In Honor of #WorldFoodDay2021 we are celebrating local, diverse, indigenous, and biodiverse foods and food systems and their capacity to regenerate the planet.<\/p>\n
Today, we underestimate the extraordinary biodiversity of plants\u00a0 and animals which the peasants of past centuries enjoyed and bred, along with the vast knowledge they had of species and variety. We see this in traditional diets, evolving from these agroecosystem management practices.<\/p>\n
These traditional systems show us that food is the currency of life, which flows from the biodiversity in living soil, through plants and animals, to the biodiversity in our gut microbiome. Diversity is the connection between us, the earth, and other species. We are part of the web of life which is a food web.<\/p>\n
How we produce, distribute, consume food is increasingly becoming the centre of the multiple crises we face today. Whether it is ecological crises of biodiversity decline, climate change or the multiple health crises of hunger, malnutrition and of diseases like cancer linked to pesticides and toxics in our environment and food chain. These degradations affect every dimension of the food systems upon which we all depend. Especially since natural and organic food systems, and their accompanying diets, that were the foundation of human health throughout the world in most of known human history.<\/p>\n
This type of biodiversity-based,agroecological, organic food systems transformation, in opposition to corporate controlled ecologically destructive globalized food systems, has been advocated for by movements throughout the world in the name of food sovereignty. Embodying a different vision of what food systems could be, these movements are already transitioning toward an ecological and democratic food systems transformation through preserving seeds, soils, biodiversity and nutrition. Food can overcome the deep divisions and inequality in society. Food is a human right. Through food we can create just and sustainable communities and societies.<\/p>\n