The global syndemic can be read from both poles of food systems: on the one hand, agricultural production is carried out on large scales, based on the intensive use of artificial inputs, such as agrochemicals, hormones, and antibiotics; on the other, the consumption of ultra-processed foods and the culturing of deeply unhealthy and unsustainable diets; and to energetically sustain this chain of ecological and sanitary irrationality, the intensive use of fossil fuels.

The Covid-19 pandemic has given new life to the questions on the impact that the control of giant corporations over food systems and its impact on public health. This Part II of the three-part series of Agroecology Now digs deeper into articulating capitalist neoliberal food empires as the structural root of the current crises in food systems and presents the case for agroecology as the alternative model to prevent the looming collapse.

Photo credit: MST- Healthy food from land reform settlements donated on the outskirts of cities in the state of Paraná by the Landless Rural Workers Movement.