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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food must not be reduced to security by Ela R Bhatt

Food must not be reduced to security by Ela R Bhatt

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published Published on Dec 23, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 23, 2011

The world food system today is far too complex for common sense to understand. It raises many questions: If safe, nutritious food is a fundamental right, why are one billion people living with hunger? Why do farmers and farm workers remain starved/half-starved? Why are people in food-exporting countries living with hunger? If the value of annual global exports in agriculture products is in billions, why are agricultural labourers and farmers in the highest level of global poverty? More than half the world’s workforce is engaged in agricultural production — why, then, are their working conditions killing their well-being? Women farmers often complain: “The food we produce we do not eat, the food we eat we do not produce!” Something is fundamentally wrong in our approach to food and hunger.
 
Moreover, for people, food has a sense of belonging; of home. Food is many-layered; from the cosmos to livelihood to ritual to myth. It is our life’s culture. Therefore, it cannot be just reduced to security. Food security is the language of a state. That has been reduced to business and trade opportunity. One is the result of failed political economy, the other, failed morality.

Historically, farming was the beginning of human civilisation. Today, in India, the face of agriculture is female. Farmers’ lives are being threatened as subsistence is threatened. Diversity in agriculture is being destroyed.

We have to protect ways of life and livelihoods of the farming communities. To protect food security, we must protect the base of agriculture, small farmers, their produce, the locality of farming. We must protect food and food growers where the food grows. To protect food security, we must understand security needs autonomy that grants diversity that stems from locality. Autonomy, diversity and locality are the fundamentals of food security.

I wish to suggest my 100 Mile Principle, which stems from the ecology of food that we see being ruthlessly violated.

The 100 Mile Principle weaves decentralisation, locality, size and scale, to livelihood. What one needs for livelihood as material, energy and knowledge should stem from areas around us. Seed, soil, water are forms of knowledge that need to be retained locally. Security stems from local innovations, not distant imports. Let us begin the principle with our staple food. Essentially, the organic human link with nature has to be restored. The millenia-old link between production and consumption has to be recovered. Ultimately, nature as cosmology is the weave of life. Let us weave it tight.

The writer is the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA)


The Indian Express, 23 December, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/food-must-not-be-reduced-to-security/891039/


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