Currently browsing posts about: Advocacy

Yesterday, I posted information about the forthcoming UN Summit on Food Systems (UNFSS) and its Pre-Summit.  The Summit has been heavily criticized on the grounds that it:

• Sets agenda themes determined by corporate entities such as The World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.
• Favors corporate technological solutions to food system problems.
• Ignores agroecology, organic farming, and indigenous knowledge.
• Excludes meaningful representation from people most affected by food system transformation.
• Promotes corporate control of food systems.
• Ignores the conflicted interests of its organizers.
• Is fundamentally undemocratic.

These criticisms are so severe that The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for Relations with the UN (CSM) is organizing counter events July 25 to July 27.

• Download and share this call to action
• Learn more about CSM’s position as regards the UN Food Systems Summit

Much has been written to document such concerns.

Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism, North America: UN Food System Summit “Dialogue” events spark renewed concerns of corporate capture in North American food system and rural economies globally

In March 2020, 550 civil society organizations sent an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General condemning the involvement of the World Economic Forum in the UNFSS, the appointment of Ms. Agnes Kalibata as UNFSS Special Envoy due to her links to corporate agribusiness, the failure of the UNFSS to elevate the primacy and indivisibility of human rights frameworks as foundational to the governance of food systems, and the necessity of civil society organizations to have an autonomous, self-organized, and equal ‘seat at the table.’ These concerns have not been addressed despite numerous CSM interactions with UNFSS organizers.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES): An IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for Food?”  How the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a problematic new science-policy agenda.

Behind what sounds like a technocratic question is in fact a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems. This, in turn, is part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.

Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael.  UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems.  Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 13 April 2021. [Note: this paper has an especially useful historical account of attempts to establish global food system governance]

Although few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, it has become clear that the Summit is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance and capture the global narrative of “food systems transformation”…It elaborates how the current structure and forms of participant recruitment and public engagement lack basic transparency and accountability, fail to address significant conflicts of interest, and ignore human rights.

Independent scientists:  Open letter to policy makers: No new science-policy interface for food systems.

We call on governments and policymakers to…Support participatory processes that actively and meaningfully include plural perspectives and voices in food system governance. Farmers and other citizens need inclusive, participatory, and safe spaces within the CFS-HLPE process to co-create the knowledge necessary to govern food systems at global, national and local levels.

Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles.  Weaponizing Science in Global Food Policy.

Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

Scientists are also contesting a summit because of its selective embrace of science, as seen in a boycott letter signed by nearly 300 academics, from Brazil to Italy to Japan.

Through the Summit, “science” has been weaponized by powerful actors not only to promote a technology-driven approach to food systems, but also to fragment global food security governance and create institutions more amenable to the demands of agribusiness.

Scientists: An open letter from scientists calling for a boycott of the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Some critics of the UNFSS have suggested ways that the process could become less problematic: (1) it could incorporate a human rights framing into all of its “action tracks”; (2) it could create an action track led by the CSM on the corporate capture of food systems; and (3) it could designate the UN Committee on World Food Security as the institutional home to implement recommendations coming out of the summit.

Nisbett N, et al.  Equity and expertise in the UN Food Systems Summit.  BMJ Global Health. 2021;6:e006569.

…time is not late to take action in rebalancing powers and enabling a greater diversity of knowledge, not simply among a multiplicity of voices in multiple public forums, but explicitly engaged at the summit’s top table of expertise and summit leadership. It is also not late to adopt mechanisms that limit the engagement of those actors whose primary interests have driven our food systems to
become unhealthy, unsustainable and inequitable, so the voices of the people can be clearly heard..

An alternative: The Global People’s Summit on Food Systems

The People’s Summit is composed primarily of movements of landless peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, rural women, and youth—or small food producers who produce 70% of the world’s food, yet remain among the world’s poorest and food insecure.  “The issue of landlessness and land grabbing is not on the agenda of the UNFSS.  Nowhere in its so-called Action Tracks do discussions highlight critical trends such as on land concentration and reconcentration in the hands of big agribusiness firms and their network of local landlords and compradors, nor on the massive displacement of rural communities to give way to big private investments and large development projects,” said Chennaiah Poguri, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC).

Additions

• Video explaining “multistakeholderism”
• Links (ongoing) to papers on the UN Food System Summit

The Rockefeller Foundation has produced what I view as an incredibly important guide to describing—“framing”—food system issues in ways that will encourage support for transforming the U.S. food system.

For effective advocacy, issues have to be “framed” in a way that the public can understand and respond to.

“Framing” is a concept made famous by George Lakoff.  It refers to the way political messages are designed to resonate with voters.  But it also refers to how public health messages can be designed to be more effective in encouraging people to act in the interests of their own health (wear masks, for example).

For food system change, the Rockefeller Foundation issued an action guide:  Reset the Table: Messaging Guide,

One of the consistent needs expressed by those seeking to transform the food system is a shared narrative to motivate and sustain the needed changes in the system. This narrative and messaging guide focuses on the long-term food system transformation while responding to the evolving circumstances presented by the pandemic, economic downturn, and racial justice reckoning being experienced in the United States.

Its guide is part of a longer report giving the research basis behind the messages: Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System.

Here is an example of how this kind of research-based framing works:

And here is an example of the messaging in action:

These are great suggestions for ways to talk about food issues.

Required reading!

I’ve just received a copy of Larry Tramutola’s The People VS Big Soda: Strategies for Winning Soda Tax Elections.

Larry was involved in the successful Berkeley soda tax initiative, and this is his account of how they won an election wtih an astonishing plurality of 76%.  I consider this initiative to be a model of how to do food advocacy, and it’s great to have this practical guide to the details of starting a campaign like this or, for that matter, any other food campaign.

He covers such matters as:

• Coalition building
• Dealing with industry arguments
• Framing the issue
• Recruiting volunteers
• Winning despite limited financial resources
• Building power, step by step
• Staying with it no matter what happens

These are important lessons for anyone involved in food advocacy.

I can’t find anything about this booklet online, which means that if you want one, you must contact him at:

I’ve been giving talks lately on how to strengthen the food movement and my two-word answer is this: build coalitions.

The food movement includes thousands of organizations working on food issues.  For real power, those organizations need to unite around common goals.

At a recent talk in Berkeley, I was asked if I could name some food movement coalitions.  I had trouble thinking of any, but the audience popped up with suggestions and I’ve added a couple more.

• California Food and Farming Network is dedicated to advancing state policies that are rooted in communities, promote fairness and racial equity, secure financial prosperity and advance environmental sustainability.  It tracks legislation and publishes a scorecard.  50 member groups.
• La Via Campesina: 182 organizations in 81 countries advocate for peasants’ rights, food sovereignty, and social justice and oppose corporate-driven agriculture that destroys social relations and nature.
• National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA):  Its more than 500 organizations advocate for policies and programs to promote healthy eating and physical activity.
• National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: Its 120 member groups advocate for federal policy reform to advance the sustainability of agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and rural communities by supporting small and mid-size family farms.
• Rural coalition: “Our mission is to build an equitable and sustainable food system that is beneficial to people of color, small farmers, rural and tribal communities.”  50 member groups.

If you know of others, please let me know at marion.nestle@nyu.edu.  I will be tracking these.

The next step: a union of coalitions?

As I posted last week, the New York Times has a handy guide to how to participate in politics.

The American Public Health Association (APHA) also has a guide, Speak for Health, specifically focused on lobbying on behalf of health.

The guide explains how to be effective in reaching lawmakers and their staff.  It suggests how you can:

• Meet with your members of Congress or their staff, or invite them to visit you.
• Attend a public forum and ask a question.
• Submit an op-ed to your local paper. Email APHA for a template letter or technical assistance.
• Use Facebook or Twitter to engage your members of Congress. Make sure to use #SpeakForHealth!
• Email or call your members of Congress. Use an APHA action alert as a phone script or email message. It’s quick and easy.

These ideas work for agriculture, food, and nutrition issues too.  Use them.

Ray Goldberg.  Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. Oxford University Press, 2018.

As should be obvious from this cover, I have a special interest in this book.  For more than 20 years, I’ve been attending an annual meeting of food industry executives, entrepreneurs, and a sprinkling of advocates, government officials, and academics brought together by its author, Ray Goldberg, to try to encourage mutual understanding if not agreement.

When the meeting started, Ray was an agribusiness professor at the Harvard Business School.  After his retirement, the meeting moved to the Kennedy School of Government.  It still continues.

This book consists of Ray’s interviews with dozens of people who have attended this meeting over the years.  Ray interviewed people with an enormous range of involvement in food as well as of opinion about what should be done to improve food systems.

If truth be told, I always felt like a spectator at this meeting, and I am enormously surprised and honored to see that my interview comes first in the book, and that Ray mentions it in his introduction and conclusion.

I think the book is worth reading.  Or, as it happens, watching.

Oxford has posted the videotaped interviews online.  Here’s mine.

The New York Times has issued a splendid guide to how to use the political process (behind a paywall, alas) to get what our country needs.

The guide covers how to vote, lobby, get information, show up, talk to people about political issues, and even run for office.

If we want to change the world for the better, this is how it has to be done.

Read this (your local library must have access).  Organize, Act.

The Fourth of July is a great time to start.