As our recent Pathways to Equitable Food Systems report shows, our food systems are deeply flawed. High levels of food insecurity, including in so-called ‘advanced’ countries, low-quality diets linked to both micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related obesity and non-communicable diseases, and food production that pushes environmental systems and processes beyond safe boundaries have become normalized.
The need for urgent changes is widely recognised, but the search for solutions is characterized by tensions between fundamentally different visions of future food systems.
Part of a series on economic democracy. Read the series introduction.
In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission set out five strategies guided by scientific targets as the basis for a ‘Great Food Transformation’, along with a call for widespread “multi-sector, multi-level action” to deliver these changes. The premise of such approaches is that addressing complex systemic challenges cannot be achieved only through technical fixes, but requires approaches that brings people together to plan and act in new ways. Yet, although a great number of multi-sector (civil society, government, business) partnerships for food security and nutrition already exist – their potential to catalyze more sustainable food systems is unproven and their legitimacy is increasingly questioned.
I have been working with multi-stakeholder partnerships in food and agriculture since 2015. Despite what I see as a clear need for solutions that cut across cut across sectoral, national or public/private/civil society boundaries, this experience points to inherent challenges which are difficult to reconcile. How to balance participants’ self-interest with a broader collective interest, where these do not align? How to avoid that the deliberative processes often at the heart of multi-stakeholder interactions sideline relevant conflicts, especially where power resources are unequally distributed.
Economic democratisation
More recently, I have also been studying the democratization of economic power. With colleagues, we mapped 44 distinct examples of ‘ordinary’ people having a real influence in economic processes affecting their lives. From these examples, we identified five conditions that influenced the degree to which participation in economic governance was being achieved. These included the quality of deliberation and the distribution of knowledge and authority as key power resources. We also found important challenges rooted in structural inequalities, some of which were familiar from my work with multi-stakeholder approaches. The risk, for example, that certain perspectives were being under-represented or sidelined; the potential to perpetuate entrenched positions on the part of some groups.
Systems in tension
Since the Lancet Commission set out its findings, tensions between distinct visions for food system transformation have been erupting in multiple spaces. Indian farmers, labourers and supporters have mobilized against deregulation of food prices and storage, growing corporate power and the marketisation of local food systems. Mexican citizens have protested against corn imports and corporate-led convenience stores. Dutch farmers are rallying against the country’s climate policies. And foreign food retailers in countries ranging from Colombia to Zambia have faced hostility for their failure to source locally.
At the global level, protests have been directed at the UN itself. In September 2021, the UN held the Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), with the stated aim of supporting an urgent transition to more sustainable and equitable food systems. It was met by a three-day protest called the “Counter-Mobilization to Transform Corporate Food Systems” by farmers, producers and activists who had been left out of – or chose to exclude themselves – from the UNFSS. They argued that UNFSS was dominated by global corporations and the World Economic Forum, which had recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with the UN. The UNFSS was also seen to be undermining another UN process, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which had mechanisms to engage Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’, as well as the Private Sector.
The question
It is clear from these examples that people within civil society, social movements and communities are demanding the right to participate in decisions about the future of our food systems. As in other sectors, these movements have been effective at delaying or blocking investments or policy changes which are seen to drive yet more industrialised and marketized food systems. The question is under what conditions can multi-sector approaches work with these constituencies to move beyond stalemate towards transformative change?
Answering that question would require finding processes to harness and use tensions productively; as powerful and rapid drivers of transformative change. Similar questions have been explored in studies on deliberative democracy, but this has been very much rooted in political contexts and work is needed to translate this to the political sphere. In a collaboration with 2Scale, an incubator of inclusive agribusiness partnerships, we have started applying these ideas to understand the character of deliberation in these agricultural partnerships. Similar experimentation is now needed with approaches involving a wider range of sectors designed to deliver better responses to problems in our broader food systems.
