Image credit: Mitra Farmand
The following is a summary of the food systems stream from last week’s Symposium on Powerful Private Actors in Global Health Governance, co-hosted by the UN University International Institute for Global Health and Third World Network in Kuala Lumpur.
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Our session on powerful private actors in food systems highlighted how corporate actors shape, distort, and dominate globalised food systems, but also gave hopeful examples of successful and ongoing struggles from the paddies of Sri Lanka to the plenaries of UN agencies.
We began with FIAN examining the structural drivers of corporate capture, where the relentless pursuit of profit maximization and shareholder returns has resulted in the extreme vertical and horizontal concentration of corporate control that now permeates agri-food chains. We are witnessing an era fuelled by industrial, fossil fuel-dependent models that not only degrade our precious ecosystems but also displace communities and restructure diets towards ultra-processed foods.
The food system now produces one third of global greenhouse emissions, is the leading driver of biodiversity destruction, contaminates air, water, and soils, and is reliant on egregious human rights violations. As commodity markets consolidate, smallholders—who still produce 70% of the world’s food—are increasingly under siege.
Jennifer Clapp revealed the alarming reality that just four firms exert control over the lion’s share of global seeds, fertilisers and agrichemicals, while five companies dominate the grain trade. This concentration stems from financialization and shareholder primacy, with massive private equity firms like BlackRock and Vanguard increasingly in the driver’s seat. A deregulatory competition policy agenda since the 1980s, focused on consumer prices and not market structure, has paved the way.
Phillip Baker spoke to the political dimension of corporate power in food systems. The industry’s role in food governance is legitimised by association with corporate friendly NGOs like GAIN, AGRA and WWF, and UN agencies and summits, including the UN food systems summit. Multi-stakeholderism has shifted accountability in global food governance from a political approach to a more technical one, asking corporations to ‘reform their conduct’ instead of imposing regulations for the public good. As one public health expert repeatedly stressed, we are no longer simply experiencing corporate capture—we are living in a corporate governance regime.
UN University researcher Penny Milsom outlined an example of today’s soft, market-based approaches to corporate accountability – the Access to Nutrition Index. While arguably well-intentioned, these scorecard ranking tools are narrow, nutri-centric, and legitimise corporate presence in food governance rather than challenging it. They rarely measure real impact, rely on self-reported data, and obscure broader harms. Instead, Penny and others argued that we need robust corporate accountability mechanisms—legally binding regulations, transparent data systems, independent monitoring, and participatory recourse mechanisms.
Akinbode Oluwafemi shared powerful reflections from Nigeria, where the UPF industry targets children, appropriates food cultures, and interferes directly in democratic processes. But he also showed that resistance is possible—from litigation wins to community mobilisation. His call is clear: we must reclaim food as culture, not commodity, and rekindle our relations with mother Earth.
Thomi Jon of the Tax Justice Network underscored how tax justice, public financing, and reclaiming sovereign policy must be at the heart of our agenda. He offered a powerful example of holding British American Tobacco to account for its extractive tax minimisation practices. As we say in the food sovereignty movement, if we don’t have a seat at the negotiating table, we end up on the menu.
According to Deakin University Global Centre for Preventive Health & Nutrition Research Fellow Ben Wood, to curb excessive market power, we must:
- shift public investment out of corporate food systems and into territorial markets,
- institutionalise social and ecological goals into policy and regulations,
- expand rights-based democratic food governance, and
- protect and promote Indigenous food and knowledge systems.
Ben called for a new international economic order grounded in equity, wellbeing, and public good that challenges and disrupts the global economic & financial architecture.
The inimitable Neth Daño reminded us that sustained resistance happens because there is something to protect, something concrete, which is why it endures in the social movements. In the Philippines, social movements have fostered local government champions, work proactively with media to shape narratives, and run regular campaigns to push for organic farming and the rights of peasants, achieving bans on aerial pesticide for the ubiquitous banana cash crops, amongst an inspiring list of other wins. These local victories show what’s possible when communities are collectivised—but also highlight the need for institutional memory, sustained advocacy, and strong alliances between civil society actors.
AFSA’s Tammi Jonas shared stories of resistance across the global food sovereignty movement—from winning the fight against golden rice in the Philippines, and enshrining food sovereignty in the constitutions of Nepal, Ecuador and Bolivia, to women-led debt resistance movements in Sri Lanka to Karnataka. Real change comes through collective organising and methodologies that centre and are led by smallholders, fishers, and food system workers, such as the people-led assessments of the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries. She called on everyone here to join the Nyéléni process in the long struggle for food sovereignty, and by mobilising your research, advocacy, and voice to support existing social movements.
We heard from a UNICEF leader, who outlined that agency’s incredible leadership on countering the influence of the UPF industry in governance and policy through its new guidance on industry engagement as crucial to upholding child rights. From UNICEF it is hoped that other UN agencies will follow, and we see a unified approach to countering the influence of the food industry.
We then shifted to action and next steps.
We started with the question of who collectively were ‘we’ gathered in KL for three days, what structure could we adopt going forward as a network, and the importance of a process for mapping our existing work, before then identifying our collective priorities. UNU has a crucial role to play here: to convene any such network, to support civil society, and to amplify critical voices that are often sidelined – including in solidarity with other UN agencies like UNICEF who are demanding adherence to the longstanding rules and norms of the multilateral system.
The colonial capitalist food regime is built on land dispossession, financial extraction, and flagrant attacks on democracy. We must not only name corporate power — we must actively work to delegitimise and dismantle it. This means challenging the role of multinational agri-food companies and private equity firms, actors like GAIN and the Gates Foundation, who advance pro-corporate agendas in multi-stakeholder platforms. It means demanding equitable rules of corporate engagement in the UN system while supporting those inside who are demanding transparency and accountability, and building collective strategies to shift narratives.
While we may not have economic power, between us we have plenty of institutional, network, expert, discursive, and moral power. Moving forward, let us not be overwhelmed by the scale of the task. We are not starting from scratch, and the work is both small and local, and grand and global. In truth, we build on decades of struggle—of food sovereignty movements, peoples’ health movements, and victories, and together, we must act with unity and a clarity of vision. Because this is not only about food—it’s about power, justice, democracy, and a liveable planet for future generations.
