Transcripts For CSPAN3 Food As A Human Right 20240622

Between canada and the European Union which gives corporations from the other countries the right to sue your government if they dont like what youre doing. And so these companies if ttip is signed between europe and the United States, any municipality in the United States that privatizes their water, well, they have a very hard time changing their minds because these companies can sue for compensation. Its called investor state. So anyone who wants to learn more about that, please, please go to Public Citizen trade campaign. And i have a whole bunch of stuff in my book on the implications of these trade agreements on the right to go back to a public system once its been privatized. So its another ongoing struggle. And i dont have a crystal ball to see where it will come out, but common sense tells people its better to keep democratic control. Water is needed for life, we better keep democratic control of it at all times. And well make this the last question. Good evening. Im wondering if you have any particular vision of how american policymakers can begin to tackle the problem with Meat Consumption in the United States . Meat consumption, yeah, is that what you asked . Yeah. Well, i mean, as you know meat is very water intensive. As well the way we intend to produce meat in north america is more and more in these factory far farms, these intensive livestock operations that in turn hurt the animals because its terrible treatment in turn destroy massive amounts of water. Again, i would send you to food and water watch. Food and water watch has a wonderful project, Wonderful Campaign on farming. I mean, people will choose or not choose to eat meat. And those are personal decisions. But on how these farms are run and the destruction that theyre doing both to animals and to local water. But again, the more we can learn about what were eating and the impact on nature, i think the more we can think through beyond just that looks good and that looks good. Where did it come from . And those questions i was talking about, what is the impact on water . When we start asking that question, i think were going to have some different answers in our personal lives. Okay. Please join me in thanking maude barlow again. [ applause ] tonight on American History tv, western history. At 8 00 p. M. Mexican california in the early 19th century. A look at the history of california during the 19th century and the role of wealthy businessm businessman, the governor of the california region while it was under mexican rule. Just before 9 25 p. M. The colonial west on lectures in history. William and mary professor paul map talks about the interactions between european colonial powers and native american tribes on the great plains in the 1700s. And at 10 35 p. M. Rocky Mountain National park. On january 26th, 1915, president Woodrow Wilson signed the rocky Mountain National park act designating an area which 100 years later spans 415 square miles in North Central colorado. Author James Pickering discusses enis mills and his involvement and its establishment. The cspan cities tour visits literary and Historic Sites across the nation to hear from local historians, authors and civic leaders. Every other weekend on cspan 2s book tv and American History tv on cspan 3. And this month with congress on its summer recess, the cities tour is on cspan each day at 6 00 p. M. Eastern. Today is our second day in madison, wisconsin, where well look at the literary life of the state capitol. Two food justice advocates discuss the concept of access to healthy food as a basic human right in the u. S. And around the world. Theyre part of a conversation sponsored by harvard yufrlts Food Law Society and the food literacy project. Hi everyone. Just to start off, if you have a cell phone on you, would you please turn it off . We would really appreciate it. So as i hope you are all aware this is one of our keynote talks. The title of the talk is the human right to food. And we have two wonderful, amazing speakers with us today. So the first person is molly anderson. Shes currently at the college of the atlantic at the partridge chair. She teaches about hunger, Food Security and Food Sovereignty, system dynamics, food power and notably food justice. She anticipates moving to Middlebury College in vermont this summer where shell be starting a food studies program. She is especially interested in how communities can achieve the right to food and nutrition, sustainability metrics and how industrialized countries will move to a post petroleum food system. She is part of the International Panel of experts on Sustainable Food systems organized by olvier, the former u. N. Special rap toir to the right of food. He also prepared a film for the conference which well be showing tomorrow as part of the keynote talk and hopefully have it up online for all of you. We are also joined by Frances Moore lappe. She is the author and coauthor of 18 books including the 3 million copy diet for a small planet. She was named by gourmet magazine as one of the 25 people whose work has changed the way america eats. Her most recent work, ecomind, changing the way we think to create the world we want, won a silver medal from the independent Publisher Book awards. She is the cofounder of three organizations including oaklandbased think tank food first and the Small Planet Institute which she leads with her daughter anna. Frances and her daughter have also cofounded the Small Planet Fund which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide. So please join me in welcoming both of our speakers and well get started with molly anderson. [ applause ] thank you. And good afternoon to all of you. Its a real honor to copresent with frankie. I see her as one of the pioneers of food justice. She brought our attention a long time ago to ways that policies and eating patterns in this country are effecting the prospects for justice of people in poor countries. And what we can learn from people in other countries. So im delighted to be here. I want to start with a few observations about why food justice seems to be rising to the fore right now. Why its on so many peoples minds. I think first is the growing awareness of racism in this country. Ferguson was certainly a flashpoint for that. But with ferguson came the realization for many of us that black youth were being massacred by state forces with virtual impunity. This had been going on for a long time. Continuing an ugly legacy of lynching in this country. I think food justice also is benefitting from the attention to global inequity and access to resources. At this point 80 people have the same wealth as the bottom 3. 5 billion in the world. In manyin carnations around the world has been raising awareness about the problems of global inequity. And doing a very good job. I think that the attention to food justice also reflects the maturation of efforts in this country to address multiple problems with food systems. And to a small extent its related to a global upsurge in demands for Food Sovereignty. Ill come back to Food Sovereignty at the end of my talk. I want to first talk about what do i mean by maturation of the conversation. How has the conversation about food justice changed over the last few decades . When i worked here in the boston area, local food was exploding on to the national scene. And many people saw localism and direct marketing, thats farmers markets, csas, they really saw it as a pathway to justice. Because finally farmers would stand a better chance of Getting Better economic returns. And customers would be reconnected with farmers. The conversation moved onto healthy food as people realized that local food isnt particularly accessible to many low Income Customers due to its cost and its availability. The interest in local food was based on the desire to improve the well being of low Income Customers. And i think it was it is quite well intentioned, but sometimes goes astray. From what those low Income Customers really want and need. Its a kind of color blind policy. Hardly anybody in the United States is eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Then people said wait a minute, its not just healthy food, its affordable food, green food, humane food, food raised with humane practices. And we saw the conversation moving onto real food and good food. And i think there will be a presentation that im not sure if anima is here yet, but talking about real food tomorrow. Then we started paying more systematic attention to the barriers and the underlying causes of food system problems. And these are some of the reports that were coming out in this time period over the last decade. We were looking at the root causes, not just the symptoms like lack of access to healthy food. And this shifted the conversation into issues of food power, the concentration of wealth and power in the food system nationally and why corporations have increasing control over what we eat as well as how they have greater control over let me try to escape from that, more control over the International Food system as well. And were seeing this playing out in free trade agreements now. With strands from Food Sovereignty, the discussion now i think is moving into issues of food governance, food democracy and who decides what people eat. This is a recent publication from the good people at the institute for agriculture and trade policy on deepening food democracy. So going back to my title, how is food justice connected with the right to food . And what does food justice really require of us . All of us sitting here. As i see it, food justice requires first of all attention to the history of structural violence and oppression in our country. These are the words of policy link. Slavery of africanamericans and native americans, the theft of land and water for native americans a long and sorted history of Racial Discrimination that continues to play out in substandard wages and working conditions for people of color. Thats the reality of our food system now. Current food systems have been shaped by historical practices and policies that systemically oppressed communities of color. Doing food justice also requires Greater Transparency about economic and social consequences of food system practices. Whos getting richer from these practices . Whos getting poorer . This goes back to those 80 people who will fit on one bus. And the 80 people include people who are making their money from food inputs and the sale of food. It also requires accountability to those who have not been well served by our food system. This accountability is demonstrated by first constant reflection and learning about the root causes of food injustice. Second, internal work by white people to understand the many ways in which we may be benefitting from oppression and pain and continuing to ignore those who are not well served in the food system. Third, it requires active work to ensure the right to food for everyone, especially those who are vulnerable and politically marginalized. Fourth, it means making opportunities for meaningful voice and engagement by those who havent been heard whove bourn the most costs of the food system and havent received full benefits. And finally it requires partnerships of mutuality and solidarity with low income communities and communities of color. Im not talking about Charitable Services or providing what we think they want. Im talking about engagement to truly learn from impoverished communities. And communities of color. And to support them. In 2008 i tried to envision an alternative to Market Based Solutions which seemed to be sucking all the air out of the room at that time and talk about food system alternatives. And to some extent continue to do so. These Market Based Solutions included direct marketing but also ecolabels, fair trade and new ways to give consumers even more choice so that they could, quote unquote, vote with their forks. It seemed obvious to me that the market was never going to deliver justice. As obvious as the local foods werent necessarily environmentally beneficial or fair. So i wrote a paper on rights based food systems. The basic idea of rights based food systems is that our Current System violates human rights on every front. Farmers, workers, citizens, hungry people. And food system reform means a transformation to the conditions under which all human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. Those of you who study human rights will recognize this language. Of course the rights of animals and the rights of nature are already being violated. But there isnt as clear an agreement about what these rights are. Human rights in contrast are agreed upon International Goals ever since 1948 and the universal declaration on human rights. Which our first lady at the time, eleanor roosevelt, was instrumental in helping to craft. Human rights are jus tishsable. For example, cases have been brought to National Courts to protect the right to food successfully. Human rights are indivisible. It seemed to me that rights based food systems might have the potential to be a unifying goal across different Food Movements, to bridge groups fighting each other, that were working in isolation for their own independent goals often fighting with each other for funding and for legislative attention. I wanted them to be working together better. But rights based food systems didnt get much traction in 2008. I have to say it was briefly considered revised around this concept, but otherwise it didnt even seem to ripple the water. Which got me thinking about why not . The first thing that i went to is the lack of comprehension in the United States of economic, social and cultural rights. The United States is horribly isolated from other countries in its failure to ratify the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights and the nine eight other major human rights treaties and conventions. This goes back to 1966 and the cold war when two covenants on human rights were developed. And the United States took the position that economic, social and cultural rights are best met by the market. The United States wanted to distinguish itself from the socialist countries over there. We endure civil and political rights, but not economic, social and cultural rights, which reflected i think a fundamental misunderstanding of the inseparability of human rights. You cant just cherry pick human rights. Weve retained this perspective despite abundant evidence that the market does not work in this way to provide these kinds of rights. It has to be directed by and reigned in by Public Policies. And unlike most other countries in the world, we lack basic Public Policies to ensure economic, social and cultural rights. For those of you in the back this map is showing the countries that have endorsed this covenant and the countries that havent. And youll see that the United States, bright blue, is the only industrialized country that has failed to ratify the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. In terms of food, the United States still uses a charitable approach to address Food Insecurity. Primarily federal assistance programs, which are a wonderful stopgap, but these are doled out at the whim of congress. And congress is pretty mean spirited right now. Ngos have pioneered programs to increase access to food that range from bounty bucks in boston or other voucher systems that low income people can use in farmers markets to get fresh food, to Better School food options, to healthy food prescriptions underwritten by Health Insurance plans. Recently there seems to be a lot of interest in redirecting food that would otherwise be wasted on to the plates of low income people. These are decent programs. They are all well intentioned but this is not a right the based approach. Poor people need and want exactly the same food that rich people want. They really dont want our food waste. Poor children in particular [ applause ] they need guaranteed access to healthy food in order to grow into healthy adults. Yet according to the latest usda data thats available, this 2013, one in 12 children in the United States lives in a food insecure household that does not have guaranteed access to healthy food at all times. In half of these households children as well as adults are food insecure. Theyre going without the food they need. While local programs can definitely improve access to healthy food for limited populations, they will not result they will never result in the elimination of hunger and Food Insecurity. Other countries that have recognized the right to food at the National Scale and are using rights based approaches to improve their food systems, have shown dramatic results. Dramatic increases in Food Security even when the country is far less wealthy than the United States. In the United States, household Food Insecurity rates have remained static or actually increased since reliable measures were first implemented in the mid1990s. Unlike less wealthy countries, brazil a great example, which frankie will be coming back to, with its program. The United States does not have federal programs to eliminate hunger and Food Insecurity, but only to dampen the most corrosive effects. This is not right. This probably occurred to you folks already. But the other obvious reason why the idea of rights based food systems never took off was because it didnt have the support of people on the ground. It was just my idea expressed in an academic paper in a journal. And social change doesnt happen that way. It doesnt happen because some academic comes up with an idea. It happens because a group of people find common cause. And thats where i want to focus for the rest of my talk. The place i see this happening most vividly today is at the global level in the committee on world Food Security. Since 2009 the committee on world Food Security has become the premiere International Forum for discussion of issues of Food Security. The cfs was reformed in 2009 so that the people who are on the front lines of hunger, the people who are working with Civil Society through social movements made up of small scale workers, fishers, farmers, women, indigenous people, the urban poor, youth, landless people, they are all working together and speaking on food system issues in this global forum. They have full participation in every activity up to voting, which is reserved for member countries of the committee on well Food Security. This is appropriate because its the National Governments that are responsible for implementing policies to protect hungry people. All of the decisions and recommendations of the committee on world Food Security must be congruent with the right to food. This was part of the reform. The decisions must consider the best evidence, which is simple through a High Level Panel of experts with equitable gender and regional representation, and with people from Civil Society organizations. Every year participation in the committee on world Food Security has grown. In october 2014, this was the breakdown, nearly 800 representatives of committee on world Food Security stakeholder groups, governments, Civil Society, the private sector, international and regional organizations, nearly 800 people showed up for this big week long meeting in rome. It included 223 on the chart here, 223 individuals from 127 different Civil Society organizations and academic institutions. I was there, i brought eight students along. And they had a wonderful time. The Civil Society mechanism, which is an organizing body for Civil Society, had 151 individuals from 81 organizations. The private sector had 91 individuals from 71 organizations. Again, their representation is growing every year. And youre probably wondering, well what do they talk about for a whole week . Some of the things they talked about, you can find this report online on the fao website, but some of the things they talked about were progress thats been made on the right to food in the ten years since International Voluntary guidelines were created in 2004. They talked about monitoring for accountability of the committee on world Food Security. They talked about the critical importance of small scale farmers to feed the world. And theyre the people who are feeding the world now. They talked about the kinds of investment that are needed in agriculture and how that investment should be regulated. They talked about the role of fisheries and agriculture in achieving Food Security. And what can be done about food waste. Most fundamentally the committee on world Food Security beyond these separate topics that are discussed, it allows conflicts in world view and conflicts in how people interpret the evidence thats before us. Scientific evidence is not all that cut and dry really. But it allows those conflicts to be aired and to be discussed with the people who are actually suffering from hunger able to say heres how we see it. And heres how we are impacted by these policies that you people are implementing. Food sovereignty is one of the banners under which Civil Society organizations organize the committee on world Food Security and around the world. Food sovereignty is an international movement. It was started by small scale farmers, but increasingly its being adopted by other groups. Its advocates include millions of small scale farmers and fishers joined by womens rights and indigenous peoples. Right to food, again, the first principle of Food Sovereignty. Detailing what Food Sovereignty means in practices rich and exciting. There were two fantastic conferences over the last calendar year, one in yale at yale. And one at the institute for social studies in the netherlands. I think this was the poster they used at iss that brought together practitioners, activists. And theres also a very recent conference in mali that came out with a declaration on ariecology as the as the referred agricultural practice for the small scale farmers feeding the world. While many of the details are still being hammered out Food Sovereignty provides a vision of the kind of food system that people want. A vision thats in harmony with nature and thats in harmony where people are in harmony with each other. This visioning work is beginning in the United States too. And may eventually result in an enlightened food policy such as the one thats been developed by our neighbors in the north and in canada. This is resetting the table and theres several other examples of peoples food policies that have been developed. A really wonderful contrast. Id love to see a peoples food policy laid out against the farm bill. It would look extremely different. So i want to leave you with a few thoughts. First, the United States has much to learn from other countries in their approaches to food justice. In particular, the United States would benefit from studying how other countries have implemented the right to food. Its no mystery. The steps are laid out clearly in many documents including these guidelines, voluntary guidelines on implementing the right to food established in 2004. Its simply a matter of political will and national priorities. We need a clear vision of the kind of food system and society that we want. This vision can draw from the concept of Food Sovereignty as its in many places but our vision will be unique. It will be distinct to us. The vision and the action to make that vision real must be shared across different races, kinds of people and interest groups. We simply cant afford to be split into factions and to fight against each other. The struggle for healthy food is joined at the hip with struggles for debt free open access higher education, for health, for Public Transportation for womens rights, for voters rights, for Campaign Finance reform. All of these movements are inseparable. What this means practically is that you need to find people who share your values and your heart. Start work even if you dont have all the answers. Evaluate who is benefitting from your work and who is suffering and keep trying to make spaces for people being left out of your vision. Keep working until you can see Real Progress toward food democracy and the right to food. I want to thank all of you for the work youre doing and for being here for this conference. Id like to turn things over to frankie. Molly, molly, where are you . Thank you so much. Thank you for your unending leadership so i want to share with you three parts this afternoon. First i want to recognize in making food the right which should be the most basic at all since we cant enjoy other human right without it, i want to start us with square one asking just what is this problem . What is the extent of this problem were hoping to solve through a rights based approach and then id like to take you with me to a delightful moment in my life when i actually got to see and taste food as a human right in brazil. And finally i want to share with you personally the lessons im learning and how they changed me. Am i good . Youre having trouble hearing me . Okay so should i give up on this . I will give up. So how do we define it to know whether or not were ending it. And molly and i were part of a wonderfully compatible internationally kabal in 2012 Civil Society of people that found ourselves incredibly disturbed by the realization that humidity still lacks a meaningful measure of hunger. So heres what happened. They were coming through the food and agricultural organizations main hunger measure that were generally so positive. Basically, we were hearing that were well on our way to meeting the Millennial Development goals and if we just do a little up tick with Economic Growth that we will be there and we learned that by 2014 that developing countries cut their share of hungry people by 42 compared to 1990. Sounded like amazing progress. So, yes, true, still 800 Million People hungry but amazing progress. But we felt like something was really off. So we dug deeper and we realized if measuring progress by the number of hungry people rather than the percentage of the population, which is a much more real measurement, its not going to make them happy or less hungry. So we looked at it from the percentagewise, from the number, and we realized if we took progress measured by the number of hungry people rather than percentage the drop is not 42 . But half of that. And then we asked is it widely spread over the world and if you remove china the actual drop is about 7 . Yes, it is progress, but not nearly what the world receives in this single measure of calorie deficiency if we looked at the mao measure, how they define hunger, we realized that it is now what even the fao says is very strict. You have to be below a very low minimum for more than a year. So think of what that means. Think of what that means. For one, you can be below that minimum for only the entire season between harvest and youre not counted as hungry. You can be pregnancit and go through your entire pregnancy below that minimum level and still wouldnt be captured in that measure of hunger so it seemed entirely that, in fact, way too strict because we know that even shortterm hunger, even shortterm hunger can have devastating effects on a developing fetus, on anyone compromised by disease and on children. And so we realized too that there is another big reason why the Standard Measure that is used by the food and Agriculture Organization is limited. It is strictly about calories. As we know, we know that calories and nutrition are disconnecting in the world to y today. I recommend a new study that said that worldwide Nutritional Foods are outpacing any improvements in most regions of the world. So what is happening then is that calories and nutrition are very separate things. One can be beating more than enough calories and not have the nutrition that we need. Thats true at the United States where Something Like 40 of the calories that our children eat are nutritionally empty. If you look at nutrition think for a minute that its almost unbelievable. 4 in 5 children under the age of 2 are anemic. Half of all indian women with incredible implications in child bearing are anemic. So this all sounded like numbers to me until i talked to a doctor in rural india who said he observed a big change in the last few decades. He said, now, i treat about 2,000 patients among very poor farmers. The amazing thing is most of them have enough calories but 60 of them are either diabetic or suffering heart conditions. 60 of them. So what im suggesting is that the world desperately needs a more meaningful proximation of the crisis. Hats off to continuing to expand its supplements to this calorie measure that is mostly what people hear. They included the indicators and news about the voices of the hungry which is interview based, my experience of hunger way of looking at the problem. But theres only one measure, the calorie county measure that comes over the 800 million that the public hears. Because the world lacks a meaningful measure im arguing for a stand in that we can grab right now that gets us closer to the actual extent of the crisis of nutrition and is there one . There is one already and it is stunting. Today one in four of the worlds children are stunted. Now stunting is caused by too little food. Both the mother and the child and unsanitary water. If you have bacteria they can interfere with your bodys capacity to absorb the nutrients so even if you eat nutritious food you cant get the nutrients. If we think of stunting as a childhood condition it seems wild to say this should be the stand in for the hunger in the world. For all of us. But in truth, stunting effects people for a lifetime. Typically. Its a condition that leads to a weakened immune system and Cognitive Impairment and severe reproductive problem. So because the conditions bring lifelong harm im arguing that any person designated as a child should be counted throughout their lives as among those suffering the effects of stunting. What i call nutritional deprivation. Thats part under this heading of what i call attritional deprivation. If you look at it this way then, one quarter of the worlds people are suffering from nutritional deprivation. 1. 8 billion people. Now as a proxy is still incomplete because to those harmed by stunting are those nutritionally deprived who are among the 2 billion of us who lack at least one essential knew nutrient. Vitamin iron deficiency is linked to one in five maternal deaths and all of those are not captured in this but its still closer than what we have now. So im saying that the term nutritional deprivation, the concept seems useful particularly also because it captured at least a good portion of both calorie and knenutrient deficiency and also suggests that the problem is not just being deficient as a passive state of deficiency but one as being actively deprived by power and equities throughout the world. What is the extent of the problem . Id love it if you disagreed with me and you wanted to argue with me and show me another way, that would be great but it leaves me believing that the extent of the problem is about at least twice as big as the official number that we hear as the account of hungry people in the world. Now im going to move to the second stanza of my song today and id like to take you to a place in the world thats really taken the heart, really taken to heart everything that molly is talking about the reality of making food. The key to it, language of framing of it is always stated as the goal being food and nutritional security. Food and nutritional security recreating this disconnect thats growing throughout the world. Brazil added the right in its constitution as have about two dozen countries and this was a result beginning in the 1980s of social activism that created during that period an estimated 7,000 committees working on everything from income generation to urban gardens to support for reform and it was the social mobilization which observers say was the essential trigger to the policy commitments that made the right to food begin for real in 2003. He pledged that by the end of his term everyone in brazil would have three meals a day. He didnt meet that but i want to tell you Amazing Things i got to see. One brazilian city, two to three Million People, symbolizes everything that the rights based approach model really means and so before i go into the good news i want to acknowledge that in the news today if youre following it there is big opposition to what im now going to describe by those that are privileged and feel very threatened but please as you hear this news do not dispair. Remember what they told us democracy is becoming. Its never finally won. Its essence is eternal struggle. So i want to tell you what i saw firsthand that changed my life. My daughter and i travelled to write our book. My daughter anna and i and this could happen in any city, really. For example, it happened because a mayor, 93, ran on the platform of food as a right and he was elected. And his officials said basically if you are too poor to buy enough food in the market youre still a citizen im still accountable to you. He put together a city agency advised by a Civil Society council that represenned everybody from farmers to universities to business and religious leaders and labor and they came up with literally dozens of initiatives. You could go to the bus stop and see something called direct from the country side where the city made available a corner, city and land to a farmer and they would come in and sell their Great Produce to the inner city at prices that poor people can afford. So with no middle person to take the big cut, the farmers are delighted and as they told us beaming that they had many more customers and so they were making a much higher profit even though they were selling their food at a much lower price. That was called direct from the country side. On a larger scale they have manage called abc markets which in portuguese is translated as food for less, basically. And theyre now in 3 dozen of these. Heres the deal. The city says to the grocer, you can have this spot for your Grocery Store at a price and was central items for health at a lower price than you could afford. The grocers loved it and they lined up to sign up for these programs now. Theres 36 of them. And then there are what are c l called peoples restaurants. It was bigger than this. Open air. Beautiful airy space, fantastic smell of food and people sitting at big tables together chatting, chatting, chatting. And its 50 cents a meal. Everyone is welcome. So for example the haydy at our table had three kids and needed that extra boost of healthy food with her children. They loved it and that was cool and then we met a soild thaldie wanted to get married but couldnt afford an apartment. Then we talked to an elder gentleman that took the bus there every day because he wanted the companionship. One of the touches i liked about it is as we left the big area with people standing around chatting and on the walls were the days newspaper. If you couldnt afford the newspaper you could know whats going on in your community but the beauty of it is there is no stigma. And one that struck us was the idea that government could help keep the market honest. So the City Government teamed one the university to track the prices for these 20 basic commodities of where you could go. What stores had the lowest costs for those particular commodities. And they post the results of this survey at bus stops and they would announce it over the radio. You know how it is in our country that the poor communities often have the highest prices. But this is a way to help push against that kind of price gouging. So these and many, many more initiatives. What do they produce. Let me tell you a couple of things. These kinds of initiatives along with a federal program which is an Income Transfer Program to the poorest in brazil, in the city in 12 years cut the child death rate by 72 . That has to be historic rate of social change. 72 . And how much did it cost . Well, it cost about 2 of the city budget. I calculated it, dont quote me, i think, i got to double check this but its about a penny a day perez dent of the city so this courageous innovation has actually you know, i believe courage is definitely contagious and so people have been visiting and delegates from african mayors coming to see how they can learn and take lessons home to africa. So what are the lessons that we need to take to heart . She was coordinator of these many programs and from a student she had been passionate about food justice. And leave me the lessons. She said behind all of these changes that youve seen, all of them, she said theres a new social mentality. Its a public good. It was a shift in consciousness. Secondly that people because we were in government are behaving the way we are, this idea that the government is some incompetent interferer is diminishing and people are realizing that the state doesnt have to provide everything. It can actually be a convener. Setting the rules and convening and enabling citizens to come up with their own solutions. So i was thrilled but she kept going and going and going in por portuguese and i dont speak a word of it and i was trying to be patient until one point when her eyes teared up. And she just kept going and i couldnt help myself then. I nudged the interpreter and i said, what what made her tear up and he stopped her and he said, she said, i knew how much hunger there was in the world but what i didnt know and what upsets me so is how easy it is to end it. You could imagine that i have been thinking afterwards. And trying to figure out what she really meant. I want to go back to talk to her and see if im right. She wasnt saying her job was easy. She wasnt saying these things happened overnight overnight. Its possible if we create community where is the city feels accountable to all the citizens and the citizens feel doubly accountable to themselves to come one solutions and to holding the officials accountable as well and what is that called . I call that doemocracy. International ranking of integrity, the u. S. Ranks 35th behind mexico. So the key lesson for me is about democracy. What is democracy and how do we make it . What made real the right to food where the Food Movement joined forces with labor joined forward to create a powerful Political Movement. Once Strong Enough, the president created the zero hunger campaign. This is what made it possible. The lesson for me today is this, to succeed in ending the outrage of nutritional deprivation in a word of food abundance, we too must and we can build a broad Political Movement. What i love to call living democracy. Its not something we have but something we do. This is where my heart is heading me. This is where im headed personally and if you want to integrate the commitments you already have into this broader canopy of hope i let you know id love to connect with you. Ill close with the lines we had on the first screen which was a lesson we brought back from our journey. Its simply this. Hope is not what we find in evidence. Its what we become in action together. Thank you so very much. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you both so much. So frankie and molly are going to take lessons and if you like to ask them a question we ask that you lineup in the aisle and then theyll call on people and take questions as they come. We coordinated. Very intentional. I think you were first. Im brad wilson, an iowa farmer. I didnt hear a lot about the right to be paid fairly on the farm side. Most of the hungry are farmers and others in a farming economy. They talk about land reform, how about farm share reform where we get paid fairly all over the world and i just wanted a comment on that, my look at the history at the Food Movement today and the history is that it hasnt done much on the issue of what it calls for and what the group calls for which is a price floor instead of writing a check just like we have a minimum wage. I just wondered what you thought of all of that. Well i would agree completely brad and the right to descent compensation for your labor is one of the recognized human rights that farmers in this country certainly are not. I heard that today without talking about is that fair for farmers . I think that theres a session on the tension between affordable food and good prices for farmers. Im looking forward in seeing that explored in that session. But thanks for bringing that up brad. Thank you both for being here. I really appreciate your work and your focussing on one of the problems thats one of the most important and significant sources of suffering in the world today. Thank you for that. I have a question about the right to food that you both discussed. I suppose it might be different than political or civil rights in the sense that the latter often require a government not to do something or not to interfere with something where as the right to food seems like it will require the government to do something. So i wonder what moral significance if any you attribute to that distinction. I can start with that. Im sure frankie has something to add too. The right to food is the right to respect, protect and fulfill. So first of all simply respecting and protecting peoples ability to grow their own food and secure the food that they want in the ways that they want to get it, thats the beginning of it. The government is not obligated to feed people except under an emergency situation. Its one of the misconceptions in this country that is very common about the right to food. Its that truly the government backs out and prevents all the ways that corporations in this country are interfering with peoples ability to eat the food that they want raised in the ways they want it to be raised. The stories capture what you were saying. Is approach is not to create food give away. It was to enable people to access the market. Thats why i love the general framing from the beginning. If youre a citizen, if youre hungry youre still a citizen and you still need us, the government to make sure the market serves you. So the market then becomes simply a tool in which we set our values, boundaries, its a tool that we set the values and boundaries around so that everyone can have access and i think we should change the meaning of the word free market to mean freedom to access and meet our basic needs in the market. Thats the freedom we need and existing wealth can never do that. So i think this distinction is really important and what i love so much about the brazil example, it seems they really got that at a Cellular Level in the way they designed their programs. Thank you. I think youre next. Thank you. I commend you both on your work how do i put this im sorry but i feel like saying we dont live in a democracy undervalues and devalues all the movements that happened up until this point in this country. Your talks are a lot about inclusivity and working together and i feel like both of your talks while theyre wonderful and your work is wonderful its exclusive and what about the government and what about the private sector and why dont you feel like they can be a part of the conversation . Frankie has fought so deeply about this for a long time. I want to give her a chance to talk first. What im saying is precisely he takes us back through the great generation and right now privately held government most americans believe 80 of the republicans and democrats, a percentage believe that corporations have too much power over our public decision making. The people brought us so much progress and that the backsliding is just so terribly frightful. And i want to compare us to other countries as i did to shock us into we can do better. We know we can do better in this country. To call us to do better because i want to be proud of my country. I can hardly add to that but that to me is exactly its the passion and the ways that people have put their lives on the line for so long that makes our corporate in this country now so hideous to me. That we have back slid and we dont have a government by the people for the people. This is not anticorporate. Its anticorporate control of the public sector. Public decision making. Public power that absolutely i believe in market economies in which corporations play a role but its the publics roles to make public decisions. Thats the distinction. Thank you. If folks wouldnt mind identifying who you are when you ask questions. You have an advantage over us. I always hate to identify myself because i forget my name. I run an Organization Called lets talk about food. I have a question, you two have both been icons of mine for as long as i have known your names which is in frankies case since i was in high school i think. In our Current Situation in america where being pour is demonized at the central level, im very pessimistic when i look at the snap budgets and cuts and when i look at the farm bill, how concreting do you maintain your optimism and what can a group of incredible young energy like all of these people do to start moving to rights based approach. I can tell you very quickly and simply how i keep my optimism. Its by working with young people. They have that optimism and believe that change is possible. You have laid out so many different steps that people can be taking but perhaps youd like to give a few . Well, first, i want to make a distinction that helps me. Is that i dont call myself an optimist and i certainly am not a pessimist. I have decided that i am a possiblist and this comes out of the work i did to write eco mind shifting to that perspective that i realized the nature of life has changed. Connection and cocreation and therefore how incredibly prideful it would be to say no we cant do this. How crazy that would be because so much is everything i just told you today about brazil, for example, i would never have predicted when i was the age of the young people i worked with. I would say thats not going to happen. Brazil is going to be the last country to ever change. Its so extreme. Thats one approach is just, i guess, very practically every week, at least once a week, find a story of something that totally shocks you that you thought was never possible and we try to specialize that. But to just remind you that its not possible to know whats possible. And that the only choice we dont have is whether to change the world. And i try to keep the idea alive that the only choice we dont have is whether to change the world and we need to talk about your organization is lets talk about food and thats the kind of thing that i believe we gain courage in community and we judge the hill to be less steep. Anything youre doing, to create that connection, youre building courage. People taking risks and having new ideas and breaking free from the Charity Model into the rights of democracy model. So i think those are the key of it takes some work. It takes some work to find these examples and spread them but telling a story of possibility is a revolutionary act. Im christine and i work with a food nonprofit called chefs collaborative. Its with chefs that want to make america eat better and the way they define that. Its been a blast but my lifelong kind of learning is food justice and mostly how it intersects with economic justice. Its very deeply intertwined as you know much better than i do and i guess my question was and i was kind of like thinking about this when you were talking about bello. How the City Government was able to kind of create this robust local economy and local market when we have such a demanding and rampantly running Global Market which has in the past caused a lot of famin like in the late 1800s in india where there was a huge famine caused by el nino. It was because the free markets caused all the grain to bypass all the People Living there to england instead. So how this city, was able to kind of work and regulate this Global Market demand versus cultivating a local market demand or were they just not connected to the local market . Im not very familiar with that situation . I cant claim to know enough to answer your question well. But i bet a lot more research has been done on it. One name that you can look for is cecila rocha. She has written a lot about that experience. And i bet your questions could be answered more fully but my impression was that it wasnt so much or i wasnt hearing about the regulation of corporate agri business as much as it was creating real alternatives that were helping the small farmer and thats also true now on a national level. A third of that. And give a leg up to the small local producer. And maybe theres also a rural setting. They have School Gardens and Community Gardens and they do cooking classes and lessons and all of that sort of thing as well. They do food supplements. They take ground up egg shells, powder, very highly nutritious and they lace flour for kids in preschool. That was a waste product before and they realized there was something they could do that would add no cost. So id love to know more and keep in touch if you learn the answer to your question because i wish i knew it. So basically youre saying its not a second question but youre saying that the City Government had the power and the legitimacy to implemented all of these acts . Because it brought remember it brought together this council that with representatives from all sectors including business that came up with all of these ideas and helped to implemented them and so it had to be of benefit to a lot of people to work and and that was the beauty of it. Thats what she was telling us is that this spirit that government doesnt have to do for that government can enable citizens to come up with the solutions and that was the spirit and it had to do with trust and the trust is its so broken down in our government level and how do we rebuild that trust . And part of it is removing the power of private wealth that makes us believe that we cant trust whats really happening in our bodies of governance. Thank you. My question is for francis. You told us about brazil and its a beautiful story but you didnt say that thats basically because its highly related to the fact that is msd has a long tradition of reclaiming not only the land but the food system in brazil and i think its important to say, especially in the context of this country because if i understood correctly its that you were trying to give us an example of something that we cant actually do in the u. S. But i think its very complicated if you dont understand the role of the farmers or the Land Movement in brazil and this is important especially to the farmer that spoke at the beginning because i saw some stickers downstairs that say power to the farmers. I think about people that selfsustain and produce food for themselves and the community but when i think about farmers in the u. S. Its different. So i guess my question now is whether you think about the difference in a way of the farmers in the u. S. And the farmers in the south that can achieve these type of products. Im delighted that you raised the mst because that was part of what was looked at and it has also just had profound impact on my sense of possibility. So i did throw in what lead to a Political Movement Strong Enough to actually elect a leader that was going to begin the zero hunger programs and so i apologize. I was worried about having so much to say and so little time. Its probably the largest social movement in our entire hemisphere and has achieved and has settled Something Like a third of a million families on 20 million acres of land and enormous achievement and has inspired much, much more land redistribution than that and created a whole organic seed line and has trained its farmers in aroecology methods so it needed more attention than what i said today because it is a central player in what became this right to food and nutritional security in brazil. So if any of you dont know about the Landless Workers Movement theres a friend of the mst website thats very rich and very very inspiring on terms of what they have been able to achieve and against all sort of odds including the murder of 1500 of their members because of the resistance by the landed elite in brazil. So hats off to the mst and we have much to learn from them but i think ill just let another person speak. Hi, my name is michelle. Im a lawyer from Quebec Canada and im a student at notre dame law school. Were talking about the human right to food. You mentioned that human rights a and mention resetting the Table Program in canada but unfortunately we still dont have in canada and i think in the u. S. , no ways to bring suits or claims in front of tribunals for violation of the right to food so i was wondering if you had suggestions on ways to do that or work towards that. Thank you. Im not a lawyer and im not sure in the cases of how people have brought cases before tribunals im not sure how they paved the way and created that framework. The legal power exists at the International Level and i know that thats probably the first place i would be going to look for examples or guidelines of how to make that happen. Its a the International Organization that is promoeting the right to food around the world. Great website and they really keep you up to date on whats happening in terms of legal actions around the world. But i wish i could give you a better answer. Hi, im he liz belg henderson. An organic farmer. One of the simplest ways to make sure that people got good food would be to raise the minimum wage and on april 15th all of you can join in on the demonstrations that are going to be happening all over the country. Fast food workers, im sure there are people that will be doing it here in boston. So having huge numbers of you here participating in support for low wage workers who are pushing for a minimum wage of 15 an hour which would be a very nice wage too for the farmers who grow the food that you eat i never made that much as a farmer. We need a movement of all of those together, farmers, farm workers and other food workers and from the Farm Worker Panel we had this morning comes a request to you and for this dproens f conference for next year that you have more workers speaking at this conference. [ applause ] thanks so much for raising that liz. Extremely important fight going on right now and i should say 15 an hour is not a living wage here. Not close to it. Especially for a person who is trying to support a child. So it should be adjusted. I know its tricky to be working that out and it would be an incredible advantage over what we have now but id like to see this minimum Wage Campaign be on an incremental scale so that it becomes tied in with what the real cost of living is. Its true, right, molly and elizabeth that 15 still does not is that correct. And still even without that. Social enterprise. Project development, and particularly setting the context of your talk. And the important context for food justice for our food justice discussion. And you said that you have a strong trust for market economies. And i understand the power of the private market but at the same time when we have corporations that are law bound to create profit in this country without taking into account social and environmental costs id really like to hear what your perspectives are on the new institutions, both public, private and potentially hybrid that we need to be bringing around Food Sovereignty and food justice. Well, i dont know what i said to lead you to think that i was such a fan of certainly not the market that we have today which i call this one rule market that its highest return to existing wealth that by definition will create hunger and poverty so what i think that could happen in a living democracy and what has happened in places that have more genuine democratic accountability that they create rules around the Market Exchange. What would happen if it kept out those that are dangerous. It really doesnt take a ph. D. In Political Science i dont think to understand that yes, Market Exchange is a handy tool. We dont want to have everything centrally distributed and yes we have to put boundaries around it so what is fair, what is unfair, what is, you know and we have to have the commons returns. For example, there was a beautiful article about the cost of coal and the fact that coal producers dont pay any of the social, environmental human costs and they are using the commons and yet not returning not paying a fair price for that and the work of peter barns for example and who owns the sky in the idea that here all this pollution happens and yet its free to pollute the sky that is for all of us these are tools we can use to make the market work to serve life. Our life and all other species. Thats all i meant in terms of the market. I dont think anybody today is advocating complete state control and so its a question of how do we get a democratic accountability in our governance that we can set those rules that work and that can be enforced . That is the key, right . Good afternoon, im an attorney in philadelphia working on land security and land sovereignty issues and thank you for framing this conversation around human rights. I wanted to come back to the question in north america of socioeconomic rights because were not familiar with how to do that but point folks to the u. S. Human Rights Network and the work thats happening across issue. I think more work around the right to food needs to happen but theres a lot of work happening across issue and really dealing with it and point folks also to the work that for example advocates for human rights, bringing a petition to the inner American Commission for human rights. Theyll work on a local level to establish local human rights. We can do this if we continue to push the human rights narrative. There are a lot of tools out there but i think in the food justice context we havent gone far enough. So i wanted to raise those as kind of markers for folks to further this work. I think we have one more question. Thank you. I was curious if either of you and then i was thinking frankie that you might refer to annas book diet for a hot planet, to speak about the relationship between the food system, food justice, Racial Equity and Climate Change given the role of industrial agriculture and agribusiness in creating a hot planet. The book is diet for a hot planet and also in the work that i am finishing called world hunger 10 miss, we have a key chapter on Climate Change that Climate Change does not have to mean more hunger. So that nexus is so its so real that people as you all know im sure, those already the most impacted by Climate Change and i particularly get an image of bangladesh and thousands of people moving every year now or every some enormous number every day because of the rising waters. So on the one hand that people throughout the world are already seriously impacting Climate Change and that reality has not is not part of the global consciousness. At the same time what we decided to share in our new book is that really Small Farmers are our climate heros if we would get behind them because it get behi them. It is precisely their work that many can potentially greatly increase the sequestration of carbon. If we got behind them, they are seriously a big part of the solution. So this combination of they are now suffering the most and their advance could advance us all. I think particularly the country of knee jer, the developing index of the most devastated countries in the world and yesterday through agriforestry, integration of crops and trees reclaimed 200 million acres im sorry, has renurtured the growth of 200 million in trees on 12. 5 million acres and has addressed Food Insecurity by doing that for about 2. 5 Million People. And they can now feed their families and all these trees, of course, thats addressing Climate Change. They are trying to take that now into 15 countries in the flank of the sahara desert. What anna and i try to do, both sounding the alarm of this needless suffering that is other people least responsible for healing of our pla