MANIFESTO

Section 3
TRANSITION TO LOCAL, SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS
BENEFIT THE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Economic globalization has led to a nutritional transition away from local,
diverse, seasonal diets to industrially processed synthetic foods, which are
leading to new food-related diseases and ill health. Economic globalization
policies increase the burden on the environment through resource and energy
intensive consumption patterns. Localization, diversification, and seasonality
are important for improving human well being, health, and nutrition.
A transition to local systems throughout the world will reduce food miles by
shortening transport chains and reduce the “energy backpack” of food in terms
of packaging, refrigeration, storage, and processing.
During the last century, a radical new approach to agriculture emerged. Instead
of local farmers growing food primarily for their own communities, a new highly
centralized global system of industrialized agriculture rapidly began replacing
the local, decentralized small-scale food systems.
According to the FAO, the liberalized economic globalization model has led to a
54 percent increase of food imports between 1990 and 2000 by least developed
countries (LDCs). Mexico, which traditionally has grown enough maize to feed its
populations for centuries, has become a net importer of maize due to dumping of
artificially cheap corn flooding in from the U.S. Imports of chicken parts from the
EU has displaced small poultry farmers in Ghana. Numerous other examples exist
of how the global industrial food system has turned food security on its head.
The centuries-old food models are connected to traditional cultures, climates,
geography, ecosystems, and other endemic factors. The industrial model has been the
dominant paradigm for “developed” countries for the past several decades. Beginning
with the Green Revolution of the 1970s and ’80s, many “developing” countries began
to adopt these chemical, energy intensive agriculture practices as well. For example
commercial “high yielding” seeds of the Green Revolution required nitrogen fertilizers,
an especially potent contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
The industrial regime of the last few decades is foisted upon developing countries
by international institutions such as the World Bank and the International