The international campaign we are all engaged in to reduce our tragic losses to the Covid-19 crisis is just a rehearsal for the big campaign that lies ahead – to preserve and build sustainable local and territorial food systems that connect producers and consumers and provide healthy, nutritious food for all. We are learning a lot about the weaknesses and gaps in the global food distribution system. Communities are discovering that they cannot rely only on food that requires transportation across borders or even from distant regions within a single country. Nor can producers on large-scale industrial farms rely on migrant labour as they have done in the past. In some countries food is beginning to rot in the fields. Many local markets have been shut down. Supplies of critical items in supermarkets disappear quickly through panic buying and profiteering. In countries like India, where farmers are on lock down along with everyone else, middlemen are taking advantage of the crisis to buy at cut-price rates from the farmers and sell at high prices to those who can afford to pay.