Dear readers,

I would like to briefly introduce myself, as you will be hearing more from me in the coming months. My name is Felix Rohrbeck and I am a business journalist and currently a media fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE. As you may know, this year's theme is Rethinking Capitalism. Here at the Institute, academics and practitioners from very different parts of the world are thinking about how to improve capitalism and develop solutions for some of the major crises of our time. This is no easy task, to say the least, but it is an exciting endeavor. As a media fellow, I will accompany the work of the other fellows with a series of newsletters, reporting on the fellows' ideas and projects as concretely and accessibly as possible. Think of it as a journey into the world of ideas here at THE NEW INSTITUTE. I hope to be a good guide!

This newsletter series begins with a topic that affects us all: food. The way that we produce food in the world is not only unfair, it also harms the climate and our health. But how can we change our systems? When he was Peru's Minister of Production, José Luis Chicoma was already tackling this issue. Now, as a fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, he is working with a team to develop the playbook he was missing during his time in the Peruvian government.

Felix Rohrbeck

P.S. We have a German version of the text available for you here.

A Former Minister of Production Is Planning a Better Food System

As Peru's Minister of Production, José Luis Chicoma wanted to make the food system more fair and more sustainable. Now, at THE NEW INSTITUTE he wants to develop the playbook he wishes he had then.

1. What is the problem?

When you ask José Luis Chicoma to explain the paradox that has occupied him for so long, formerly as Peru's Minister of Production and now as a fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, he usually starts with a specific small fish: the Peruvian anchovy. It lives in the southeastern Pacific, off the coast of Peru, and although it is no more than 20 centimeters long, it is of vital importance to the fishing industry. Between three and eight million tons are taken from the sea every year, making the Peruvian anchovy the most caught fish in the world.

Peruvian anchovies

“So you would think that there would be more than enough fish for Peruvians,” says Chicoma, who directs the Future of Food program at the Institute. “But that's not the case.” More than 95% of anchovies are processed into fish meal or fish oil in factories and then exported to China or Europe. There, the anchovies are fed to farmed fish like salmon, pork, and poultry, while half of Peru's population of 34 million people suffers from malnutrition.

For José Luis Chicoma, anchovies are part of a broken system that produces paradoxical results. “How can it be that a country as agriculturally rich as Peru struggles with malnutrition and food crises? Why do we export nutritious and protein-rich anchovies from our own waters to the West and Asia as fishmeal, and eat pasta and chips?”

Chicoma sees Peru as a microcosm that can be used to study why the way we produce food globally is no longer working, why it is harming the climate and biodiversity, leading to inequitable and unhealthy outcomes, and why – and this is ultimately his mission – the system urgently needs to be fixed.

2. What is the approach to tackling the problem?

To better understand Chicoma's work, it's best to start with the phone call that led to him becoming Peru's Minister of Production in 2020. At the time he was 44 years old, living in Mexico City, and running a think tank with more than 30 employees. It's a demanding job, but for Chicoma, who took on political responsibility in his early thirties as Vice Minister for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in his home country of Peru, it was also a time to enjoy life and Mexican food, and to have a personal life in addition to a career.

José Luis Chicoma, photo by Maximilian Glas

But then events in Peru changed rapidly. Within a week, a president was overthrown and his successor was forced to resign due to mass protests. It was one of the biggest political crises in the country's history. In the midst of this chaos, the engineer Francisco Sagasti was appointed interim president (and Sagasti will also be a fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE starting in May 2025). Shortly thereafter, Chicoma recalls, Sagasti called him. “I had 45 minutes to think about whether I would accept the ministerial post.” That same day, Chicoma took the oath of office by Zoom, and the next day, he flew back to Peru as Minister of Production.

At that time, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the focus was on acute support programs for the Peruvian economy. But Chicoma also wanted to set sustainable impulses. Normally, he says, the Minister of Production in Peru has a single mission: to increase production. But he saw things differently, especially when it came to food. “I wanted Peru not only to produce more food, but also to produce healthier and more sustainable food that would benefit the local population. Food should not only be about quantity, but also about quality and making sure that it reaches those who really need it.”

Yet what sounds like a no-brainer is at odds with the way food is currently produced, not just in Peru, but around the world. At least, that's the way Chicoma sees it. For him, it is a system full of contradictions, including the following:

It is precisely where food is produced, in the countryside, that a particularly large number of people suffer from hunger.

Although there are about six thousand edible plants in the world that could strengthen biodiversity, almost half of the calories consumed worldwide come from just three types of grains: wheat, corn, and rice.

Instead of eating what grows in the fields as quickly and as freshly as possible, crops are often processed into industrial products that make us overweight and sick. Or they are fed to animals, and we eat far too many of them, which is also one of the biggest contributors to climate change.

Chicoma could go on and on. He thinks the way we produce food is unhealthy, unjust, and destructive. As Minister of Production, he wanted to at least try to change things. But how?

The first thing he noticed was the power of the industrial fishing corporations. These are the same companies that control the market for Peruvian anchovies, processing them into fishmeal and exporting them abroad. They are well organized and quickly made it clear to Chicoma that they expected him, like his predecessors, to spend at least an hour a week with them, listening to their concerns and interests. Chicoma refused. Instead, he organized a counter-lobby to ensure that the interests of local fishermen, who often live in poverty, were heard.

Most importantly, Chicoma strengthened the traditional food markets that are found in every town in Peru, where fish, fruit, vegetables, and spices are sold. Since the 1990s, large supermarkets have also become increasingly popular in Peru, but in those stores only the perfect-looking tomatoes make it onto the shelves and everything is standardized. “This excludes many small farmers,” says Chicoma. Biodiversity also suffers. “There are 50 different kinds of yogurt available in the supermarkets, but only a few varieties of potato. That's even though the potato originated in Peru. There are more than 3,000 different varieties: yellow, purple and white.” Some varieties are resistant to pests, others can withstand long droughts and extreme cold. Yet they are not available in supermarkets.

Traditional food markets not only strengthen farmers, but also biodiversity. As Minister of Production, Chicoma supported traditional food markets, with a larger budget and commitments from different ministries, and by prioritizing them within the political agenda. This also sent a signal: the future of food in Peru should belong to them, not just to supermarkets.

These are interventions that Chicoma is still proud of today. But his term as minister in the transitional government only lasted nine months, and he would have liked more time in the role to accomplish more. Chicoma would also have liked a kind of playbook for how to build a fairer, healthier, more sustainable food system. “At the time, I was also looking internationally for models and policies that I could use as a guide, for example to strengthen traditional markets. But no such playbook existed.”

3. What is the project at THE NEW INSTITUTE?

Essentially, Chicoma is using his time at THE NEW INSTITUTE to develop the playbook that he would have wanted to have as Minister of Production. The special thing about THE NEW INSTITUTE is that, as head of the Future of Food program, he has been able to assemble a team of scholars and practitioners as fellows at the Institute, and they live and work together in the Warburg Ensemble on Hamburg's Alster lake. There are regular team meetings, but they also talk over lunch, at the in-house bar, after lectures, and in the library – not only with fellows from their own program, but also with fellows working on completely different topics. All of this is designed to create space for new ideas. “It's a place where you can think big,” says Chicoma.

Among the fellows in his program of nine are: Kristin Reynolds, Chair of the Food Studies Program at The New School in New York who studies how to make food systems more equitable; Nicolás Rovegno, Latin American Regional Coordinator for the Fisheries Transparency Initiative, which advocates for greater transparency and sustainability in the fishing industry; and anthropologist Emma McDonnell, who in her recently published book “The Quinoa Bust” shows how a simple Andean grain became a sustainable miracle plant – and what unintended consequences this had.

What will the outcome of this program be? The Future of Food team is still in the midst of the process and has already made strides by bringing together experts and sharing knowledge. In early March, for example, it invited representatives from UN agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to a three-day conference at the Institute. Organizations such as the WWF, Slow Food International and Bioversity International were also represented, among many others. Chicoma and his team were able to discuss the ideas and approaches that they’re developing with the external guests and get their expert feedback.

At the end of the Future of Food program at the Institute, the team will publish a report that will give new impetus to the need to reform the food system and will contain concrete recommendations and measures. In the best-case scenario, this report will become the playbook that Chicoma wished for as minister.

Future of Food Advisory Committee, photo by Maximilian Glas

“For example, right now we are focusing a lot on the agroecological approach,” says Chicoma. This is the application of ecological principles to agricultural systems. The Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples, for example, used to grow squash, corn, and beans together because the plants benefited from each other: the corn acts as a climbing pole for the beans, the beans add nitrogen to the soil, which was used by the other plants, and the squash covers the weeds. “Such farming methods work completely without artificial fertilizers and increase biodiversity,” says Chicoma. “There's a lot to be said for re-adopting these methods.”

But can such approaches really be put into practice easily? “It would be naive to think that it is possible to change our food system without breaking with existing power structures,” says Chicoma. Therefore, the team is also looking at radical measures, such as land reform. “Whoever controls the land has a huge influence on what is grown and how it is grown,” says Chicoma.

Redistributing land is a great lever to change the system.

In the food councils of international organizations, such as the UN, and at the national level, Chicoma says, power must also be distributed differently. Traditionally, all stakeholders come together: science, agriculture, NGOs, governmental authorities, and companies. In principle, this is a good idea. The problem, however, according to Chicoma, is that the corporations, with their enormous financial resources, are often the best prepared and most able to successfully assert their interests – even when these stand in the way of change towards a fair, sustainable, and healthy food system. Chicoma's suggestion: “They should simply be excluded from these rounds in some cases. For example, companies that produce ultraprocessed products shouldn't be included to discuss how their products are regulated and restricted.”

4. What does this mean for capitalism?

When people discuss the future of capitalism, they often talk about financial markets, technology monopolies, or growing economic inequality. Rarely, however, is our food system discussed, even though it provides an absolutely essential and indispensable good.

Chicoma does not want to abolish capitalism. But he believes that we should not think of our food as being a normal commodity that corporations produce as much as they possibly can on an industrial scale. Instead, food is more than just a commodity. It is essential for our survival and health – and therefore deserves a special role within our capitalist system.