The coronavirus pandemic: A critical reflectionon corporate food patterns
The SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic declared by the World Health Organization in January 2020 has sparked a critical debate about its relationship to ‘food processes’ in the era of capital-ism.
On the one hand, the pandemic sheds light on the trans-mission of infectious agents caused by so-called ‘modern food systems’, which have made biodiversity more fragile and pro-moted cross-species transmission from animals to humans. On the other hand, it demonstrates that the ‘corporate food process’ has already created a favorable environment – in the form of non-communicable chronic diseases – for a fatal out-break of disease.
Beyond the mainstream scientific response that centers on medication and vaccines, the article puts forward an exit strategy to the crisis via six proposals that build on the notion of food agency. This includes doing away with the patriarchal, developmentalist model that underpins corporate food patterns, thereby prioritizing collective care led by women through family and community agroecology, and promoting planetary life in the wider framework of food sovereignty.
