While food is considered to be one of the basic human needs and even a right in itself, there is an ongoing debate about how to produce it as industrial agriculture has failed in its promise[¹] to ensure food security while at the same time hindering the spread of alternative methods. This article emphasizes the importance of rural settings and rural people who can offer solutions for this issue and therefore have the potential to transform our food production systems.
“The current industrial agricultural model has serious disadvantages. It generates food loss and waste, mistreats animals, emits greenhouse gases, pollutes ecosystems, displaces and abuses agricultural and fishery workers, and disrupts traditional farming communities. Put simply, the human rights of food system actors, including agricultural workers, smallholder farmers, and consumers, are often ignored or their rights violated.” (UN, 2020)[¹]
In practice, the industrial agricultural model, together with the policies supporting it, has contributed to rural depopulation, or rather a rural exodus, which has had a detrimental impact not only on rural livelihoods but also on food sustainability.
Rural depopulation
The evidence shows that the trend of rural depopulation and, conversely, urbanization continues. It is expected that by 2050 almost 70% of the world’s population will live in cities[¹].
One of the reasons for emigrating from rural regions is to look for jobs and better opportunities. In fact, such jobs existed in rural areas before industrial agriculture established itself as the dominant production system. To be precise, at the beginning of the 20th century, a high number of people were employed in agriculture which was also an important economic sector. For instance, in 1955 the agriculture sector’s share of employment was 40% in Italy, 26.9% in France, and an average of 21.2% in the European Union, while in 2017 this had dropped to 3.9%, 2.9%, and 4.2%, respectively.[²] Agriculture also used to account for a double-digit share of the GDP (%) in these and other member states of the European Union. This is no longer the case. In fact, on average, every week 18 farms cease their activity in Belgium alone whilst
“… family farms produce more than 80% of the world’s food in value terms, smallholder farmers and family farmers are often excluded from policy design (FAO, 2018).”
Given this situation, two questions arise: who will grow food and how will the food be grown while the industrial system continues to negatively impact people’s lives, nature, and the economy?
Reviving rurality
One solution suggested by a range of experts is to look at farming techniques that use fewer resources and produce as much or even more than conventional industrial systems. These techniques are often applied by smaller producers with one such method being agroecology which has been endorsed by a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food as one of the most efficient farming techniques with the potential to alleviate poverty and hunger.
See also| Agroecology: an opportunity for fragile farms
The most recent report on the right to food[¹] calls for investment in agroecology and support for local community-based movements, traditional knowledge, and culture as ‘rural populations play a critical role in the realization of the right to food’ due to the long-term vision in their interaction with the land and supporting it living systems.
[²] Baldwin, R. E., & Wyplosz, C. (2019). Chapter 9: The Common agricultural policy (pp.205-229). The economics of European integration (6th ed.). London: McGraw-Hill Education.
