Rights-based food systems and the goals of food systems reform |
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| Authors: | Molly D Anderson |
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| Institution: | (1) Food Systems Integrity, 22 Lawrence Lane, Arlington, MA 02474, USA |
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| Abstract: | Food security, health, decent livelihoods, gender equity, safe working conditions, cultural identity and participation in
cultural life are basic human rights that can be achieved at least in part through the food system. But current trends in
the US prevent full realization of these economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) for residents, farmers, and wageworkers
in the food system. Supply chains that strive to meet the goals of social justice, economic equity, and environmental quality
better than the dominant globalized food value networks are gaining popularity in the US. However, achieving important human
rights has become conflated with other goals of food system reform over the past decade, such as being “community-based,”
local, and sustainable. This conflation confuses means, ends, and complementary goals; and it may lead activists trying to
help communities to regain control of their food system choices into less productive strategies. This paper introduces a new
concept, rights-based food systems (RBFS), and explores its connection with localization and sustainability. The core criteria
of RBFS are democratic participation in food system choices affecting more than one sector; fair, transparent access by producers
to all necessary resources for food production and marketing; multiple independent buyers; absence of human exploitation;
absence of resource exploitation; and no impingement on the ability of people in other locales to meet this set of criteria.
Localization and a community base can help achieve RBFS by facilitating food democracy and reducing environmental exploitation,
primarily by lowering environmental costs due to long-distance transportation. Sustainability per se is an empty goal for
food system reform, unless what will be sustained and for whom are specified. The RBFS concept helps to clarify what is worth sustaining and who is most susceptible to neglect in attempts
to reform food systems. Localization can be a means toward sustainability if local food systems are also RBFS.
Molly D. Anderson
consults on science and policy for sustainability in the food system through Food Systems Integrity. She manages a national
project based in the Henry A. Wallace Center at Winrock International to establish indicators of good food, and is a contributor
to the International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development. She was a 2002–2004 Food & Society Policy
Fellow and a University College of Citizenship & Public Service Faculty Fellow at Tufts University. She was appointed as a
Wallace Fellow in 2007. She earned a PhD in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has dedicated
her professional life to exploring how society can encourage changes in human behavior to promote ecological integrity and
social justice simultaneously. |
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| Keywords: | Rights-based approach Food system Local food Food democracy Ecological integrity Sustainability |
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