people’s food sovereignty and
sustainable agriculture
The current system of agriculture has
proven incapable of delivering global food
security and environmental sustainability.
Shockingly, 826 million people, the
majority of them women and children, suffer
from hunger and malnutrition even though
there is sufficient food for everyone being
produced at a global level.
Industrial agriculture, which uses
expensive and sometimes untested
technologies, is characterized by
large-scale, monoculture production and
high levels of external inputs like
pesticides and fertilizers. Although
proponents argue that traditional forms of
agriculture fail to produce adequate
quantities of food, studies have shown that
crop yields can be effectively increased
via sustainable agriculture techniques. For
example, a survey of nearly 9 million
farmers working on 208 separate sustainable
agriculture projects in 52 countries found
“substantial increases in per hectare
cereal production, typically up to 50-100
percent, and in some projects rising to 200
percent increases.” Along the same lines,
studies have shown that Uruguay, a country
of 3 million people, could potentially
produce food for 14 million using
sustainable agriculture techniques.
It is clear that we need to change
track: agriculture needs to focus on and
promote food security, food sovereignty and
diverse sustainable agriculture practices,
not ‘efficient’ production for an ever more
competitive global market. Communities,
people and countries should have the right
to decide upon their own policies to secure
adequate and affordable food supplies.
Smallholder farmers and their families
constitute about half of the world’s
extremely poor and hungry. There is a large
amount of evidence to show that a
farmer-led approach, utilizing known and
proven agricultural techniques and
practices, can transform the livelihoods of
farmers, increase food security and reduce
malnutrition while also preserving the
environment.
Many communities around the world rely
heavily on traditional agriculture methods
and indigenous knowledge, key elements of
sustainable agriculture. The loss of local
plant species and traditional seed
varieties in many places under
environmental stress has given birth to
community efforts to preserve them. In
Uruguay, farmers are protecting local seed
varieties which are on the brink of
extinction, including butter beans (
see page 46
).
