Transforming the Global Economy to Achieve the Right to Food For All: Democratizing Global Economic Governance

The way food systems operates, from what we produce and consume to where, how, and when food is sourced, is increasingly tied to the uneven rules that shape our global economy. Agricultural commodities and industrial food products are at the core of the current international division of labor and are key determinants of the corporate power concentration that characterizes the dominant pattern of globalization. Yet, this complex web of economic agri-food relations has been increasingly disconnected from land, territories, and communities in recent decades.

With the expansion of global value chains, food production and consumption are no longer a matter of what is accessible, culturally adequate, ecologically sound, or sufficiently available in each territory. They are more related to what is lucrative for corporate actors dominating the market. The financialization of food and agriculture—a trend that has intensified since the 2008 global economic crisis with the growing involvement of pension funds, private equity firms, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds in agricultural and land investments—has shaped food systems in unprecedented ways, including through dematerialization and digitalization.

In this article Flora Sonkin and Stefano Prato show why global economic solutions are essential for realizing the right to food. They argue that the UN’s Financing for Development process serves as a platform to promote the necessary systemic changes. They also acknowledge that power imbalances and political-economic dynamics influence the UN systems. Nevertheless, they stress that it can be a space to develop new normative frameworks for transforming global economic, monetary, and financial governance.