A seat at the table. It ’s a cliché, a phrase that denotes clout, power, influence. But taken literally it means something quite different, though hardly unrelated. The table is the dinner table. The meaning is clear: Those who have influence get to eat.

In 1992, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro to find answers to a couple of questions: Who benefits? Who decides? I was one among thousands attending the historic Rio Earth Summit. I was among those pushing for changes in food and agriculture policy, changes that would provide "a seat at the table" in more ways than one.

Thousands of community groups, non- governmental organizations and government representatives alike attended the global conference to adopt Agenda 21 — a "Blueprint for the 21st Century" that was to guide decisions about economic, environmental and social issues.

For me, this summit was an introduction to people-centered development. Here I met the people speaking up for an agricultural system that would keep them on the land, enable them to feed their families and help them help themselves.

Banners and booths representing organizations from all over the world, each touting ways to help people and the environment, were surrounded by military guards with machine guns. Messages of peace required armed securit y. Never before had a United Nations conference been so open, but not without worries about the risks such openness might entail.

Hundreds of people from around the world — speaking several different languages — gathered in steamy Tent 33, the meeting place to address agriculture and food security. Our task? Draft a plan to end world hunger that used sustainable agriculture.

Money for translators was short, and as we tried to get to know one another, it was touch-and-go for a while. We struggled with complex ideas that would have been so easy to convey had we known each other’s language. Concepts like animal welfare, keeping people on the land, farming sustainably and paying producers a fair price for their products became increasingly difficult to articulate.

But late at night, every night , we encountered tangible reminders of what we were trying to accomplish. At the outdoor restaurants that are so much a part of Rio, street children gathered around us, waiting silently for any scraps of food we might share. No seat at the table for them. And when I returned to my meetings, I remembered the children.

After two weeks of discussion, our colleagues were pleased to acknowledge that "we never met anyone from your part of the world who thought like us." We agreed that food security was a basic human right. We agreed to work toward ensuring that every person had access to safe,high-quality food,that agriculture was sustainable when it was humane, ecologically sound, economically viable, socially equitable, culturally appropriate and based on a holistic scientific approach.

Years later, we’re still working to ensure a seat at the table for those most affected by want and those most in touch with the real needs of families and communities. The parting words of my summit friends? "Don’t forget us." We haven’t forgotten — not them, not their animals, not their right to determine who has a seat at the table.

Nor, of course, have I forgotten the children.

Linda Elswick is co-director of International Partners for Sustainable Agriculture and program manager of the ustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Initiative at Humane Society International.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2005 issue of World Ark magazine, a publication of Heifer International [2]. Used with permission.