1 - Peasants are the main or sole
food providers to more than
70% of the world’s people, and
peasants produce this food with
less (often much less) than 25%
of the resources – including
land, water, fossil fuels – used
to get all of the world’s food to
the table.
2 - The Industrial Food Chain uses
at least 75% of the world’s
agricultural resources and is a
major source of GHG emissions,
but provides food to less than
30% of the world’s people.
3 - For every $1 consumers pay to
Chain retailers, society pays
another $2 for the Chain’s
health and environmental
damages. The total bill for the
Chain’s direct and indirect cost
is 5 times governments’ annual
military expenditure.
4 - The Chain lacks the agility to
respond to climate change.
Its R&D is not only distorted
but also declining as it
concentrates the global food
market.
5 - The Peasant Food Web
nurtures 9-100 times the
biodiversity used by the Chain,
across plants, livestock, fish
and forests. Peasants have
the knowledge, innovative
energy and networks needed to
respond to climate change; they
have the operational scope and
scale; and they are closest to
the hungry and malnourished.
6 - There is still much about
our food systems that we
don’t know we don’t know.
Sometimes, the Chain knows
but isn’t telling. Other times,
policymakers aren’t looking.
Most often, we fail to consider
the diverse knowledge systems
in the Peasant Food Web.
7 - The bottom line: at least 3.9
billion people are either hungry
or malnourished because the
Industrial Food Chain is too
distorted, vastly too expensive,
and – after 70 years of trying –
just can’t scale up to feed the
world.
