Food trade on the other hand is an important tool of food accessibility and income poverty reduction whereas treating food as a commodity has trapped many food producers and consumers in hunger and mal-nutrition as healthy diets are increasing becoming a privilege of the rich orchestrating the movement of healthy foods from producer communities to the market. Increasingly health diets are becoming expensive and therefore inaccessible by the poor in urban areas.
The episodic flooring and hiking of food prices breeds injustices in the food system. The dynamics around trade barriers (tariff and no tariff) is a growing concern especially in the efforts of promoting intra country and intra Africa food trade. The food system contributes to climate change and equally affected by the climate change emergencies exhibited as droughts, floods and the invasion of pest and diseases.
FRA will address the social and environmental injustice of the current production and marketing systems through advancing models that are sensitive to the safety and health of the food and entire eco system. It will seek to address cultural norms and systemic institutional discrimination, capacity deficits of both duty bearers and rights holders, barriers that hinder meaningfully participation of vulnerable groups in decision making in their families, communities and market place.