Food

The global food system is broken. Although there is enough fertile land in the world to grow food for everyone, industrial agriculture feeds corporate profits instead of people.

Around the world, billions of people face hunger and malnutrition. The majority live in rural areas. Small-scale, local farmers grow food for the majority of the world, but the power to decide what to grow and how it is distributed has been taken away from them. Big business, financial institutions and policymakers in rich countries dominate the food industry, buying up land and controlling which crops are grown for the biggest profit. The consequences have been devastating for people in rural communities around the world – many cannot afford to eat the food they grow on their own land.

Local farmer communities are leading a movement to put power over agriculture back in the hands of people: food sovereignty. Local farmers know how to grow food sustainably for their own societies and for the planet. Food sovereignty enables communities to grow food that is appropriate for their lands and culture, and guarantees democratic control over how it is distributed and traded. Food sovereignty is a practical solution that puts power in the hands of people, not corporations.

We stand with our partners in peasants’ movements around the world who are fighting for a better food system and for the rights of rural communities. We support their efforts to restore the control of land and the food grown on it to local communities, to farm and live sustainably and free from exploitation and poverty.

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Building power when the far-right is on the rise

Left-wing movements are growing, forging new alliances to transform the global economy for the many.

Man sprays pesticides over crops in a green field. He is wearing only a basic face mask, not covering his nose, and no other protective gear.

Toxic harvest: fossil fuel pesticides on our plates

Deadly toxic pesticides and fertilisers derived from fossil fuels are destroying the health of people and planet.

Photograph showing a starling murmuration.

Protecting biodiversity: rejecting carbon offsetting

With ecosystems collapsing as the climate crisis intensifies, corporations are pushing 'solutions' like carbon offsetting, in reality a way to keep polluting and profiting.

Three rows of green tractors make their way through a busy high street during a protest.

Why the global farmers’ protests matter

Farmers around the world are protesting decades of government pressure to produce crops more and more cheaply at the expense of farmers’ livelihoods and the environment.

Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians

The right to food is an internationally recognised human right. But for Palestinians, this right is under attack by Israel’s apartheid and occupation regime.

Tea pickers in a tea plantation, Sri Lanka. Tea production is one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the country. iStock

Tea trade trouble for Sri Lanka's crucial rainforests

The tea trade is threatening Sri Lanka's crucial rainforests, with devastating impacts for local people, regional biodiversity and the global climate.

Sri Lanka protestor graffitis 'power to the people'

More debt won't solve Sri Lanka's debt crisis

Sri Lanka's severe political and financial crisis means millions are unable to afford food. This is a crisis driven by international debt.

Garment workers from JKSS on May Day march

We will never stop fighting for workers' rights

Decent work and a living wage are not only basic rights, but a key route out of poverty. Through organising, the collective voice of workers has won rights and decent work for millions of people.

Building alternatives to toxic pesticides: peasant agroecology in Kenya

While the UK produces and exports dangerous, banned agrotoxics to the Global South, our partners in Kenya are creating new, organic alternatives.

Corporate capture of our food systems: the importance of language

Corporations are co-opting the language of peasants' and environmental movements to press their agenda of profit over people and planet.

Left: A man gathers up the harvest, Right: A drone sprays pesticide across the fields

The Corporate Capture of Food Systems

The UN Food Systems Summit 2021 will achieve nothing meaningful while its agenda is shaped, and its language defined, by the very corporations that have engineered our current — broken — food systems.

Food Sovereignty: the struggle for a fair global food system

The global food system is in crisis. The reason? Food being treated as just another commodity to be traded, rather than as a fundamental human right. The scale of hunger and malnutrition across the world today is the direct result of our global economy in which hundreds of millions of small farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and indigenous people face ruin - because of the hijacking of the food system by large corporate agribusiness and food retailers.

Take action

Join the fight to fix our broken food system

Food Sovereignty is a practical solution and a positive alternative to our failed food system, putting human rights at the centre, instead of corporate profits.

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Partners

ATTAC/CADTM Maroc, Morocco

ATTAC/CADTM Maroc is an action-oriented popular education movement, committed to the struggles in Morocco against capitalist globalisation and the domination of the International Financial Institutions. ATTAC Maroc strives to be a space for critical reflection to understand the neoliberal assault on Moroccan people. ATTAC fights for another globalisation, far from any logic of isolationism, that is grounded in solidarity between peoples and based on social justice, democracy, dignity and sustainable development in a world that is not equated to a market. Most of its work is focused on debt, microcredit, extractivism, workers’ rights, trade justice, climate justice and as food sovereignty. ATTAC Maroc is a founding member of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty.

Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), Kenya

The Kenyan Peasants League (KPL) is a social movement of Kenyan Peasant farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and consumers, whose main aim is to promote smallholder farmer agroecology and resist neo-liberal policies that kill local agriculture. KPL promotes indigenous seeds, livestock and plant varieties and the creation of an alternative economy that is driven by provision for livelihoods. KPL was founded in 2016 and has been part of La Via Campesina network since 2018.

Networks

La Via Campesina

Resources

Someone in bright clothing working on their knees in a green field, with their head covered by fabric. Credit: Ali Aznague

Challenging Agribusiness and Building Alternatives in Tunisia and Morocco

Working Group on Food Sovereignty in Tunisia and ATTAC Maroc

Food Sovereignty report

The report contrasts the UK government’s preferred approach of ‘food security’, based on free markets supplemented by aid, with the positive alternative of food sovereignty, which returns control over the food system to farmers.  

Land workers gathering against WTO and free trade agreements

Profiting from hunger

The industrialised global food system is driving the climate crisis and the impoverishment of millions across the Global South, while making vast profits for a handful of corporate monopolies. Peasants are leading the struggle for an alternative food system ...

The SABL Land Grab: Papua New Guinea’s ongoing human rights scandal

This report highlights the devastating impact of Special Agricultural Business Leases (SABL) land grabs on the people of Papua New Guinea. It also shines a spotlight on the ongoing resistance, led by communities and War on Want’s partner, ACT NOW!

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