Big Ag Isn’t Ending Hunger – Small-Scale Farmers and Forward-Thinking Governments Will

Will GMOs end hunger? Is industrial agriculture the answer to grow more food ever more cheaply? Political agroecologist Dr. Jahi Chappell doesn’t think so. Rather, Chappell tells us that the only way to end hunger is to have coordinated policy platforms that work directly with family farmers—something the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) has been fighting to achieve for over five years.

‘Ending Hunger with Jahi Chappell’ – a stimulating evening talk over a local dinner at the Polish Club in Canberra this Sunday 14 October – is an opportunity to hear from author, scholar, and political agroecologist Dr. M. Jahi Chappell as he discusses food sovereignty and ending hunger through the lens of his book, Beginning to End Hunger: Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond.

Beginning to End Hunger presents the story of Belo Horizonte, home to 2.5 million people and the site of one of the world’s most successful food security programs. Since its Municipal Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security was founded in 1993, Belo Horizonte has sharply reduced malnutrition, leading it to serve as an inspiration for Brazil’s renowned Zero Hunger programs.

The Secretariat’s work with local family farmers shows how food security, rural livelihoods, and healthy ecosystems can be supported together. In this convincing case study, Chappell establishes the importance of holistic approaches to food security, suggests how to design successful policies to end hunger, and lays out strategies for enacting policy change.

With these tools, Chappell shows us how we can take the next steps toward achieving similar reductions in hunger and food insecurity elsewhere in the developed and developing worlds.

Chappell also provides a critical lens through which to examine the food sovereignty movement and build on its successes while addressing its weaknesses, focusing sharply on the need for deeply collective, collaborative work by diverse organisations with the direct involvement of small-scale agroecological farmers.

‘Ending Hunger with Jahi Chappell’ is a not-to-be-missed event open to everyone who cares about promoting everyone’s right to culturally appropriate and nutritious food grown and distributed in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and our right to collectively determine our own food and agriculture systems. The night with Chappell is the inspirational opening of the annual 2018 Food Sovereignty Convergence.

For those who can’t make it to Canberra, there is also an Ending Hunger event in Melbourne with Jahi Chappell on Thursday 18 October, event details can be found here.