End corporate monopoly control!

Fight for People’s Rights to Just, Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Food Systems!

We are smallholder farmers, landless peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, plantation workers; groups representing indigenous peoples, local communities, youth, women, urban poor, and consumers; and advocates of food sovereignty, agroecology, and genuine agrarian reform and rural development.

We make up the Global People’s Summit for Just, Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Food Systems.

Amid the multiple and interrelated crises of health, climate, environment, and economy and their many impacts on hunger and poverty, it is urgent to transform the global food system radically. But big monopoly corporations have dominated and dictated the discussions on food systems transformation, as clearly seen in the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS).

We find it unacceptable that the UNFSS is proclaiming itself as a so-called “people’s summit” when the profit-seeking interests of monopoly corporations sideline the aspirations and demands of the world’s peoples for a truly radical transformation of food systems.

We say to the UNFSS and its big business patrons, “Not in our name!”

Thus, we have gathered as the Global People’s Summit to expose and strongly counter the devious corporate agenda of the anti-people summit that is the UNFSS.

More importantly, as the Global People’s Summit, we declare that through the collective vigor and resolve of our communities and movements, we shall advance with unwavering enthusiasm the people’s demands for a food systems transformation that is truly just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable.

We commit to the struggle for just food systems.

We believe that a just food system can only be built on the people’s right to own and effectively control land, seeds, water, and other productive resources. Recognition of indigenous peoples’ self-determination over their ancestral land and diversified food system is critical to promoting just and equitable food systems. No community, social class, or nation shall ever be deprived of access to food because of poverty, wars, or conflicts.

We commit to the struggle for equitable food systems.

We believe that an equitable food system can only be built on the people’s right to land and livelihoods and decent working and living conditions, which means that food production must be decided by the sovereign will of the people, based on their particular circumstances, priorities, and needs. Women farmers, who make up much of the global farming population, must be accorded the respect they have earned, and their rights protected.

We commit to the struggle for healthy food systems.

We believe that healthy food systems can only be built on the people’s right to always have access to nutritious and sufficient food. Agroecological food production must be promoted and be made widely available and affordable to all to protect the health and well-being of both the food producers and consumers.

We commit to the struggle for sustainable food systems.

We believe that sustainable food systems can only be built on the people’s right to a healthy planet and environment capable of adequately producing all the food needs of the world’s population. Building a solid foundation for sustainability in our food systems requires food sovereignty and agroecology, people’s rights to land and resources, decent working and living conditions, and a nutritious diet.

We commit to the struggle for diverse local food systems.

 We believe that a single, globalized food system imposed everywhere can never be healthy, sustainable, or equitable. Only local food systems that are reflections of cultural and biological diversity and put local needs before export can meet these goals. We reject and oppose the globalization and corporatization of our food systems and call for political mechanisms to support sustainable local food systems.

We vow to work collectively to carry out the national, regional, sectoral, and thematic People’s Action Plans produced from the workshops, public forums, and consultations organized under the Global People’s Summit. These Action Plans represent our concrete and particular demands and campaigns along the four pillars of food systems transformation – (1) Food sovereignty and democracy at the core of food and agricultural policies; (2) Agroecology and sustainability in production, distribution, and consumption; (3) People’s right to land, production, and resources; and (4) People’s right to adequate, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.

We are the Global People’s Summit, and we are hungry for change.

Join the struggle for just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems!

(For follow-up actions, get in touch with the organizations that produced the Action Plans or email the Global People’s Summit Secretariat at secretariat@foodsov.org)