A Socially Inclusive Pathway to Food Security: The Agroecological Alternative

Abstract

With roughly 1 billion people unable to meet their minimum daily caloric intake, the issue of food security is imperative to overcoming rural poverty. The way in which we produce food plays an extremely important role in solving the hunger epidemic and reaching the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. The dominant model of agricultural development practised by many countries today is based on chemical-intensive agro-industrial complexes growing monocultures for export. This model of corporate-controlled agro-industry has failed to produce positive results economically, environmentally or socially. As one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, the agro-industrial model is exacerbating global climate change, degrading arable land, deteriorating public health, decreasing food quality and disrupting traditional rural livelihoods. Although this model was deemed to produce higher yields and increase productivity, it has failed to increase food security around the world. In fact, since the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) started calculating the number of undernourished persons worldwide in 1969, the number of hungry people has increased by about 8 per cent —from 878 million in 1969 to an estimated 925 million in 2010 (FAO, 2012). (…)