Prior research has found that challenges facing global food systems—which include food insecurity, public health crises, biodiversity loss, and climate change—are perpetuated in part by the U.S. food system and the political influence of its big players.
For decades, many in the U.S. and beyond have called for transforming the industrial food system. The United Nations has promoted agroecology as the mechanism to achieve that transformation.
Despite its growing international reputation, agroecology was slow to gain recognition beyond academic circles in the U.S.
But staff from the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked agroecologists to convene a U.S. Agroecology Summit in 2023, which brought together 100 stakeholders in the food system to discuss promoting research of this kind in the country.
Participants discussed the need for equitable representation and support for all food system stakeholders, including agricultural practitioners, food systems changemakers, and scientists, and increased access to funding and ethical approaches to research.
"'Food sovereignty'—the right to define, produce, and access healthy food that is culturally appropriate and preserves the ways of life of farmers—is a critical goal in agroecology and was first defined by La Vía Campesina, an international peasant movement, in 1996," says Ong, who was a participant at the summit.
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