Intervention at FAOs the virtual event Joint Action on COVID-19 - Boosting our global food and agricultural response

Intervention on behalf of Nyéleni Europe & Central Asia Food Sovereignty Network at:

Ceyhan Temürcü

Tahtacıörencik Ecological Living Collective, Ankara-Turkey. 

FAO Regional High-Level Dialogue for Europe and Central Asia: Joint Action on COVID-19  - Boosting our global food and agricultural response, virtual event, 7 October 2020, 10:30 – 13:30 (CEST).

Event link: http://www.fao.org/europe/events/detail-events/en/c/1308398/

Youtube webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibiOnsoUDDk 

Intervening on behalf of Nyéleni Europe & Central Asia Food Sovereignty Network, I will try to reflect the views of small-scale food producers, including peasants, small-scale farmers, fishers and pastoralists, indigenous peoples and other people working in rural areas. 

These people, despite the ever increasing pressure and hostility from the corporate-driven industrial food system, continue to feed their communities and the majority of the planet's population in sustainable ways. As such, they continue to feed our hopes for a decent future for our children.

And these people, as well as waged workers in the food and agriculture sectors, have been gravely affected by confinement and lockdown measures during the pandemic, as were many socio-economically deprived groups in both rural and urban areas. 

Small-scale producers, rural communities and indigenous peoples had been facing hard-hitting problems even before the COVID-19 crisis, including denied or restricted access to resources, public services and markets, as well as aggressive grabbing of their lands and resources, and forced migration. These historic problems of systemic marginalization only aggravated since the pandemic started.

The forced shift  from local and territorial food systems to capitalist and industrial modes of production and distribution had terrible impacts all around the globe. It is now well documented that the industrial food system is too costly to the planet, with its dependence on fossil-fuels and synthetic chemicals, with its heavy exploitation of soil, water, genetic resources and labour, as well as its health costs. In fact, it has brought the whole life on the planet to the brink of destruction. 

We also know that the expansion of industrial animal farming into natural habitats is one of the key factors in zoonotic disease outbreaks. The title of one of the key priority areas of FAO’s COVID-19 Recovery Programme - "Preventing the next zoonotic pandemic" - actually enunciates the crisis-prone nature of the industrial system.

Hence, when thinking about responding to post COVID emergencies, we should never forget that the profit-driven, exploitative industrial food system is the very source of crises in food and agriculture.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel. What we need is to protect and support local, resilient food systems, and work together for a global transition in line with principles of peasant agroecology and people's food sovereignty at every level. 

We, people who produce and feed the world in sustainable ways, have the knowledge, the wisdom and the skills to realize this systemic change. During the most acute days of the COVİD-19 food crisis, many small-scale food producers quickly adapted to new conditions, continued to feed their communities with fresh, healthy, nutritious food, and also found creative solutions to connect directly with wider populations. In our PGS group some producers even offered free food for all in need. Many cooperatives and food communities continued to distribute food in conformity with safety measures. CSA groups and producers’ organisations operated more actively than ever, with their safe methods under pandemic conditions. People have self-organized to create solidarity funds for the most vulnerable. 

Farmers and responsible consumers proved that they are a pillar of strength in our societies, and that they can expand their solutions once they are granted space to do so. 

Will FAO’s COVID-19 Response Program contribute to a systemic change? 

The documents of the Response Programme mention many of the world's ecological, economical and social related to food and agriculture. But often only the symptoms or effects, without enough analytic depth or courage to look at the real roots. 

As it stands now, the Programme also lacks modalities or guidelines for supporting the primary producers of food. It remains to be seen if it will enable locally-adapted mechanisms for supporting small-scale producers, in collaboration with social movements and CSOs. 

Documents mention the precarious situation of some rural populations with primarily informal economic activities. Will the measures of humanitarian aid only serve to sustain the deprived and dependent conditions of these populations? Will they use arguments of ‘employment’ only to include their labour or products in profit-driven, formal economic sectors? Or will they secure and promote these populations’ access to local resources, creating conditions for decent livelihoods, enhanced life qualities and needs-driven innovations?

Is it not odd that ‘agroecology’ is not mentioned even once in the documents? Will the Programme use the narrative of ‘food systems transformation’ as a pretext to promote industrial agribusiness with huge external costs, sacrificing genuinely sustainable and resilient ecological systems and social structures? Or will it support rural communities and smallholders in much cheaper, easier to implement and climate-friendly ways, respecting the rights of the people? 

If the latter is chosen, social movements, CSOs and people who are in the center of the food production will be willing and ready to support the processes of implementation in all possible ways. 

In particular, we propose that the Response Programme calls for public policies and implements measures which

• guarantee that peasants, indigenous people and other rural communities have continuous and stable access to land, seeds, water, and other natural resources for production, as well as local and territorial markets,
  
  

• promote legislation that protects small-scale farmers and other smallholders, including sanitary norms adapted and appropriate to small scale food systems,
  
  

• promote local, open air farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA), both which have proven to adapt very well to safety measures under pandemic conditions,
  
  

• promote public procurement for schools, hospitals, prisons and other public institutions, from small-scale farms and local primary producers,
  
  

• promote needs-driven innovation and nature-friendly agricultural technologies accessible to smallholders,
  
  

• do not compromise from a human-rights based approach, respecting and defending:
  
  

• peasants’ rights as adopted by the UN in December 2018,
  
  

• rights for agricultural and food workers for secure and dignified working conditions and living wages,
  
  

• indigenous people's rights to land, shelter and livelihood,
  
  

• everyone's right to access quality, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.
  
  

• ensure gender equality and support opportunities for development for the youth in rural areas,
  
  

• guarantee the rights of agricultural and food workers, securing them dignified working conditions and living wages,
  
  

• strengthen legal and safe channels for third-country workers, facilitate the regularization of migrants, and support the implementation of equal treatment provisions for all categories of workers in rural areas,
  
  

• Strengthen participatory governance by fostering smallholders inclusion in debates and decision making processes at all levels, and by enhancing accountability mechanisms.
  
  

Finally, we invite FAO to intensify its efforts for a common policy aimed at a systemic change in food systems, respecting the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) consensus, and with closer collaboration with local communities, social movements and CSOs included in the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM).