Food Justice Background

Why care about food justice?

One in eight people goes to bed hungry every night. Not because there isn't enough food, but because of deep imbalances in access to resources like fertile land and water. The power to control these resources sits neither with the billion-plus farmers who produce food, nor with the billions of consumers who eat it.

Instead, companies and governments control the global food system—and they often determine who eats and who doesn't.

What we're doing

Oxfam has launched the GROW campaign to build a better food system: one that sustainably feeds a growing population (estimated to reach nine billion by 2050) and empowers poor people to earn a living, feed their families, and thrive.

Join Oxfam and help make sure everyone has a seat at the table.

Here's what we need to do, starting now, to grow food and justice without wrecking the planet:

• Increase the productivity, self-reliance, and economic opportunity of small-scale farmers, especially women, who depend on agriculture for income and food.
• Increase farmers’ access to resources like water and land, and make sure they don’t have to unfairly compete with big companies for ownership of these resources.
• Increase farmers’ preparedness in the face of more-frequent and more-extreme droughts, floods, and storms.
• Modernize our food aid programs so they are more effective, efficient, and fiscally responsible, improving the global response to natural disasters and food crises.
• Hold governments and businesses accountable for the impacts of their policies and practices on global food security.

All of us, in this generation and the next, deserve enough to eat. To meet the needs of humankind and take pressure off the planet, we need to grow more fairly and sustainably and choose cooperation over division. Together, we can fight hunger by urging governments and companies to make smarter investments in agriculture and climate preparedness—investments that protect farmers living in poor and marginalized communities worldwide.