International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), 20 May 2015
(20.05.2015) Who holds the power to shape food systems, and who sets the terms of debate when it comes to reforming them? These were the questions asked by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, IPES-Food, as it launched its first report.
“We need to look at food systems through a new lens,” said the co-chairs of IPES-Food: Olivier De Schutter, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and ex-UNICEF nutrition expert Olivia Yambi. “This lens must be wide enough to consider questions like impacts on health and nutrition, environmental degradation and small-scale farmers’ livelihoods simultaneously, as the component parts of wider systemic problems.”
Olivier De Schutter added: “This lens must also bring to light the power imbalances running through these systems. For decades, incentives to increase production of bulk commodities for export have gone hand in hand with trade liberalization. These approaches have reinforced the economic power of dominant actors, and those actors have used this power to exercise an ever-greater influence on decision-making.”
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