The ANGOC network joins the global community’s celebration of World Food Day, with a call for Protecting Land Rights and Ensuring Food Security in the Time of COVID-19.

This year, we commemorate World Food Day in the middle of a fierce battle against a global pandemic. As communities face crises of hunger, malnutrition, and reduced livelihood in the midst of this health crisis, and as big, global businesses struggle to cope with disrupted value chains, it becomes clear how nations can ensure food security during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: through supporting small-scale food producers and family farmers, protecting their rights to land, enabling community-based conservation and resource management, and localizing food production and distribution systems. Only through secure land rights and supporting smallholders will the world be able to Grow, Nourish, and Sustain, Together.

ANGOC’s theme for World Food Day this 2020 is also expounded in a Statement issued by the network’s members, available in seven languages.