On December 4, farmers, including Wisconsin dairy farmer and IATP Food and Community Fellow Jim Goodman, joined Occupy Wall Street to speak out against the abuse of corporate power and how it impacts our food system.

"I've never done a "mic check" before. Yesterday, I was milking cows!" Goodman joked as he fired-up the crowd. "I'm trying to feed you. The corporations won't let me."

Agribusiness has long been making the argument that U.S. farmers should be "feeding the world" via the standard industrial cocktail of genetically modified crops, pesticides, free trade agreements and environmental deregulations.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy recently released an update of a report that long-ago debunked this oft-claimed argument that increased U.S. grain exports decrease global hunger. In reality, the report revealed, grain exports went overwhelmingly to wealthy countries (or, um, more recently, to feed China's pigs) and almost not at all to the nations struggling most with malnourishment.

And a recent article in the Atlantic reiterated this point by noting that our current production system--with nearly one billion people undernourished--has not exactly proven its ability to "feed the world," whereas plenty of solid scientific research has called for a shift to more sustainable farming methods with greater emphasis on smaller-scale producers.

In his speech, Jim Goodman brought the concept of food sovereignty back into the discussion with fervor. Is whether or not we can "feed the world" even the right question? Shouldn't all nations, all people, have the right to be able to shape their own food and agriculture policy? Shouldn't we be able to choose who feeds us and what's for dinner?

Goodman made this connection for the Occupy movement eloquently: "They tell me I must feed the world. But I'm not going to. I want to feed you. I want the world to feed itself. And they can. They've been farming longer than we have. They're smarter. They're younger. They're stronger. They're women. They're people of color. [...]Let the world feed itself. Let me feed you."