Sustainable Food Systems for Security and Nutrition: The Need for Social Movements Eric Holt Gimenez - CIP Americas
go to original October 18, 2013

In celebrating sustainable food systems, World Food Day is recognizing the need for systemic change to end hunger and malnutrition. Systemic change is urgent because even though for decades the world has produced 1 ½ times enough food for every man, woman and child on the planet, nearly a billion people go hungry while over a billion are malnourished. Ironically, most of the hungry are the very ones producing half the world’s food: peasant women. Similarly, most of the food insecure people in the developed world are food and farm workers—as are many of those suffering from obesity and diet-related disease.

Hunger and malnutrition are not by-products, but an integral part of the global food system. Ensuring environmental sustainability, food security and good nutrition around the world—as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) asserts—will require a radical transformation in how we grow our food.

Luckily, we have many examples of sustainable food systems in the making. Agroecologically-managed smallholder farms like Latin America’s Campesino a Campesino Movement increase yields, conserve soil, water, and biodiversity and capture carbon to cool the planet. Urban farms from Havana to Bangkok are steadily increasing food production and improving livelihoods. Community-supported Agriculture groups around the world provide fresh, healthy food for members and a living income for local family farmers. Hundreds of municipal Food Policy Councils and Food Hubs are implementing citizen-driven initiatives to keep the food dollar in the community where it can recycle up to five times, thereby creating jobs and kick-starting local economic development. What do all these efforts have in common? They are grounded in sustainable, equitable and dignified livelihoods.

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