Industrialised agriculture, intensive animal husbandry methods, and overfishing are destroying traditional farming, poisoning the planet and all living beings. Subsidised exports, artificially low prices, constant dumping, and even some food aid programmes are increasing food insecurity and making people dependent on food they are unable to produce. The depletion of global grain stocks has increased market instability, to the detriment of small producers. Family farmers and vulnerable people are forced under International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies to pay the price of structural adjustment and debt repayment. National policies too often neglect these same groups.
Official corruption erodes all efforts to achieve food security.
The proliferation of war, civil conflict, and environmental degradation is a growing source of hunger and food insecurity. Hunger and malnutrition are most severe in cases where these combine with natural disasters. We propose a new model for achieving food security that calls into question many of the existing assumptions, policies and practices. This model, based on decentralisation, challenges the current model, based on a concentration of wealth and power, which now threatens global food security, cultural diversity, and the very ecosystems that sustain life on the planet. We highlight six key elements of this alternative model, along with steps toward its development and implementation.