The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) recently released its latest report titled Food From Somewhere. It finds that territorial markets can help build food security and resilience across the globe in a system corrupted by corporate-controlled supply chains.
Almost 30 percent of people worldwide are food insecure, while 42 percent cannot afford a healthy diet, according to the IPES-Food report. The authors find that the tumultuous state of the past several years has reversed progress on world hunger and proven the current global food system remarkably inflexible. In the face of COVID-19, the Ukraine war, and the climate crisis, an unreliable food system has revealed itself.
Territorial markets offer an alternative to corporate-controlled supply chains and an avenue to a resilient global food system, the report states. According to the report, territorial markets are local or regional markets that allow for relationship-building, give small-scale actors autonomy, and serve multiple functions in their communities.
“It’s important to stress that territorial markets feed as much as 70 percent of the world’s population. They are especially important in terms of serving marginalized communities and providing diverse nutrition at affordable prices,” Jennifer Clapp, Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Ontario and co-author of the report, tells Food Tank. “But they do so much more as well.”
Clapp explains that, in addition to food security, territorial markets provide diverse livelihoods to millions of people—including producers, traders, and food processors. They also have ecological benefits because they offer a market outlet for small-scale producers not involved in large-scale industrial agriculture. And because these markets are built on strong relationships among farmers and buyers, Clapp says they are much less likely to break down in the face of crisis and much more able to adapt—something that is critical in an ever-changing, tumultuous global landscape.
Territorial markets also serve to preserve culture. Clapp explains that these markets help prevent the homogenization of food that occurs in corporate value chains. They are “actually enabling the more locally specific and traditional crops to be grown and consumed,” she tells Food Tank. “In these ways, territorial markets keep local foodways alive in ways that the global industrial food system simply cannot.”
These markets serve as an important gathering place for communities, allowing people to build and sustain relationships. Unlike grocery stores, these spaces allow eaters to get to know the people who grow their food. They can ask questions, learn where the produce came from, and determine what inputs were used in the production process.
To ensure that territorial markets can continue to thrive, the report includes recommendations for governments to support and sustain territorial markets. These include subsidies to support territorial food systems actors, more robust rural infrastructure, and programming to increase food systems education.
While Clapp tells Food Tank that she hopes the report will influence policymakers to implement these changes, she explains that relationships between government officials and corporate actors can impede progress. “The greatest threat [to resilient food systems] is the growing concentration of corporate power… undermining livelihoods and agency in the food systems, undermining ecological integrity, undermining food security.”
The IPES-Food report argues that territorial markets are the anecdote to corporate control—they provide food security, fulfilling livelihoods, environmental benefits, and the ability to quickly adapt amidst crises. They also build community. Territorial markets “provide connectivity between people,” Clapp tells Food Tank. “They are built on relationships; and they provide alternatives to the global industrial system—and these matter to people.”
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Photo courtesy of Christian Mackie, Unsplash
