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In a direct challenge to the world’s current system of industrial agricultural production, the United Nations special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, submitted a ground-breaking report on how to reform the world’s food production to the UN Human Rights Council this past Monday. The report, which has been six years in the making, calls for an outright dismantling of large scale agribusiness to give people a democratic voice in growing more locally based food.

Despite promises of the 1940s ‘green revolution’ which was expected to feed more people through high yielding crops dependent on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, 800 million people around the world remain hungry. The report finds a long list of problems with industrial agriculture from its high levels of greenhouse gas emissions to its emphasis on monocultures which reduce biodiversity. While the sweeping list of concerns are nothing new for those working in the food sovereignty and environmental movements, the report is being heralded as radical.

GUEST: Raj Patel, writer, activist, and academic, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, and the New York Times bestselling The Value of Nothing. He teaches a class at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan called Edible Education, and works with Olivier De Schutter

Visit www.srfood.org to learn more.