By Jess Halliday, Chief Executive of RUAF.
The timing of our new report – Shaping food security narratives: A strategic tool for climate action – is both seriously dismal and serendipitous.
It’s dismal because, well, have you seen the headlines?! The war on Iran is playing serious havoc with fertilizer prices, meaning the industrialized food system that depends on chemical inputs to assure sufficient production is (ironically, and please pardon the pun) in deep doo-doo.
The repercussions will be huge. Make no mistake, in a world that is locked into this industrialized system, it’s the world’s poorest who suffer when crops fail and food prices skyrocket.
Yet it’s serendipitous too, because when we peer at those headlines through a narrative lens we see how they support the productivist narrative that claims food security is only possible through increased production, technical innovation and high-yield staples. More than that, even as the industrialized food system is bracing for figurative fallout from the bombing, the headlines are promoting the power dynamics that have made it globally dominant.
Through a narrative lens, we note there is no mention of other food security narratives that are based on values of environmental sustainability, human rights, equity and social justice, and responsibility and care.
And when we are aware that there are alternative narratives out there, we can see other routes to food security aside from pumping the earth with chemicals to achieve bumper crops – and other outcomes than greater volume of food and more cash in shareholders’ pockets.
These include:
- Food sovereignty: Putting power and agency in the hands of those who produce, distribute and consume food, so they can identify and address needs within local environments and communities.
- Agroecology: Adopting farming systems that work in harmony with ecological principles, to create long-term sustainability and resilience.
- Nutrition and health: Ensuring people have access not only to sufficient calories but to affordable, safe and diverse diets that are essential for good health, to tackle malnutrition in all its forms and forge an equitable food system.
- Planetary health: Adopting diets that are both healthy for people and ecologically sustainable, to slow or reverse our transgression of planetary boundaries.
- Civil food resilience: Taking a ‘whole of society’ approach, where citizens are prepared to act collectively to ensure everyone remains fed during and after crises.
If I were pressed to highlight just one of my many personal take-aways from the year-long research behind the new report, it’s that everyone needs to be able to spot a food security narrative at 100 paces, interrogate them over their intentions and take evasive action where necessary.
This is because food security narratives are sneaky devils that can twist stories and alter our perception of what the real issues are.
We read the headlines on the war in Iran and we believe the industrialized food system has ‘solved’ food security, if only fertilizer remains cheap and accessible.
We visit a website about a new agritech solution that promises crop resilience, and we celebrate the bright futures of smallholder farmers everywhere.
We read a heartwarming story on the back of a cereal packet about how much a multinational cares for their suppliers and the environment, and we feel the warm glow of a sustainable purchasing decision.
And before we know it, we’re inadvertently peddling those same narratives through own stories and conversations, without a thought to who really stands to benefit – and whose health, livelihood or resilience capacities are destroyed.
It’s only when we start to see the narratives, and ask how they are shaping our views, that we can consciously transform food systems in ways that are true to our own values.
And for many of us, that means ending the dependency on fertilizer (just as fast as ending this insane, illegal war), building resilience literally from the ground up, and putting farmers and local communities in the driving seat of food systems – on their own terms.
Download our report on food security narratives for climate action here.
