‘Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste’

Co-published with the Transnational Institute (TNI)

The Covid-19 pandemic has provoked widespread discussion of what kind of future the world should look forward to after the crisis. One of the areas of economic life around which there is spirited debate is the global food system. This paper focuses on how the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the corporate-dominated global food supply system and shown that it is not, as the Food and Agriculture Organization and its allied agencies see it, part of the solution. The study recommends that while in the short term, it would be important to prevent disruptions of global trade so as not to create hunger and widespread malnourishment, it is important to begin the strategic transformation of the global food production system along lines designed to bring about food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty. Moreover, it urges that this process of transformation be articulated with other progressive alternatives that seek to go beyond the inequality, conflicts, uneven development, and ecological destabilization engendered by global capitalism.