Abstract

The author provides an overall context for this issue by discussing how food systems are organized and governed today. Food is a fundamental human right and a factor of connectedness and social identity, yet the requirements of capital accumulation have disconnected it from its social and productive relations and transformed it into a commodity 'from nowhere'. Transnational agrifood corporations have consolidated their control of global supply chains with the support of neoliberal public policies with negative impacts on the well-being both of the planet and of its inhabitants. Confronting the corporate food regime is an increasingly networked movement of small-scale producers and territorial food systems that account for over 70% of the food consumed world-wide and have gained space in global governance in the context of the UN Committee on World Food Security. The article closes by reviewing the contents of the three sections of the publication and synthesizing the insights that emerge regarding 'where to next?'