What Is Wrong With Our Current Food System?

When food is simply viewed as a commodity that can be bought and sold rather than the means to a deeper connection to society and the environment, we need to reevaluate our food system. When the increase of profits and control over means of production for agribusinesses results in a destruction of the smallholder life, we need to reevaluate our food system. When consumers and smallholders no longer have the right of choice over their own food, and when one billion people are hungry, we need to reevaluate our food system. There is something missing in the way the current food regime seeks to feed the world. The thing that is missing is people.

From the crusade to change the psychology of the peasant, to the increased agricultural mechanization that ends rural lifestyles, to the constant food advertisements meant to change the way consumers view food, there is a strange lack of humanity in our food system.

However, in the midst of all of this, rises resistance and alternatives. There is a growing awareness of the unsustainability, both socially and environmentally, of our food system. From this awareness comes movements like food sovereignty or agroecological practices like permaculture. These movements are fairly new but may offer great potential solutions to revolutionize how we grow food.

What is Permaculture?

The Foundations of permaculture rest on these principles:

1- the problem is the solution
2- the yield is theoretically unlimited
3- work with nature not against
4- everything gardens
5- least change for the greatest effect

What is Food Sovereignty?

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems…Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations” - La Via Campesina

How Will Permaculture Create Food Sovereignty?

Permaculture is a sustainable design method that copies systems found in nature. It looks at the whole system and creates a design in which each part of the system contributes to the long term sustainability of the whole. It is meant to be a closed-loop system and self-sustaining once implemented that contributes to rather than destroys the surrounding environment and society. It utilizes crop rotation, polyculture, integrated water management, and perennial crops to create such a system.

It is a method that returns control of resources to communities and breaks dependency on external resources, which are key factors in food sovereignty.