This proposal seeks to transform food systems, restore ecosystems, and guarantee the right to food. Agroecology and food sovereignty are pathways out of the extractive violence of industrialized food and farming systems, providing a policy framework for building resilient and equitable food systems that sustain both human well-being and planetary health over the long term. While industrialized systems have served to maximize both yields and profits, they have done so at great societal expense, estimated to be between $10 trillion and $19.8 trillion annually in externalized costs. Agroecology seeks to solve several food system problems simultaneously: soil infertility and degradation; disappearance of biodiversity; livelihood insecurity; economic precarity for food system workers; malnutrition (including in producers’ families); degradation of water supplies, exposure of workers to toxins; lack of marketing options; and constraints on producers by the agribusinesses that produce and sell agricultural inputs, market food, and affect political decisions. Industrialized food systems are widely recognized to be responsible for a host of environmental, economic, social, cultural, and health problems; they extract health and resources from communities and natural environments. Agroecology, when viewed as a framework for food systems transformation, is the most viable alternative and can reduce or eliminate most of the negative effects of industrialized food systems. Despite considerable evidence of its success, agroecology is not yet widely implemented and faces significant barriers that arise from a policy environment that predominantly supports industrial agriculture. In response, this proposal recommends the development of an agroecology plan for countries or regions; public investment in agroecology and local food systems, and divestment from industrialized agricultural subsidies; protection of farmers’ rights and participatory governance by farmers and Indigenous people; securing tenure to arable land for farmers and especially women; breaking up corporate control of diets, markets, inputs; and creating territorial markets and farmer cooperatives linking institutional food procurement with local agroecological production.
Policies must also bolster Indigenous Rights to land, culture and territory; incorporate agroecology into educational curriculum at primary, secondary and postsecondary levels; provide social security for farmers to support farm livelihoods; and redirect subsidies for industrial agriculture to agroecological farm and food system redesign. Additionally, policies should support research comparing the outcomes of agroecological and food sovereignty practices with those of industrialized practices with respect to ecological integrity and environmental attributes, social cohesion, livelihoods, cultural continuity, and human health. Agroecological and food sovereignty policies have already been enacted in several countries and included in national constitutions. If implemented, these policies will significantly reduce ecological pressure and exploitation (especially soil and water degradation, loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions); redistribute power to farmers and communities and enable governments to meet human needs without depending on GDP growth. Agroecology will eliminate fossil fuel inputs in the production of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and food sovereignty will re-localize food systems. By reducing dependence on fossil fuels and long-distance food transportation, producers and food systems will be far less vulnerable to oil and input supply disruptions caused by conflict and geopolitics.
