Supermarket Watch supports local food struggles
FIAN contributes to a recently expanded monthly bulletin about developments on food retail and distribution around the world alongside GRAIN and StreetNet International in support of small farmers and food producers, street and market vendors and cross-border traders.
Supermarket Watch began a decade ago at a time when supermarkets and convenience store chains were expanding faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world and rapidly changing the face of Asian food markets. They undermined the region's long tradition of fresh food markets, which provide consumers everywhere in Asia with vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and all kinds of healthy, prepared foods, and were supported by government policies to support that growth.
The supermarketisation of food markets is now well advanced in the Americas and Europe, and is slowly spreading in Africa, from South Africa and a few countries in North Africa to the rest of the continent, prompting an expansion of this bulletin's scope by its editors and authors in GRAIN, FIAN International and StreetNet International.
Supermarkets do not just push out traditional, local markets. They have dramatic impacts on people's diets and the ways in which foods are produced. They marginalize locally produced food and encourage the consumption of ultra-processed “food products”. In countries such as Mexico, where supermarkets and convenience stores have taken over food markets, we see a paradox where millions of people suffer from hunger or malnutrition while at the same time millions of others are affected by obesity, diabetes and other food-related illnesses.
Fortunately, there is a growing, strong resistance to this supermarket expansion. People in different places around the world are organizing to defend food distribution systems and local markets that are rooted in the community. They are taking actions against laws and regulations that undermine the presence of fresh food markets and harass and criminalize street and market vendors. Public markets that were once a decentralized space for street and market traders, have become battlegrounds for economic justice and livelihood.
In this context, we believe it is critical to share information emanating from the struggles of small farmers and food producers, street and market vendors, and cross-border traders around the world and to deepen connections between these struggles to help foster a global movement.
We hope the bulletin will continue to serve as a tool for social movements in defense of food sovereignty!
For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org
