GRAIN Staff

Finding a way out of this “polycrisis” requires a deep transformation in how energy and food are produced and distributed, with actions that challenge corporate control head on.

There are tonnes of good ideas on the table about how to reshape our food systems – and fleets of social movements eager to take the reins and put them in practice. Perhaps this food crisis can serve to bring movements together to get some serious action going.

Numerous studies have shown that small farms are not only more productive per hectare of land, but that they also protect biodiversity better, produce more diverse and more nutritious food, create more jobs and keep more people on the land.

The picture often painted for us is that we need corporate seeds to feed the world: they are alleged to be more efficient, productive and predictable. Locally developed farmer varieties are painted as backwards, less-productive and disease-ridden. But those of us with our feet on the ground know that this is not the reality in Africa.

Eight years after releasing its first report on land grabbing, which put the issue on the international agenda, GRAIN publishes a new dataset documenting nearly 500 cases of land grabbing around the world.

From deforestation to fertiliser use, and from factory farms to supermarket shelves, producing, transporting, consuming and wasting food account for around half of all greenhouse gas emissions