Opinion | Six Months to Prevent a Hostile Takeover of Food Systems, and 25 Years to Transform Them | Nick Jacobshttps://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/04/07/six-months-prevent-hostile-takeover-food-systems-and-25-years-transform-themthe "4th industrial revolution" is already sweeping through food systems. For proof, we need look no further than the changing complexion of the agri-food sector, where mergers and market disruptions are occurring at a dizzying pace. E-commerce platforms like Amazon and China's JD.com are now among the top ten retailers globally. With agribusinessesincreasingly reliant on cloud, AI, and data processing services, big tech firms like Amazon, Alibaba, Microsoft, Google, and Baidu are moving into food production. Meanwhile, Blackrock and 4 other asset management companies own 10–30% of the shares of the top agri-food firms.
With climate change, environmental breakdown, and pandemics wreaking havoc on food systems over the coming years, the "silver bullet" solutions offered by the new agri-food giants may prove irresistible to panicking policymakers. This year's UN Food Systems Summit—arising from a partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum—will be a showcase for corporate-led "solutions."
In other words, the keys of the food system are already being handed over to data platforms, e-commerce giants, and private equity firms. This could mean dismantling the diversified food webs that sustain 70% of the world's population and provide environmental resilience. It could mean putting the food security of billions of people at the mercy of high-risk AI-controlled farming systems and opaque supply corridors.
And yet, there is nothing inevitable about this dystopian future. In reality, divisions will grow among corporations and between companies, workers, and consumers, as ecosystems refuse to be tamed, people refuse to be nudged, technologies malfunction, and environmental and social tipping points draw closer.
Farmers, food workers and their allies have recognized the crossroads we are at. They are already organizing in new ways to defend their spaces, their livelihoods, and their future—starting with mobilization around the Food Systems Summit.
In scanning the landscape for clues about the next quarter century, we found that what could be achieved by civil society and social movements is just as "disruptive" as the plans of the agri-food giants. A "Long Food Movement"—bringing together farmers, fishers, cooperatives, unions, grassroots organizations and international NGOs—could shift $4 trillion from the industrial chain to food sovereignty and agroecology, cut 75% of food systems' GHG emissions, and deliver incalculable benefits to the lives and livelihoods of billions of people over the next 25 years