Nora McKeon is engaged in teaching, writing and advocacy on food issues and social movements, following a career at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. She is the author of Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations (2014), Global Governance for World Food Security (2011), The United Nations and Civil Society (2009), and Peasant Organizations (2004).
Today’s food system generates hunger alongside of food waste, burgeoning health problems, massive greenhouse gas emissions. Applying food system analysis to review how the international community has addressed food issues since World War II, this book proceeds to explain how actors link up in corporate global food chains and in the local food systems that feed most of the world’s population. It unpacks relevant paradigms – from productivism to food sovereignty – and highlights the significance of adopting a rights-based approach to solving food problems. The author describes how communities around the world are protecting their access to resources and building better ways of producing and accessing food, and discusses the reformed Committee on World Food Security, a uniquely inclusive global policy forum, and how it could be supportive of efforts from the base. The book concludes by identifying terrains on which work is needed to adapt the practice of the democratic public sphere and accountable governance to a global dimension and extend its authority to the world of markets and corporations.