We Must Degrow the 'Corporate Food Regime': Food Sovereignty Advocate [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Tuesday, September 09, 2014
by Common Dreams

We Must Degrow the 'Corporate Food Regime': Food Sovereignty Advocate

The industrial system in place has 'fetishized growth' but has not addressed hunger, according to Food First's Eric Holt-Giménez

by Andrea Germanos, staff

It's necessary to "degrow" the "corporate food regime" that over last five decades has impoverished the climate, water resources, local communities and crop diversity, and has not solved the problem of hunger.

This was the argument made by Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First, an organization whose mission is to work towards ending hunger by bringing about food justice, at a presentation Friday at the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, which took place in Leipzig, Germany.

Holt-Giménez made his address via video during a session entitled "The food challenge. Struggling for just and ecological food systems."

The food sector has been growth-focused, but this has not stopped the problem of hunger, Holt-Giménez said, pointing the example of 2008, which was a year of record harvests and record profits for agricultural giants like Cargill and ADM amidst record hunger.

"Clearly something has to change, and simply growing more food isn't going to solve the problem of hunger," he said. "This contradiction runs even deeper when we realize that most of the hungry people in the world are farmers. They're peasant farmers," most of whom are women, he added.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/09/10/un-bankruptcy-vote-could-stop-vulture-funds