Thank you for opening up this consultation.
For the older among us in this circle, there may well be a sense of déjà vu as we look back at a decade and more of consultative activity. Questions, and answers, seem to follow annual generations. What is posed from year to year varies little, and what is answered, the same.
That is why, in this contribution - which I make after a long gap - I would suggest a revisiting of terms, definitions and concepts. I think this needs to be done, every so often, and also especially as the fsnforum has expanded greatly in numbers from where it was some 13 or 14 years ago.
I'd like to start with the root level term, food. Does it mean the same as what we thought it to mean 15 years ago? Now, as I see it, 'food' can mean anything ultra-processed (there's another term we didn't have a decade ago) and sold in supermarkets with the packaging claim that it is food. So what do we mean by 'food'? Primary processed grain crop? Packagaed vegetables? Tetra-packed milk?
Next, the right, towhatever we call 'food', and guidelines. Without loading a thesis worth of material here, I would like to ask the question: are we talking about a right to be free from hunger, or a right to whatever it is that is expedient to call 'food'? I think thatere's a world of difference between the two.
Now for 'guidelines'. Here's what the text says: "practical guidance for States on how to realize the right to adequate food". Far too many fuzzy variables, in my view. What is 'adequate'? Could what's adequate in smalltown USA be the same 'adequate' as a village in the Horn of Africa? I would say not. What then is meant by 'adequate'?
And also, what have States (with a capital 'S') made of such rights and guidelines over the last 20 to 30 years? Without some kind of assessment about what States (which means countries and territories) actually do - on the ground and not on paper - it becomes moot as to whether any guidelines at all, let alone rights, are followed and ensured.
On to "Governments have legal obligations to ensure the right to food". Well, look, when governments are sending out factory-made inedible reprocessed junk, as some adjunct of a direct benefot transfer or universal basic income, then this as I see it is assuredly not the fulfilment of a legal obligation. Does the FAO Committee on Food Security (which many governments listen to) recognise this as being a rather knotty problem?
There are large doses of buzzwords and feelgood signalling in this text that really, I think serves no purpose other than to distract from pressing local problems. Why are we being carpet-bombed with the same old 'sustainable development,' ' conflict', 'inequality', 'disease', 'climate change', 'loss of biodiversity', 'cooperation and collaboration', ' collective public good', ' poverty', ' inequality'?
At 20 years old, shouldn't these have been worked out? Or at least substantially on the way to being worked out?
Best wishes, Rahul Goswami
Rahul Goswami