Seeds of Understanding

The global food crisis is often framed as a problem of scarcity, inefficiency, or individual behavior. But emerging findings from Food First’s forthcoming research report, Amplifying Grassroots Voices in Food Justice: Global Struggles and Local Strategies, tell a very different story. Drawing from in-depth interviews with farmers, organizers, and food justice leaders across the Global South and the United States, this research reveals that hunger persists not because food systems fail to produce enough, but because they are structured to extract value, concentrate power, prioritize food to the wealthy and leave millions to survive on toxic ultra processed food or even worse provide no food at all.

This blog post shares early insights from that larger report, which will be released in the coming months. The research was conducted using a variation of the “WriteShop” model, a participatory methodology designed to center lived experience and collective analysis from frontline communities working to reclaim food justice and sovereignty.

Across regions, participants consistently pointed to the legacy of the Green Revolution and the rise of industrial agriculture as a major inflection point. While high-yield seeds, chemical inputs, and large-scale irrigation increased overall production, collectively, they also displaced traditional farming systems, degraded soil and water, and locked farmers into cycles of dependency. Corporate seed regimes and intellectual property laws have steadily eroded the use of traditional, Indigenous, regenerating seeds, limiting farmers’ ability to save, exchange, and adapt seeds to local ecological conditions. This loss of control has reduced biodiversity, weakened communities’ capacity to respond to climate stress, and made it harder for small farmers to survive economically.

Interviewees also described how export-oriented agriculture prioritizes global markets over local food access. Farmers are often encouraged, or pressured, to grow cash crops for export, even as food insecurity rises in their own communities. When markets fluctuate or climate shocks hit, it is small-scale producers and food workers who absorb the losses, while corporations remain insulated. As one farmer reflected, everyone recognizes the damage caused by industrial agriculture, yet farmers remain trapped in systems that benefit corporations and politicians while offering little support that helps farmers feed their communities or lead to real material and structural changes. 

Climate change compounds these failures. Erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and extreme weather disrupt planting cycles and fisheries, making it harder to rely on generations of ecological knowledge. Yet climate finance and adaptation programs rarely reach the smallholder farmers, fishers, and Indigenous communities most affected. Instead, policies continue to favor large-scale agribusiness solutions that deepen inequality while claiming resilience.

Land access emerged as another defining barrier. From land grabbing in the Global South to insecure tenure in the United States, many farmers invest years restoring soil and productivity, only to lose access when land values rise and they are unable to access funding. Women and Indigenous producers face even greater obstacles, despite being central stewards of land, seeds, and ecological knowledge.

The research also highlights how economies of scale distort food systems. Small producers receive only a fraction of the value of their labor, while consolidation in processing, distribution, and retail, strips communities of control over pricing and access. “Cheap food” is subsidized by cheap labor, environmental degradation, and public health costs borne by frontline communities.

Yet these findings are not solely diagnostic. Across regions, participants described strategies of resistance and renewal rooted in agroecology, cooperative farming, seed saving, and collective organizing. These approaches do more than produce food: they rebuild knowledge systems, strengthen social ties, and restore cultural and ecological relationships severed by industrial models.

Understanding why the crisis persists requires moving beyond surface-level fixes and naming the systems at work. The stories emerging from Amplifying Grassroots Voices in Food Justice remind us that food sovereignty is not a utopian vision. It is a grounded response to structural injustice, built by communities who refuse to accept a system that profits from their dispossession. The question is not whether alternatives exist, our focus must be on working together to deploy proven strategies that shift power and create locally controlled people-centered food systems.