Food Distribution – Monica Piccinini

Surging Hunger Levels Crush Years of Progress

Monica Piccinini

12 July 2023

The world is facing an alarming and deeply distressing reality as food insecurity reaches catastrophically high levels. Across the globe, countless individuals and communities are struggling with the crippling fear of not having enough to eat.

According to the latest findings unveiled in the United Nation’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published today, the data highlights a distressing state of global hunger in 2022, a year tainted by a combination of severe challenges, including a food price crisis, ongoing conflicts, and detrimental economic and climate disturbances.

This is a sobering wake up call, says the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, IPES-Food.

Jennifer Clapp, food security expert with IPES-Food and professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, explained:

“The world is facing disturbingly high levels of hunger right now. Years of progress on improving food security and nutrition have been erased. Governments have failed to make food systems shock-resistant, to shield people from food price inflation, or to address the ticking time bomb of debt.

We desperately need a new recipe for addressing hunger – based on the right to food, less reliance on volatile global markets, and on countries producing more food for their own people.”

The SOFI data reveals an alarming picture, where food insecurity has reached unprecedented and catastrophic new levels with no signs of improvement on the horizon – setting the world back 15 years.

In 2022, approximately 735 million people (9.2% of the world population) faced economic undernourishment, while nearly 30% of the world’s population encountered varying degrees of moderate to severe food insecurity.

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The report also reveals that the hunger crisis intensified in 2022, with an additional 122 million people facing food insecurity compared to the pre-pandemic period in 2019. The compounding effects of COVID, conflict and climate change have highlighted the fragility and inequalities ingrained within the global food systems.

Moreover, the study warns that if substantial changes are not implemented, we are heading towards a future where 600 million individuals will continue to suffer from chronic undernourishment by 2030. This outcome would have severe consequences for the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), rendering them ineffective.

Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, IPES-Food, and UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, mentioned:

“Low income countries are trapped in debt, unable to invest in combating hunger, and condemned to export cash crops rather than feed their own people.

To have any hope of reaching the sustainable development goals at transformation is needed – with social protection schemes that guarantee the right to food for the world’s poorest, debt cancellation, and investment in diverse, resilient agroecological food production.”

The impact of food insecurity is devastating, with families and vulnerable populations bearing the brunt of its consequences.

Hunger in Africa Continues to Grow

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The relentless increase of hunger in Africa persisted for the tenth consecutive year, affecting a staggering one-fifth of the continent’s population.

According to the SOFI report, in Africa, where the shares of the population that are food insecure and unable to afford a healthy diet, are among the highest in the world.

Million Belay, expert with IPES-Food and coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, AFSA, reacted:

“It’s shocking that hunger has risen in African for ten years in a row. But our exploitative global economic system has prioritised servicing debt over feeding people, exporting cash for crops over growing nutritious food for Africans, and burning fossil fuels over adapting to climate change.”

Fresh data from 11 African nations reveals that farmers and rural communities face greater vulnerability to fluctuating food prices and hunger than previously anticipated, while the consumption of processed foods in these regions is on the rise, even in rural areas. In rural areas, a notable 33% of individuals encounter moderate to severe food insecurity, surpassing the corresponding figures observed in urban areas.

The African Development Bank estimated that Africa’s net food imports reached $35 billion in 2015, and expects it to triple by 2025, reaching over $110 billion. Agricultural surpluses from the Global North are dumped on African markets, inundating local markets, driving down farmers’ incomes, weakening communities and local agricultural production.

Africa’s reliance on world food markets is damaging to food security, especially during times of crisis, like we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic.

“African countries have been left critically vulnerable to the blows of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and climate change. Our governments are starved of cash to build the sustainable food systems we need to feed ourselves. The dominant food system is reducing people’s resilience to shocks and leading to perpetual debt and food dumping – this must change”, explained Belay.

Ultra Processed Diet

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The adoption of industrialised farming practices has led to a change in dietary habits, with a rise in the consumption of highly processed foods, which has had negative health consequences, particularly among low-income communities.

Additionally, this form of agriculture heavily depends on the widespread use of chemical inputs, including fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics, with negative consequences for ecosystems and human health.

Based on the SOFI report, the increased accessibility of affordable, ready-to-eat, and fast food options, which are often high in calories, fats, sugars, and salt, can contribute to malnutrition.

Insufficient availability of fruits and vegetables for meeting the daily nutritional needs of the population is also a concern. Moreover, this trend has resulted in the exclusion of small-scale farmers from formal value chains and the loss of land and natural resources due to urban expansion.

The report also highlights the prevalence of child overweight at risk of increasing with the emerging problem of high consumption of highly processed foods and food away from home in urban centres, which is increasingly spreading into peri-urban and rural areas.

“Once again the world is plagued by hunger. A healthy diet is unattainable for nearly half of the world’s population – even while food manufacturers and giant agriculture corporations enjoy bonanza profits”, explained De Schutter.

The predicted cost of treating dietary related diseases is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2030.

Global hunger can have severe consequences that go beyond the immediate lack of food. Key consequences associated with global famine include migration and displacement, health issues, economic impacts, as well as social and political unrest.

As the grip of food insecurity tightens, urgent action and comprehensive strategies are essential to alleviate this alarming situation, restore hope, and ensure that no one is left behind in the struggle for sustenance.

The time to act is now, as we must collectively confront the specter of hunger and work tirelessly to build a future where food insecurity becomes an unimaginable concept rather than a haunting reality.

We Need to Talk About Our Food Systems

Monica Piccinini

8 June 2023

Our global food systems are highly complex and serve many constituent parts. It’s responsible for making available fresh produce throughout the year in countries and regions that historically have been very limited in their food produce. Viewed in a positive light, the systems serve the needs of many.

However, as the global food systems have evolved over time, it has increasingly been focused on monetary gain for corporate stakeholders and less about serving the needs of the global populous.

The increasing focus on economic gain from the global food systems can be evidenced as a cause of wide scale sickness, hunger, poverty, sickness, homelessness, poisoning of our land, water, air, plants, animals, our bodies and minds.

The food industry is considered as a major drive of climate change, responsible for one third of world GHG emissions (IPCC 2019), land-use change and biodiversity loss (40% of earth’s surface), major user of freshwater resources (70% of global freshwater) and a major polluter of terrestrial aquatic systems through the use of chemicals.

During the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023 in London, Philip Lymbery, global CEO of Compassion in World Farming, highlighted the fact that we rely more and more on a small number of countries for the production of major crops on which we depend on. When certain world events occur, such as conflicts and the Covid-19 pandemic, and global supply chains are disrupted, the entire food system is impacted.

*Philip Lymbery at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London*

The countries we rely on, mainly in the global south, are forced to invest in “cash crops” for exports, not producing enough to feed their own population. They produce raw materials that we then process and sell it back to them in the form of finished food products, mainly as a result of their huge debt, explained Lymbery.

Food security is another issue, as we have witnessed in recent years a record high in food prices, global hunger and social inequities that result from the industrial farming systems, not just from conflicts and climate change. We are producing enough food to feed the entire world, but what we’ve seen is a mismatch between supply and demand, a financialisation of agriculture systems and markets, as well as an increase in power concentration.

Lymbery said, “These companies are taking our food systems hostage for their thirst for profits.”

“Food systems are often shaped by politics, rather than policies”, he added.

Our food systems are also impacting our health and making us sick. According to Marco Springmann, senior researcher in environment and health at the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford, the cost of treating diet-related diseases is projected to exceed USD 1 trillion by 2030, also putting a strain on health systems around the world.

“Food that brings you sickness and disease is not food, it’s poison”, said Dr. Vandana Shiva, Indian environmentalist, physicist and author, during one of her speeches at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023 in London.

*Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food*

Power Concentration

We are experiencing growing concentration in our food systems, as the number of corporations controlling everything, from inputs up through retail are getting smaller.

According to Jennifer Clapp, Canada research chair & professor, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at University of Waterloo, and IPES Food “Who’s Tipping the Scales” report, only top six agrochemical companies control 78% of the global market, the top six animal pharmaceuticals control 72%, the top six farm machinery control 50%, the top six seeds companies control 58% and the top five global grain traders control between 70-90%.

Jennifer Clapp at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food

Four major grain traders control approximately 80% of the trade in cereals worldwide, the ABCD firms, ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland), Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus; and four major food processing and packaging companies dominate the global market, Nestle, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Bush InBev and JBS.

Since 2015, we’ve seen mega mergers in the seeds and agrochemicals industry, making these corporations even more dominant and powerful. Some of the mergers include Bayer and Monsanto, ChemChina and Syngenta, Dow and Dupont merged to form Corteva, Agrium and Potash Corp merged to form Nutrien.

Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and co-chair of IPES-Food, mentioned that giant dominant food corporations acquired the position in decision making to veto any transformative change.

According to him, “it’s not because of corruption of politicians or the finance lobbyists working on their behalf, it’s because they are the champions of economic gain of large scale production that global commodities markets demand.”

“This allows these corporations to say to politicians, “trust us”, we know how to produce food for mass consumption, … if you impose too strong regulations on us, you’ll be faced with higher prices that your voters will have to face. This is what allows them to have a privileged access to politicians”, he added.

He explained that these companies manage to get protection from legislators for intellectual property rights for the new “breeds” that they develop, as well as the new technologies that they promote. Additionally, they can very easily challenge environmental regulations. The State ends up in the hands of these economic actors and ends up working for them.

*Olivier De Schutter at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food*

These corporations also control the labour conditions of the food system worker, the products that end up in the supermarkets shelves, and have the power to shape government policies. Small-scale producers don’t stand a chance when faced with such powerful competition.

In order to democratise our food systems, we need to increase transparency and accountability.

It’s necessary to set up a worldwide robust anti-trust and competition legislation and food policy, as well as creating a lobby register, which is already in place in some countries, in order to limit the concentration of power of the big agrifood corporations

We should be listening to farmers and working with them to identify solutions that will not only be beneficial to them, but also to our health and the environment, instead of filling the pockets of greedy corporations.

“We also need more public support for alternative food systems, in particular, research and development money going towards agroecology and organic agriculture”, mentioned Clapp.

She added that it’s now necessary for the State to step back in like they did in the past, when they played a prominent role during the last transition to industrial agriculture with R&D and hybridisation in fertilisers and other sectors.

There’s a need control those actors that have the power to shape our policy spaces, including measures that prevent conflicts of interests, where corporate officials end up as regulators and go back to work in the corporate sector.

Lastly, there’s the need to create an autonomous space for civil society to determine and control the rules and governance they’d like to see happen.

It’s a Profitable & Greedy Business

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According to Planet Tracker, a non-profit think tank, nearly USD 9 trillion of private finance is currently supporting the global food system.

“Financial regulations have become weakened to the extent that they’ve allowed big financial institutions like banks and investment houses to create new financial products for investors to speculate on food commodities”, explained Jennifer Clapp during the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023.

The price of commodities can swing much higher or lower than supply and demand would normally indicate and this creates price volatility, consequently generating profit for these institutions.

“There’s another aspect of financial concentration, where asset management firms own huge portions of the global food systems. The ABCD firms, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus, make huge windfall profits when food commodity prices swing. We saw this happening in 2008, and once again, in 2022, when Russian invaded Ukraine”, added Clapp.

Asset management firms, Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and Capital Group, manage people’s pensions, trillions of assets worth over USD 20 trillion in the global economy. They are buying shares in almost all the companies across the entire agrifood supply chain, which means they have a shared interest in those companies being profitable, therefore creating an incentive for collusion.

Clapp mentioned that economists are concerned about this issue, which is called common ownership, leading to a reduction in competition, as well as leading to higher prices and encouragement of mergers and acquisitions, creating even bigger companies.

The danger of this situation is the fact that it allows them to hold more power to shift food systems in a certain direction, enabling them to shape markets in a way that it can affect prices that consumers pay. Prices are kept low for the agriculture and livestock producers and high for consumers. They also have the power to determine what technologies are going to dominate the market.

Clapp proposed a few solutions to some of these problems, including stronger rules in the financial markets, rules to curb speculation, better reporting, better limits on financial actors in these markets, as well as rules limiting asset managers owning the entire scope of the food systems.

Health Hazards, New Pandemics & Antimicrobial Resistance

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Industrial animal production may be a driver of future pandemics. The confinement of high number of animal in small spaces, leave them much more susceptible to viruses and infections, with the potential to evolve into more infectious types, explained Melissa Leach, social anthropologist and geographer, director of the Institute of Development Studies, IDS, during the Extinction or Rebellion Conference 2023.

All recent infectious diseases outbreaks and pandemics are zoonotic, as they originate in animals. Wildlife domestic and farmed animals and humans all interact in intense interfaces where spillover can occur.

The World Health Organisation, WHO, describes antimicrobial resistance, AMR, as the overlooked pandemic. It contributes to treatment failures, increasing human vulnerability to a wide range of infections.

Some of the latest figures suggest that AMR will cause 10 million deaths by the year 2050, more than from cancer, diabetes and pneumococcal diseases combined.

“Key causes of AMR are the overuse of antibiotics in livestock to promote growth and routinely prevent diseases, especially in intensified livestock farming”, mentioned Leach.

*Melissa Leach at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food*

A study published by The Lancet, Global Burden of Bacterial Antimicrobial Resistance in 2019, estimates that there were 1.27 million deaths globally due to AMR in 2019, and 4.96 million deaths associated with AMR, compared with 6.9 million deaths globally from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

According to Cóilín Nunan, scientific adviser to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, certain types of antibiotics used in animal farming have led to the rise and spread of livestock associated strains of MRSA and clostidrium difficile.

There’s also the resistance to colistin, used as a last resort antibiotic in human medicine for treating life-threatening infections on patients who don’t respond well to other antibiotics, added Nunan.

Scientists from Oxford University released a study showing Escherichia coli bacteria that acquired resistance to colistin in animal farming. According to Nunan, this is an issue of concern and may be more dangerous than AMR, as it may be more able to cause infections in humans.

In Europe, over 60% of antibiotics are used in farmed animals, rather than in medicine. Globally, the figure rises to nearly 70%.

*Photo: ID 118875273 © Petr Goskov | Dreamstime.com*

The health impact caused by our food systems is putting a real strain on health systems around the world. There’s been a rise in conditions, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of gastro-intestinal cancer, amongst others, all related to our diets.

We can no longer deny the urgent need to embrace more sustainable food systems solutions, support and listen to our farmers, respect and protect Indigenous peoples, our land and the environment, which we are highly dependent on.

The concentration of power within our food systems should be limited and a new model replaced instead, to ensure there’s fairness and equality, access to healthy and nutritious food for everyone, everywhere, and that our health and the health of our planet is protected and respected.

Who Controls What We Grow and Eat?

Monica Piccinini

9 May 2023

Similar to our current political & economic systems, the food system is no longer serving us; mainly driven by power, profit and greed, resulting in global food insecurity and impacting directly on our health and the environment.

We’ve seen a sharp increase in food insecurity worldwide, driven not only by climate change and multiple conflicts, but also by an unbalanced food system fuelled by corporate power.

As the world population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in the next 27 years, there’s an urgent need to address issues related to our food system, or we may be facing a worldwide famine sooner than expected. We’ve already seen signs of this in many parts of the world.

“The right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access—either directly or by means of financial purchases— to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear”, according to the United Nations.

Corporate Power

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Giant agribusiness corporations hold the power and control over our food systems, with the ability to influence governments and decision-makers, through lobbying, with the direct intention of shaping policies in many ways.

Their objectives and tactics are questionable, with the tendency to favour their own interests, focusing on profits and maximising shareholder value, rather than addressing hunger and malnutrition.

According to ‘Who’s Tipping the Scales’, a report published by IPES Food, the international panel of experts on sustainable food systems:

“A bold, structural vision to counter the corporate takeover of food-related global governance – one that support central roles for people, governments, and democratic, public-interest-based decision-making, is urgently needed.”

It’s clear that the voices of the most vulnerable communities across the world, and mostly affected by hunger and environmental impact caused by this industry, must be heard.

These giant and dominant agribusiness corporations influence the global organisations we most trust, which should be there to defend our interests. To the surprise of many, agribusiness associations were sitting directly at the UN governance table at the 2021 UNFSS, UN Food Systems Summit.

One must also question the kind of relationship between the private sector and international governance bodies and institutions about potential conflicts of interest.

According to the IPES Food report, in 2020, a private philanthropic foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was the second largest donor to the CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Another partnership that raises some eyebrows is the FAO’s, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, partnership with CropLife International, CLI, an agrochemical lobby organisation, whose members include Syngenta, BASF, FMC and Bayer (acquired Monsanto in 2018).

PAN North America, Pesticide Action Network, mentioned that instead of putting the profit of CropLife International members before farmers and consumers worldwide, the FAO must invest in solutions, including agroecology and take stronger action on ending the usage of highly hazardous pesticides, HHPs.

We’ve also seen increase in consolidation, a large number of mergers and acquisitions, allowing these corporations to dominate the agribusiness sector. This allows these giants to have a profound influence on governance and the structure of our food system, resulting in anti-competitive market practices.

Our Health & the Environment

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These corporations have significant funding at their disposal to influence policies and regulations, such as pesticides, biosafety, patents, intellectual property, as well as trade and investment agreements.

Bayer AG spent over USD 9 million lobbying the US government in 2019, after it acquired Monsanto. At the time, they were reviewing the re-registration of one of the company’s main products, glyphosate (Roundup), which is considered a toxic herbicide. In the US, Bayer has been contesting billion of dollars in settlement claims to end lawsuits over accusations that glyphosate causes cancer.

They are also responsible for shaping science by sponsoring academic research favouring their corporate interests, influencing governance and policies. This was seen in the agrochemical and processed food sectors.

As proof of this, below is an internal email between Monsanto executives obtained by lawyers representing plaintiffs in the Roundup® litigation, where they suggest ‘beating the s**t out of’ a mother’s group expressing concern over the effects of GMOs and Roundup® on their children.

Monsanto also tried to influence science by sponsoring various ghostwriting academic articles questioning scientific studies that raised concern over its product’s safety, glyphosate.

Another very concerning issue related to the health of our children is the fact that this industry continuously lobbies against mandatory public health measures, including taxes on ultra-processed foods, UPF, sugary drinks and front of package labeling, as well as restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods to our children. This has a gigantic impact on their health and also creates pressure on our health systems.

A reported example of this was when a children’s cereal manufacturer attempted to sue Mexico after the country tried to amend a food packaging regulation called NOM-5, in order to protect their children from the marketing of unhealthy foods. The regulation established that certain unhealthy products would be prohibited from putting children’s animations and characters on their packages.

The invention of novel foods also raises some red flags. On March, The Defender, a publication defending children’s health, published a piece on Bill Gates’ latest invention, an edible food coating called Apeel, which is an odourless, colourless and tasteless coating for vegetables and fruit, which potentially extends the life span of these products, keeping it fresher for up to two times longer.

Apeel has already received the green light from US regulators, but some questions still remain unanswered surrounding the safety of the product, as the company is relying mainly on existing scientific studies, as no new science has been required to evaluate and test the product.

We seem to be completely exposed and reliant on these corporations to carry out their own safety studies, without the scrutiny of independent regulators and scientific studies.

According to the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies are expected to develop their own internal procedures to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their impacts on human and environmental rights in global supply chains.

It’s clear that the way we grow our food has a massive impact not only on our physical and mental health, but also on our environment, affecting fauna and flora, the health of our soil, water and air.

Recently, we have seen a sharp increase of fungal disease in crops, affecting 168 crops listed as important in human nutrition, according to FAO of the United Nations. Despite spraying fungicides, farmers are losing between 10-23% of their crops to fungal disease every year, including rice, corn, soybeans and potatoes.

According to a study published at Nature journal, this issue is mainly because of the adaptability of fungi to meet modern agricultural practices. Monocultures entail vast areas of genetically uniform crops, an ideal ground for fast-evolving organisms, such as fungi. Another problem is the increasingly widespread use of antifungal treatments, leading to fungicide resistance.

The use of pesticides and toxic chemicals are increasing exponentially across the world, causing havoc to our health, the soil, polluting water sources, the air, animals and plants.

Industrial agriculture, including cattle farming, soybean, palm oil, sugar cane, corn, wheat, GMOs, monoculture production, is responsible for the deforestation of rainforests, the Cerrado, and many other parts of the world, causing destruction and degradation.

In Brazil, 2.8% of landowners own over 56% of all arable land, and 50% of smallholder farms have access to only 2.5% of the land. Overall, the land is in the hands of a small number of industrial farms.

We must rethink the way we grow our food and we all have the right to access nutritious and healthy food and decide what we eat.

Digital Farming

*Photo 225876642 © Andrey Popov | Dreamstime.com*

The agribusiness sector spends vast amounts on research and development, making it extremely hard for smaller companies to compete with them, capitalising on patent protection and intellectual property rights.

Why? Because they can!

Patent protection and intellectual property is another issue that should be catching everyone’s attention.

Giant tech companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, among others, entered the food sector focusing on power, control and profit. Small farmers and local food systems are struggling, as they can’t afford to use this high tech data gathering technology. They are also located in remote areas where these types of services can’t reach.

We can see an increasing movement of powerful integration and control between the companies that are supplying products to farmers, such as tractors, drones, pesticides, etc., and the tech giants. They feed and control farmers with information, and at the same time have direct access to consumers.

The aim is to integrate millions of farmers into a wide centrally controlled network by encouraging and forcing them to buy their products. This digital infrastructure is run by platforms developed by tech companies that run cloud services.

Fujitsu farm workers, located just outside Hanoi, carry smartphones supplied by the company, which monitors their every single movements, productivity, the amount of hours they work, etc., all stored on the company’s cloud. This is extremely worrying, as this practice could easily lead to labour exploitation.

Similar to Fujitsu, other companies investing heavily on this type of digital farming platforms include Microsoft’s Azure FarmBeats, Bayer’s Fieldview, BASF’s Xarvio, Syngenta’s CropWise, Yara’s Yaralrix and Olam’s OFIS, Olam Farmer Information System.

It’s essential to point out the extent of data gathering these platforms are capable of, including real time data and analysis on the farmers soil condition and water, crops growth, pests and diseases monitoring, weather, humidity, climate change, tractor monitoring, etc.

Some of these corporations are also trying to eliminate the “middlemen” by selling directly to consumers, which may be attractive proposition to many, if the idea is mainly to help farmers and small vendors directly, but somehow they may use digital platforms to increase their pricing power over farmers.

An important question we must ask these companies, regulators and our governments: who controls all this data, what do they do with it and who gives the advice?

The influence a few powerful corporations have in food governance must be scrutinised. Governments should be leading in the field of food security and not leaving it in the hands of those that put profit over longevity of life. It may seem a drastic change to the world as we know it, but it may be the only way to bring back a balance in the global food system and secure our quality of life and ultimately our survival.

Seeds of Hope for the Global Food Systems and Biodiversity Crises

Monica Piccinini

31 May 2022

According to the United Nations projections, the world population will increase to 8.5 billion by 2030, as humanity faces one of their biggest challenges, food insecurity. Almost 193 million people in 53 countries suffered acute food insecurity in 2021.

Major producers around the world need to turn away from the damaging industrial agrochemicals and pesticides that are magnifying the current issues and explore new innovative techniques to ensure the world’s food security for the future.

Approximately USD 44tn of economic output – more than half of global annual GDP – is moderately or highly reliant on natural capital. Yet, humans have already transformed more than 70% of the Earth’s land area from its natural state, causing unparalleled environmental degradation and contributing significantly to global warming, according to UNCCD Global Land Outlook latest report.

“Our health, our economy, our well-being depends on land. Our food, our water, the air we breathe are all coming from the land, at least partially,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, in a call with reporters. “Humanity has already altered 70 percent of the land. This is a major, major figure.”

If degradation of the land keeps increasing at this rate, scientists predict that there will be large-scale food supply disruption, increase in biodiversity loss, extinction, more zoonotic diseases and decline human health, giving rise to poverty, hunger and pollution.

“Time is short, and the situation is dire,” said Qu Dongyu, the Direct-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). He added there needed to be a “transformation of agrifood systems to be more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable”.

Agroecology & Biocontrols VS Industrial Agriculture & Pesticides

The world’s industrial food systems haven’t found a solution to the food and biodiversity crises yet, mainly due to the fact that the solution may not appeal to the agribusiness giants, including the agrochemical industry, governments and world development banks, who usually seem to set the agenda and policies for the sector.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Public Development Banks invest about $1.4tn per year in the agriculture and food sector.

A report by the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), ‘Who Will Feed Us?’, mentions that small-scale producers provide food to 70% of the world, while using only 25% of the resources.

After all, there’s a solution to these crises available, a solution that serves people’s interest and the environment, instead of agribusiness corporations, public development banks and governments. We should be supporting agroecology as the solution to the food and biodiversity crises.

According to UNFSS, we don’t need “sustainable intensification”, “climate-smart agriculture” or ‘nature-positive solutions,” which often greenwash corporate agendas. Millions of smallholder farmers, fishermen, pastoralists, agricultural and rural workers, and entire indigenous communities practice agroecology, a way of life and a form of resistance to an unfair economic system that puts profit before life.

Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN-UK) are the only UK charity focused solely on tackling the problems caused by pesticides and promoting safe and sustainable alternatives in agriculture, urban areas, homes and gardens. PAN-UK promotes agroecological practices, guiding and supporting farmers across the world.

Agroecology practices include putting farmers first, promoting soil health, biodiversity and natural ecosystem function, integrating science with knowledge and practice, promoting complexity over simplicity, minimising waste and optimising energy.

According to PAN-UK, less than 0.1% of pesticides applied for pest control reach their target pests (Pimental, 1995). Replacing chemicals that cause harm to our health and biodiversity, including soil degradation, is essential. Agroecology improves farmers’ profitability, yield, health, food security, and better opportunities for women farmers.

Pesticides can damage our health, biodiversity, wildlife, pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, soil, plants and everything else it touches. It’s also the cause of suicide and accidental deaths mainly in the global south. These toxic chemicals must be replaced with biological control or biopesticides.

Biocontrol

Biological control, or natural control, is a component of an integrated pest management strategy. It’s the reduction of pest populations by natural enemies, biological control of insects, weeds and plant diseases. Biocontrol is safer for the end-user and the environment.

The approval process and authorisation of innovative biocontrol is still slow, complex and differs from country to country. There is an urgent need to rethink data requirements on risk assessments and also create a worldwide integrated and simplified regulatory system, so every country is on the same page. This would also facilitate trade between countries and at the same time help to reverse biodiversity loss globally.

“We need a strong voice lobbying for biocontrols at the highest levels of government”, mentioned Nick Mole, PAN-UK policy officer at the World BioProtection Awards 2022.

Since Brexit, the UK’s deregulation plans on pesticides and GMO food have caused some concern, including possible free trade agreements with countries with lower food standards. The UK population may be consuming products with high level of pesticides, including unlabelled genetically engineered foods that may be available as early as 2023. Are we prepared to accept this?

“The indirect consequence is that people are starving in Africa because we are eating more and more organic products”, said, Erik Fyrwald, the CEO of Chinese-owned agrochemical giant Syngenta, to NZZ. This statement showed his opposition to organic farming.

Syngenta produces pesticides and GM seeds. The company’s Huddersfield factory exported a staggering 12,000 tonnes of the herbicide Paraquat and others in 2020. Paraquat was banned for use in the UK since 2007, as it’s been linked to be lethal to humans causing kidney failure, liver damage, DNA damage, Parkinson’s disease and death.

A very interesting move from Syngenta Crop Protection AG is their recent acquisition of two products, NemaTrident® and UniSpore®, from UK-based biocontrol technology developer Bionema. Is this a sign that change may be under way?

With the right support from governments, farmers are keen to accept more sustainable solutions to protect their crops, retailers and the public are open and interested in healthier products and protecting the environment, therefore legislators should be on their side facilitating this process, turning this into a win-win situation.

This is time for corporations, scientists, environmentalists, activists, farmers, growers, the public, governments, legislators, regulators, and the entire world to come together and accept that change is essential to our survival and it must happen now!

Climate Change – Inaction May Prove Fatal to Humanity

Monica Piccinini

22 Aug 2021

Humanity has been in denial for decades, avoiding the truth about the implications of its complex relationship with nature. A toxic, turbulent and abusive liaison based on constant exploitation. Eventually, a break up is imminent!

As human population numbers have grown and with it consumption, we have seen the correlated demand in areas of food, living space as well as demand for luxury items created by commerce. At the heart, there is a very basic human desire for ‘more’. Populations across the world are now interconnected in a way few would imagine, therefore creating an environmental impact most choose to conveniently ignore.

An individual in the Western Northern Hemisphere seeking a never ending supply of fresh exotic vegetables, fruit and meat from half way around the globe at an ever decreasing price. For all those products to be on the consumer’s plate, it will have passed through an incredibly efficient, yet troublesome system.

From high production farming techniques driving the destruction of natural flora, fauna and land exploitation, to the use of pesticides, distribution from one country to another by lorries, planes and ships with huge carbon footprints, all managed by profit oriented distribution companies operating on a global scale. The simple desire of a consumer wanting more products at bargain costs has created a significant ecological footprint with dramatic consequences.

The interconnections between our global systems and social fabrics are very sensitive and easily interrupted. The world has had a taste of such disruption with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the even bigger issues of climate change and biodiversity loss are upon us and we can’t afford to turn a blind eye to, nor try to separate them, as they are all interconnected.

The reality is that the pace of destruction is faster than we had ever predicted. Unless we address the critical situation we have created, and put our house in order, we may be homeless and face a grim future.

“2021 must be the year to reconcile humanity with nature”, said António Guterres, the UN secretary general, in an address to the One Planet Summit of global leaders in Paris last January.

We have seen how much the emergence of a pandemic can cost us and how quickly it can affect businesses, the global economy, and our physical and mental health. Climate change is one of the primary drivers of biodiversity loss, which is a key driver of emerging infectious diseases. Investing in ecological measures that can help future pandemics is much lower than the cost of a pandemic.

One-fifth of the world’s countries are at risk of their natural ecosystems collapsing because of the destruction of their habitats and wildlife, according to Swiss Re. Food, air, clean water, and flood protection have already been damaged by human activity.

According to the OECD, the total economic value to society of biodiversity and ecosystem services is estimated to be as much as USD 140 trillion per year and over half of the world’s GDP (USD 44 trillion) is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services.

The recently released 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, IPCC, is a stark warning that humanity will not be able to limit global warming, unless we take rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The top major green house gas emitters in the world are China, United States, India and Russia. China, Brazil, Australia and Russia’s current energy policies will prompt to an astonishing 5C temperature rise.

At 1.5C of global warming, we will see significant and unprecedented changes to the weather across all regions, but at 2C of global warming, the results could be catastrophic and irreversible, with heat extremes, heavy precipitation, marine heat waves, reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost, agricultural and ecological droughts.

We have already seen the impact of climate change across the globe with fires, floods, draughts, hurricanes, etc. In Brazil, the worst drought in nearly a century, followed by extreme cold temperatures, has been reported, affecting heavily Brazil’s farming. Deforestation is considered as one of the main causes.

As world population is predicted to increase to 9.7 billion by 2050, food demand will intensify, putting pressure on the land. We have already exploited more than a third of the world’s land area to crop and livestock production, affecting the lives of thousands of species as well as the land. At least 60% of the world’s agricultural area is dedicated to cattle ranching, making up to only 24% of the world’s meat consumption.

According to a projection by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, PBL, the area of land under agriculture could increase from 35% to 39% by 2050. Industrial agriculture is one such villain responsible for degradation of the land, water, and ecosystems, high green house gas emissions, biodiversity loss, hunger and nutrition deficiencies, as well as obesity and diet-related diseases.

“We are facing acute, interconnected crises – hunger, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, growing inequality and poverty. What we need are real solutions, not more greenwashing from agribusiness. Real solutions – public regulation for agroecology and Food Sovereignty – require dismantling corporate power, redistributing resources, re-localising food systems and ensuring small scale producers have control. Food is a human right not a commodity”, said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, from Friends of the Earth International.

Global agribusiness giants not only control the market price farmers get, but also what we eat, not to mention their contribution to poor health, food waste, soil erosion and soil acidification due to the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, wildlife destruction, ground water pollution, disease outbreaks, death, hunger and food insecurity, deforestation and climate change. According to the Climate Land Use Alliance, commercial agriculture drives 71% of tropical deforestation, posing serious risks to our global forests and climate.

According to the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services, IPBES, half a million terrestrial species of animals and plants may already be doomed into extinction. Up to one fifth of wild species are at risk of extinction this century due to climate change. Over 25% of forests have been permanently cleared. Since 1970, the global abundance of vertebrates has declined by 68% and since 1700, 90% of global wetlands have been lost.

The degradation of our oceans, soil, rivers, corals, can take decades, if not centuries to recover, and in some cases this destruction may already be irreversible.

Governments across the globe have made many commitments with the intent to tackle climate change. The commitments included the 2011 deadline to decrease emissions by 4%, the 2015 deadline to decrease it by 5%, and the 2020 deadline with the promise to decrease emissions by 10% each year. It has been a total failure and they have missed every single deadline. In the meantime, global emissions keep increasing.

“We have to reduce emissions far more rapidly than we are today. We have to leave fossil fuels in the ground, we have to remove the green house gases we have already put into the atmosphere that are creating this crisis today and into the future, and then to buy time while we manage those two processes. Then we also need to refreeze the Arctic. I don’t think it’s ridiculous, we have at least half a dozen of processes we’ve been looking at (Marine Cloud Brightening Technique)…. We don’t have the time we need to reduce emissions…buying time becomes essential”, said Sir David King, Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) at a Chanel 4 interview last July.

Humanity has to urgently re-think its relationship with nature. Not only we have the responsibility to address the current ecological crises we face, but also try to understand how we got here.

Will science and technology be able to solve the climate change and biodiversity loss crises?

“What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion… More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.” – Lynn White’s 1967 article.

This is the time of serious commitment not only from our world leaders, but also from each one of us. It’s our responsibility to get involved and put pressure on our governments, businesses and policy makers across the world and demand total transparency and urgent action!

Global Food Crisis

Monica Piccinini

26 Jan 2021

A radical and collective rethink is required to re-engineer many of humanities core living systems, if we are to sustain our existence on the planet. With the global population having grown from 6.1 billion to 7.7 billion in 20 years, demand on the world’s resources is at breaking point.

Two powerful forces are magnifying each other’s effects, creating a hurricane, which will leave devastation in its path. These forces are not military or subversive in nature, they are basic human instincts; to feed ourselves and our families with healthy nutritious food, and the human desire for easy access to more food, more clothes, more products and more money.

The voracious demand of the worlds growing consumer base is fuelling and incentivising commercial greed, which in turn is feeding the demand within the world’s population. A tornado that is spinning faster and faster and getting bigger, as our population gets larger and older.

Less scrupulous organisations and individuals knowingly cut corners and standards to deliver more to more, at less and less. Often camouflaged in the respectable delivery of corporate profit and shareholder value. This is a race to the bottom, a race in which humanity will lose.

Industrial agriculture is one such villain responsible for degradation of the land, water, and ecosystems, high green house gas emissions, biodiversity loss, hunger and nutrition deficiencies, as well as obesity and diet-related diseases.

The world’s population is set to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, with huge concern on the need to ensure universal access to healthy food, but at the same time making sure food is produced in a sustainable way. Hunger and malnutrition is a result of the oligopoly control of the agrifood business supply chain. A high percentage of food is often lost along this supply chain before it even reaches the consumer.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, an estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019, putting them at greater risk of various forms of malnutrition and poor health. This forecast grew worse early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, with the World Food Programme (2020) warning on 21 April 2020 that the planet was facing a famine of “biblical proportions”.

More than 30 countries in the developing world, the UN agency cautioned, could experience widespread hunger, and 10 of those countries each already have more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation.

Countries need to realise the urgent need to support small-scale food producers, such as family farming and agroecology, adopt measures to address food price volatility, better market linkages and shorter supply chain, improving coordination between producers and consumers. Agroecology contributes to reduction of greenhouse emissions and builds farming that is more resilient to climate change.

Family farming represents 90 per cent of all farms globally, and produce 80 per cent of the world’s food in value terms, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO. Family farmers combined with the practice of agroecology could be key to addressing global food security, as well as the conservation of ecosystems, considering they have full government support through adequate policy, resources, services, programs and regulations and their production methods comply with environmental standards. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has produced a document, “The 10 Elements of Agroecology”, a guide to transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems, offering a unique approach to meeting significant increases in our food needs of the future.

It is evident the dominance exercised by mega-corporations over food systems. A few corporate food empires control the majority of the food we consume and their practices have caused a serious impact on our health, environment, and farming communities. Their production is carried out on mass scales, based on intensive use of agrochemicals, hormones and antibiotics. They prioritise profit above all else.

These global agribusiness giants not only control the market price farmers get, but also what we eat, not to mention their contribution to poor health, food waste, soil erosion and soil acidification due to the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, wildlife destruction, ground water pollution, disease outbreaks, death, hunger and food insecurity, deforestation and climate change. According to the Climate Land Use Alliance, commercial agriculture drives 71% of tropical deforestation, posing serious risks to our global forests and climate.

On a report of Mighty Earth, more than one million square kilometers of the planet have been cleared of their natural vegetation to grow soy, one of the primary ingredients of animal feed used to raise meat. More than three quarters of the world’s soy is used to feed livestock.

Cargill, Bunge, JBS, ADM – Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson are the World’s largest agribusiness companies. Cargill is a US privately held company, found in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill. It was named the “worse company in the world”, according to an astonishing Mighty Earth Report. The company has been involved in scandals that go from fatal food poisonings, agricultural pollution, deforestation, contamination, to allegations of child enslaved labour. This large corporation still manages to keep a very low profile.

“The people who have been sickened or died from eating contaminated Cargill meat, the child laborers who grow the cocoa Cargill sells for the world’s chocolate, the Midwesterners who drink water polluted by Cargill, the Indigenous People displaced by vast deforestation to make way for Cargill’s animal feed, and the ordinary consumers who’ve paid more to put food on the dinner table because of Cargill’s financial malfeasance — all have felt the impact of this agribusiness giant.” These are the words of former Member of Congress and Chairman of Mighty Earth, Henry A. Waxman.

Cargill, the UK’s largest soybean importer, has been linked to the deforestation of 61,260 hectares of forests in the Brazilian Amazon and the Cerrado since March 2019. Cargill provides chicken to the UK market via Avara, the company’s joint enterprise with Faccenda foods. They supply chicken to Tesco, Nando’s and McDonald’s.

“British consumers have been talking loud and clear – they don’t want to be complicit in destroying Brazil’s precious forests. However, supermarkets are failing to protect them from eating meat fed with forest-destroying soy, ”says Robin Willoughby, director of Mighty Earth UK. “We are urging the CEOs of Tesco PLC, J.Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Morrisons and Aldi UK to take immediate steps to stop the destruction of Brazil and abandon Cargill.”

Brazil’s Cerrado and the Amazon rainforest are not the only regions that have been affected by the exploitation of Cargill. The Gran Chaco region, 110 million hectare ecosystem, spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, faced burning of their fields to make way to genetically modified soy. Home to communities of Indigenous Peoples, including the Ayoreo, Chamacoco, Enxet, Guarayo, Maka’a, Manjuy, Mocoví, Nandeva, Nivakle, Toba Qom, and Wichi.

Cargill also helped drive destruction of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire’s forests to grow cheap cocoa, buying cocoa grown through the illegal clearing of protected forests and national parks as a standard practice. Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are the world’s two largest cocoa-producing countries. Many other countries across the world have also been affected by the greedy practices of Cargill.

“The agricultural sectors and livestock farming in particular must shift towards sustainability to enhance their contribution to food security, nutrition and healthy diets and build back better to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges”, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said on September 28, 2020, in his opening remarks to the 27th session of the Committee on Agriculture (COAG).

Many other factors affect the way our food is grown, such as the use of pesticides, which cause a huge impact on our health, soil, water and animal life. Chemicals considered harmful to our health, and also to the environment, have been sold by the world’s largest agrochemical companies: Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, and Corteva – members of Croplife International lobby group. These chemicals have been linked to increased cancer, liver disease, DNA damage, reproductive failure, endocrine disruption and also groundwater contamination, microbiome disruption, poisoning of birds, mammals, fish and bees. Although in European markets some of these dangerous products have already been banned, European companies can still produce and sell them to regions with lesser regulations.

Recently, the UK government has allowed farmers to use a poisonous bee-killing pesticide neonicotinoid thiamethoxam on beet crops, a chemical that has already been banned in the EU. Pesticides should be replaced with safer, agro-ecological and other appropriate non-chemical alternatives.

Another great concern is the fact that the largest technology companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, are now entering the food sector, where we have seen a strong relationship being formed between companies that supply farmers with pesticides, expensive machinery, drones, etc., and those who are in control of food distribution and collecting and storing data. Farmers are being pushed to use their mobile phone apps, which feeds them with data as well as monitors their every movement. It is worth pointing out that small farmers can’t afford this high tech data gathering technology.

The largest agribusiness companies all have apps that cover millions of hectares of farmland, supplying farmers with information in exchange for a discount on their products. One example is Bayer, the world’s largest pesticide and seed company, where its app is being used in the US, Europe, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. This digital infrastructure is run by platforms developed by tech companies that run cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The aim is to integrate millions of small farmers into a wide centrally controlled network, making it easier for corporations investing in agribusiness to control and profit by encouraging and forcing them to buy their products. Profit is definitely the main and only purpose of these global technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, as well as agrochemical corporations, such as Sygenta/Chem China, Basf, Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva, including the involvement of international institutions supporting digital agriculture such as AGRA, CGIAR, FAO and the World Bank.

There is no question that something needs to be done in order to ensure the protection of biodiversity by developing sustainable agricultural practices. By dismantling the power of large agribusiness corporations and reconstructing sustainable agri-food systems, a more reliable, secure and healthy world will be the place where we will be able to live in harmony with the environment, and where it will provide us with our very basic human right: food. We are facing an urgent call from Nature!

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