World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 112

Advancing Health Promoting Food Systems

(Abrahams 2006; Gertel and LeHeron
2011; Goodman, DuPuis, and Goodman
2012).

An ecological approach favors an
approach to diet, disease, and health on the
principles of “the right to be well: [with]
the entire food supply geared to deliver
health” (Lang 2005, 735). This approach
is based on diverse systems of food
production and care of food producing
environments. From an ecological
perspective, agricultural lands perform
multiple functions, including livelihood
generation which is not necessarily linked
to food production on a constant basis.
The stewardship of these lands is valued
because of its role in future food security:
through protecting agricultural lands and
also through providing incomes to access
available food.

farmer knowledge and public and farmer
investment in agriculture. Knowledge and
agricultural inputs, once in the public
domain, are no longer available to many
small farmers (Tansey 2002).

As a result of their market power
and intellectual property ownership,
corporations have the lobbying and
research capacity to influence dietary
guidelines and national food supply,
bio-technology and bio-security policies
and to dominate all aspects of the
supply chain (PLoS Medicine Editors
2012; Hastings 2012). By capturing the
regulatory architecture, industrial scale
and corporatized food systems become
normalized, and encourages food insecure
countries to produce and trade themselves
out of poverty and by extension food
and nutrition insecurity. This logic does
not necessarily play out in practice (De
3.3 - Capital accumulation among a few Schutter 2011).
corporations to the exclusion of wealth
sharing
3.4 - Urban migration and de-agrarianization policies

A small number of global food
corporations dominate the major food
The current migration of people
sector supply chains (meat, grains, dairy, to cities in low- and middle-income
oils, and some horticulture). In the grain countries represents the largest and
sector, and more recently in sectors where most rapid human movement in human
genetic modification and bio-technologies history, and is having considerable
are being applied (meat and fish), the laws impact on food security, environmental
and conventions on intellectual property degradation, and the separation of
rights (especially TRIPS: Trade-Related peoples from their food supply. In part,
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) this movement is the result of political
are privatizing access to the biological instability in rural regions, but it is also
foundations of agriculture (Tansey due to government and development
2002; Tansey and Rajotte 2008). This agency policy. The movement of peoples
intellectual property rights architecture away from agriculture and into cities
has transformed agricultural research and towns as skilled and semi-skilled
and development and biotech innovation, labourers is viewed in development circles
with corporate science and “private as a sign that sufficient food is entering
right” patents displacing community and the global food system and that national
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