flat at the global level.
The slower demand growth for agricultural commodities is projected to be matched by efficiency gains in crop and livestock production, which will keep real agricultural prices relatively flat. International trade will remain essential for food security in food-importing countries, and for rural livelihoods in food-exporting countries. World agricultural markets face a range of new uncertainties that add to the traditionally high risks agriculture faces. The most significant source of uncertainties relates to the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacts on consumption, production, prices and trade. Other uncertainties relate to changes in consumers preferences, plant and animal diseases, and the heightened uncertainty with respect to future trading agreements between several important players on world agricultural markets.”

Figure 1. Agricultural policies across 54 countries have generated transfers to the agricultural sector worth more than USD 700 bn per year on average for 2017-19

Figure 2. Inventory of close to 500 agricultural and food policy responses to COVID-19

*The report includes the 37 OECD countries and the five non-OECD EU Member States, as well as 12 emerging economies: Argentina, Brazil, People’s Republic of China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Ukraine and Viet Nam.

Reflections from the UK on COVID-19 and our food systems

In Mid-May, I was asked to make this video as a contribution to the Agricultural and Food Ethics Association of Turkey (TARGET) ‘Virtual Conferences in the days of Corona’. It starts with a brief introduction in Turkish with sub-titles in English then is in English with Turkish subtitles, please watch. As a member of the Food Ethics Council in the UK and as someone who has lived and worked in Turkey, I’ve been supporting the creation and development of TARGET since its inception. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic their conference planned for this year went virtual. I also spoke at their first and second conferences in 2017 and 2019 as did most others who also feature in the English and Turkish Language contributions to these virtual conferences.

The other English language contributions are by:

Richard Falk on ‘Ecological Imperatives and the Right to Food during the Coronavirus Pandemic, A time of Bio-Ethical Crisis‘

Bart Gremmen on ‘Covid-19 as a Moral Stress Test of Agricultural Systems‘

Michael Roberts on ‘Covid-19 and US Food System‘

And for any Turkish speakers reading, here are the Turkish Language contributors to these virtual conferences. You can access all the talks by subscribing to the TARGET Online channel on YouTube.

 

 

Sitopia: how food can save the world – an interview with Carolyn Steel

In her wide ranging book ‘Sitopia: how food can save the world’ Carolyn Steel aims to provide a tool with which to think – and re-think – the world through food. In this interview, she explains the meaning of the term, its philosophical grounding and why food is such a powerful lens to view society and what makes for a good life – and how using this lens shows a value system that is upside down. In seven chapters, she starts from a plate of food and moves out into the universe, beginning with food itself and moving out through the body, the home, society, city and country, nature and time.

You can watch Carolyn’s keynote talk on ‘How to feed a city – and change the world’ here on the Food Systems Academy website where you will find other talks including a guest lecture by Prof Tim Benton on Climate change and agriculture: adaptation and mitigation.

 

 

Feeding Britain: our food problems and how to fix them

Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University, London, spends 2 years writing Feeding Britain: our food problems and how to fix them and when it comes out it is in the midst of a global pandemic when feeding people hits the headlines due to COVID-19. Food bank use shoots up, catering stops, supermarkets shelves are emptied at first as people prepare to be locked down, and food parcels are delivered to the most vulnerable. If ever there was a time to seriously examine how to feed a country long term this is it. Britain is his and my country. In this interview, Tim discusses the major themes in the book, including what food defence means for the UK today, the failure of current policy to get to grips with the challenges, 12 interlocking problems and the framework needed to address them. He challenges what he sees as the complacency in government to do so and the failure to address food security in current thinking.

Tim was also a member of the Eat Lancet Commission and co-author of Sustainable Diets. Do watch his two keynote talks on the Food Systems Academy : Changing our fatally flawed food system and Sustainable diets and public health.

It’s time to turn swords into ploughshares, bombs into bread, and soldiers into good Samaritans*

It is blatantly obvious that there is no military response that can defeat the COVID-19 virus. It should be equally obvious that military spending can’t deal with the other two great long-term, slower-acting pandemics – climate change and biodiversity loss. It is also clear that the way we run the world and today’s global “leaders” are far from adequate to address these challenges.

We see the fragility of today’s food systems revealed, and hear calls for fundamental change to our food systems after we get through the current pandemic – for example, see IPES paper COVID-19 and the Crisis in Food Systems. What will be the response throughout the world as we come out of this pandemic – will it be a return to business as usual as far as is possible, or a recognition that now is the time to seize the opportunity for fundamental change? The latter is what is needed to address the challenges in the food system and far beyond.

At their best the world’s governments can come up with clear and sensible goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals the first of which is to end poverty and the second to end hunger. But to achieve this we need to put our resources to work in the right direction. And for this to happen we need to see a worldwide commitment from every country to redirect its military spending away from mechanisms and technologies to better kill each other with into life-enhancing and environment sustaining activities. It is only by doing this that we will achieve the sustainable development goals, conquer hunger and poverty and make a fairer, healthy and sustainable world for this and future generations.

Now it is unrealistic to expect a complete redeployment of military spending to occur over night, it needs to be done in stages. So from 1 January 2021 every government in the world should shift 10% of its military spending into other areas that address the food, health, environment and climate destabilisation challenges that we face, that address the growing inequity in the world and aim to reduce it. These redirected resources must support new forms of business and productive activities which enhance our ability to mitigate and adapt to the climate disruption that is already underway. This annual 10% reduction should continue until world military spending is negligible. The valuable logistical and organisational skills found in the military should be redirected into international and national rescue services, peacekeeping and peacemaking. This redeployment of the brainpower and resources is aimed at achieving and going beyond the sustainable development goals.

This requires vision, leadership of the kind that we have not currently seen, and a ground swell from the bottom up, building on the kind of help and support we have seen being given throughout the world in many countries to those affected by COVID-19. The United Nations charter begins “We the peoples” and it is we the peoples of the world demanding this change, and to be part of it. We need to see every different means of calling on our governments and businesses to do this, including through the online types of petition such as 38Degrees, SomeofUs, WeMove, AVAAZ, and others. If governments and businesses can take unprecedented steps in acting to fight COVID-19 they can do this.

On April 16, 1953, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.” It is time to stop that theft. Let us begin a better way of life and save millions from the consequences of the two great long-term, slower-acting pandemics – climate change and biodiversity loss.

*I come from a background in which Biblical stories permeated my childhood and this refers to a story of a man from a different and despised group (a Samaritan) from the dominant one but who helped a stranger in trouble when those you might have expected to do so from the religious and dominant group did not.”

Food or War: is that the question?

Rather foolishly, when I set up my website  some years ago, I wrote that I was thinking of writing a book provisionally entitled Food is a Key to Avoiding World War III. Life has intervened and I haven’t been able to do that. Now Australian author and science writer Julian Cribb has written a book that covers much of the ground I would have needed to.  Food or War is not a jolly read. But it does end with a range of proposals to help humanity avoid what has been a recurring feature of human life – conflicts over food, land, and water leading to destructive wars. In this interview, Julian discusses the bleak history of the links between food and war and suggests what might be done to avoid them.

He outlines three key ways to avoid to conflicts over food, land and water and suggests how a Year of Food in primary schools and a Stewards of the Earth programme play a central part giving hope for the future and why fundamental economic drivers also need to change to avoid wars in the future.

Julian Cribb, Food or War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2019

His other books include Surviving the 21^st Century (Springer 2017), Poisoned Planet (2014) and The Coming Famine (2010). Poisoned Planet is currently out of print, a new edition is being written for Cambridge University Press. See also his blog post ‘Is a Food Crisis the next big hit for humanity?‘

For a broad ranging set of talks on the food system visit the Food Systems Academy. In his talk, ‘The crucial century, 1945-2045: Transforming food systems in a global context‘ Prof Paul Rogers puts the challenges of transforming food systems in a global, human security context and argues that food is at the centre of the third great transition humankind has to go through.

Compassionate #meat eating – less and better respecting sentient animals says Joyce D’Silva

About 20 years ago I was commissioned to edit a book based on the papers from the Compassion in World Farming’s (CIWF) 1998 conference ‘An Agriculture for the New Millennium – Animal Welfare, Poverty and Globalisation’. The result was The Meat Business: Devouring a Hungry Planet, published in paperback in 1999. I was surprised to receive a hardback copy of the book a few months ago, reissued I assume as the publisher saw the growing interest in meat, health, livestock’s role in greenhouse gas emissions and thought reprinting it in hardback and as an e-book to be timely.

Joyce D’Silva was my co-editor and then director of CIWF. Today she is CIWF’s emeritus ambassador. I thought I’d catch up with her to discuss how their work has developed over the years, its impact on how animals are kept and are treated as sentient beings. She also discusses health, climate change and what the impacts new approaches to eating are having as well as CIWF’s  work on supporting regenerative agriculture in which livestock are treated humanely. We met in at the Royal Festival Hall in November where I recorded this interview.

You can find CIWF’s many research papers on sustainable and humane farming here.

 

Ethics, ecological consciousness and rethinking #agriculture – a lot to digest at Turkish Agricultural and #Food #Ethics Association’s 2nd International Congress

A wide range of issues across food and farming were discussed at the 2^nd International Agricultural and Food Ethics Congress organised by the Turkish Agricultural and Food Ethics Association. The congress was held on 24-25 October 2019 in Izmir, Turkey, a place where I first went to work some 41 years ago. I was there to share some of the things we in the UK in the Food Ethics Council are grapping with, notably our new work on food citizenship. You can download my talk and slides by clicking here.

Rethinking agriculture and kissing a mule!

While most of the meeting was held in Turkish, with simultaneous translation for one of the parallel sessions, I was able to record a couple of the international speakers. One was Robert Zimdahl, professor emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences and Pest Management at Colorado University. He argued that technological fixes for the unintended consequences of technological innovation are not enough. Rethinking how we practice agriculture is necessary he believes – and ended his talk with a little story about kissing a mule – hang in to the end of this talk for that!

 

Ecological consciousness with a new politics of impossibility

The global challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, malnutrion and inequality require an ecological consciousness with a new politics of impossibility (beyond traditional political institutions) to achieve solutions, argued Richard Falk, emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University in this short closing address at Congress.

 

You can download the programme from the Congress Website

#Potatoes – Crop of the Future? A discussion with Prof Anton Haverkort

Forty years ago, when I was working in Turkey, I met another young man called Anton Haverkort, just setting out on his career. He grew up on a potato farm in the Netherlands, studied potatoes, and came to Turkey to work for the International Potato Centre at their base in the Menemen Research Institute near Izmir. He is now recognised as an award winning leading world expert on potatoes and has writtien ‘Potato handbook – Crop of the Future’, a magnum opus covering potatoes in society, the plant, propagation material, environment and cultivation, running to almost 600 pages. I went to meet up with him again in Wageningen, where he was a professor for many years, to hear his take on potatoes in the world today, and about the impact climate change and genetics will have on potatoes in the future.

As you heard, he is very much a technological optimist and proponent for using all the new techniques available to increase potato production in the future. By chance, I also met his older brother, Bertus, very briefly, and found out he had taken a different tack to Anton in looking at food and farming, focussing on the different ways different societies and cultures understand the world and use their knowledge and understanding about it. His work focuses on indigenous knowledge, agroecology and different approaches to science and use of knowledge. I wasn’t around for what I expect would be rather lively conversations between them but did see some of his books, pictured below. He is currently working on a contribution to a new book provisionally entitled ‘Agroecology, indigenous epistemologies and cognitive justice’ for the University of Coventry’. Here are some of the titles he authored:

For a non GM approach to breeding blight resistance potatoes take a look at this earlier blog with an interview with Dr David Shaw, of the Sarvari Research Trust here. The trust is still going despite doubts about its future at the time of my earlier blog.