In 2012, GRAIN published “The great food robbery”, a collection of hard hitting articles showing how corporations are taking over the food system. As the December 2015 climate talks in Paris approached, we thought it was time to do a sequel.

In this new book, “The great climate robbery”, GRAIN has pulled together data to show how the industrial food system is a major driver of climate change and how food sovereignty is critical to any lasting and just solution.

We expose how corporate investors are pushing small farmers off their fields as they take control of land, water and seeds in many parts of the world to expand the more profitable industrial system. We show how they are pulling political strings through trade negotiations, standard setting and multilateral policy negotiations to secure legal and political security for their own model. Governments, in the meanwhile, are not dealing with the problem of how food and agriculture contribute to climate change and just towing the corporate line.

“For the sake of having a livable planet 50 years from how, this has to stop,” Ange David Baïmey, a GRAIN staff member in Africa, puts it. “People have to take action into their own hands.” In addition to all the incredibly inspiring work going on to stop bad energy projects, divest from fossil fuels and force a more democratic approach to political decision-making all around the world, we have to change the food system as well, GRAIN believes.

“We really hope this book will encourage people to get more involved in the struggle for food sovereignty as a real and urgent solution to the climate crisis,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN, ahead of the Paris talks.