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The Land Question in the Food Sovereignty Project
Abstract
This essay explores the changing landscape of food sovereignty politics in the shadow of the so-called ‘land grab’. While the food sovereignty movement emerged within a global agrarian crisis conjuncture triggered by northern dumping of foodstuffs, institutionalized in WTO trade rules, the twenty-first-century food, energy and financial crises intensify this crisis for the world's rural poor (inflating prices of staple foods and agri-inputs) deepening the process of dispossession. The circulation of food is compounded by global financial flows into enclosing land for industrial agriculture and/or speculation, challenging small producer rights across the world. Under these conditions, the terms of struggle for the food sovereignty movement are shifting towards a human rights politics on the ground as well as in global forums like the FAO's Committee on World Food Security. This includes in particular the need to develop a discursive politics to reframe what is at stake, namely the protection and support of a production model based on social co-operation, multi-functionality and ecologically restorative principles.
... Food Sovereignty is, however, a developing and contested concept (Agarwal, 2014;McMichael, 2014McMichael, , 2015; as Borras (2008) states, La Vía Campesina is attempting to represent "a plurality of identities and interests", which means it "constitutes an evolving 'arena of action'" (p261). ...
... Despite Food Sovereignty being a contested concept (Agarwal, 2014;McMichael, 2014McMichael, , 2015Wald & Hill, 2016), with due care it can be used to highlight problems that might not have been revealed through a food security perspective (Patel, 2009). In the case of the Rama this was seen with how it has highlighted the community's vulnerability to land and resource conflict, and the fact that their food comes from varied sources-from farming and fishing with hand nets to buying fast food in Bluefields. ...
Despite its prominence within food security debates, Food Sovereignty is still a developing and contested concept. This article illustrates two of the tensions within the Food Sovereignty literature through an analysis of the foodways of the Rama indigenous group in Nicaragua. Firstly, the results show that there is considerable heterogeneity in how the Rama source their food and that, for most Rama, engagement with the market economy is critical to ensuring their own food security. This presents a further challenge to the idea that Food Sovereignty should only promote a one-size-fits-all “small-scale farming” approach to food security. Secondly, the paper shows there is considerable conflict over resources between the Rama and Pacific Nicaraguans who have encroached on their territory. This finding reinforces the view that Food Sovereignty needs to be further developed to be able to give clear direction in similar instances. This article concludes by arguing that although these tensions need to be resolved in order to boost the utility of Food Sovereignty on the ground, the concept can provide a useful theoretical arena in which to highlight the food security threats that are faced by communities like the Rama.
... Corporate-driven food interventions often undermine the ability of smallholders, most notably in low-income countries, to participate on favorable terms in food production (Bryceson 2002;Hazell et al. 2010;McMichael 2012aMcMichael , 2014Roger 2014). This is a consequence of the influx of cheap food from the subsidy-laden West and land grabs by agri-food capitalists (McMichael 2015). This further worsens food insecurity as smallholder farmers are relied on to feed a significant proportion of the global population (Béné et al. 2019;Sonnino et al. 2014). ...
The concept of food sovereignty is primarily taken as an alternative to the prevailing neoliberal food security model. However, the approach has hitherto not received adequate attention from policy makers. This could be because the discourse is marked by controversies and contradictions, particularly regarding its ability to address the challenges of feeding a rapidly growing global population. In response to these criticisms, this paper argues that the principles of food sovereignty, such as democratic and transparent food systems, agroecology, and local market prioritization, should be fundamental pillars for achieving sustainable food security. It acknowledges that neither food sovereignty nor food security models alone can guarantee long-term food security, thus advocating for a blended approach that integrates these perspectives into a complex and interconnected system. This paper makes three significant contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, it emphasizes that food sovereignty should be seen as an integral component of transforming food systems towards sustainability, rather than a complete departure from neoliberal food systems. Secondly, it highlights the importance of adopting a multi-scalar approach, where decisions and policies for transforming food systems are context-specific and tailored to local circumstances. Lastly, the paper recognizes the necessity of institutional transformations that involve nation-states, social movements, and civil society organizations as key actors in the process of food system transformation. By reframing the discussion on food sovereignty and its relationship with food security, this paper provides insights into how these concepts can be mutually reinforcing, leading to more sustainable and equitable food systems.
... The worldwide expansion of agricultural research and extension programs during the second food regime was heavily funded by the US government and international agencies. Finally, the third or 'Globalization Project' food regime moved away from interlocked Cold War alliances toward international free-trade agreements (FTAs) made in response to the global economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s, and the WTO governance structure, ushering in the current period of neoliberal capitalist expansion (McMichael 2009(McMichael , 2013(McMichael , 2015Pritchard 2009). ...
This paper answers calls from the food regime scholarship for a closer analysis of the implicit rules, transitions, and regional scales of food regimes. Drawing on archival materials from the Japanese colonial administration and Sino-American agricultural cooperation, interviews with key actors, and secondary sources, this paper examines instances of agricultural knowledge production and exchange. We suggest that beyond the profound influence of the US in the postwar food regime, the nuances and historical and regional specificity of agricultural scientists' life stories and individual technological imaginaries can 'scale up' through the translation of agrarian knowledge.
... In recent decades, various concerns regarding the trajectory of commonplace practices in the global agribusiness complexdsuch as food sovereignty (Berry, 2015;McMichael, 2015;(Claeys, 2015); Kelly, 2018), health concerns, ecological footprints from intensive food system processes (Zeunert, 2018b), and conditions for animals in factory farming (Hurnik and Lehman, 1988)dhave assisted a resurgence in UA. Yet waiting lists to join community or allotment gardens can demonstrate demand outstripping supply, partly explaining the emergence of unofficial forms of PUA such as some street verge gardens (Mobbs, 2012) and guerilla food gardens (Reynolds, 2009). ...
Urban agriculture in the urban public realm faces many barriers and challenges to both its occurrence and ongoing success. One of these factors is its aesthetics and frequently, a lack of positive association with its spatial presence and visual performance. This chapter contextualises urban agriculture in relation to the public domain, focusing on the USA, Canada, UK and Australia. In these contexts there is frequently a lack of public urban agriculture (PUA) beyond allotment, community (P-Patch), educational and street verge gardens, which can all suffer from negative aesthetic perceptions in relation to highly visible public contexts. We explore how rural agricultural production examples could be translated into urban contexts to help address aesthetic shortcomings, examining eight distinctive and unique rural food production practices. We discuss how these eight cases and more widely, how unique agricultural elements could be translated and applied into the design and execution of public urban agriculture in parks, plazas and streetscapes.
... It is beyond the scope of this article to give attempt a full account of the rich history of conceptual approaches that this article draws and which enable us to better understand food systems governance challenges, such as food regime theory (Campbell and Dixon, 2009;McMichael, 2009b), food systems assemblages (Marsden et al., 2018;Santo and Moragues-Faus, 2019) and sustainability transitions approaches (Markard et al., 2012). Equally, it is beyond the scope of the article to give a full account of the various discourses that engage with the relations between the state, space and territory; scholarship related to food justice (Alkon and Mares, 2012;Levkoe, 2006) and food sovereignty (Patel, 2009;Wittman et al., 2010), for example, have engaged in different ways with issues at the heart of the state-space-territory triad, particularly in relation to land (Borras et al., 2015;McMichael, 2015). Instead, the article only focuses on specific elements within these literatures that explicitly overlap with literature on food systems governance. ...
Food systems governance has emerged as a distinct focus of geographical research. Researchers and policymakers are increasingly engaging with food systems as complex, multi-scalar and cross-cutting sets of issues. This article examines the potential of critical, interdisciplinary readings of the relationships between the state, space and territory to explore new directions and opportunities for food systems governance research and practice. In doing so, the article proposes a critical research agenda that emphasises the interdependent spatial and relational character of food systems governance.
... The importance of the relationship between trade and dietary health is well established in the literature, especially as it relates to the question of trade liberalization [1][2][3][4][5]. Supporters of food sovereignty movements argue that globalized agricultural trade deprives communities and countries of the ability to chart their own path towards broader socioeconomic development and sustainability, and question the methods of global food policy and trade institutions in contributing to food price shocks and commodity dumping [6][7][8]. Others point to the role of globalized food trade in driving increased production and consumption of highly processed foodstuffs [2,9], localized biodiversity loss [10,11], and increased waste through an agricultural Jevon's paradox [12]. On the other side, proponents of global agricultural trade point to reduced hunger and increased opportunities for agricultural producers in the developing world. ...
The connection between international trade and food systems (un)sustainability is both contentious and critical for policy work supporting progress towards achieving the twin goals of hunger alleviation and dietary health while improving the overall sustainability of development. We characterize the food system using a set of metrics based upon the EAT-Lancet commission dietary guidelines for both over- and under-consumption of different foods to assess country-level dietary health and sustainability in tandem. Using a partial equilibrium model of agricultural production and trade, we then project the functioning of the global agricultural system to 2050 and calculate the metrics for that year. For most regions we find increased overconsumption above the expert-defined healthy and sustainable diet thresholds, with more limited progress towards closing dietary health and sustainability gaps where they currently exist. Trade influences this dynamic into the future under certain socioeconomic conditions, and we find that under a “business as usual” trade environment, future agricultural import profiles continue to be misaligned with dietary health and sustainability outcomes, suggesting the potential for early intervention in trade policy as a means to positively influence food system outcomes.
Food sovereignty movements emerged in the 1990s as a global constellation of struggles against the corporate food regime. Here, we propose a radically relational ‘sites, stakes, and scales' framework for analyzing food sovereignty mobilization, adopting a flat ontology that considers both actual and potential relations. ‘Sites' refer to the actually existing relations between actors engaged in a social struggle; ‘stakes' are dynamic interests that change as relations in the site change, and ‘scales’ capture how potential relations, such as relative social locations, can become actual relations, reconfiguring the site and stakes involved over space and time. We apply the framework to the work of CEPAGRO, a Brazilian agroecology NGO, tracing mobilizations from rural agroecological transitions, to urban agroecology, to building settler-Indigenous relations of solidarity. The ‘sites, stakes and scales’ framework provides a relatively simple set of concepts to explore how social movement mobilizations change over time and across contexts.
This chapter introduces the reader to the world of urban food movements. It starts by outlining the key problems in food systems that contemporary food movements aim to tackle; these problems involve power and democracy, food security and health, social-racial justice, ecology, and climate. It then highlights the proactive will to build alternative food systems informed by key principles, such as food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice. The chapter follows by describing the emergence of urban areas as epicentres of experimentation around alternative food systems, starting from grass-roots organising around land and urban food production to the challenge of addressing the food system as a whole. After elucidating key strategies used by food movements to foster food system change in urban areas, this chapter concludes by stressing the relevance of a hybrid and relational perspective on the governance of urban food movements and food system change.KeywordsUrban food movementsFood system changeFood policy councilsUrban-regional food strategiesTrans-local food policy networks
The article aims to explore the link between commodification of nature and
commodification of food. The latter is in fact one of the most negative and
controversial aspects of nature commodification. The examination of food
commodification represents fertile ground for investigating the relationship
between humans and nature. In this context, food sovereignty provides a
useful paradigm that not only serves as an alternative to the current food
regime, but also allows for the experiencing a different kind of
relationship between humans and nature. Food sovereignty represents a unique
social movement in which community, political, and cultural rights are
intertwined with the issue of food. Through its multidisciplinary approach
and its strongly ethical component, food sovereignty constitutes an
opportunity in order to contrast the progressive commodification of nature
and of the environment.
This thesis explores the significance of the transnational movement for food sovereignty, in the context of three key intensifying tensions in global and national food systems: namely over-production, inequality, and ecological degradation. Using the synthesised methodology of a neo-Gramscian political ecology, the thesis asks whether the engagements to date of the Food Sovereignty movement with these tensions are deep and constructive. It does this by using the device of a hypothesis, within the framework and method of a Gramscian theory of politics: is the Food Sovereignty movement a counter-hegemonic movement, vis-à-vis the globalising capitalist food system as a hegemonic power formation in global politics?
Thus, the substance of the thesis is a ‘balance of forces’ assessment, conducted in order to determine the existing ‘effective reality’ as between the forces of food sovereignty and those of the globalising capitalist food system. The form of the thesis takes accordingly a ‘double-movement’ character. The first movement is where the context, being, respectively, the political-institutional, and economic-ecological, framework and conditions of the globalising capitalist food system, is discussed and analysed in depth. Here the theoretical resources of political ecology, and supportive Marxist-informed political economy approaches such as regime and food regime theory, and theories exploring the dynamics and historical evolution of globalising capitalism across time and space, are marshalled in order to probe the manner in which the hegemony of the globalising capitalist food system has been constructed and maintained over time, and to understand the ways in which that hegemony is being renegotiated in the context of the contemporary ‘global food crisis’.
The second movement analyses the responses by key actors within the Food Sovereignty movement to the political-institutional, and economic-ecological, context. This movement draws on the empirical work undertaken for the thesis, in the form of two case studies: the development of food sovereignty at the transnational level by the peasant and family farmer organisation La Via Campesina; and two elements of the local food movement in Australia, namely on the Coffs Coast region of New South Wales, and the Food Connect social enterprise in Brisbane, Queensland. Particular attention is focused on the efforts devoted by La Via Campesina to the securing of a new United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Peasants; and to the development of a hybridised version of community-supported agriculture in Australia by Food Connect.
The thesis concludes that the Food Sovereignty movement is a potential counter-hegemonic movement, and accordingly that its engagements with the tensions of the globalising capitalist food system are deep and constructive. This positive conclusion is tempered with a number of qualifications regarding the lack of coherence, in certain respects, of the food sovereignty alternative, which are, in my assessment, impacting its political effectiveness. At the same time, these limitations represent opportunities for the further theoretical and political development of food sovereignty, which in turn will enhance its transformative potential.
Readers of this book will encounter peasants and farmers who struggle at home and traverse national borders to challenge the World Trade Organization and other powerful global institutions. Studies the activists in Brazil who uproot plots of genetically modified soybeans, forest dwellers in Indonesia who chop down rubber plantations to cultivate rice to feed their families, 'runaway villages' in China that take up arms to resist corrupt officials, and Mexican migrants who, having exited in desperation, return from abroad to transform their communities Little-known transnational agrarian movements of the early twentieth century share the stage with more recent, high-profile global alliances, such as Vía Campesina Celebrates a dynamic sector of international civil society, and tackles the thorny questions of successes and failures, ethical and political dilemmas, troubled alliances with NGOs, protest repertoires, and representation claims Analyzes contemporary collective action in all its complexity, acknowledging ambiguities and contradictions, posing challenging questions, and providing concrete strategies for scholars and activists.
In recent years, food sovereignty has emerged as a way of contesting corporate control of agricultural markets in pursuit of a more democratic, decentralized food system. The concept unites individuals, communities, civil society organizations, and even states in opposition to globalizing food regimes. This collection examines expressions of food sovereignty ranging from the direct action tactics of La Vía Campesina in Brazil to the consumer activism of the Slow Food movement and the negotiating stances of states from the global South at WTO negotiations. With each case, the contributors explore how claiming food sovereignty allows individuals to challenge the power of global agribusiness and reject neoliberal market economics. With perspectives drawn from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia, Globalization and Food Sovereignty is the first comparative collection to focus on food sovereignty activism worldwide.