Published on
Wednesday, April 07, 2021
byCommon Dreams
Six Months to Prevent a Hostile Takeover of Food Systems, and 25 Years to
Transform Them
A misguided technological revolution is about to sweep through food systems,
but civil society and social movements can stop it in its tracks.
byNick Jacobs
In this 2004 file picture a farmer sprays a soya beans transgenic plantation
in Mato Grosso do Sul, central Brazil. (Photo: Monalisa Lins/AFP via Getty
Images)
Imagine a world where algorithms are used to optimize growing conditions on
every fertile square metre of land. Where whole ecosystems are
re-engineered. Where drones and surveillance systems manage the farm. Where
farmers are forced off the land into e-commerce villages.
Imagine a world where food is treated like a strategic asset and food
transit routes are militarized. Where powerful governments and their
flag-bearer corporations control resources and food supplies across vast
economic corridors.
Imagine a world where many foods are grown in petri dishes, vats, and
bioreactors. Where people's eating habits are invisibly nudged using reams
of metadata they have unknowingly surrendered via digital wallets. Where AI
assistant apps decide on people's food intake based on genetic information,
family history, mood, and data readings from inside their waste bins and
digestive systems.
"Travel any further down the path laid by agribusiness, and the momentum
will soon be unstoppable."
This may sound like science fiction. But the "4th industrial revolution" is
already sweeping through food systems. For proof, we need look no further
than the changing complexion of the agri-food sector, where mergers and
market disruptions are occurring at a dizzying pace. E-commerce platforms
like Amazon and China's JD.com are now among the top ten retailers globally.
With agribusinessesincreasingly reliant on cloud, AI, and data processing
services, big tech firms like Amazon, Alibaba, Microsoft, Google, and Baidu
are moving into food production. Meanwhile, Blackrock and 4 other asset
management companies own 10-30% of the shares of the top agri-food firms.
With climate change, environmental breakdown, and pandemics wreaking havoc
on food systems over the coming years, the "silver bullet" solutions offered
by the new agri-food giants may prove irresistible to panicking
policymakers. This year's UN Food Systems Summit-arising from a partnership
between the UN and the World Economic Forum-will be a showcase for
corporate-led "solutions."
In other words, the keys of the food system are already being handed over to
data platforms, e-commerce giants, and private equity firms. This could mean
dismantling the diversified food webs that sustain 70% of the world's
population and provide environmental resilience. It could mean putting the
food security of billions of people at the mercy of high-risk AI-controlled
farming systems and opaque supply corridors.
And yet, there is nothing inevitable about this dystopian future. In
reality, divisions will grow among corporations and between companies,
workers, and consumers, as ecosystems refuse to be tamed, people refuse to
be nudged, technologies malfunction, and environmental and social tipping
points draw closer.
Farmers, food workers and their allies have recognized the crossroads we are
at. They are already organizing in new ways to defend their spaces, their
livelihoods, and their future-starting with mobilization around the Food
Systems Summit.
In scanning the landscape for clues about the next quarter century, we found
that what could be achieved by civil society and social movements is just as
"disruptive" as the plans of the agri-food giants. A "Long Food
Movement"-bringing together farmers, fishers, cooperatives, unions,
grassroots organizations and international NGOs-could shift $4 trillion from
the industrial chain to food sovereignty and agroecology, cut 75% of food
systems' GHG emissions, and deliver incalculable benefits to the lives and
livelihoods of billions of people over the next 25 years.
"Farmers, food workers and their allies have recognized the crossroads we
are at. They are already organizing in new ways to defend their spaces,
their livelihoods, and their future."
The challenge is vast, and many of the victories will be hard-won, from new
treaties to regulate and recall failing technologies, to shifting the $720
billion of annual producer subsidies towards agroecological farming and
territorial markets.
But most of the tools are in the hands of civil society and social
movements. Much can be achieved by amplifying existing approaches, linking
different struggles together across sectors, scales and strategic
differences, and thinking 5, 10 or even 20 years ahead.
Over a 25-year timeframe, huge progress could be made by multiplying the
farmer field schools and seed exchanges that underpin agroecological
systems; by sustaining the current trendlines towards local, regional, and
ethical purchasing and flexitarian diets; by developing "early listening
systems" and emergency food security blueprints so we are ready to act when
harvest failures, pandemics and other shocks hit; by deploying apps to
instantaneously decode negotiating texts, and to apprise consumers of the
'true cost' of their food; and even by syncing funding cycles and civil
society gatherings to make cross-sectoral collaboration the norm.
Both of these futures remain viable-but for how much longer? Travel any
further down the path laid by agribusiness, and the momentum will soon be
unstoppable. Once systems have been structured around specific production
models and technological trajectories, it is very difficult to change the
course. GMOs offer a cautionary tale: instead of rethinking
chemical-intensive monocultures in the face of widespread environmental and
social damage, the "green revolution" was followed by a "gene revolution"
that reinforced its logic.
We often hear that we have 10 harvests left before climate change becomes
unstoppable. We have may less than 5 years to prevent the full-scale
digitalization and automation of food systems, and only 6 months to prevent
corporate takeover of global governance at the Food Systems Summit. Neither
short-term actions nor long-term planning can wait. That's why we need a
Long Food Movement.
