The dominant policy approach to the right to food has been improperly underpinned by a food security paradigm

Focusing on food security is hiding the true challenge of reclaiming a truly democratic path to the right to food and adequate nutrition. Under the food security paradigm, the question of power in the food system never comes up. So, as long as access to food is guaranteed under some system or other, there is no problem. Therefore, the notion of ‘securing-the-needs-of-the-hungry’ is also meant to signal the presence of a ‘security’ discourse that identifies ‘hunger’ and the ‘hungry’ as a threat to the political economy. The dearth of active scholarship in this area may be due, in part, to the opposition that the Via Campesina’s food sovereignty narrative poses to the existing institutions handling food issues, particularly at their governance level. The increasing dependence on agriculture --not as a source of food for direct consumption, but as a source of inputs for the food processing industry-- means that the raw food commodities produced by agriculture will have a diminishing potential to directly impact human consumption and health since many are processed, reshaped and transformed into unhealthy ultra-processed formulations.