The FAO must Do More to Promote Food as a Basic Human Right

Should the UN’s leading food security agency prioritise helping countries boost their agricultural production with subsidised chemical fertiliser, or promote ecological farming practices? Should it help countries protect themselves against import surges, or open them to the global marketplace? Should it work exclusively with national ministries of agriculture, or demand inter-ministerial and civil society participation?As recently as 2011, the FAO Latin American regional office, then headed by the current FAO director general José Graziano da Silva, was indispensable in driving forward the Hunger-free Latin America and the Caribbean 2025 initiative, which brought about a regional parliamentary front and a 20-university-strong observatory on the right to food …READ MORE