Food Sovereignty Activists Debunk Common Myths about Global Hunger

Last month Change.org ran a post about African farmers who are rejecting the Gates Foundation's anti-hunger efforts, instead demanding more control over their food system and agriculture research. Comments from Change.org readers got us thinking: why are we still facing this problem in the first place?

There are more than 1.2 billion people worldwide that suffer from hunger. Fortunately, there are thousands of organizations and a Millennium Development Goal devoted to doing something about it.  But why, despite this global effort, haven't activists and aid organizations all over the world made any progress in ending world hunger? Is anyone working on a more 'holistic' solution to hunger?

One way to promote an end to world hunger is to support the food sovereignty movement. The idea, conceived of by Via Campesina and championed by the folks at the Institute for Food & Development Policy (also known as Food First), is that all peoples have the right to define and control their own food and agriculture systems. Food sovereignty goes way beyond the concept of food security (making sure everyone has enough to eat) and tries to dismantle the unjust systems that create food insecurity in the first place.

Food sovereignty posits a critique of the many anti-hunger advocates and organizations still organizing their policies and projects around a faulty understanding of hunger. The Gates Foundation, which we wrote about last month, is a prime example.

Ten years ago Food First published a book called World Hunger: 12 Myths, outlining a number of myths which still pervade our thinking about hunger today. A few of them:

1. People are hungry because there is not enough food to go around.

A cursory investigation into the amount of food Americans throw away each day (enough to fill up the Rose Bowl), is ample evidence that this is simply not true. The problem lies both in the distribution of food, but more importantly of land, wealth and power. Proponents of the industrial agriculture system claim that without factory farming, genetically modified seeds and gas-guzzling tractors, there's no way everyone could eat. Increasing crop yields (through industrial technologies) continues to be the main goal of agriculture research."But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food," say the people at Food First.

2. Overpopulation causes hunger.

The overpopulation argument assumes that if global population were reduced, there would be more food to go around, and hunger would therefore be eliminated. This argument was first made popular in the early 19th century by Thomas Malthus, who argued that population growth unmatched by an equal expansion in agricultural resources was the cause of poverty. This sentiment is alive and well today, but while the regions with the most rapidly growing populations also have the  largest hunger problems, hunger and unsustainable population growth both have poverty and inequality at their roots. Improving the living standards and decreasing inequality is the best way to reduce fertility and world hunger.

3. The free market is the solution to world hunger.

A lot of anti-hunger advocates have now moved beyond just delivering food to starving people. There has, however, been an resurgence in the idea of market as a savior and increasingly anti-hunger programs focus on reducing market inefficiencies. If only we could get rid of all those government subsidies, marketing boards and weird regulations, the market would distribute food to everyone efficiently, right? Wrong. "The market's marvelous efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger," they write, "when purchasing power is widely dispersed." Instead, market liberalization has led to land consolidation, unstable price fluctuation and favoring export crop production over basic food production - none of which are good for ending hunger.

To keep up with the folks at Food First and their activism around food sovereignty and hunger, check out their action alerts page. Please also sign the petition to urge the Gates Foundation to rethink their role in eradicating hunger and make funding decisions based on a food sovereignty framework.

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