Америкалық Food First ұйымы және әлемдік азық-түлік жүйесі

American nonprofit organization

Food First, also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California, US. Founded in 1975 by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, it describes itself as a "people's think tank and education for action center". Its mission is "to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger". According to the Food First website, its main goal is to forge food sovereignty for human rights and sustainable livelihoods, and to do so it has three programs of development: building local agri foods systems, farmers forming food sovereignty, and democratizing development. The organization is meant to offer policy analysis on poverty, agriculture, and development, and is highly critical of the policies implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The organization focuses on the Green Revolution which was supported in the 1970s and which did not produce the development people hoped for. Instead it put in place a system that has high input costs, but does not produce a yield much higher than traditional farming methods. There has been a recent resurgence of Green Revolution ideas, especially with the large scale support of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and high yield variety agriculture. Food First claims that these policies will only further global inequalities, and has produced several policy briefs stating that the way to establish fair and effective development is through local sustainable agriculture. In 1987, the organization received the Right Livelihood Award "for revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them."

The organization began in 1975 as the Institute for Food and Development Policy (IFDP). The institute was founded by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, and actually began in New York in Lappe's basement before relocating to San Francisco, and then later to Oakland where it is still located. In 1977 the IFDP published its first work, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, and has since continued publishing policy briefs and analysis on the world food system and the inequalities that are caused by it. Today's Food First is managed by a board of trustees that has five members with backgrounds in different non profit organizations. They have a shared vision of creating a more grass roots based system of economic development through the endorsement of local and sustainable agriculture systems. The organization's president is Joyce E. King, whose work in sociology has focused on "women's participation in grass roots social change movements in Africa, South America and France". In addition to the Board of Trustees, Food First has six staff members who work on the organization's policy briefs. The staff's executive director is Eric Holt Gimenez, who has published several books on global inequalities and the global food system, including Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, which outlines seven steps to solving the world food crisis. Finally, the organization benefits from the support of the general public through interns and volunteers who contribute to the process of policy research. Food First is a think tank composed of many individuals from many different backgrounds, who share the organization's aim of eliminating global inequalities through the rethinking of the world's emphasis on industry based economics, and shifting the paradigm towards a more inclusive form of economic development.