Tomaso Ferrando
Tomaso holds a Phd in law from Sciences Po University (Paris) and has been visiting a fellow at Harvard University Law School, University of Sao Paulo and the University of Cape Town. Before joining the University of Antwerp, he worked as a Lecturer in Law at the Universities of Warwick School of Law and at the University of Bristol Law School.
Tomaso’s main line of research focuses on the link between law and food, with particular attention to the international dimension (trade, investments and the human right to food) and the implementation of local practices. In his latest academic work, he has focussed on the EU regulation of food waste, on the role of competition law in obstructing coordinated attempts to improve the global food system and on the idea of the food system as a commons (similar to air, water, sun, etc.). He is the co-investigator in a UKRI-AHRC funded project entitled 'Food security at the time of climate change: learning and sharing bottom up experiences from the Caribbean Region' where he works with local and academic partners from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, Antigua and Barbuda and the United Kingdom.
His second line of research concerns the socio-legal-financial construction of Green Bonds as a new/old form of financing that combines the instrument of debt with the desire of building sustainable and green futures. He is the co-investigator of a British Academy funded project that looks at the expansion of the Green Bond market in Brasil from the point of view of local communities and the people who are affected by the realisation of this new round of large-scale development projects.
Outside of academia, Tomaso has been the legal advisor of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2016 to 2020. He is a member of the Legal Committee of the Global Legal Action Network (glanlaw.org) and the Extraterritorial Obligation Consortium (ETOc). He acts as consultant and pro-bono advocate in questions relating to the right to food and food policies. In the last years he has been cooperating with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and contributed to the formulation of a EU Common Food policy (to replace the Common Agricultural Policy). He was an active member of both Feeding Coventry and Feeding Bristol, two multidisciplinary stakeholder projects that aim at tackling the roots of food poverty by involving public administrators, private sector and civil society.
Research interests: food systems; global value chains; commons; financialization
Tomaso’s main line of research focuses on the link between law and food, with particular attention to the international dimension (trade, investments and the human right to food) and the implementation of local practices. In his latest academic work, he has focussed on the EU regulation of food waste, on the role of competition law in obstructing coordinated attempts to improve the global food system and on the idea of the food system as a commons (similar to air, water, sun, etc.). He is the co-investigator in a UKRI-AHRC funded project entitled 'Food security at the time of climate change: learning and sharing bottom up experiences from the Caribbean Region' where he works with local and academic partners from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, Antigua and Barbuda and the United Kingdom.
His second line of research concerns the socio-legal-financial construction of Green Bonds as a new/old form of financing that combines the instrument of debt with the desire of building sustainable and green futures. He is the co-investigator of a British Academy funded project that looks at the expansion of the Green Bond market in Brasil from the point of view of local communities and the people who are affected by the realisation of this new round of large-scale development projects.
Outside of academia, Tomaso has been the legal advisor of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2016 to 2020. He is a member of the Legal Committee of the Global Legal Action Network (glanlaw.org) and the Extraterritorial Obligation Consortium (ETOc). He acts as consultant and pro-bono advocate in questions relating to the right to food and food policies. In the last years he has been cooperating with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and contributed to the formulation of a EU Common Food policy (to replace the Common Agricultural Policy). He was an active member of both Feeding Coventry and Feeding Bristol, two multidisciplinary stakeholder projects that aim at tackling the roots of food poverty by involving public administrators, private sector and civil society.
Research interests: food systems; global value chains; commons; financialization
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Papers by Tomaso Ferrando
The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.
We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel funds through private equity initiatives to acquire and invest in farmland.
To complete our analysis, we finally set our contribution alongside the alternative represented by food-sovereignty, which offers the promise of heeding to the needs engendered from within the peasant milieu, as opposed to subjugating it to extrinsic quantitative metrics.
In the absence of mandatory requirements of negative disclosure, violations and exploitations that occur outside of the ‘sustainability sphere’ are invisible and normalized by the multiplicity and complexity of transnational production. Therefore, logos and no-logos must be understood as the two sides of the same exploitative system: two mutually supportive sources of value that depend on each other and foster the reproduction of transnational corporate capitalism
The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.
We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel funds through private equity initiatives to acquire and invest in farmland.
To complete our analysis, we finally set our contribution alongside the alternative represented by food-sovereignty, which offers the promise of heeding to the needs engendered from within the peasant milieu, as opposed to subjugating it to extrinsic quantitative metrics.
In the absence of mandatory requirements of negative disclosure, violations and exploitations that occur outside of the ‘sustainability sphere’ are invisible and normalized by the multiplicity and complexity of transnational production. Therefore, logos and no-logos must be understood as the two sides of the same exploitative system: two mutually supportive sources of value that depend on each other and foster the reproduction of transnational corporate capitalism
sulla possibilità e sulle implicazioni che deriverebbero dal considerare il
cibo come un bene comune. In particolare, Jose Luis Vivero Pol ha più volte sottolineato il legame tra la malnutrizione e la visione commodificata del cibo, concludendo che il consolidamento del paradigma del cibo come bene comune rappresenterebbe una scelta di dignità e tutela collettiva più forte del messaggio alla base del diritto al cibo. Inoltre, esso offrirebbe un punto di partenza per riformare le politiche pubbliche di distribuzione alimentare, il commercio internazionale e le molteplici forme di appropriazione privata e speculazione sul cibo.
Il riconoscimento e la pratica del paradigma del cibo bene comune saprebbe tradurre i meriti e le forze trasformative sopra descritte e ispirare altresì una riforma strutturale del ‘sistema cibo’ attuale, superando il ricorso a rimedi temporanei (come la distribuzione delle eccedenze e l’educazione al consumo critico) ed evitando di concentrarsi esclusivamente sulla fase produttiva. La nozione di bene comune non riguarda, infatti, solo il cibo come frutto della terra che deve essere condiviso, ma anche la terra stessa, i mezzi di produzione, la distribuzione, la trasformazione e il consumo. Immaginare un regime del cibo comune porterebbe dunque al superamento definitivo dell’idea del cibo come commodity in ogni fase della catena alimentare, dalla produzione fino al consumo.
This Annex is in support of the Article, Tomaso Ferrando, Land Rights at the Time of Global Production: Leveraging Multi-Spatiality and 'Legal Chokeholds', Business and Human Rights Journal (forthcoming, 2017)