News/ Opinion

Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links

Focus on agro-business rather than ecology has split groups invited to planned UN conference on hunger.

Despite efforts to make the 2021 Food Systems Summit a "peoples' summit", there have been concerns that leadership focus on market-based solutions that also favour big agri-good business. There have been calls for it to be "broadened into a more inclusive world food congress, and that initiatives such as agro-ecology, endorsed by scientists, civil society and farmers, and food sovereignty be put firmly on the agenda." And further, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism – a group of more than 500 civil society groups with more than 300 million members – said they would boycott the summit and set up a parallel meeting.

For more details, read the full Guardian article here: Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links