Right To Food: What it is & what it isn’t
OCFP team at Parkdale’s Right To Food Day
This month the Parkdale Food Centre hosted and coordinated Ottawa’s first ever Right To Food Day. In light of this, we would like to talk about what the right to food is, how it affects Canadians, and what our government is doing to address it.
As of 2021, Canada’s crop and animal production exceeded $30 billion and accounted for some 226,00 jobs across the country. According to a national geographic study from 2014, Canada was one of the few countries in the world that could be considered “food independent”. Unfortunately, this alleged independence on the global food network does not extend to all those living in Canada. In Ottawa alone, 1 in 7 households are food insecure, 1 in 10 are experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity. These statistics are alarming to say the least. From a human perspective, we all need to eat, and eat well in order to survive. This is where the Right to Food comes in.
What is the Right to Food?
So what is the Right to Food? It is more than simply a minimum ratio of calories, protein and nutrition. It is a legal concept built affirmed in a number of international treaties going all the way back to 1948. It is built upon 3 principles:
Availability: Food should be available either through the production of food (animal husbandry, land cultivation, fishing, hunting, or gathering) OR through direct purchase at shops and markets.
Accessibility: Food must be accessible both through economic and physical access. Economic accessibility means that food must be affordable,meaning that a minimum wage or social assistance must be sufficient to meet dietary needs. Physical accessibility means that food must be accessible to all. This includes but is not limited to those in remote areas, anyone with a disability, the elderly, prisoners, those in conflict zones or experiencing natural disasters.
Adequacy: Food must satisfy both dietary AND cultural needs. This can vary depending on age, living conditions, religion, sex etc. Food must also be safe to eat, free from adverse substances like industrial contaminants or pesticides.
Misconceptions about the Right To Food
So far so good. These are the basic building blocks of what the right to food is all about! BUT there are also a number of misconceptions.
Right to food is NOT the right to be fed, such as with our current food bank model. It is the right for everyone to be able to either purchase or produce their food. HOWEVER, the right to food does mean that if someone does not have the ability to work in order to meet their needs, governments must step in with adequate support.
The Right to Food is also NOT Food Security. While these two concepts are deeply intertwined, they are not the same thing. Right to Food is a legal concept, much like other human rights. Food security, a prerequisite to the Right to Food, is a measurement of whether someone has the ability to feed themselves or their family.
Right to Food is also NOT Food Sovereignty. Food Sovereignty is where people are able to determine their own models of food production (i.e fishing vs animal husbandry).
Right To Food and Other Human Rights
The Right to Food is heavily influenced by and intertwined with a number of other human rights. This includes but is not limited to:
The Right to Life: People must eat adequate food in order to survive.
Right to Education: People (especially children) without access to food often leave school in order to meet their dietary needs.
Right to Work & Right to Social Security: Employment and social security are often crucial means of obtaining food.
Special Rapporteur on the Right To Food in Canada
So now that we know what the Right to Food is and is not, how does Canada stack up? Well in 2012 the UN sent a Special Rapporteur to investigate this issue. The report echoes what we already know, that in spite of producing more than enough food to feed every single person in the country, there is a lack of access and availability of healthy and culturally appropriate food to many.
The report highlighted a number of recommendations:
Recognize the right to food as legal entitlement.
Canada needs to formulate a comprehensive national food strategy. Within this framework, they must clearly define responsibilities at all levels of government, establish clear timelines and goals. This food strategy should include a national poverty reduction strategy.
Revise social assistance to correspond to the cost of basic necessities.
Set minimum wage standards as a living wage adjusted to inflation and corresponding to the cost of basic necessities.
Support indigenous and remote communities, who are disproportionately affected by food insecurity. Ensure they have access to land, water, and resources to which indigenous people are entitled.
Limit the size of farming operations in Canada and promote local food systems. Canada’s farm subsidy system is based on a capitalized system, meaning the more capital within a single farm, the larger the subsidy that farm receives. The Special Rapporteur recommended that Canada de-capitalize farm subsidies.
In response to this report, the then Conservative Government criticized the report. This criticism was met with backlash from a number of human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Action Canada, and Canada Without Poverty who all supported the recommendations made in the report.
What is being done today?
It has now been a decade and several governments since the UN’s report. What has the government done, if anything, to address the concerns over the Right to Food?
In 2019 the Liberal Government announced its first ever food policy! Advisory committee meetings began in 2021 with an assembled panel of industry experts. A positive step in the right direction- if only the committee had taken on some of the other recommendations made in The Report. The Advisory Committee has set some lofty 2030 goals: end hunger, reduce premature mortality by ⅓ for noncommunicable diseases, halve food waste per capita, improve education and awareness.
While these goals are admirable, there is NO acknowledgement that people go hungry because of a lack of ACCESS. No mention of increasing social assistance, no living wage, no de-capitalization of farm subsidies.
We must demand more from our governments and hold them accountable. Demand that they address the root causes of the issue at hand.
Call to Action
The Parkdale Food Centre has released a broad personal call to action:
Vote in elections at all levels
Write your government representatives
Continue the conversation. Talk amongst friends. Go to rallies. Share ideas and articles.