Mapping the state of play on the global food landscape (Introduction)

Abstract

First paragraph: The global food landscape is changing rapidly. In 2007-08 food prices soared and remained volatile in the following years, effectively leading to a world food crisis that drove tens of millions of people into poverty and hunger. A phenomenal increase in large-scale farmland acquisitions in developing countries by a range of investors is leaving land rights in question for many small-scale producers while land grabbing is also occurring in the global North. There is also growing corporate concentration in the international food industry, from agricultural input firms to trading firms to production and processing and food retail. A changing global climate with associated unpredictable weather and crop yields complicates this picture, as does a steady increase in the application of agricultural biotechnology worldwide. To counter these global forces, communities around the world are imagining and building alternative locally-based and interconnected food systems grounded in the idea of food sovereignty to ensure food security, ecological sustainability and social justice.