Around the globe, hundreds of millions of food workers make it possible for the world to eat. Almost all the food we eat passes through the hands of workers who plant, harvest, process, transport, prepare, sell, and serve it. Labor is essential to our food system. Yet workers throughout the food system are treated as disposable at every stage, while their labor and this exploitation remain invisible to many.
The profit-driven, corporate consolidation of the food industry and the structures of global capitalism allow this exploitation to continue. This race to the bottom in food economies does not only impact workers, it impacts everyone. The cycle of producing cheap food has led to extreme degradation of our health and environment.
This corporate-driven system continues to be facilitated through acts of colonialism and imperialism and protected by racist systems that criminalize migrants and black and brown communities around the globe.
We are joining social movements around the globe in the counter-mobilization to the 2021 U.N Food Systems Summit that has been organized to reinforce corporate control over food and agriculture, while attempting to weaken the voice of civil society, grassroots and worker movements in the global food system.
As La Via Campesina writes: “The UN Food Systems Summit 2021 has been hijacked by Corporate Interest and aims to lay the foundation for an agribusiness take over of agriculture in the coming decades.”
We are supporting the efforts of our allies and members fighting for food sovereignty who are leading the call for a people-centered summit.
#FoodSystems4People
#FoodSystems4Workers