The “Food Future Switzerland” project was presented at a press conference in Berne on May 17. The Citizens’ Assembly is an integral part of this project. The 100 participants are representative of Swiss society in terms of gender, age and urban-rural distribution. At the end of eleven meetings, they will have to say what Switzerland’s food policy should look like by 2030, while making healthy, sustainable, animal-friendly and fairly-produced food available to all Swiss people.
The banking system collapsed in 2008, and our food system is about to do the same. For some years now, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to resemble the global financial system as 2008 approaches. While the collapse of the financial system would have been devastating for the well-being of humanity, the collapse of the food system is not worth thinking about. Yet the evidence that something is amiss is multiplying rapidly. The current surge in food prices seems to be the latest sign of systemic instability.
From now on, the global food system must survive not only its internal fragilities, but also environmental and political disruptions likely to interact with each other. To give a current example, in mid-April, the Indian government hinted that it could make up the shortfall in global food exports caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Barely a month later, he banned wheat exports, after crops shriveled during a devastating heat wave.
There is an urgent need to diversify global food production, both geographically and in terms of crops and farming techniques. We need to break the stranglehold of big business and financial speculators. We need to create back-up systems, producing food by entirely different means. We need to introduce a reserve capacity into a system threatened by its own efficiencies.
If so many people can go hungry at a time of unprecedented generosity, the consequences of a major crop failure caused by environmental degradation defy imagination. The system has to change.
