Public Policies For Food Sovereignty

An increasing number of rural and urban-based movements are realizing some political traction in their demands for democratization of food systems through food sovereignty. Some are pressuring to institutionalize food sovereignty principles and practices through laws, policies, and programs. While the literature on food sovereignty continues to grow in volume and complexity, there are a number of key questions that need to be examined more deeply. These relate specifically to the processes and consequences of seeking to institutionalize food sovereignty: What dimensions of food sovereignty are addressed in public policies and which are left out? What are the tensions, losses and gains for social movements engaging with sub-national and national governments? How can local governments be leveraged to build autonomous spaces against state and corporate power? The contributors to this book analyze diverse institutional processes related to food sovereignty, ranging from community-supported agriculture to food policy councils, direct democracy initiatives to constitutional amendments, the drafting of new food sovereignty laws to public procurement programmes, as well as Indigenous and youth perspectives, in a variety of contexts including Brazil, Ecuador, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Canada, USA, and Africa. Together, the contributors to this book discuss the political implications of integrating food sovereignty into existing liberal political structures, and analyze the emergence of new political spaces and dynamics in response to interactions between state governance systems and social movements voicing the radical demands of food sovereignty.

Policy-related challenges to building community-based agriculture and food systems that are ecologically sustainable and socially just are also highlighted.

Food sovereignty has been a fundamentally contested concept in global agrarian discourse over the last two decades, as a political project and campaign, an alternative, a social movement, and an analytical framework. It has inspired and mobilized diverse publics: workers, scholars and public intellectuals, farmers and peasant movements, NGOs, and human rights activists in the global North and South. The term ‘food sovereignty’ has become a challenging subject for social science research, and has been interpreted and reinterpreted in a variety of ways. It is broadly defined as the right of peoples to democratically control or determine the shape of their food system, and to produce sufficient and healthy food in culturally appropriate and ecologically sustainable ways in and near their territory. However, various theoretical issues remain: sovereignty at what scale and for whom? How are sovereignties contested? What is the relationship between food sovereignty and human rights frameworks? What might food sovereignty mean extended to a broader set of social relations in urban contexts? How do the principles of food sovereignty interact with local histories and contexts? This comprehensive volume examines what food sovereignty might mean, how it might be variously construed, and what policies it implies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.

Taking as a starting point that hunger results from social exclusion and distributional inequities and that lasting, sustainable and just solutions are to be found in changing the structures that underlie our food systems, this book examines how law shapes global food systems and their ongoing transformations. Using detailed case studies, historical mapping and legal analysis, the contributors show how various actors (farmers, civil society groups, government officials, international bodies) use or could use different legal tools (legislative, jurisprudential, norm-setting) on various scales (local, national, regional, global) to achieve structural changes in food systems. Section 1, Institutionalizing New Approaches, explores the possibility of institutionalizing social change through two alternative visions for change – the right to food and food sovereignty. Individual chapters discuss Vía Campesina’s struggle to implement food sovereignty principles into international trade law, and present case studies on adopting food sovereignty legislation in Nicaragua and right to food legislation in Uganda. The chapters in Section 2, Regulating for Change, explore the extent to which the regulation of actors can or cannot change incentives and produce transformative results in food systems. They look at the role of the state in regulating its own actions as well as the actions of third parties and analyze various means of regulating land grabs. The final section, Governing for Better Food Systems, discusses the fragmentation of international law and the impacts of this fragmentation on the realization of human rights. These chapters trace the underpinnings of the current global food system, explore the challenges of competing regimes of intellectual property, farmers rights and human rights, and suggest new modes of governance for global and local food systems. The stakes for building better food systems are high. Our current path leaves many behind, destroying the environment and entrenching inequality and systemic poverty. While it is commonly understood that legal structures are at the heart of food systems, the legal academy has yet to make a significant contribution to recent discussions on improving food systems - this book aims to fill that gap.

Indigenous Food Systems addresses the disproportionate levels of food-related health disparities among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people in Canada, seeking solutions to food insecurity and promoting well-being for current and future generations of Indigenous people. Through research and case studies, Indigenous and non-Indigenous food scholars and community practitioners explore salient features, practices, and contemporary challenges of Indigenous food systems across Canada. Highlighting Indigenous communities’ voices, the contributing authors document collaborative initiatives between Indigenous communities, organizations, and non-Indigenous allies to counteract the colonial and ecologically destructive monopolization of food systems. This timely and engaging collection celebrates strategies to revitalize Indigenous food systems, such as achieving cultural resurgence and food sovereignty; sharing and mobilizing diverse knowledges and voices; and reviewing and reformulating existing policies, research, and programs to improve the health, well-being, and food security of Indigenous and Canadian populations. Indigenous Food Systems is a critical resource for students in Indigenous studies, public health, anthropology, and the social sciences as well as a vital reader for policymakers, researchers, and community practitioners.

Food sovereignty is an emerging discourse of empowerment and autonomy in the food system with the development of associated practices in rural and some urban spaces. While literature on food sovereignty has proliferated since the first usage of the term in 1996 at the Rome Food Summit, most has been descriptive rather than explanatory in nature, and often confuses food sovereignty with other movements and objectives such as alternative food networks, food justice, or food self-sufficiency. This book is a collection of empirically rich and theoretically engaged papers across a broad geographical spectrum reflecting on what constitutes the politics and practices of food sovereignty. They contribute to a theoretical gap in the food sovereignty literature as well as a relative shortage of empirical work on food sovereignty in the global "North", much previous work having focussed on Latin America. Specific case studies are included from Canada, Norway, Switzerland, southern Europe, UK and USA, as well as Africa, India and Ecuador. The book presents new research on the emergence of food sovereignties. It offers a wide variety of empirical examples and a theoretically engaged framework for explaining the aims of actors and organizations working toward autonomy and democracy in the food system.

Despite technological advances in agriculture, nearly a billion people around the world still suffer from hunger and poor nutrition while a billion are overweight or obese. This imbalance highlights the need not only to focus on food production but also to implement successful food policies. In this new textbook intended to be used with the three volumes of Case Studies in Food Policy for Developing Countries (also from Cornell), the 2001 World Food Prize laureate Per Pinstrup-Andersen and his colleague Derrill D. Watson II analyze international food policies and discuss how such policies can and must address the many complex challenges that lie ahead in view of continued poverty, globalization, climate change, food price volatility, natural resource degradation, demographic and dietary transitions, and increasing interests in local and organic food production. Food Policy for Developing Countries offers a "social entrepreneurship" approach to food policy analysis. Calling on a wide variety of disciplines including economics, nutrition, sociology, anthropology, environmental science, medicine, and geography, the authors show how all elements in the food system function together.