Food Sovereignty
From P2P Foundation
= "Food sovereignty" is a term coined by members of Via Campesina, the international farmers' movement, to refer to the right of communities and nations to implement their own food policies and promote local food systems respecting people's livelihoods, cultures and the environment. It is a policy framework advocated by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth and environmental organizations around the world. [1]
URL = http://en.solecopedia.org/index.php?title=Food_sovereignty
See also: Food Sovereignty Movement ; Land Sovereignty
Contents |
Principles
Via Campesina's seven principles of food sovereignty include:
- Food: A Basic Human Right. Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.
- Agrarian Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.
- Protecting Natural Resources. Food Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agro-chemicals.
- Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.
- Ending the Globalization of Hunger. Food Sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF. Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct for TNCs is therefore needed.
- Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, repression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
- Democratic control. Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decisionmaking on food and rural issues."
(http://en.solecopedia.org/index.php?title=Food_sovereignty)
Discussion
"Food sovereignty is increasingly being promoted as an alternative framework to the narrower concept of Food security, which mostly focuses on the technical problem of providing adequate nutrition. For instance, a Food security agenda that simply provides surplus grain to hungry people would probably be strongly criticised by food sovereignty advocates as just another form of commodity dumping, facilitating corporate penetration of foreign markets, undermining local food production, and possibly leading to irreversible biotech contamination of indigenous crops with patented varieties. U.S. taxpayer subsidized exports of Bt corn to Mexico since the passage of NAFTA is a case in point." (http://en.solecopedia.org/index.php?title=Food_sovereignty)
Paul Nicholson, Via Campesina:
"Food sovereignty is a perspective for changing society and an alternative to the neoliberal policies, from a social and community perspective. This means that food sovereignty is much greater than food security. It’s the political right to control polices and the public goods and define what we eat from a social perspective, not just an individual one. And within the framework of neoliberal politics this is clearly not going to happen. The theory and practice of comparative advantage has resulted in the massive destruction of the rural world because it reduces everything to the criteria of competition without any basis for social or labor rights. At the same time, it generates environmental costs that are then socialized. We have to reveal that neoliberal policies are the causes of the poverty, exclusion, and misery that exist in the world. And although we know that neoliberal policies have failed in this day in age, they continue to drive models of production that are absolutely destructive. The response we can give to such policies is Food Sovereignty that brings together all movements: rural, urban, from the North and from the South. Food sovereignty as a right of the people is an integral demand for social movements from around the world.
We think that the new pathways and the new food and agriculture policies should be based on the kind of Food Sovereignty that is not just for farmers, but a collective right of the people. It is the right of citizens to determine food and agriculture policies, to decide what and how to produce and who produces. It is the right to public goods like water, land, and seeds. We need policies based on solidarity among citizens and between consumers and producers. We need to regulate markets because it is impossible to maintain agrarian policies based on market liberalization. We need socially sustainable, ecologically produced food that provides work for people everywhere." (http://www.foodmovementsunite.org/authors/paul_nicholson.html)
Example
Fatou Batta interviewed by Groundswell
What does Food Sovereignty mean to the rural people in Burkina Faso?
The [people in Burkina Faso] may not know it in terms of Food Sovereignty, but to me it's a question of having a choice, to produce what we can eat—which is appropriate—and eat what we produce, and that will contribute to the local economy.
In terms of successful experiences we try to find out with at least twenty farmers at a session as representatives, and what we've found is water catchment techniques combined with organic manure and we've improved seeds. These three combined techniques just boost productivity. Also using some of the nitrogen fixing trees can … improve the soil and … the productivity. The changes may vary from fifty percent to above 120 percent. One resident was saying that in the previous year [they] couldn't fill one granary but with the three [techniques] combined I can fill three granaries and can go through the whole year without any worrying about food.
You have very successful experiences, but at a very limited scale. So … our perspective is to say "okay, what made you successful?" "Who are the leaders that are promoting it?" "To what extent [can] these leaders … expand it to the neighborhoods; communities?"
And I think it is feasible, it's just a question of will, because what we can observe, many of these NGOs are still tied to technology transfer, using a lot of …chemical fertilizer, and this is out of the reach of small-scale farmers. And among these small-scale farmers, many are women, and they … can't afford it, and the have a very bad land to crop on. So, to me, NGOs can do better if they try to promote agroecological techniques and try to support these leaders who are doing it.
It doesn't mean a lot of investment, in terms of resources, [they just need] to find out 'where are these successful experiences?' 'who are the leaders?' and to what extent and to what extent [can we] support them?
Groundswell is spearheading … sustainable agroecological techniques, and we can show evidence and we see it can be expanded. Perhaps we'll get some of those NGOs to buy in, because food is the burning issue right now. One thing is also to link it to consumers; to market because if they produce [farmers] would like to get money from [that].
I think the question of Food Sovereignty needs to be related …we need to insist on it. There is a change in food habits, trying to do something different from what we used to do, so I … feel we are becoming dependent on excellent food, so to me we need to rethink our food habits and also try to eat what we produce." (http://www.foodmovementsunite.org/authors/fatou_batta.html)
More Information
- http://www.iied.org/natural-resources/key-issues/food-and-agriculture/multimedia-publication-towards-food-sovereignty-re
- Groundswell International on how NGO's can enhance food sovereignty, http://www.foodmovementsunite.org/authors/groundswell.html
- Food Sovereignty Movement
