No to Corporate Food Systems!

No to Corporate Food Systems!
Yes to Food Sovereignty!

On the 25^th anniversary of food sovereignty, CAN reaffirms its commitment to work toward justice in our food system. Food sovereignty is a strategy of struggle for people to define their own agricultural policies, and protect their food ways, cultures, and ecologies, in direct opposition to the exploitation of people and nature by agribusiness.

Last week, on September 24, the United Nations held a Food Systems Summit (UNFSS 2021) in New York. Misleadingly called “the people’s summit,” it has been denounced since its inception for prioritizing corporate interests over the demands and aspirations of small-scale producers, workers, indigenous peoples, women, youth, and rural-urban communities. Social movements, NGOs, and academics boycotted the UNFSS after the UN Secretary General signed an agreement with the World Economic Forum (established by 1000 of the world’s most powerful corporations), and refused to incorporate a rights-based approach, one that recognizes the human right to food and the people’s right to be at the center of governance and decision-making.

Still from video.

The People’s Countermobilization to Transform Corporate Food Systems created a platform to contest the Summit, re-claim power, and amplify dignified solutions to hunger, climate change, ecological devastation, and oppression of farmer and fisher folk. The RIAC-Juvenil (Youth Network) joined the countermobilization, producing a video that shares their vision of justice-based alternatives grounded in agroecology and food sovereignty. Click here to watch the RIAC-Joven’s full video.

Agribusiness, fossil fuel corporations, chemical companies, and technology giants are using the UN Food Systems Summit to take over global governance and ensure their continued profits via carbon markets, intellectual property rights, a digital takeover of farming, and a raft of other false solutions.