The Right To Food

The year was 1948. After years of war, the dust had finally settled. Nations were reeling at what had happened during the Second World War. They wanted to make sure that a war of that substance and scale never happened again, and in this spirit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born. Yesterday was its 61st birthday. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines the basic rights that all people have, just because they are human. However, this is not to say that all people on earth have achieved these rights. I'd hazard a guess that most of us do not get to express our right to free speech, our right to adequate food and shelter, and even our right to a nationality on a consistent basis.

Food is one of those rights. To be exact, it is article 25: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food." Why is it important to look at food as a right? We often think of the right to freedom of speech as an important right that we need to uphold. The flip side of this right is responsibility - the responsibility to ensure that the right to free speech is protected. Yet when it comes to the lack of food, we bemoan the circumstances that got people there, talking about the economy and joblessness and the bad weather or poor infrastructure. But what about our role and our responsibility to make sure that everyone can grow their own food and access healthy food? Is that not the flip side of the right to food?

When we create a food system that relies on heavy inputs of pesticides and fertilizers and depletes the soil and the water, making it more difficult for small farmers to raise crops, that undermines the right to food. When we make it more difficult for farmers to save their own seeds for a new year, that undermines the right to food. When small, local farms fail and we don't think about increasing the capacity of communities to grow their own food, that undermines the right to food. When try not to think about those who are struggling and how to change the social inequalities and systemic problems that lead to lack of food, that undermines the right to food.

How about reframing this? Can we create places where food is treated as a human right, and where we create a food system that sustains the soil and water, helps small farmers thrive, encourages local resilience through seed-saving and community education, and creates communities that value food and value creating ways to ensure that everyone is involved in growing and sharing food?

I'd like to think so. Do you?