The countries of the world seem willing to sign an agreement to “completely eradicate hunger from the face of the Earth by 2025. But how? What will we have to eat – and thus to cultivate - in the future? What do we have to eat wisdomly (and not to eat) if we want that every member of the future mankind eats enough as soon as possible, and that the climate and the ecosystems and the other living beings are not destroyed, and that the national and community food sovereignty are enhanced? We, the undersigned associations, research centers, and movements,

 

where almost 1 billion people mostly concentraed in the global South go hungry, where many more experience some forms of malnutrition in micronutrients, while another morte than one billion experience in the North and among the middle class in “emerging” countries experience overweight and cronic diseases,

 

where the overconsumption of animal-based foods in affluent nations and increasingly among the middle class of “developing” countries is one of the cause of hunger and environmental stress. Indeed the monocropping production of feed and generally speaking the intensive production of animal-based foods in the context of the industrial globalized agriculture (agribusiness) notoriously compete with the production of food, over scarse resources such as land, water, energy, biodiversity, inputs, creating – along with the agrofuel production – pollution and depletion (as the animal-based food requires more resources per output than plant-based foods (see Pigs or Peas by the research centre Profetas, see the special issue “Alimentation en péril” in Ecologie politique, see the studies by David Pimentel about the nutrition ecology and by the World Watch Institute and Earth Policy Insistute and Lester Brown about the carrying capacity). It derives also a food price increase which contribute to the hunger and malnutrition

 

where livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions (see Livestock's Long Shadow by Fao 2006 and the lecture by dr.Rajendra Pachauri, ‘The impact of meat production and consumption on climate change”)

 

where the production of feed and the pastures in former forests are among the main causes of forest destruction (see Greenpeace report Slaughtering the Amazon) along with the production of agrofuel (we can call it feed-food-forests-fuel competition)

 

where overgrazing contributes to an increase of desertification

 

where the monocultural export crops to feed animals and cars damage the food security and sovereignty of many countries and small farm units, contribute to land grabbing and also results in a virtual flaw of water from water-stressed areas

 

where the subsidies from the Northern countries also harm via dumping the local production and sovereignty in the South

 

where intensive farm methods create huge risks for human health (transmissible diseases, and degenerative diseases, see the study by the Physicians Committee for responsible medecine-Pcrm), cause a huge pollution affecting many local communities (see the reports by Grain), and are responsible for huge sufferings in animals

 

where intensive acquacolture in many places contributes to salinize the drinking waters, to destroy the coastal land and mangroves (see the struggles of various movements such as Lafti in India, and the report by Greenpeace Challenging the Aquaculture Industry on Sustainability)

 

showing a sharp increase in animal production and consumption (by 2050 according to this trend, world meat production may double its 2000 levels, reaching 513 million tons yearly, due to the exportation of the Western food patterns among other populations and also in Low income- food deficit nations (Lifdns), a phoenomena which will exacerbate rather than relieving hunger and malnutrition.

 

Taking into account  

the social and ecological debt from the North , accumulated in centuries and still growing

 

taking into account the climate crisis and water crisis

 

the repeated commitments by the international community since the Nineties to solve the hunger, water and climate crisis

 

the Rome Declaration and Plan of Action of the World Food Summits in 1996 and 2002

 

the examples by communities and individuals whose healthy food habits improved the health levels

 

We call upon
the Fao, the United Nations, the world governments both in North and South, the farmers organizations, the civil society organizations, the scientists, in order to feed the world while preserving the planet:

 

a) favour and support elsewhere plant-based, community-based, small scale, agroecological, local, highly nutricious solutions to world hunger and malnutrition as a mean to achieve a sustainable and total respect of the right to food, at a national level and international one; in this case it will not be necessary as said to double the food production and there will be more resources (water, land, energy) and ecosystems left as global commons, and there will be a positive contribution to the climate protection

 

b) cancel subsidies to unsustainable forms of animal production (factory farming, acquaculture, overfishing, overpasturing), increase the regulations of wasteful and polluting operations, and act towards the abolition of factory farming and its conversion, to overcome the feed-food-fuel-forest competition

 

c) reform world trade to avoid dumping of animal products and the feed/food/fuel competition,

 

d) promote in the North and the South, healthy and culturally adapted food patterns, through educational campaigns at all levels.