“Notre travail a un prix” (Our work has a price). With this slogan in French, anchored on the banner of a tractor, a new edition of Parabere Forum began a few days ago in Rome, the feminist congress that annually brings together women from all corners of the planet to try to find solutions to a specific problem. . This year what worried them most were food policies, an issue that is stirring these days not only in Europe, but in the entire world.
We have seen tractors asserting themselves in the streets and cutting off the main arteries of cities in Germany, Spain, Italy or France, but also in Argentina or India. “It’s a global problem,” food activist Dee Wood, co-founder of the Granville Community Kitchen and honorary member of the London Authority Food Board, explained to La Vanguardia, adding that it is the same philanthrocapitalist corporations that monopolize land around the globe with the pretext of doing positive things, such as offsetting the carbon footprint or supposedly producing clean food. “It’s not true, they are planting monoplantations of trees that are not native to the area and also doing things around oil.”
The Frenchwoman Audrey Bourrolleau, former advisor on agriculture, forestry sciences and rural development to French President Emmanuel Macron, agreed with her that the concentration of power in food corporations is the greatest evil of our times. “If more were invested in the local industry, in doing everything from a more regional perspective, things would be different.”
Also if the same rules of the game were followed in all countries, because “if there is a gap between prices and salaries you cannot bet on a common value,” said Bourolleau. “If you look at the French market, we export grains and wine. We are not good at transforming products, the same thing happens in Spain or Italy. I think we must build on common value in Europe, and not transport our raw materials far away, so the regions can be part of the solution.”
We asked Dee Wood what she thinks is the most prostituted product on the planet and, surprise, you don’t even have to travel to Colombia or Brazil to find it. It is not cocoa, avocado or any of the products that come to mind related to slavery. “They are grain and milk, which are global. Cheese, butter, bread are made with them,” she explains. “The problem is that the cooperators increasingly want to get more out of the producers, they don’t care about people or families. With them they create products that cannot even be called food. Ultra-processed, extremely unhealthy.”
“Farmers should be paid well, yes. But what does this mean?”, Buenos Aires chef Narda Lepes, head of Narda Comedor, in Buenos Aires, added to the conversation. “They should have access to the land and for that it should be whitened.” the economy. If that happened, fruits and vegetables would have to have a much higher price. In Argentina, for example, at this moment the economy cannot absorb that impact. Yes, there is a part of the population that can pay what the food is worth, but another cannot. The black market is a problem that no one wants to touch, logistics is another big problem. “The more complicated a country’s economy is, the more difficult the problem is.”
In India, however, farmers are apparently taking loans from banks to buy genetically modified seeds. This is what Asma Khan, a London-based chef with her successful restaurant Darjeeling Express, says. “It is easier to work with those seeds, because due to climate change sometimes there is no rain or it comes at the wrong time.”
In India there is also overexploitation of the countryside, which does not leave time to recover the land and does not allow for creating real food for families. “This agriculture should not be happening, we would have to go back to the old seeds that do not need as much water. But today’s farmers are betting on grain because it is what the market asks for.”
Can this entire global scenario be fought from home? Yes, because the vote is precisely on the plate. “Food is no longer a private matter: entire economies and even national security depend on it. The decisions we make about how and what to eat are shaping the world’s food systems,” said journalist María Canabal, founder of Parabere. Forum.
And the chefs? “We have to show ourselves, because we are also involved in all this. We have a role in food waste, diversity, sustainability and gender,” the star French chef Hélène Darroze explained to La Vanguardia in Parabere Forum.
