Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and cost economies trillions of dollars. Yet state responses have done little to address the negative externalities of the corporate food regime, which has contributed to, and exacerbated, the impacts of the pandemic. In this paper, we build on calls from the grassroots for states to undertake a strategic dismantling of the corporate food regime through redistributive policies and actions across scales, financed through reparations by key actors in the corporate food regime. We present a strategic policy framework drawn from the food sovereignty movement, outlined here as the “5Ds of Redistribution”: Decolonization, Decarbonization, Diversification, Democratization, and Decommodification. We then consider what would need to occur post-redistribution to ensure that the corporate food regime does not re-emerge, and pose five guiding principles grounded in Indigenous food sover¬eignty to rebuild regenerative food systems, out¬lined here as the “5Rs of Regeneration”: Relation¬ality, Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility, and Rights. Together these ten principles for redistri¬bution and regeneration provide a framework for food systems transformation after COVID-19.
Highlights
At the time of writing, COVID-19 had claimed over two million human lives, with estimates by the Centre for Risk Studies that it will cause GDP losses of up to US$82 trillion over the five years (University of Cambridge Judge Business School, 2020)
Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods in low-income communities, linked to malnutrition in the form of obesity, may be an underlying factor in higher COVID-19 death rates (White, Nieto, & Barquera, 2020). These findings suggest that the existing disparities created or deepened by the corporate food regime are further exacerbated by worsening food insecurity, poverty, and health risks associated with COVID-19
Following the lead of social movements oriented by food sovereignty principles, we echo calls for a strategic dismantling of the corporate food regime in order to create spaces for rebuilding food systems based on social justice and ecological foundations
Summary
At the time of writing, COVID-19 had claimed over two million human lives, with estimates by the Centre for Risk Studies that it will cause GDP losses of up to US$82 trillion over the five years (University of Cambridge Judge Business School, 2020). State responses fail to address the underlying structural features of the “corporate food regime” (McMichael, 2005), including land consolidation, industrialized and intensive crop and livestock production, the concentrated market power of multinational corporate actors, the tight coupling of the fossil energy and agri-food sectors, and liberalized global trade (Holt-Giménez & Shattuck, 2011) Together, these features increase the risk of pandemics and exacerbate their effects (Wallace, Liebman, Chaves, & Wallace, 2020). Following the lead of social movements oriented by food sovereignty principles, we echo calls for a strategic dismantling of the corporate food regime in order to create spaces for rebuilding food systems based on social justice and ecological foundations Such a change requires economic and political restructuring through a suite of redistributive policies and actions across scales, following principles outlined here as the “5Ds of Redistribution”: Decolonization, Decarbonization, Diversification, Democratization, and Decommodification.. The 5Rs are informed by Kirkness and Barnhardt’s (1991) foundational work on higher education for First Nations peoples, and the later work of Indigenous scholars sharing insights from Indigenous research methodologies (Hart, 2010; Kovach, 2009; Morrison, 2011; Wilson, 2008)
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