LAND & FOOD RIGHTS PROGRAM

From 2016-2020, SPI hosted the Land and Food Rights Program under the direction of Timothy A. Wise, now a Senior Advisor at SPI. He is now with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) leading research on Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Future of Food. The products of the Land and Food Rights Program can be found on these pages. Subscribe with IATP for updates on Tim's work. Visit his Author Page for see more of his work.

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The Small Planet Institute’s Land and Food Rights Program provides research and analysis on global, national, and local efforts to promote climate-resilient sustainable agricultural development in some of the world’s poorest countries. Building on the institute’s path-breaking work, Senior Researcher Timothy A. Wise brings a rights-based approach to understanding persistent hunger and poverty in a world of plenty. 

The Land and Food Rights Program deepens and extends Wise’s research and writing on the elusive promises to help small-scale farmers feed their families and communities. Wise’s book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (New Press, Feb. 2019), illustrates the many ways in which agricultural and food policies promote global agribusiness instead of family farmers who grow most of the world’s food but who suffer the highest rates of food insecurity. With chapters on Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, India, Mexico, and the United States, Eating Tomorrow offers a global tour of what is and is not working in a world dealing with persistent hunger, malnutrition, and climate change.

Building on Wise’s book research, the Land and Food Rights Program examines key global policy issues—land-grabbing, genetically modified food, biofuels, trade, climate change—with a particular effort to contribute to ongoing debates on agricultural development in Africa and other developing countries.