Beyond Feeding the World: Expanding the Food Justice Conversation

Beyond Feeding the World: Expanding the Food Justice Conversation

Research Advisory Committee member Dr Abi Masefield reflects on how veganism can contribute to the food justice conversation by challenging the same structures of power that underpin many forms of human inequality.

I have spent more than thirty-five years working as an expert in food security and nutrition policy, first with NGOs and then advising governments, UN agencies and currently the European Union. Much of my career was spent in Africa and South Asia, where, for so many, food remains an issue of power, livelihoods, dignity and survival. Over the same period, I have also been vegan.

For years I struggled to understand how these two parts of my life fitted together. It was through my PhD that I realised they were connected by the same questions about power. Who controls food? Who benefits from the way food systems are organised? Who bears the costs? These are questions of justice before they are questions of food. And yet thinking about food security debates often starts by thinking about production: is there enough food to feed the world and could vegan agriculture feed the world better? After three decades working in this field, I have become convinced that there is a bigger question.

Hunger and malnutrition are no longer confined to the Global South. They coexist with food banks, insecure work, poor diets and chronic disease across high-income countries, including here in the UK. Whether we call it food insecurity, food poverty or a cost-of-living crisis, the reality is the same: millions are denied their basic human right to adequate food, not because food is unavailable, but because they cannot afford healthy diets.

The real issue, then, is not simply producing more food. It is who has the income, resources and power to obtain it. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen showed, famines occur even when food is available. The economist Jason Hickel extends this argument, showing how colonial extraction, unequal trade, global value chains and concentrated corporate power continue to shape who can eat well and who cannot. Hunger persists not because humanity lacks food, but because too many people remain excluded from the resources needed to obtain it.

I believe veganism has an extraordinary opportunity to contribute to a much wider conversation. Across the world, agroecology, organic farming, permaculture, food sovereignty, Indigenous food systems and shorter local food value chains all seek food systems rooted in ecological regeneration, democratic control, resilient local economies and respect for life rather than extraction. Although they differ – and not all advocate veganism – they share a commitment to reducing violence within food systems.

The emerging veganic movement demonstrates that vegan principles can support regenerative farming that builds healthy soils without animal agriculture. More broadly, it suggests that veganism has something distinctive to contribute to the food justice movement by asking for justice itself to extend across the species boundary while never losing sight of the urgent need for food justice for all people.

My research has led me to conclude that the same structures of power that normalise the exploitation of animals also underpin many forms of human inequality. Colonialism, racism, patriarchy, land dispossession, labour exploitation and corporate concentration all rely, in different ways, on assigning unequal value to different groups of living beings. Some lives are protected; others become available for use, extraction or sacrifice. Within humanity this logic has justified slavery, colonial domination and exploitation. Across the species boundary it continues to justify the routine exploitation of billions of animals. These are not identical forms of oppression, but they arise from similar hierarchies of value that make violence – including the violence of food insecurity – appear normal and necessary. Decolonising food systems therefore means more than changing ownership or restructuring supply chains. It means challenging those hierarchies and building food systems rooted in justice, dignity and non-violence – for people, other animals and the living world on which we all depend.