Last week Olivier De Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to food, released his final report in which he called for decisive shifts in agricultural policy and fundamental changes to the ways in which food is produced. De Schutter said current food systems are geared only towards maximizing agribusiness profits, and that seen from any other perspective they are inefficient and damaging.  

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To date, only ten states, mostly in South America have formally introduced a legal 'right to food'. Political opponents have raised tough questions over how this will be achieved in practice in these countries and others which are drafting such legislation.

Speaking in Geneva, De Schutter, a lawyer by training, said, "The food systems we have inherited from the twentieth century have failed. Of course, significant progress has been achieved in boosting agricultural production over the past fifty years. But this has hardly reduced the number of hungry people, and the nutritional outcomes remain poor."

He pointed out that current means of measuring hunger are also unreliable, as they miss short-term periods of undernourishment and assume people need less energy than is often actually the case. Even so, he continued, "The eradication of hunger and malnutrition is an achievable goal. However, it will not be enough to refine the logic of our food systems – it must instead be reversed."

Agroecology: Diversifying objectives of food production

The special rapporteur said that, in order for a practicable right to food to exist, food production should focus on a wider array of outcomes than the merely monetary. He said that producing more diverse and culturally-acceptable foods in different regions, supporting smaller farmers, sustaining soil and water resources, and raising particularly vulnerable areas out of food insecurity must be the priorities of this more democratic food policy. He added that that these goals "Must not be crowded out by the one-dimensional quest to produce more food."

The special rapporteur elaborated, "The greatest deficit in the food economy is the democratic one. By harnessing people's knowledge and building their needs and preferences into the design of ambitious food policies at every level, we would arrive at food systems that are built to endure."

On a practical level de Schutter said the kind of "bottom up… Food democracy" will require a much greater focus on agroecology. Agroecology is an interdisciplinary school of agriculture which uses crop science, ecology and social sciences to create agroecosystems. Agroecologists aim to achieve results in four main areas; these areas, viewed as being of equal importance, are productivity, stability, sustainability and equitability.

The more holistic approach to agriculture has resulted in improvements in productivity, profitability and production in areas where it has been adopted. (De Schutter's 2011 report relayed the outstanding results of agroecology projects in Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh). However, just as importantly, the approach can reduce and reverse the loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and pollution of air and water associated with more conventional techniques.

Rights expert de Schutter said last week, "Food security must be built around securing the ability of smallholder farmers to thrive. Respect for their access to productive resources is key in this regard."

He identified three levels on which food policy can be democratised: locally, nationally and internationally.  

Local level

On the local level, the rapporteur said supporting communities to sell locally, and create more vibrant local food systems would slow the urbanisation of populations. He urged cities to take food security into their own hands.

The expert researcher explained that there is a pressing need to increase attention on urban agriculture and look into how food systems interact with cities. De Schutter stated, "By 2050 more than 6 billion people - more than two in three - will live in cities. It is vital that these cities identify logistical challenges and pressure points in their food supply chains, and develop a variety of channels to procure their food, in line with the wishes, needs and ideas of their inhabitants."

"Emerging social innovations in all parts of the world show how urban consumers can be reconnected with local food producers, while at the same time reducing rural poverty and food insecurity," he continued. "Such innovations must be supported."

National strategies

The expert warned, however, that these local initiatives can only succeed if they have backing on a national level. Echoing recommendations he made in 2011, De Schutter said, "Governments have a major role to play in bringing policies into coherence with the right to food, and ensuring that actions are effectively sequenced, but there is no single recipe.

"In some cases, the priority will be to promote short circuits and direct producer-consumer links in order to strengthen local smallholder farming and reduce dependence on imports," he advised. "In other cases, the prevailing need may be to strengthen cooperatives in order to sell to large buyers under dependable contracts."

He called for this national response to be devised as democratically as possible – with input from those groups in society most affected by hunger and malnutrition.

International environment

He concluded that, "Just as local-level initiatives cannot succeed without support from national strategies, efforts at the domestic level require an international enabling environment to bear fruit." According to De Schutter, all players on the international stage should work to collectively address the problems with current food production paradigm.

The food rapporteur commended the work being done by the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and said, "Other global governance bodies must align themselves with the strategic framework provided by the CFS. The WTO, for example, must not hinder developing countries undertaking ambitious food security policies and investing in small-holder agriculture." He went on to say that it would be necessary for the global north to develop in parallel with moves being made in developing countries. The rights expert stated more explicitly, "Wealthy countries must move away from export-driven agricultural policies and leave space instead for small-scale farmers in developing countries to supply local markets."

"They must also restrain their expanding claims on global farmland by reining in the demand for animal feed and agrofuels, and by reducing food waste," he added.

The special rapporteur's report can be read in full here.