FOLLOWING a request from the United Nations plenary meeting of December 16 2021, the special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhiri, has submitted an interim report to the general assembly that includes an examination of the issues emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on food security and nutrition.

In his summary, he states that there is a food crisis, yet most national governments have not come together with a substantive, international response. His report highlights structural constraints and outlines how a just transition to agroecology could provide a way forward.

According to Fakhiri’s well-researched paper, hunger has been on the rise since 2015. In 2021, between 702 million and 828m people were affected, 103m more than during the 2019-20 period and 46m more than in 2020.

The gender gap in food security which had grown in 2020 widened further from 2020 to 2021, driven largely by differences in the Latin America/Caribbean and Asia regions. In 2021, 31.9 per cent of women were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 per cent of men.

Inequality has increased markedly during Covid with the wealth of billionaires and corporate profits soaring to record levels, particularly in the food sector where the former’s earnings were increasing to the tune of a $1 billion every two days. In 2021, food trader Cargill made almost $5bn in net income, its largest surplus in a 156-year history.

The pandemic can be attributed to the failure of global governance. It is not only a health problem, but also a human rights challenge, the impact of which is determined by poor leadership, socioeconomic inequality, systemic racism and structural discrimination.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought the food agenda to the fore, as 26 countries source at least 50 per cent of their wheat from the two warring states. Nevertheless, the spike in grain and cooking oil prices is not the result of shortages per se but rather because hoarders, traders and speculators have taken advantage of the situation.

The principal reason that the world is in a food crisis is because of a failure to co-operate and co-ordinate efforts to alleviate it, thus enabling the growing influence of agribusiness and commodity speculation.

Indeed, agribusiness has taken advantage of the pandemic to profiteer and has used its financial power to bully and lobby governments into halting measures that further the right to food and promote healthy eating.

Consequently, existing inequalities have been worsened by the pandemic. Even before the onset of Covid-19, food and agricultural labourers experienced the highest incidences of working poverty and food insecurity.

In 2021, the number of children in child labour increased to 160m of which 70 per cent were in agriculture. But despite today’s unprecedented food crisis, the world awaits a multilateral actionable commitment on behalf of UN member states to realise the right to food.

In order to improve what is a dire situation, the rapporteur suggests that the international legal framework for the right to food should be updated to include trade policies informed by food sovereignty and labour rights instead of being simply about buying and selling edible commodities.

However, states are faced with structural constraints that make additional spending unlikely. In response to the pandemic, they have all borrowed more, causing their debts to surge at their fastest pace in five decades and lifting poor countries’ debt payments to their highest levels since 2001.

Therefore, as food prices rise, countries are faced with the choice of feeding people or servicing debt. It is apparent that the prevailing international financial system, dominated by rich Western states, impedes the ability of governments to meet their obligations in feeding their people.

Since the 1950s the world’s food system has been gradually industrialised. Productivity has not been measured in terms of human and environmental health but exclusively in terms of output and economic growth. It has fostered a dependency on fossil fuel-based machines and chemical inputs, displacing long-standing regenerative and integrated farming practices.

Despite a 30 per cent increase in food production since the mid-1960s, malnutrition is rife — thus illustrating that the issue is not a lack of food but inequality and other systemic impediments. The fundamental problem is not that farmers’ access to chemical fertilisers has been depleted by war in Ukraine, it is that so many farmers rely on them in the first place.

Chemical fertilisers deplete nutrients from the soil and cause environmental harm through runoff into aquifers and water courses. In the short term, it is important that farmers have access to fertilisers, but in the long term the ultimate goal must be to wean them off.

Agroecology is defined as the application of ecological practices to agricultural systems and practices and in Fakhri’s view, is essential to fulfilling the right to food, adapting to climate change and increasing biodiversity. As an agricultural practice it is labour-intensive and encompasses a range of production techniques derived from local expertise that draws on immediately available resources.

The International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) is in broad support of the rapporteur with the proviso that there will have to be a just transition for agricultural workers and their families. In order for this to happen, the IUF says that it is essential that trade unions have a voice in the planning of the transition so that they are not left behind.

Secure green jobs with union representation should be paramount in a radical shift away from the current unequal and profit-driven system of endless production and consumption towards a more sustainable model where the concerns of workers and small producers are central.

Access to land and secure rights of tenure for those who work it are a prerequisite for the enjoyment of the right to food — and that means curbing corporate power. Food systems emit approximately one third of the world’s greenhouse gasses, driven by intense agriculture and export-oriented food policies.

The “ABCD group,” so named for the alphabetic convenience of its initials, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and (Louis) Dreyfus, account for between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of global grain trade and four agrochemical companies, including Bayer and BASF, control 60 per cent of the global seed market and 75 per cent of the pesticides market.

Ther priority is shareholder profits not public good. Moreover, states are constrained in their actions as regards food policy because of World Trade Organisation edicts limiting domestic support and public stockholding, together with intellectual property rights favouring transnational corporations.

It is abundantly clear that existing capitalist modes of production and terms of trade enforced by Western-dominated international institutions are largely to blame for people not having enough to eat.

Fakhri’s excellent report, which can be found on the UN website, is essential reading for anyone wanting to gain a clearer understanding of how the system works. Nonetheless, as Karl Marx famously said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is however to change it.”