{"id":4071,"date":"2021-08-12T16:14:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T08:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panap.net\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2021-08-12T16:14:53","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T08:14:53","slug":"the-toxicalliance-the-food-systems-summit","status":"publish","type":"panap_updates","link":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/updates\/the-toxicalliance-the-food-systems-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"The #ToxicAlliance & the Food Systems Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last month, peasant movements, Indigenous peoples and civil society organizations (CSOs) sent two strong messages to those in charge of the UN Food Systems Summit (UN FSS) at a Pre-Summit event in Rome: A corporate-driven<\/a> approach will not address the crises in our food systems. And neither will an alliance with CropLife International, the global trade association of the largest agrichemical, pesticide and seed companies.<\/p>\n

There is no hiding that Big Ag corporations are driven by bigger market gains and product sales, with dire impacts for people and the planet resulting. Each year, 385 million farmers and farmworkers<\/a> suffer from acute pesticide poisoning, pesticides are a major driver of the unprecedented collapse of insect populations and biodiversity loss, and these petroleum-derived products contribute to climate change.<\/p>\n

While that may seem devastating enough, industry\u2019s clear efforts to increase access to power in international policy arenas are also undermining democratic governance processes, and imperil the future of food systems worldwide.<\/p>\n

FAO proposes a #ToxicAlliance<\/strong><\/p>\n

In October 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced their intention to create a formal alliance with CropLife International. CropLife is made up of seven regional associations (America, Canada, Latin America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, Africa & the Middle East), with well over three hundred country-level associations and Big Ag member corporations.<\/p>\n

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Social movements immediately pushed back<\/a> with demands that FAO Director General Dongyu Qu not enter this #ToxicAlliance with the world\u2019s leading manufacturers of harmful and unsustainable agrichemical technologies, who all have long track records<\/a> of poisoning farmers, workers, food, air and water \u2014 and undermining food sovereignty.<\/p>\n

So far, Director General Qu has ignored mounting expressions of concern<\/a> about the alliance with CropLife. Similarly, the UN plowed forward<\/a> in the Summit with institutions that represent top-down, corporate, and biotech-driven approaches to addressing hunger in tow.<\/p>\n

The problem with the UN Food Systems Summit<\/strong><\/p>\n

CropLife is set on using the September Food Systems Summit to advance<\/a> the \u201crole innovation and technology can play in the sustainable intensification of agriculture\u201d \u2014 in other words, the ways that Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Corteva and other pesticide purveyors can push the most hazardous pesticides on communities across the world.<\/p>\n

Indeed, sitting at the leadership<\/a> of one of the UN FSS\u2019 Action Tracks is the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), and their donors include not only the biotech-driven Gates Foundation but also the pesticide company BASF. GAIN works on biofortification \u2014 a technology that depends on market-based crops \u201cfortified\u201d with just a handful of nutrients. This promotes a poor diet based on monocultures, with little nutritional diversity. Not to mention that several \u201cbiofortified\u201d crops in the pipeline are genetically modified. Alarmingly, one of them \u2014 Syngenta\u2019s GM vitamin A \u201cGolden Rice\u201d \u2014 has just been approved<\/a> for commercial propagation in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

By virtue of the UN\u2019s strategic partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF), CropLife members are among the many corporations that have been given even greater space and legitimacy through the Food Systems Summit to push discredited false solutions<\/a> to the food, biodiversity and climate crises, this time repackaged as \u201cinnovations\u201d and part of \u201cfood systems transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

CropLife and the cooptation of food systems transformation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The pesticide industry\u2019s narrative of food systems \u201ctransformation\u201d is clearly hinged on the marketing of their products. A CropLife Asia press release claims that the lobby group<\/a> \u201cechoes\u201d FAO\u2019s call for food systems transformation. Yet not surprisingly, its proposals are the same corporate techno-fixes of old.<\/p>\n

In a CropLife Asia tweet<\/a> during the UN FSS Pre-Summit, in which they claim that \u201ctechnology and innovations\u201d will advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals, they promoted a project to develop genetically engineered cassava in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

In an Independent Dialogue<\/a> that CropLife organised in May as part of the UN FSS, it identified outcomes such as the \u201cneed for regulation to keep up with innovation, especially around topics like plant biotechnology\u201d and \u201cfarmers must be supported and capacitated to adopt new technologies.\u201d Perhaps especially those \u201cinnovative\u201d pesticide products their members sell?<\/p>\n

CropLife also went so far as declaring member companies BASF and Sumitomo as \u201cFood Systems Heroes\u201d \u2014 with BASF<\/a> advocating for \u201cherbicides that enable minimum tillage\u201d and Sumitomo<\/a> for \u201chighly effective chemical and biorational…technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global Mobilization against the UN FSS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, peasant movements, Indigenous peoples and CSOs across the world have been actively mobilizing to protest the UN FSS, highlighting how it further entrenches corporate interests into our diets, our lands, and our initiatives to protect biodiversity and the planet.<\/p>\n

The People\u2019s Counter-Mobilization to Transform Corporate Food Systems<\/a> and the Global People\u2019s Summit on Food Systems<\/a> led successful online<\/a> and on-the-ground actions<\/a> during the Pre-Summit, and these mobilizations will snowball into even bigger actions come September. These actions are being led by peoples of the Global South who produce the world\u2019s food and bear the brunt of unjust, inequitable, unhealthy, and unsustainable food systems.<\/p>\n

Our campaign<\/a> calling on the FAO to stop its #ToxicAlliance with CropLife is an integral part of this larger movement for genuine food systems transformation. Our food systems don\u2019t need poisons. We don\u2019t need obstacles to people-centered solutions such as agroecology, either \u2014 and a huge, glaring obstacle is the increased access to power by pesticide purveyors.<\/p>\n

Urge the FAO to stop its #ToxicAlliance with CropLife, add your name to the global petition<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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Watch our video messages:<\/p>\n