Food Sovereignty: An alternative to food security
The proposal of a program for Food Sovereignty (FS) involves an important shift from the prevailing public policy approach oriented towards food security. Although there is a large literature attempting to define the terms, and many people who have strongly invested in their differences, for the present essay suffice it to attempt to characterize the two and then explore the implications of the second concept for social policy and political development.
The FAO provides this “useful workable definition”:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Household food security is the application of this concept to the family level, with individuals within households as the focus of concern (FAO, 2001:Ch. 2, p. 1).
This definition is useful in that it emphasizes an important characteristic: the availability of food to satisfy human needs, regardless of how it is procured. This is important because the issue is directly related to the question of the liberalization of world trade and international capital markets as well as the powerful influence of the principal corporate interests involved in global trade in grains (Morgan 1979).
Food Sovereignty, on the other hand, not only focuses its concerns on the availability of food, in the sense, described above, but also encompasses a number of other crucial matters that are directly related to the way food is produced, and who and where it is produced. Although the expression has a long history in public policy, for our purposes we will focus on its development as a political goal and organizing program by La Via Campesina since the mid-1990s:-
Food sovereignty is different from food security in both approach and politics. Food security does not distinguish where food comes from, or the conditions under which it is produced and distributed. National food security targets are often met by sourcing food produced under environmentally destructive and exploitative conditions, and supported by subsidies and policies that destroy local food producers but benefit agribusiness corporations. Food sovereignty emphasizes ecologically appropriate production, distribution and consumption, social-economic justice and local food systems as ways to tackle hunger and poverty and guarantee sustainable food security for all peoples. It advocates trade and investment that serve the collective aspirations of society. It promotes community control of productive resources; agrarian reform and tenure security for small-scale producers; agro-ecology; biodiversity; local knowledge; the rights of peasants, women, indigenous peoples and workers; social protection and climate justice. (Nyéléni Newsletter 2013)
For purposes of this presentation, the key to understanding the importance of delineating the differences is their differing impacts on justice. The operative difference between the two is the emphasis on the conditions of production, the processes, and the impacts that this production has on the environment and on the people involved. By emphasizing process and impacts, the FS approach places its emphasis on the ways in which food systems promote a dynamic integration of communities with an all-inclusive concern for the relationship between producers, production, and the ecosystems within which they function.
FS: Building food systems that strengthen community, promote good nutrition, and protect the environment.
Although the academic discussions of FS have pointed to numerous limitations of the way in which the concept is currently used, in this presentation I stress its importance as an organizing tool and political platform for implementing a program that offers a meaningful alternative to the inability of the international community to meet its quite laudable declarations to eliminate hunger on a global scale (Millennium –2000-2015– and Sustainable –2015-2030 – Development Goals).
The basic argument of those supporting FS is that it offers an effective alternative to the official approach to rural development to assure environmental justice. Since its formal creation in 1996, La Vía Campesina is systematically advancing a definition of FS that clearly established an agenda for its practical work and political advocacy in regional and international fora. At a meeting in 2007, convened by LVC in Nyéléni, Mali, the defined six pillars of food sovereignty:
1. Focuses on food for the people by: a) placing people’s need for food at the centre of policies; and b) insisting that food is more than just a commodity.
2. Values food providers by: a) supporting sustainable livelihoods; and b) respecting the work of all food providers.
3. Localizes food systems by: a) reducing the distance between suppliers and consumers; b) rejecting dumping and inappropriate food aid; and c) resisting dependence on remote and unaccountable corporations.
4. Places control at a local level by: a) placing control in the hands of local food suppliers; b) recognizing the need to inhabit and share territories; and c) rejecting the privatization of natural resources.
5. Promotes knowledge and skills by: a) building on traditional knowledge; b) using research to support and pass on this knowledge to future generations; and c) rejecting technologies that undermine local food systems.
6. Works with nature by: a) maximizing the contributions of ecosystems; b) improving resilience; and c) rejecting energy intensive, monocultural, industrialized and destructive production methods (http://www.nyeleni.org/IMG/pdf/31Mar2007NyeleniSynthesisReport-en.pdf).