The UN won’t find the answers to the global food crisis in Rome.

Food supplies are a big business. Just four crops (wheat, corn, soy and rice) provide around 60% of all the calories consumed globally. From the global corporations patenting seeds, to huge companies such as Bayer and Nestlé promoting the consumption of ultra processed foods, to the agri-businesses who own 70% of the world's farmland, food supply chains are largely run for corporate profit.  

While industrial agriculture controls the production of staple crops, we are all vulnerable to disruption in food supply chains.  

But most of the food consumed across the world isn’t exported or imported across the world. It is small scale producers who feed 70% of the world’s population – and use just 10% of global farmland to do so.  

These farmers, like those we work alongside in East Africa, India and Bangladesh, have shown that they are exactly what's needed at times of high prices and low international supply.  

We need small-scale farmers growing more, using biodiverse seeds, selling more and getting locally grown, affordable food into disadvantaged communities.  

But as world leaders are meeting at the UN summit to discuss global food systems this week, the smallholder farmers who feed the vast majority of the world are not attending the event - because agri-food corporations continue to dominate the agenda.  

We know that the people on the frontline of these crisis are the ones with solutions. We’ve seen it firsthand. Yet their voices are repeatedly ignored, in favour of global corporations accountable only to their shareholders.  

Smallholder farmers have answers to the crisis we all face.

In 2022 we ran an appeal supporting innovative farmers in East Africa who run small farms – which make a profit, feed families, and fight back against the impact of increasingly extreme weather patterns.  

With your support, they invested in their farms – and increased food stability for their families and communities.

It is work Transform Trade continues to fund in India, Bangladesh, and Tanzania– supporting smallholders facing the brunt of climate change, so they can find their own solutions, adapt, grow more and earn more. 

“The place we are farming now it is no longer reliable. I think we should change the way we are cultivating now. I think among the things we can do is to adopt irrigation farming as a solution; that can be done if we gather the villagers and discuss on the uncertainties of the weather and how during the dry season, use the water from the river to irrigate our farms.”

Athuman Omari Kuyawa

Midway through this appeal, we had a sobering reminder of just how important global food supply chains are – as Russia began its brutal invasion of Ukraine, and the world was plunged into a serious food crisis. 

Russia and Ukraine export wheat, grain and fertilizers across the world – and supply much of the World Food Programme’s emergency food aid supplies. It became apparent that supporting farmers to invest in sustainable, localised solutions to food insecurity - has never been more vital.

More people than ever before rely on food aid rather than local production of food – due largely to conflict and the ongoing climate emergency.

Right now, the crisis continues, as Russia has threatened to pull out of the Black Sea Grain deal (which allows Ukraine to export vital crops globally), having extended for just four months.  

As world leaders leave the UN Food Summit, they need to remember that small scale producers have the answers in their hands. They are calling for a sea-change in global food systems to ensure that they are ‘based on respect for human rights...advancing agroecology, food sovereignty, biodiversity, gender justice and diversity, youth agency, climate justice and economic and social justice’.

We should be learning from them, rather than agri-food corporations accountable only to their shareholders. Transform Trade are committed to shifting the power in trade, which can only be done in our food systems if we listen to small scale producers and their needs; We stand with those calling for real food systems change for people and planet.  

With food prices soaring, hunger increasing and extreme weather events battering the globe - we need to hand power back into the hands of the small scale producers feeding the world.