To truly transform food systems, we must confront what holds them in place: power. Not as an abstract force, but as concrete control over land, markets, labor, taste, and narratives. This report begins with com- mon sense assumptions that should not be controversial: food systems must feed everyone, not only those that can afford it; they must regenerate ecosystems, not deplete them; and they must provide decent livelihoods to those who nourish us, not consign them to hunger and exploitation.

But the fact that we are not meeting these goals is not due to technical failures. Power inequities are at the root of hunger and malnutrition, the destruction of ecosystems and climate change, and deep social inequalities. Yet power is also the hardest barrier to address, because it is both historically entrenched and actively reinforced by today’s economic and political systems—systems that have evolved to extract value for the benefit of a few, while externalizing costs onto the many (Sen, 1981; Patel & Moore, 2017; Clapp, et al., 2025).

Confronting power is thus urgent and essential for transforming food systems. This report presents a set of public policy recommendations to rebalance power in food systems. This rebalancing means, for example, redistributing the control, ownership, and management of land and water resources; redirecting public investment toward territorial systems and biodiversity; protecting and promoting traditional and informal food markets; and dismantling the institutional protections that uphold corporate concentration—whether through trade rules, subsidies, weak antitrust regulations and enforcement, or other mechanisms.

We present seven briefs on different domains—agroecology, fisheries and aquaculture, neglected and underutilized species, supply chains, nutrition, seeds, and governance—but all share the same premise: transformation is only possible when power shifts. The selection of topics addressed in this report is not exhaustive; it focuses on illustrative domains, while acknowledging that other areas of the food system would also benefit from a similar power-focused analysis and recommendations.

Power Is the Elephant “At the Table”

Power is too often absent from food policy debates. It is the subject many institutions and experts tiptoe around, it is obscured and de- politicized, reduced to questions of coordination, technical fixes, or marginal reforms (Clapp & Fuchs, 2009; IPES-Food, 2015).

The ubiquity of the phrase “broken food systems” shows what happens when power is left out of the debate: everyone agrees on the depth of the crisis, yet few are prepared to challenge the structures—or give up the privileges—that keep inequities in place. References to broken food systems now appear in United Nations declarations, corporate white papers, and philanthropic strategies—echoing what activists have said for decades (UN, 2023; Food Foundation, 2025; Beard, 2025). Some have questioned whether the term “broken” remains useful, yet the irony is that many of the same corporate leaders who have profited from the system now declare it broken—and even position themselves as those best equipped to fix it (Clapp, 2021; Canfield, Anderson, & McMichael, 2021; IPES-Food, 2023).

This language of crisis has been followed by the language of “transformation”. Yet genuine food systems transformation remains elusive if we don’t address the elephant at the table. We cannot accept claims of transformation when the proposed solutions—such as multi-stakeholder platforms or sustainable intensification (terms often used in food systems policy)—are little more than technocratic, marginal adjustments to the status quo, repackaged as bold changes (IPES-Food, 2016; McKeon, 2017; Clapp, Noyes, & Grant, 2021; Pereira et al., 2023; Horton, 2024; Juri et al., 2024).

Real transformation must be political. It requires naming where power lies, challenging those who hold power, building broad coalitions to shift power, and redistributing power to make meaningful change possible. Without this, we remain trapped in cycles of minimal reform— adjustments that create the appearance of progress while leaving the structures of exclusion and control intact (Clapp & Fuchs, 2009; IPES- Food, 2023; Béné et al., 2024).

How Power Inequities Drive Food System Failures

Corporate concentration is the clearest symptom of these inequities. From seeds to supermarkets, a handful of firms dominate entire value chains, exerting outsized influence over what is grown and where, how it is processed, and what reaches our plates—or fails to. This dominance not only squeezes producers and narrows consumer choice, it also allows corporations to shape the very rules of the game through lobbying, regulatory capture, and privileged access to decision-makers (IPES-Food, 2017; Howard, 2021; Clapp et al., 2025).

But power is not just about corporations. Food systems are governed by policymakers and political actors who set agendas, define priorities, and decide whose participation counts—often in ways that align with corporate interests. They amplify some voices in policy debates while dismissing others as irrelevant, anecdotal, or unscientific. They systematically exclude the very actors driving real transformation, from smallholder farmers and small-scale fishers to women, food workers, and social movements. These exclusions are not accidental but the product of deeper inequities in access to voice, representation, and political legitimacy. Even global institutions—often described as neutral platforms—are governed by the political interests of powerful states and donors with greater financial resources, making them less inclusive and prone to avoiding direct confrontation in order to preserve their influence (Clapp & Fuchs, 2009; IPES-Food, 2016; Canfield, Anderson, & McMichael, 2021).

Food systems are also built on the systematic use of cheap labor. From fields and fishing boats to packing plants and retail, profitability depends on workers who are underpaid and denied basic protections. Women, migrants, and informal workers are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs, which carry the risks of unsafe conditions, seasonal volatility, and sudden shocks. This dependence on precarity and exploitation is a clear expression of power inequity: it transfers value upward to corporations and consumers while stripping workers of security and rights (Patel & Moore, 2017; ILO, 2022; HLPE, 2023).

At the heart of these power imbalances lies unequal access to and control over natural and financial resources: land, water, oceans, seeds, technologies, and public investment. These inequities shape who produces food and under what conditions, as well as who benefits. They also determine which actors and activities are prioritized for infrastructure, credit, or research—and which are systematically neglected (Smith, 2021; Anderson & Maughan, 2021; IPES-Food 2022; IPES-Food, 2021a; Clapp & Isakson, 2023).

Today’s global context is amplifying power inequities in food systems. Trade disruptions expose the vulnerability of global supply chains, with import-dependent regions particularly at risk of food insecurity. Food is increasingly weaponized, with the ongoing siege of Gaza and the deliberate use of starvation as a tool of control in its most devastating form. At the same time, cuts and shifts in aid threaten populations that depend on aid for survival, even as they open spaces to rethink models long tied to donor priorities.

There Has Been Progress, But It’s Not Enough

Over the past two decades, the discourse around food systems has evolved. Once dismissed as the domain of agriculture ministries or nutritionists, food systems are now recognized as complex, interconnected arenas that touch on health, climate, and inclusion (IPES- Food, 2015; HLPE, 2017). Reports now highlight the importance of inclusive governance, agroecological transitions, territorial markets, school meals, and Indigenous knowledge (McKeon, 2015; HLPE, 2019; IPBES, 2019; WFP, 2020; IPES-Food, 2024). Social movements—such as La Vía Campesina (LVC), the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), and additionally, Indigenous peoples-led movements—have long made this case. Their visions have shaped international frameworks and introduced ideas once considered radical into mainstream policy (HLPE, 2019; IPBES, 2019).

Academics have long worked in parallel with—and often ahead of—policy circles in exposing the structural dynamics of food systems. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research (discussed in the following chapter, Reclaiming Power in Food Systems) has shown how power operates: through corporate concentration (IPES-Food, 2017; Clapp, 2021; Howard, 2021), the extraction of value from labor and nature (Patel & Moore, 2017), the marginalization of alternative knowledge systems (Vijayan et al., 2022), and the narratives that justify these patterns (Anderson, 2024). What began in critical agrarian studies and political ecology has now begun to shape food policy debates more broadly, although long-dominant food policy paradigms continue to endure (McMichael, 2013).

Calls for food systems transformation have multiplied in recent years— but many of these proposals fall short of confronting the forces that prevent transformation, or they co-opt concepts originating in social movements or traditional and community based practices, neutralizing these concepts to the extent that they reinforce the status quo (Clapp, Noyes, & Grant, 2021; Canfield, Anderson, & McMichael, 2021). While some actors are pushing for real change, too many efforts remain stuck—trapped by institutional caution, political risk, or an unwilling- ness to disrupt entrenched power. In some cases, this hesitation is understandable: challenging dominant interests can come at a cost. But in other cases, avoiding power has become a convenient strategy—technical, politically acceptable, and easy to fund, yet ultimately incapable of shifting the structures that drive inequality, food insecurity, and ecosystem destruction (IPES-Food, 2016; Béné et al., 2024).

And the results speak for themselves: we were promised transformation but instead we got pilot projects.

Tracing Power in Food Systems: Frameworks, Movements, and Evidence

Scholars, experts, and organizations have long examined the politi- cal economy of food systems and the role of power within them. The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) has been a pioneer in addressing power explicitly and accessibly, producing influential reports, such as “From Uniformity to Diversity” (2016), “Too Big to Feed” (2017), “Smoke and Mirrors” (2022), and “Who’s Tipping the Scales” (2023), shaping the thinking of policymakers, funders, and activists alike. Even more formal bodies—like the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the World Committee on Food Security and Nutrition— have contributed significantly to bringing structural issues into policy processes. Though not always framed explicitly in terms of power, their reports and analyses on nutrition (2017), agroecology (2019), inequalities (2023), and urban food systems (2024) have created space for deeper political reflection.

Considering this body of work, we briefly review three strands of research and social movement analysis that are especially useful for understanding power in food systems. First, we review analytical frameworks from political science, political ecology, and related fields, which we use instrumentally. Second, we review broader perspectives and frameworks—colonial legacies, the Right to Food, and food sovereignty—that link diagnosis to historical responsibility, legal obliga- tions, and social movements. Third, we review targeted literature on corporate concentration, narratives, and policy processes that show where control accumulates, how discourse narrows options, and why reform stalls.

In the first strand, we draw on multiple analytical frameworks used to examine power in food systems and policy. We do not seek to add yet another framework; instead, we use this literature as guidance to diagnose how power inequities manifest across resources, corporate concentration, governance, and labor—and to anchor the policy path- ways that follow in this report. Among the most cited in the political science literature, Gaventa’s “power cube” (2006, 2021)— which identifies levels (global/national/local), forms (visible/hidden/invisible), and spaces (closed/invited/claimed) of power—remains foundational and was designed for practitioner planning (Gaventa, 2006, p. 25). Complementing this, Shackleton et al. (2023) synthesize four strands of power analysis, applying this to conservation work: actor-centered, institutional, structural, and discursive.

To address food systems, Baker and Demaio (2016) use Gaventa’s levels–forms–spaces framing alongside Clapp and Fuchs’ (2009) account of corporate influence via instrumental, structural, and discursive power. Lécuyer et al. (2024) extend the cube to “multiple dimensions,” adding expressions of power (“for,” “with,” “to,” “within”) and their interconnections, underscoring complexity and linkage across scales.

Taken together, these frameworks are useful yet fragmented and numerous —what Boonstra (2016) calls a “confetti of labels and theories” (cited in Lécuyer et al., 2024, p. 1409).

Second, in our analysis of power in food systems, we consider perspectives and movements that treat power inequities as the root of the problem—such as colonial legacies, the Right to Food, and food sovereignty. This body of research, advocacy, and activism—alongside many other efforts to confront the structural causes of food system failures—traces a trajectory from diagnosing domination, to articulating state obligations, to advancing a political project that clarifies where control lies and how it can be redistributed and democratized.

Colonial legacies endure in multiple ways. Quijano’s “coloniality of power” (2000) explains how colonial practices and racialization are continually reworked to sustain elite control—an essential lens for contemporary food-system inequities. Thinkers who consider lived realities in the Global South— such as Josué de Castro (1952); Amartya Sen (1981); Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh; and Arturo Escobar (2012)—have traced how Western colonialism remains entwined with agricultural development and food (in)security. Recent syntheses map how imperial legacies persist throughout time and place (Reynolds and Qader forthcoming), including through resource grabbing and biopiracy (Shiva, 2016), and through what Liboiron (2021) terms “pollution is colonialism”.

These dynamics are also reproduced institutionally, as Western knowl- edge systems and development orthodoxies shape agendas in bodies such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CGIAR; Álvarez and Coolsaet (2020) show how over-reliance in Latin America on Western epistemologies reproduces inequitable food and environmental outcomes. These legacies also have military expressions; for instance, the destruction of agricultural land and crops in Gaza demonstrates how force can secure resource control (Fakhri, 2024, p. 16).

The Right to Food frame exposes hunger and malnutrition as outcomes of power relations. Human-rights frameworks provide a legal-political counterweight to productivist framings. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), adopted in by the UN General Assembly in 1966, underpin the Right to Food; in 1999 the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, issued in 1999, elaborated on the normative content of the Right to Food, and since 2000 a UN Special Rapporteur has monitored violations and advanced interpretation to include cultural and dignity dimensions. The Right to Food has been defined as regular, permanent, and unrestricted access—directly or by purchase—to adequate food consistent with peoples’ cultural traditions, enabling a dignified life free of fear (OHCHR, 2010, p. 2). This rights-lens challenges FAO’s (2003) output-and-access definition of food security by imposing duties on states to act beyond charity or narrow productivity targets, though this 2003 framing is a more humanistic approach than that articulated in FAO’s first definition of the term, in 1974, which was even more in-line with productivist narratives (Fukuda-Parr 2018).

Food sovereignty has been the key pioneering framework for analyzing and contesting power in food systems, with La Vía Campesina at its core. Founded in 1993 amid increasingly neoliberal global trade reforms, LVC introduced the concept of food sovereignty at the 1996 World Food Summit and has since placed it at the center of its work on global food politics. Through struggles for agrarian reform, equitable access to land, water, and territories, and opposition to commodification, it has influenced both discourse and policy (Claeys & Edelman, 2019; La Vía Campesina, n.d., accessed 12 Aug 2025). Its broad agenda—from land and territories to agroecology, biodiversity, peasant seeds, labor rights, and corporate accountability—continues to affirm peasant-led agroecology as key to ensuring healthy food and ecological balance (La Vía Campesina, n.d., accessed 12 Aug 2025).

Third, we spotlight a few commonly analyzed arenas while recognizing many other strands (e.g., labor, infrastructure, finance) that also shape power.

Corporate concentration research shows how transnational firms shape governance and markets, with harmful effects on access, livelihoods, and ecology (Fuchs & Clapp, 2009; IPES-Food, 2023; Clapp et al., 2025); sectoral consolidation is documented across seeds, organic foods, and retail (Howard, 2021), extending the food-regime arc from colonial trade to today’s “corporate food regime” (Friedmann & McMichael, 1989; McMichael, 2005). Jennifer Clapp has been a leading voice in exposing the consequences of corporate concentration in food systems, most recently through her book Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters (Clapp, 2025) and her recent co-authored paper “Corporate concentration and power matter for agency in food systems” (Clapp et al, 2025), both essential for understanding how control is consolidated and legitimized, and its negative impacts on agency.

Parallel work on narratives demonstrates how dominant framings steer solutions—what IPES-Food (2022) calls narrative capture—marginalizing alternatives in food security (Sonnino et al., 2016), “climate-smart” agriculture (Newell & Taylor, 2018), agroecology (Anderson & Maughan, 2018), and “nature-based solutions” (IPES-Food, 2022). In particular, Molly Anderson’s Transforming Food Systems: Narratives of Power (Anderson, 2024) reveals how dominant narratives—framed around efficiency, modernization, and innovation—reinforce existing power structures, delegitimize alternatives, and must be dismantled and reimagined to enable meaningful systemic transformation.

Finally, governance and policy change research also emphasizes power inequities and exclusion. Policy-process studies explain why reforms stall and bureaucratic incentives, institutional lock-ins, and elite interests bias change toward incrementalism (Resnick & Swinnen, 2023). Rather than being framed as neutral or technocratic (while in reality steeped in power dynamics), governance spaces must be explicitly re-politicized to confront conflict and power directly, making participation a vehicle for inclusion of diverse voices and transformation rather than depoliticization (Duncan, 2016; Duncan & Claeys, 2018). Multistakeholder governance—despite its inclusive veneer—often erases power imbalances and undermines democratic accountability (McKeon, 2017; Gleckman, 2018; Canfield, Duncan & Claeys, 2021).

Our work in this report builds on theirs—and on many others cited throughout this document—while aiming to go a step further: to make the structural analysis of power visible and actionable through concrete policy proposals. The recommendations in this report are global in scope, but attentive to difference: we recognize that power operates differently across regions and contexts, and that the pathways to transformation must reflect that diversity.

Power, Food, and the Need for Bold Proposals

This report was developed through a year-long collaboration at THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg, Germany, where a group of eight scholars and practitioners came together not just to critique food systems, but to propose policy pathways and solutions to the power inequities that shape these systems. From September 2024 to June 2025, some of us spent several months in residence at THE NEW INSTITUTE, while others joined for shorter periods of time, contributing in different ways to a collaborative process rooted in exchange, experimentation, disagreement, and creativity.

We also benefitted from collaboration with our Advisory Committee, which convened experts from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Biovision Foundation, the Agroecology Coalition, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Slow Food International, EIT Food, CARE, the Think Tank for Sustainability (TMG), and other partners. Their contributions and feedback helped test our strategic direction, strengthen proposals, and refine a transformative agenda. Each chapter of the forthcoming book—the basis for the briefs in this report—was reviewed by external experts, who provided substantive and organizational feedback that was incorporated in finalizing this document. The report also draws on inputs from the work on food and power carried out by report co-editor and author José Luis Chicoma in his work with UNDP, developed in collaboration with Lou Lécuyer.

We were supported by an extraordinary team at THE NEW INSTITUTE— in management, coordination, and media—who made it possible for us to think boldly and act collectively, and who encouraged us to be daring in our proposals to address power inequities in food systems.

Our team of scholars and practitioners experienced shared frustration: we were tired of marginal policy proposals, technical fixes, and apolitical blueprints. We also noted a gap in much critical academic analysis, which, though crucial and increasingly influential, often precludes concrete policy proposals. Across sectors, disciplines, and regions, we saw the same patterns—concentration of power, erasure of alternatives, co-optation of language, and the sidelining of justice. We didn’t all agree on everything—and we certainly didn’t all feel the same level of frustration. But we agreed on one fundamental point: any serious transformation of food systems requires a redistribution of power—of voice, of resources, and of authority—and that this must be included in specific policy proposals.

To that end, this report offers specific, sectoral proposals to con- front power asymmetries across food systems, from agroecology to neglected and underutilized species, from aquatic foods to nutrition and seeds, from supply chains to governance. It is written for those working on food systems in any context—policymakers, practitioners, funders, researchers—because all food systems work is, inherently, work on power, even when it is not recognized as such. And because too many debates about improving food systems remain stuck in minor tweaks and technical solutions, our goal is to expand the space for real, structural change. We believe that, regardless of our roles or institutional positions, we can all be more courageous and abandon timid solutions in favor of bold ones. In this report, each chapter and brief follows a common structure— offering diagnosis, power analysis, vision, and concrete policy recommendations—but authors have applied power analyses and concepts that best fit their perspectives and methods of analyzing their respective sectors.

The full body of work we developed in Hamburg will be published in a forthcoming book. That book will provide deeper detail on the diagnoses, analyses of power inequities, visions, and policy pathways that each of the participating scholars and practitioners contributed across the different domains. While this report distills the main findings, the book will offer a more comprehensive analysis and expanded explanations of the recommendations—an invitation to engage more deeply with the ideas and debates that shaped our collaboration.

We have not attempted to cover every issue related to food systems in our work here. Topics like trade, water governance, or livestock production—which are also deeply entangled with power asymmetries—remain beyond the specific focus of this report. But we have chosen to center issues that offer critical leverage points for real change. Rather than present a comprehensive map, we offer a set of interventions that we hope will sharpen the conversation and embolden action.

The report begins with a chapter-length analysis of power in food sys- tems, followed by seven shorter briefs on specific sectors. We begin by tracing the architecture of power that shapes what we eat and how and by whom it is grown and harvested. In that first chapter, Power in Food Systems Transformation, José Luis Chicoma and Kristin Reynolds lay out the core approach that runs through the report: an analysis of how power asymmetries—rooted in unequal access to resources, exclusive governance, flawed democratic processes, and high corporate concentration—undermine equity, sustainability, and nutrition. This chapter maps the forces that must be confronted for meaningful transformation and outlines four key areas of intervention: reclaiming control and ownership of resources; rebalancing power among actors; guaranteeing food access through diverse market, public, and community mechanisms; and exposing power dynamics more clearly in narratives and policy debates.

In Chapter 2, Reclaiming Agriculture: Unveiling the Transformative Potential of Agroecology, María Mideros’ brief pushes beyond the technical narratives of agroecology to explore its transformative potential. She challenges the deep-rooted power structures that hinder agroecology’s systemic integration and calls for a bold rethinking of food, land, markets, and justice.

Turning to the ocean in Chapter 3, Navigating a Blue Future: Reimagining Aquatic Food Systems, a brief by Nicolás Rovegno, proposes a new framework for blue food transformation grounded in food sovereignty, biodiversity conservation, and marine sustainability. Like agroecology, this vision challenges dominant models of industrial aquaculture and extractive fisheries.

Chapter 4, a brief on Food for All: Realizing the Transformative Power of Traditional and Informal Food Systems, by José Luis Chicoma, centers the often-overlooked infrastructure that feeds billions—traditional markets, informal traders, and decentralized supply chains. It argues that recognizing and strengthening these systems is essential to reducing corporate concentration and building diverse food systems that ensure access to good food for all.

In Chapter 5, Harnessing Biodiversity: Neglected and Underutilized Species as Drivers of Structural Transformation, Emma McDonell’s brief examines the complexities and contradictions of turning biodiverse, locally important crops into global commodities. Drawing on multiple examples—including quinoa— McDonell reveals the risks of market-driven NUS promotion and calls for more context-specific strategies that prioritize equity, local markets, and food sovereignty.

Chapter 6, Democratizing Diets: Strategies to Make Biodiverse, Healthy Diets Affordable and Accessible, a brief by Chris Vogliano, challenges the dominant discourse on nutrition. Vogliano critiques how power dynamics shape dietary guidelines and food assistance programs and argues for integrating biodiversity into public food systems—particularly through school meals—to build healthier, fairer, and more sustainable diets.

In Chapter 7, Power Shift: Radical Restructuring of Food Systems Governance, a brief by Jessica Duncan, takes us into the contested arena of global food governance. She critically unpacks who gets to decide the future of food, why multistakeholder platforms often entrench existing hierarchies, and how more democratic governance can emerge through civil society, social movements, and institutional reform.

And in Chapter 8, Farmers First: Reclaiming Seed Sovereignty for Biodiverse Value Chains, Sayed Azam-Ali explores how current seed regimes constrain diversity and farmer agency in his brief, envisioning a future where seed systems foster biodiversity, resilience, and justice from the ground up.