Submitted to the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the Committee on World Food Security for the UN FAO (CFS) on the 4th May 2026.
AFSA welcomes the call for submissions on the Zero Draft of the Critical, Emerging and Enduring Issues (CEEI) for the HLPE of the CFS. Since the previous note in 2022, the global context has shifted dramatically, and our understanding of food system challenges must reflect these broader geopolitical, ecological, and technological transformations. What happens at the macro level—conflict, economic instability, climate disruption, and corporate consolidation—inevitably cascades down to the micro level, shaping the daily realities of farmers, First Peoples, workers, and communities on the frontlines of food systems.
The 2022 CEEI note was released in the shadow of the COVID‑19 pandemic, at a moment when the war in Ukraine was only beginning and digital technologies were rapidly expanding across food systems. By 2026, the global landscape has become even more volatile; these issues are ‘enduring’. Conflicts have deepened, humanitarian crises have multiplied, and geopolitical tensions have intensified. As AFSA and allied organisations have documented, global power struggles increasingly play out through food and agriculture: fertiliser markets manipulated during conflict, commodity corridors disrupted or weaponised, and sanctions regimes that restrict access to essential inputs for farmers. These dynamics expose how deeply food systems are entangled with imperialist geopolitical interests, replicating the process of colonial dispossession, and how these costs of crisis are disproportionately borne by small‑scale producers, workers, and communities, not by the corporations or governments that shape global trade and finance. The weakening of multilateral institutions and the erosion of international norms around human rights and the use of food in conflict further undermine the world’s ability to respond collectively to these challenges.
These global patterns are mirrored in Australia. AFSA has long challenged the highly consolidated, corporate, industrial food and agriculture sector in Australia, which continues to dominate production, processing, and retail, while an export‑driven agricultural model prioritises global commodity markets over domestic food security. Despite Australia’s status as a major food exporter, many households struggle to access affordable, nutritious food, a contradiction rooted in structural inequities and policy choices. Corporate concentration in the supermarket sector has enabled unfair trading practices, downward pressure on farmgate prices, and environmental and labour concerns, all of which undermine the resilience and fairness of the food system. Recent national policy processes, including the establishment of a National Food Council, have been criticised by civil society for privileging agribusiness interests and excluding the voices of small‑scale farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and community food system actors. At the same time, ongoing failures to uphold the rights, sovereignty, and cultural value of First Nations peoples continue to weaken the foundations of a just and sustainable food system.
It is within this global and national landscape that AFSA, with the support of the Food Connect Foundation, submits its response to the Zero Draft. We emphasise the need for the HLPE to address the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, conflict, and corporate concentration through a coherent, rights‑based, and accountable food systems approach; one that centres agroecology, food sovereignty, and democratic governance as essential pathways forward.
