Alphaghetti in Ottawa

by Cathleen Kneen, former Chair of Food Secure Canada

On January 13^th I attended a meeting in Ottawa on the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (the RAI), an agreement proposed through the Committee on World Food Security (CSM) of the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Aside from nostalgia – I loved Alphaghetti as a child – why was I there and what did Food Secure Canada get out of it?

I was there because our “International Issues” Board member currently is Faris Ahmed, but he was unable to attend the meeting and I was pinch-hitting for him.

When we started Food Secure Canada, we wanted to make sure that we did not limit our work for food security to Canada, but in solidarity with movements for what we now call food sovereignty around the world. So I was one of a handful of Canadians to attend the global Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali in 2007, and later I represented Food Secure Canada at meetings which framed a “civil society mechanism” within the CSM to include peasants, people's movements etc., proposed by La Via Campesina and, amazingly, agreed to. I wound up sharing the role of “focal point” (i.e. convenor) for North America with a woman from Why Hunger in New York; this role is rotates between the US and Canada and at the moment it is our turn and Faris is the designated person.

Fortunately for me, because I have been out of this arena for a while, there is a team of people in Canada working on this, among them Jennifer Clapp, who provided a detailed analysis of the “Zero Draft” of the Principles which I used extensively in the meeting – thank you, Jennifer!

So, what is Responsible Investment? It is either:

1. Part of a larger effort to greenwash land grabbing and the destruction of small-scale, sustenance food systems in favour of industrial systems that return a profit to international investors;
2. Or, an attempt to protect these local systems and ensure that any investments do not undermine the integrity of local communities and “the progressive realization of the right to food”.

Or possibly it's both. In fact, one of the problems with the guidelines is that investment is never defined, so there is no distinction between speculative foreign investment and local community investment (for example).

The people at the meeting (which was held in concert with a similar meeting in Washington, with the two linked by video for reporting and discussion in the afternoon) represented not just civil society organizations like Food Secure Canada, food aid organizations like the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, farmers (National Farmers Union, US Family Farm Coalition), but also Coca-Cola, the Canadian Fertilizer Institute, CropLife, and both the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development and the US State Department. So there were certainly differences of perspective in the discussions!

For example, several spokespeople from the food industry stated emphatically that the purpose of this exercise is to promote investment in agriculture, pure and simple. The civil society people at the table insisted that its purpose is to define “responsible” to include agro-ecology as well as the “progressive realization of the right to food”, and to provide regulation that gives power to local communities to negotiate and monitor the impacts of investments, with real consequences for irresponsible investors. Since by definition the Principles are voluntary and non-binding, we said that its provisions need to be very clear and tough so if an 'investor' chooses to sign on, the designation of 'responsible' has real meaning.

There were some areas of agreement. We agreed that there needed to be more emphasis on the role and needs of women, Indigenous peoples, harvesters, and farm workers (including migrants) and to include seeds and water along with land as core elements of food security. (I had a nice moment when I channelled Neil Young and talked about grabbing of Indigenous territories in Canada for resource extraction.) We also agreed to include the requirement for Free, Prior and Informed Consent from the peoples affected (that's UN language). But then in the final discussion, the representative of the US State Department told us that the US Government would prefer “Free, Prior and Informed Consultation”. (Pat Mooney whispered to me that the President of the US governs with the “advice and consent” of Congress, and he probably would love to change that to “consultation”!)  The State Department rep also suggested, speaking for the US Government, that the Principles be reframed as mere “Goals”.

So, was it worth all the effort? Will the positions of civil society have any real effect on the outcome? Time will tell. The Chair of the process will now develop a summary of the North American consultation along with the consultations in other regions, and propose a Draft One.

Meanwhile, we have until February 3, 2014, to send comments in on-line. The Zero Draft is available at http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/sites/foodsecurecanada.org/files/files/95_RAI/CFS_rai_Zero_Draft_01_August_2013_EN.pdf; and you can join the discussion at http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/forum/discussions/RAI. If you feel the need for guidance, please contact me (Cathleen@ramhorn.ca) and I can share more detailed notes.