Abstract

The world's food system is broken, and today's peasant societies are at a crossroads. This collection explores the multiplicity of problems faced by global family agricultures in the current neoliberal era.

The contributors, including include Samir Amin, Joao Pedro Stedile and Utsa Patnaik, argue that an understanding of the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land is essential. Financialisation is undermining their work, and must be resisted if they are to construct a new, socially just food system.

This is a response to the confusion surrounding how these urgent problems are understood, with the authors offering solutions as to how they should be resolved. They express the importance of the co-operation and cohesion of the various struggles taking place across Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, and how they must share a common vision for the future.
'With historically unprecedented hunger sitting side by side with historically unprecedented obesity, it is apparent that the world food system is broken. As a result, around the world peasants and family farmers are struggling to construct a new, socially just, food system that cools the planet and feeds the world.'
Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Professor, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada
'Cogently underscores the global threat of financialisation to family farming, identifying possibilities for peasant mobilisation to protect land, food and society. It breathes new life and meaning into the agrarian question.'
Professor Philip McMichael, Cornell University, author of Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions (2013)