There is a sense that the world food system has reached an impasse. Hunger afflicts at least an eighth of the world population (FAO, 2012), mostly in the global South, but also in the North where austerity policies – which respond to crisis by prioritising the interests of the wealthy – leave working people hungry. What is even more serious is that even this damaged ‘food security’ cannot be guaranteed into the future. International institutions now recognise that something fundamental must change, a realisation embodied in the notion of paradigm
shift (Graziano da Silva, 2015; FAO, 2011) and further concretised in the form of sustainable intensification. Expanding on this, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) further stated: ‘The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development: from a ‘green revolution’ to an ‘ecological intensification’ approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture- based and high- externalinput- dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small- scale farmers. We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognises that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agro- ecological system . . .’ (UNCTAD, 2013, p.i).