A controversy surrounding the World Food Prize (WFP) highlights how the fault-lines of power struggles are no longer essentially between nations. Civil society organizations across the world are taking on corporations and governments over who will secure our food future.
Interestingly, both WFP and its counter, an activist initiative known as the Food Sovereignty Prize, are based in the US. This year’s WFP is being shared by three biotechnology scientists for their work on genetically modified foods—two of them senior executives of agri-industry giants Monsanto and Syngenta. The Food Sovereignty Prize has gone to a peasant organization in Haiti with honourable mentions to a farmers group in Spain, one in Mali and the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective in India.