Towards Food Sovereignty

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

With increasing hunger globally, people are resisting the industrialised food system and returning control to small farmers. This radical food sovereignty movement leads to increased production, safe food and agricultural practices that respect the earth.

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.

We Want Land to Live explores the current boundaries of radical approaches to food sovereignty. First coined by La Via Campesina (a global movement whose name means “the peasant’s way”), food sovereignty is a concept that expresses the universal right to food. Amy Trauger uses research combining ethnography, participant observation, field notes, and interviews to help us understand the material and definitional struggles surrounding the decommodification of food and the transfor­mation of the global food system’s political-economic foundations. Trauger’s work is the first of its kind to analytically and coherently link a dialogue on food sovereignty with case studies illustrating the spatial and territorial strate­gies by which the movement fosters its life in the margins of the corporate food regime. She discusses community gardeners in Portugal; small-scale, independent farmers in Maine; Native American wild rice gatherers in Minnesota; seed library supporters in Pennsylvania; and permaculturists in Georgia. The problem in the food system, as the activists profiled here see it, is not markets or the role of governance but that the right to food is conditioned by what the state and corporations deem to be safe, legal, and profitable—and not by what eaters think is right in terms of their health, the environment, or their communities. Useful for classes on food studies and active food movements alike, We Want Land to Live makes food sovereignty issues real as it illustrates a range of methodological alternatives that are consistent with its discourse: direct action (rather than charity, market creation, or policy changes), civil disobedience (rather than compliance with discriminatory laws), and mutual aid (rather than reliance on top-down aid).

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.

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.

Contestations over knowledge – and who controls its production – are a key focus of social movements and other actors that promote food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity. This book critically examines the kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing needed for food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity. ‘Food sovereignty’ is understood here as a transformative process that seeks to recreate the democratic realm and regenerate a diversity of autonomous food systems based on agroecology, biocultural diversity, equity, social justice and ecological sustainability. It is shown that alternatives to the current model of development require radically different knowledges and epistemologies from those on offer today in mainstream institutions (including universities, policy think tanks and donor organizations). To achieve food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity, there is a need to re-imagine and construct knowledge for diversity, decentralisation, dynamic adaptation and democracy. The authors critically explore the changes in organizations, research paradigms and professional practice that could help transform and co-create knowledge for a new modernity based on plural definitions of wellbeing. Particular attention is given to institutional, pedagogical and methodological innovations that can enhance cognitive justice by giving hitherto excluded citizens more power and agency in the construction of knowledge. The book thus contributes to the democratization of knowledge and power in the domain of food, environment and society. Chapters 1 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.