Nettie Wiebe, excerpts from Our Food Future ... A Vision: Proceedings of a Saskatoon & Region Food Policy Workshop, November 29 & 30, 1998.

"There are two clear streams present in most discussions of solving hunger, addressing food safety and building food security.

1. That proposed by most governments, and supported by global corporate interests:
   • Grow more food. Use biotechnology - especially interspecies genetic engineering to create higher yielding crops and animals;
   • Establish an unfettered, unrestrained global economy governed by international trade agreements. Allow distribution to be sorted out by market forces, and reduce and remove the ability and capacity of national governments to say how food is produced and regulated.

   The globalizing economy strips national governments of the tools needed to implement policies, regulations and programs to ensure food security for their citizens. Those same governments are then handed back responsibility for feeding their citizens in global fora like the recent World Food Summit.

   Without adequate tools, governments are hamstrung in their ability to effectively solve the problem of hunger and malnutrition. Food, a basic human need and a basic human right, is relegated to the status of commodity, governed by international trade agreements and by international corporate agribusiness interests. Neither nation nor community has much control.

   A problem that is global, systematic and systemic is left to be solved by national governments and non-governmental organizations. Anyone who has the mandate or responsibility to do anything about the problem is chronically and perennially short of resources.

2. That proposed by farmer and farmers' organizations, and non-governmental organizations around the world:
   • Return control of food and food production to communities and nations. When we put the locus of control over the food system in the hands of international traders, we are making a naive assumption that they will "do it right" for us, and that all we have to do is just buy the food.
   • Build food security upwards from the level of he household to the community and finally to the nation. Only then will food security be truly global, and safe food be assured."

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