 I'm very happy to be with all of you this afternoon and to be sharing this panel in terms of speakers with Shalma Lee, with Deepa, and with Indra. So let's have the first slide, please. Okay, so COVID-19 provides an opportunity to break the global food supply chain. Now, food has been very much front and center in the COVID-19 story. First of all, hunger is following closely on the heels of the pandemic, especially in the global south. The United Nations World Food Program says that the pandemic will double the number of people experiencing acute food insecurity from $113 billion in 2019 to $265 billion in 2020. And some say that this is an underestimate. Third slide, please. Next slide. Now the fragility of the global supply chain was impressed in us a couple of weeks ago by a World Trade Organization and Food and Agricultural Organization joint declaration. The three institutions warned that, and I quote, when acting to protect the health and well-being of their citizens, countries should ensure that any trade-related measures do not disrupt the global supply chain, unquote. One particular case appeared to have triggered the agency's concern, the blockade of food exports in Rosario, Argentina. According to the FAO, and I quote, Rosario in central Argentina is the country's major grain export hub, as well as a major soybean area, and it is the world's largest exporter of soy milk livestock feed. Recently, dozens of municipal governments near Rosario have blocked grains. Grain trucks from entering and exiting their towns to slow the spread of the virus. Many are defying the federal government's order to unblock their roads, siphing health concerns. Soybeans are therefore not being transported to crushing plants, affecting the country's export of soybean milk for livestock. Similarly, in Brazil, another key exporter of staple commodities, there are reports of logistical hurdles putting the food supply chains at risk. Internationally, if a major port like Santos in Argentina or Rosario in Argentina or Santos in Brazil shuts down, it would spell disaster for global trade. The FAO and the WTO are certainly right to be worried that disruptions of global and regional supply chains could contribute to the spread of hunger. But what is really disturbing is the absence of any awareness that global and regional supply chains are themselves the problem when it comes to ensuring global food security. The 2007-2008 food price crisis should have taught these agencies this sobering lesson. But there is the same uncritical endorsement of the corporate food supply chain. Instead, the chief problem of globalization of capitalist industrial agriculture through the creation of a process of production, the dynamics of which was, quote, the suppression of particularities of time and place in both agriculture and diets, unquote. As Harriet Friedman puts it, let me continue the quote, more rapidly and deeply than before, transnational agri-food capitals disconnect production from consumption and re-link them through buying and selling. They have created an integrated productive sector of the world economy and peoples of the third world have been incorporated or marginalized, often both simultaneously as consumers and producers. Instead, in the case of agriculture, the global supply chain stretched farther and farther and local and regional food systems withered even more. The FAO estimates that global agricultural trade more than tripled in value to around $1.6 trillion from 2000 to 2016. More and more local and regional food systems that provide most of the domestic production and consumption of food have retreated. So that today, as one study reveals, modern food supply chains dominated by large processing firms and supermarkets, capital-intensive with relatively low labor intensity of operations constitute roughly 30% to 50% of the food systems in China, Latin America, and Southeast Asia and 20% of the food systems in Africa and South Asia. The bulk of the evidence is that the gains from high standards agricultural trade promoted by value chains that impose strict quality controls on local producers are captured by foreign investors, large food companies, and developing country elites. Vertical integration and consolidation at the buyer end of export chains are strengthening the bargaining power of large agricultural firms and food multinationals, displacing decision-making authority from the farmers to these downstream companies. And expanding the capacity of these companies to extract rents from the chain to the disadvantage of contracted smallholder suppliers in the chains. The smallholder, in short, is being squeezed out at almost every level from production to finance to meeting sanitary and phytosanitary standards, all of which benefit corporate agriculture with its big buyers, big suppliers, and big middlemen. One well-known liberal research institute sums up the smallholders like this, and I quote, increasingly globalized and liberalized agri-food markets are dominated by supermarkets, distributors, processors, and aggro exporters, that they're introducing and expanding food safety and quality standards that many smallholders are unable to meet. These developments are further shifting the competitive advantage away from smallholder farmers towards large-scale producers. Increasingly, foreign investors are pushing out the smallholders even from land ownership. Many land acquisitions, notably in Africa, are really land grubs, that's one important report since, and I quote, the competition for investment, the weak capacity of states, and the complex implications of titling and clarification of property rights are all factors that have impeded the establishment of robust regulatory frameworks to protect local communities from land grubs. Okay, one example of this process, which is very recent, is in Myanmar. In Myanmar, which is considered the last frontier of development in Southeast Asia, GFAO teamed up with the Asian Development Bank and the livelihood and food security trust fund to draw up an agricultural development plan that, in their own words, focuses on ensuring that, and I quote from the report, farmers and aggro enterprises are integrated into effective value chains and are competitive in regional and global markets. This is achieved by facilitating your process of transforming the agricultural sector from a situation where a substantial proportion of farming is carried out primarily for subsistence or for local markets into a sector in which most farming is carried out for profitable commercialization and is connected to the local, national, and international markets. So basically, a fairly conscious push to destroy or subvert food self-sufficiency. Now, there are four good reasons for promoting food self-sufficiency and I borrow this from my friend Jennifer Clapp. One, when a large proportion of a country's population is at risk of hunger in instances of sudden food shortages due to the vagaries of world markets, as happened in 2007, 2008, it is vital to carefully consider ways to improve domestic food production. Two, countries with volatile export earnings can assure their unimpeded access to food by reducing reliance on global food markets by a greater domestic food production. Three, in fact, the majority of the world's countries do have the resource capacity to be food self-sufficient, but of those countries that have the resource capacity to be food self-sufficient, a number have become net food importers owing to neoliberal policies. Many sub-Saharan African countries, for example, were net agricultural exporters in the 60s and the 70s. That became net importers of food after the 1980s. Some of these countries that have become reliant on imported food since the 80s still have the capacity to produce sufficient foodstuffs domestically, including Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four, countries facing the threat of trade disruptions, or as a result of war, political tensions, or other emergencies like the current COVID-19 pandemic may also benefit from greater levels of food self-sufficiency. Most countries consider the ability to ensure food supplies in times of crisis to be a national security issue. And depending on the risk that imports will be cut off due to conflict or political tensions or emergencies, countries may want to invest in their domestic agricultural capacity. Transitional measures. Now, while in the short term, global food supply chains must be kept running to ensure people do not starve, the strategic goal must be to replace them and ensure, and some measures can already be taken, even as the pandemic hits high. For instance, in many cities under lockdown, produce from the countryside is available, even as the global supply chain stops functioning. But the produce ruts, and peasants lose money because lockdowns prevent food from entering the city. Or peasants and fishers cannot do productive work, even if they observe precautions such as the two-meter social distance rule because of emergency directives that are not appropriate to the local situation. If under appropriate emergency rules, the combined force of peasants and fishers can be unleashed in a safe and cautious manner, much of the current problem of the supply chain for cities can be significantly reduced. In addition, it can help prevent and mitigate any possible future food supply shortages for poor peasants and the landless rural poor are themselves among the first to suffer and to starve. Now, key principles of food sovereignty. One, local food production must be linked from corporate-dominated global food supply chains, and each country should strive for food self-sufficiency. That means the country's farmers should produce most of the food consumed domestically. This is not, it should be stressed, the corporate concept of food security that says that a country can also meet a greater part of its food needs through imports. Two, food sovereignty includes food self-sufficiency, but it is more comprehensive. The people should have the right to determine their patterns of food production and consumption taking into consideration rural and productive diversity, and not allow these to be subordinated to unregulated international trade. Three, localization of food production is good for the climate, since the carbon emissions of localized production on a global scale are much less than that of agriculture based on global supply chains. Fourth, traditional peasant and indigenous agricultural technologies contain a great deal of wisdom and represent the evolution of a largely benign balance between the human community and the biosphere. Thus, the evolution of agro-technology to meet social needs must take traditional practices as starting point rather than regarding them as obsolete. And fifth, a technology supported of food sovereignty is agroecology, which is marked by recycling nutrients and energy on the farm rather than introducing external inputs and diversifying plant species and genetic resources over time and space. Now I just mentioned a number, a few of the principles of food sovereignty, which has been elaborated by farmers, by organizations such as Via Campesina, organizations of farmers. There are much more, but our time is limited. But I just picked out some of the more important ones. But the point is that this is already, food sovereignty is a well-developed science and practice that has been tried out in a number of different places and that this, in fact, given COVID-19 represents the future of farming, but of course, if we intervene in the process. So let me end by saying that it has been said that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. The silver lining of the COVID-19 crisis is the opportunity to spells for food sovereignty. Thank you very much again.