Seasoned in defending rural communities and smallholder farmers, Sofía Monsalve, 56, was appointed United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food in May. In exchange for throwing herself into an unpaid position, the Colombian political scientist says she enjoys complete independence. “I have the freedom to call things by their name,” she tells EL PAÍS in Turin during Terra Madre, the gathering of the international sustainable food network Slow Food.
During her speech, Monsalve called for a complete overhaul of the global food system. The far-reaching transformation she advocates rests on four pillars: land redistribution, agroecology, relocalization of food systems, and democratic decision-making. Her work must navigate both U.N. budget cuts and the suspicion directed at independent-minded rapporteurs. “You see what has happened to Francesca Albanese [the Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, sanctioned by the United States] and you hear rumors about similar actions against other rapporteurs. They want to intimidate us, to make us censor ourselves, but the truth will prevail,” she says.
Monsalve faces an enormous challenge: upholding the right to food at a time when humanitarian aid is at historic lows. After years of almost uninterrupted decline, the share of people experiencing hunger worldwide began to rise in 2017. It then surged during the pandemic and, although hunger levels have fallen in recent years, they have yet to return to their 2016 levels.
Question. Are we heading toward a world with two kinds of consumers: high-quality organic products for the rich and ultra-processed foods for the poor?
Answer. I am very worried about the rapid spread of junk food in Africa and Latin America. It is a matter of perception, driven by very aggressive advertising aimed at changing young people’s eating habits, especially now with social media.
Q. In the structural transformation you advocate, you say that reducing the power of large agribusiness corporations is an essential condition. How can that be done?
A. To start, by changing the narrative so food stops being treated as a commodity bought in supermarkets and traded on stock exchanges. If it is a right, the economic logic changes. We must also question the idea that corporations feed the world and that without them everything collapses. That is not true, or at least not the whole truth.
Q. In what sense?
A. We need to explain how these companies operate. They use monopolistic practices. They often receive substantial subsidies — in the European Union, the U.S. and Brazil — and pay little tax. Added to that are the enormous external costs they impose on nature and never make up for. And the junk food they sell leads to severe public health problems. Industrial agribusiness is by no means as efficient as we think. We must not forget the forced population displacements caused by their huge monoculture plantations.
Q. How is it possible that we are worse off than a decade ago in a world of supposed abundance?
A. That was the question I asked myself while preparing my first report as rapporteur. I found answers in the work of researcher Alex de Waal, director of the World Peace Foundation, who attributes the shift to the end of the Pax Americana, a fairly stable system based on dollar hegemony in which, despite its contradictions and forms of exploitation, there was some recognition of human rights and of the importance of development aid. Eradicating hunger was a more or less shared objective. De Waal argues that all this has fractured. We are now witnessing a fierce rivalry among economic powers.
Q. And the most vulnerable pay the price of this geopolitical storm.
A. Above all because it has led to the collapse of the international norms that govern coexistence. Famine is being normalized. For example, by dehumanizing a population and repeating that everyone there is a terrorist. And that one cannot live under that threat. The idea that we are all human beings and that hunger cannot be used as a weapon of war has been gradually abandoned.
Q. In your speech, you said some states are setting very dangerous precedents.
A. The case of Gaza is very clear. Besides Israel, there are complicit states like the U.S. and Germany. They have done nothing to ensure compliance with the precautionary measures of the International Court of Justice, which in March 2024 said humanitarian aid must enter there without restrictions. To this day, there are still serious limitations. There is also Sudan, where U.N. investigations point to the United Arab Emirates as bearing great responsibility in a conflict in which, once again, famine is being used as a weapon of war. This impunity is appalling. There has to be accountability.
Q. Crises such as those in Ukraine and Iran have exposed just how fragile the global food system is.
A. This structural fragility is a product of neoliberalism, which created a food security paradigm based on global trade. For decades, countries were told they could dismantle their capacity to produce food or that they should not keep food reserves. The message was that there was nothing to worry about. We now see the consequences.
Q. Is anything changing, given that in this model of extreme dependence, disturbing one piece (Ukraine’s wheat, fertilizers passing through the Strait of Hormuz) causes devastating effects?
A.That is my impression. Even the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations], a staunch defender of that paradigm, is beginning to talk about diversifying supply sources and crops. Even about having food reserves, as China and India already do. I am not saying everything must be public. For example, the Indigenous rural farming sector, where a social and solidarity economy predominates, cannot be state-run. I advocate rather for a new balance among the three actors — public, commercial private and social-solidarity — in shaping food systems.
Q. Are you concerned that, in this rethinking of food systems, national security will be prioritized?
A. Certainly, especially in a world like today’s, in which everything is viewed through the lens of confrontation. You know: we will join with our allies and against such-and-such an enemy bloc. It is what they call the securitization of food systems.
Q. You advocate greater democracy in decision-making. Isn’t that almost utopian?
A. It is not easy, but neither is it impossible, especially with new digital technologies that give us planning tools we didn’t have before. Agri-food multinationals already use them with excellent results to maximize their profits. They have real-time information: how much is in stock, how much moves from here to there... So why shouldn’t we be able to use those same technologies to support democratic deliberation and decision-making? Whether the political will exists is another matter, but it is possible.
Q. You insist that land must be distributed more equitably. Is land ownership becoming increasingly concentrated in large estates?
A.The FAO published a study last February that demonstrates this. Thanks to the work of [Thomas] Piketty and other economists, there is much discussion about growing inequality in income and wealth, but not so much about land distribution. The issue must be put on the agenda, not only as a matter of social justice but also because there is a clear link between this inequality and environmental destruction. The more equitable the distribution, the more biodiversity.
Q. You advocate for agroecology. Does that mean no pesticides or chemical fertilizers at all?
A. That is the direction we should head in, especially considering that their production depends heavily on fossil fuels. If there is an energy transition, there should also be a transition toward other ways of maintaining soil fertility. Not dogmatically, but with a clear direction.
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