The world food system today is far too complex for common
sense to understand. It raises many questions: If safe, nutritious food is a
fundamental right, why are one billion people living with hunger?
Why do
farmers and farm workers remain starved/half-starved? Why are people in
food-exporting countries living with hunger? If the value of annual global
exports in agriculture products is in billions, why are agricultural labourers
and farmers in the highest level of global poverty? More than half the world’s
workforce is engaged in agricultural production — why, then, are their working
conditions killing their well-being? Women farmers often complain: “The food we
produce we do not eat, the food we eat we do not produce!” Something is
fundamentally wrong in our approach to food and hunger.
Moreover, for people, food has a sense of belonging; of
home. Food is many-layered; from the cosmos to livelihood to ritual to myth. It
is our life’s culture. Therefore, it cannot be just reduced to security. Food
security is the language of a state. That has been reduced to business and
trade opportunity. One is the result of failed political economy, the other,
failed morality.
Historically, farming was the beginning of human
civilisation. Today, in India, the face of agriculture is female. Farmers’
lives are being threatened as subsistence is threatened. Diversity in
agriculture is being destroyed.
We have to protect ways of life and livelihoods of the
farming communities. To protect food security, we must protect the base of
agriculture, small farmers, their produce, the locality of farming. We must
protect food and food growers where the food grows. To protect food security,
we must understand security needs autonomy that grants diversity that stems
from locality. Autonomy, diversity and locality are the fundamentals of food
security.
I wish to suggest my 100 Mile Principle, which stems from
the ecology of food that we see being ruthlessly violated.
The 100 Mile Principle weaves decentralisation, locality,
size and scale, to livelihood. What one needs for livelihood as material,
energy and knowledge should stem from areas around us. Seed, soil, water are
forms of knowledge that need to be retained locally. Security stems from local
innovations, not distant imports. Let us begin the principle with our staple
food. Essentially, the organic human link with nature has to be restored. The
millenia-old link between production and consumption has to be recovered.
Ultimately, nature as cosmology is the weave of life. Let us weave it tight.
The writer is the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s
Association of India (SEWA)
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