It‘s an important year for the global food security debate, and the current heated political arguments in the EU on the topic do not look promising. The European People’s Party, the biggest political group in the European Parliament, officially declared they want to end all greening policies for agriculture and almost all policies which protect or improve biodiversity. Now even French president Emanuel Macron, European commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo hold this position as well. It is a stance carefully prepared by powerful agrochemical corporations and their lobby agents. The main and fake argument they use since the war in Ukraine started is “we need to boost food production”.
To find out more about the issue of food security, EU Watchdog radio talked to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri. Fakhri presented a report on conflict and the right to food to the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council earlier this year.
In his report, Fakhri describes how different forms of violence in food systems harm people and generate the conditions that lead to human rights violations like hunger. Food systems not only produce food but also amplify and produce violence that makes people poorer, vulnerable and marginalised. He repeats that “hunger and food insecurity always are a result of political failure”, not an issue of production.
Fakhri also talks about the increasing wealth and power of food-sector billionaires, and the alarming trend of global corporations taking over UN policy processes. During today’s food crisis, transnational corporations in the agrifood sector are profiteering while people struggle and suffer as life gets harder.
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