# Indigenous peasant women in Ecuador

Camila Cuevas

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Camila Cuevas. Indigenous peasant women in Ecuador: Agents of food sovereignty? 2009-2017. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2022. dumas-03944377

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# Indigenous peasant women in Ecuador

## Agents of food sovereignty ? 2009-2017

Présenté par **Camila Cuevas**

Sous la direction de **Elisa Botella-Rodríguez**

Mémoire de Master 2 mention Sciences Sociales, Coopération et Développement en Amérique Latine/Latinamerican Studies.

Parcours-type Master Erasmus Mundus Latin America and Europe in a Global World (LAGLOBE), avec les universités de Salamanque et Stockholm.

Mémoire présenté le 19 juillet 2022 à l'Université de Salamanque.
Acknowledgment

An enormous gratitude to all the people who, in one way or another, have helped me in the completion of this work.

This is nothing more than the collective result of effort, care and affection.

First, thanks and enormous gratitude to Dr. Elisa Botella-Rodríguez, who has always been at the forefront in
each of the stages of this work. Thank you for your consistency and support.

I would also like to thank Betty Espinosa; Bélgica Bermeo and her family; Pablo and Rosa Jordan; Narcisa Requelme and Ronnie Lizano. Thank you for receiving me so affectionately and guiding me all the way through Ecuador.

I thank each person who agreed to be interviewed, who gave me their time and shared with me their experiences, concerns and hopes. I am sincerely grateful for the openness and interest in this research.

Thanks to my parents, for accompanying me on the roads of life. For their unconditional love, guidance and accompaniment. ¡Arriba los corazones!

Finally, I thank my dear network of friends and colleagues: we made it!
"We both work, you can see it in our hands. We paint our nails with dirt. Not with paints. Yes, we work.
You see, I have calluses on my hands because I work"

- P-16 (16:6).

May 26, 2022
Table of Contents

<table><tbody><tr><td>1.</td><td>INTRODUCTION</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>1.1 Justification &amp; Research Questions</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>1.2 Research Methodology</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>1.3 Contribution of the research to the literature</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>1.4 Outline of Dissertation</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td>THEORETICAL FRAMING</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>2.1 Malnutrition and Food Security</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>2.2 Food Sovereignty (FS)</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>2.3 Gender Studies (GS)</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td>BRINGING TOGETHER: FS, GS &amp; FOOD SECURITY</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.1 Conceptual &amp; Analytical Levels of FS</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.1.1 Agrifood Regimes and Systems</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.1.2. Agroecology and Short Food Circuits (SFC)</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.2 Contours of the debate: FS &amp; Food Security</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.2.1. Food Safety: Principles &amp; Objectives</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.2.2. FS as an Alternative Agrifood System</td><td>34</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.2.3. Conceptual integration: dialectic relationship between FS &amp; Food Safety</td><td>38</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.3 Relationship between FS &amp; GS</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.3.1 FS &amp; Human Rights</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>3.3.2 FS &amp; Feminist Movements</td><td>42</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td>TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT: FS &amp; GS</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.1. FS &amp; IPW Approaches</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.1.1 Perspective from and on Latin America</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.1.2. The paradigmatic case of Ecuador</td><td>48</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.2 FS models in Ecuador</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.2.1 Social actors and LORSA</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.2.2. FS at provincial and cantonal level</td><td>57</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>4.2.3. Legal framework</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td>CASE STUDY IN THE NORTHERN INTER-ANDEAN HIGHLANDS</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Insights from the interviews</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>5.2. Specificities per Case Study</td><td>69</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>5.2.3. Province of Pichinga, Canton of Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo</td><td>69</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>5.2.4. Province of Imbabura, Canton of Ibarra</td><td>70</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Concluding remarks</td><td>71</td></tr><tr><td>6. CONCLUSION</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>7. BIBLIOGRAPHY</td><td>74</td></tr><tr><td>8. APPENDIX</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix A. Supplementary information on methodology</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix B. Template of questions for the semi-structured interviews</td><td>86</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix C. Original quotations</td><td>88</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix D. Constructivist Grounded Theory</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix E. Fieldwork Photographs</td><td>93</td></tr></table>
## List of Figures

<table><tr><td>Illustration 1: Conceptual relationships of the investigation</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 2: Research organization</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 3: LORSA modification process (2008-2009)</td><td>55</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 4: Relationship between open source codes</td><td>64</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 5: Axial categories as the core of the emerging theory</td><td>65</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 6: Gender of participants</td><td>81</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 7: Level of education of participants</td><td>82</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 8: Age range of the participants</td><td>83</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 9: Sector represented by participants</td><td>83</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 10: Photograph of Ibarra Fair 1</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 11: Photograph of Ibarra Fair 2</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 12: Photograph of Ibarra Fair 3</td><td>94</td></tr><tr><td>Illustration 13: Photograph of Ibarra Fair 4</td><td>94</td></tr></table>

## List of Tables

<table><tr><td>Table 1: LVC Gender-Sensitive FS Principles</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>Table 2: Dialectics in the alternative food supply chain process</td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>Table 3: Political positioning of delegates vis-à-vis the FS (2007-2008)</td><td>52</td></tr><tr><td>Table 4: Social Actors in the definition of the FS in the NCA (2007-2008)</td><td>53</td></tr><tr><td>Table 5: Mapping of actors and legal resources for FS in Ecuador</td><td>59</td></tr><tr><td>Table 6: High co-occurrence among open source codes</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>Table 7: Profile of research participants</td><td>79</td></tr></table>
List of Abbreviations

<table><tr><td>ANC</td><td>National Constituent Assembly</td></tr><tr><td>SFC</td><td>Short Food Circuits</td></tr><tr><td>CAN</td><td>National Agricultural Census</td></tr><tr><td>CLOC-LVC</td><td>Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations of La Vía Campesina</td></tr><tr><td>CONFESUNASSC-CNC</td><td>National Confederation of Peasant Social Security Affiliates - National Peasant Coordinating Committee - Coordinadora Nacional Campesina</td></tr><tr><td>COPISA</td><td>Plenational and Intercultural Conference on Food Sovereignty</td></tr><tr><td>FAO</td><td>Food and Agriculture Organization</td></tr><tr><td>FENOCIN</td><td>National Federation of Peasant, Indigenous and Black Organizations</td></tr><tr><td>FS</td><td>Food Sovereignty</td></tr><tr><td>GS</td><td>Gender Studies</td></tr><tr><td>INEC</td><td>National Institute of Statistics and Census</td></tr><tr><td>IPW</td><td>Indigenous Peasant Women</td></tr><tr><td>LORSA</td><td>Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime</td></tr><tr><td>LVC</td><td>La Vía Campesina</td></tr><tr><td>MAGAP</td><td>Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock</td></tr><tr><td>MCDS</td><td>Ministry of Social Development Coordination</td></tr><tr><td>SENPLADES</td><td>National Secretariat of Planning and Development</td></tr><tr><td>CGT</td><td>Constructivist Grounded Theory</td></tr></table>
# 1. Introduction

Food sovereignty (FS) has emerged as a political tool, a food regime and a technical concept that redefines the geo-political, social, ecological and nutritional relations of capitalist agrarian production processes (McMichael, 2009). It has been especially relevant as a vindicatory starting point for social movements and in the transformations of agricultural systems in Latin America (LA), since its origins in the Mexican and Central American peasant movements in the 1980s (Edelman, 2014) (Edelman, et al., 2014). From academia, associated with this concept, a significant strand of critical analysis has been generated on the dynamic processes of the expansionist, corporate and liberalizing agro-food model. Consequently, it has been taken up by research within analytical frameworks of agricultural policy-economy and rural development models.

FS movements have placed small producers and their right to adequate food at every level of production, distribution and consumption as the main subject of their actions and thinking (Edelman, 2014) (LVC, 2020). They uphold social agrarian development models based on principles of justice, redistribution and equity, which call for the suppression of all types of unequal relations (Patel, 2009). In congruence, this discourse has been inserted in the international arena from an approach to democracy and human rights, pillars of liberal governance and citizen participation in global food processes. This openness has meant the adoption and interpretation of FS by multiple actors, institutions and movements, so its definition has become an intellectual challenge, both in its implementation and in its use in conceptual research frameworks (Rivero, 2017).

Despite the multidimensional interaction of the term with human rights and its public emergence in 1996, little research has been done on the role and conditions of Indigenous Peasant Women (IPW) in the FS agrifood system. Despite being located at the intersection expressed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Latin America, focused on synergies and trade-offs between SDGs 1 and 2 (poverty and food security) and SDG 5 (gender equity), as well as the global importance given to the fight against growing inequalities in the Latin American region. In this having, FS becomes relevant in Ecuador for being the first country at the Latin American level to incorporate it in its Political Constitution in 2008, turning this system, at least on paper, into its national strategy (Clark, 2017). In terms of legislation, this Republic is one of the most advanced in the region, being the Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime (LORSA) and the provincial and cantonal level constructions of Ordinances, the main referents. Consequently, it seems that Rafael Correa's governments have promoted a legal and strategic agrifood framework aligned with FS, good living and citizen participation. Likewise, Ecuador has been taken up as a reference in the
organization and struggle of indigenous and women's movements<fnref n="1" />, both at the territorial level and
in the party systems<fnref n="2" />.

As a result, Ecuador is positioned in the discussions on the legislative vanguard in *alternative* models of agrarian development in the region, as well as in that of participatory political reactivation of indigenous populations and rural women. Despite this, recent studies have highlighted the incongruence between frames of reference, agrarian policies implemented by the government (Clark, 2017) and practical outcomes. In particular, different researchers (to name a few Clark, 2017; Carrión & Herrera, 2012; Peña, 2016; Giunta, 2014), underline the incompatibility of neo-developmentalist economic development models guiding agrarian policies and the approach of FS in the sense of LVC. It is in this area that this research aims to contribute, in analyzing, from the conditions and roles of Indigenous Peasant Women (IPW), their agency in the FS agri-food production system in Ecuador, as an expression of its territorial implementation and public policy.

**1.1 Justification & Research Questions**

Continuing with the above reasoning, despite the incorporation of FS in the constitutional body of Ecuador and the growing citizen participation, the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) has pointed out the systematic reproduction of structural problems in the maintenance of inequities of access in rural areas to food, land and water; especially aggravated for indigenous populations and for women agricultural producers (INEC, 2018). In this sense, the Gini Coefficient in land distribution, calculated at 0.86 in the year 1954, has changed to only 0.80 in 2001 (Martinez, 2014 cited by Clark, 2017, p. 352). Despite a substantial improvement in 2015, Ecuador has not complied within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations (UN)<fnref n="3" /> with the percentage decrease of the population in a state of undernourishment, in which is still more than 10% of the national population; being estimated the costs of malnutrition at 4.3% of the Ecuadorian GDP, in terms of costs in health, education, care and productive loss (ECLAC & WFP, 2017). Likewise, according to UNICEF (2022) "chronic malnutrition is one of the greatest public health problems in Ecuador, being the second country in

<footnote n="1">¹ Article 282 of the 2008 Constitution is the first to refer to the creation of land redistribution in favor of peasants, especially women.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Among the organizations highlighted are the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE); the National Federation of Peasant, Indigenous and Black Organizations (FENOCIN), the Pachakutik Political Party, the National Federation of Free Agroindustrial, Peasant and Indigenous Workers of Ecuador (FENACLE), among others.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ The UN MDGs are eight international development goals that the 192 members, including Ecuador, and a number of international organizations agreed to achieve by 2015. A main goal that is relevant to this research is MDG 1: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and indirectly Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.</footnote>
Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest rates after Guatemala". Therefore, the discussion focuses on the gap between the apparent improvements in legal tools regarding access and exercise of the right to food -or not to suffer from malnutrition, hunger or undernourishment-, access to production resources -land, water, seeds, among others- and public policies promoted within the framework of the FS.

Starting from an outdated national statistical and data base in Ecuador<fnref n="4" />, exploratory research is proposed, in which the main research objective is directed at two levels of analysis: (a) macro: study of literature and key concepts and (b) micro: case studies. (a) Firstly, in the review of the discourses that have regulated political actions around food production, distribution and consumption. Specifically in the conceptual analysis established between Food Security and FS, as two technical-political narratives derived from constitutive processes of agrifood regimes and systems; and their analytical relationship with the gender approach. (b) The second level of analysis is directed to a micro vision, in two explanatory case studies carried out with IPW associations. The first one is located in the Canton of Pedro Moncayo and Cayambe in the Province of Pichincha with the Association of *Agroecological Producers "Buen Vivir"*; the second one in the Canton of Ibarra in the Province of Imbabura with the *Association Llakta Pura*. This last section focuses on providing examples to understand the interpretation and action of the FS system on IPW in the northern rural inter-Andean area of Ecuador. It is analyzed as an alternative to the neoliberal or corporate food regime (Burch & Lawrence, 2009), in the search for a better retribution of food and its social, economic and environmental effects.

The highlands of Pichincha and Imbabura differ from other areas of Ecuador due to the historical development of their land distribution. It is one of the areas with the highest concentration of small and medium-sized indigenous agricultural producers due to displacement to the inter-Andean highlands. This movement was caused by the large agro-industrial monocultures located in the natural region of the coast and as a result of the agrarian reform process of the 1960s and 1970s in the country. Thus, the *Sierra Interandina* is the heir to the rise of modern agribusiness in Ecuador, linked to the decline of the *hacienda* system and the appearance of a greater number of landless peasants. It is these displaced populations that become labor for these agroindustrial operations, especially in the planting of flowers and broccoli (Martinez, 1984 cited by Clark, 2017).

Together, these two levels of analysis aim to consolidate a theoretical and practical

<footnote n="4">⁴ The last Agricultural Census carried out in 2000, the main source of information for the last two decades being the reports of international organizations and NGOs present in the country.</footnote>
approach that allows to answer the main objective of this research, which is articulated by the
following question: a) Why are IPWs agents of the FS system implementation in Ecuador?
To answer this question, two sub-questions are posed, the first one referring to the macro
analysis and the last one to the case studies: b) What are the roles given to IPW under FS
frameworks? c) What are the conditions that influence their capacity for agency in the agro-
food systems of the inter-Andean highlands of Ecuador?

The time period determined for this research is between 2009 and 2017. The starting year is considered relevant because it is the year in which the Organic Law of Food Sovereignty (LORSA) came into force, which establishes the mechanisms through which the State regulates the FS regime (Carvajal, 2009). The last year corresponds to the end of Rafael Correa's executive term (2007-2017), which marks a period of interpretation on FS and the first decade in force of the Constitution of Ecuador; as well as the end of the pink tide cycle<fnref n="5" />. In addition, 2019 is the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant an episode of radical changes in the economic dynamics and social impact with repercussions yet to be measured.

In summary, it is understood that the context of study is crossed by a set of main axes that
mediate (a) gender relations (social), (b) constructions of ethnic identity (political-historical) and (c)
the development of agrifood markets (economic) (see Illustration 1). These characteristics are
mediated through narratives, understood as the set of causal explanations that give meaning to
realities; and legal frameworks, which serve as the social rules in the collective construction of social
dynamics.

<footnote n="5">⁵ This is called the progressive cycle in various countries of the Latin American region, with the emergence of "progressive, left-wing, center-left governments that combined heterodox economic policies with the expansion of social spending and inclusion through consumption. Thus began the so-called Latin American progressive cycle that lasted at least until 2015-2016" (Svampa, 2019, p. 11. Own translation).</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Illustration 1: Conceptual relations of the research</figcaption></figure>

Source: Own elaboration based on Cuevas (2019).

These narratives on development models and forms of local political organization are about FS in Ecuador, which have a direct impact on the activities and possibilities of IWPs. They are subject to the material conditions of their existence, in terms of access to resources, as well as in the subjectivity or symbolic character that mediate their actions, decisions and collective behaviors. It is these variables that shape local knowledge and access to adequate food and nutrition. This first scheme serves as a reference to the conceptual relationships or the analytical map used in the construction of the research. In this way, it is exposed that the relationship between IPW with the FS agri-food system is constructed based on the social, political-historical and economic interaction of the context of study. To this end, this research is based on a qualitative methodology of an exploratory nature as section 1.2 explains.

## 1.2 Research Methodology

The choice of the qualitative exploratory methodology responds to the scarcity of research on the topic of interest (Logroño, Borja Naranjo, & Estrella Valdivieso, 2018; Aguinaga Barragán, Astudillo Bravo, & López Pazmiño, 2019; De Veintimilla Donoso, 2021) and the lack of updated agricultural sociodemographic data in Ecuador, with the last National Agricultural Census conducted in 2000. Therefore, it is based on several data collection strategies, which responds to the need to increase the validity and consistency of the findings. In this way, a methodological triangulation is proposed as interpretation and processing that allows the theoretical formulation
under a logic of abduction and retroduction (Okuda Benavides & Gómez-Restrepo, 2005). The first data input is based on the review of secondary sources, the literature review on the concepts and theories of interest. This compilation of articles, reports and theses is fundamental for the delimitation of FS and Gender Studies (GS). The review shows the importance of deepening on the theories of agri-food regimes and systems, in the rational path towards the distinction of the strategies of Agroecology and Short Food Circuits (SFC).

The search is carried out through scholarly databases, among them those belonging to European educational centers -IHEAL-CREDA (Sorbonne - Nouvelle University - Paris III); Instituto de Iberoamérica (University of Salamanca); NILAS (University of Stockholm)-; Latin American -mainly SIBDI (University of Costa Rica) and FLACSO-Ecuador- as well as theses on Latin America produced from Canada, Great Britain and the United States of America -Dissertations & Theses Global (e.g. Journal of Peasant Studies)-; and finally, in search engines Mendeley, Google Scholar, Dialnet, Red de Bibliotecas Virtuales de América Latina y el Caribe - CLACSO and Scopus. Secondary sources were used to complete the information collected through semi-structured interviews and case studies, specifically from the INEC agrarian census and from reports and publications of COPISA, Asociación de Desarrollo Social e Integral "Llakta Pura", Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS), the NGO COAGRO, the Asociación de Productores Agroecológicos "Buen Vivir" and the Universidad Técnica del Norte (UTN).

The second source of data used were seventeen semi-structured interviews<fnref n="6" />. Ten of them were conducted in person at IPW<fnref n="7" /> located in the cantons of Ibarra, Pedro Moncayo and Cayambe. They were carried out during participant observation at weekend fairs and during visits to the chakras belonging to the women of the associations involved. The remaining seven were carried out via Zoom, with the President and two members of COPISA, with an alternate elected assemblywoman of Pachakutik and former leader of the Caranqui people, two academic professionals specialized in FS in Ecuador and a professor of the Universidad Técnica del Norte de Ingeniería Agrónoma, specialist in nutrition, rural development and sustainable management. These specialists were contacted by means of the snowball technique; face-to-face visits were made as a form of presentation. Contact was maintained after the end of the field work in Ecuador through digital means of communication.

This process made it possible to go deeper into the topics of interest, promoting a prior exchange of information that facilitates the construction of the research questions and modeling

<footnote n="6">⁶ See Appendix B.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ See Appendix A.</footnote>
the structure of the study. Thus, the use of these methods contributed to the definition of common
characteristics and to elucidate patterns for a better understanding of the study phenomenon and
its approach (Okuda Benavides & Gómez-Restrepo, 2005). Subsequently, these interviews were
processed in Atlas.T.I. software<fnref n="8" />. Finally, a triangulation is made between the conceptual bases, the
analytical results of the interviews and the participant observation, integrating the phases of the
research in divergences, similarities and dialectics. As theoretical support for the methodology and
basis for the analysis of both discursive and textual information, the Constructivist Grounded
Theory (CGT)<fnref n="9" /> has been taken as the main source. This framework allows the research to
systematically follow up the data collected, as it positions the construction of situated knowledge,
derived from the interviews, with contextual references that allow its interpretation and validity.

As part of the research itself, multiple limitations are recognized. The first lies in the data
collection techniques, due to the lack of updated data or the possibility of applying a methodology
with representative results, which is why we have focused on seventeen interviews with key actors
and reports from non-governmental institutions. Consequently, the data may not reflect the
national reality of IPW, due to the diversity of actors and historical and contextual characteristics
of each region. To overcome this limitation, interviews were conducted with FS specialists with
experience at the national level, which allows for a comparative view of the subject under
investigation. Likewise, specialists from various organizations and institutions have been
incorporated, until reaching a point of information saturation, in order to control biases and
broaden the view of the topic under study.

Likewise, the non-participation of any of the leaders of the Federations or political unions
and of the national indigenous peasant social movements was also noted as a limitation. This was
the result of meeting the deadlines established for the presentation of this research, which could
not be articulated with the bureaucratic, social and approaching times to these groups. Therefore,
we point out the bias to be considered in the perspectives and approaches of analysis in the
interpretation and conclusions section. To mitigate this limitation, greater prominence has been
given to the interviews conducted with the IPW.

Finally, the FS agricultural system has not been applied in most countries of the region and
studies concerning this productive model in Ecuador are scarce at the territorial level, so there are
FS analysis documents dislocated from Ecuadorian realities and vice versa. To compensate for this
difficulty, we have resorted to theoretical and conceptual reflections that provide tools to approach

<footnote n="8">⁸ Atlas. T.I. is a computer program used primarily in qualitative research or qualitative data analysis.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ See Appendix D.</footnote>
the study and possess viable parameters of analysis that would allow research contributions in the
interconnection of these two phases of research, resorting to a micro and macro analysis. In
consideration of these limitations, it is considered pertinent to delve into the contributions of this
research, which are presented below.

**1.3 Contribution of the research to the literature**

This research contributes to studies on the relationship between the State and Society in FS agrarian systems and IPW. First, it makes a conceptual review contribution on the relationship between FS and GS, which allows evidencing the analytical connectors of agro-food systems and gender studies. It provides an argumentative basis on the feasibility of presenting research focused on IPW. Anchored in Human Rights models and material and symbolic conditions, the paradox of finding IPW within the discourses of the agrarian development model is evidenced. Their primordial role is highlighted, together with the evidence of their vulnerability to malnutrition, undernourishment and poverty. This, framed in a context where gender equity and the search for focused policies, with a gender perspective, are requirements of institutional action due to the progress in Human Rights focused on equity. The paradox, it is argued, lies in the review and theoretical argumentation dislocated from daily practices and realities. This has perpetuated a system of gender inequality that has little impact on the daily lives of IPW and on structural intersectional inequalities.

Second, it provides reflections on the role and situation of IPW in FS systems in Ecuador.
Being a study focused on cases in the northern inter-Andean highlands, it is based on field work
and interviews in areas with few sources that lack updated data and information. In this sense, it
offers an exploratory sample of the IPW in the study cantons, as well as the role they have played
and achieved since the integration of the FS in the 2008 Constitution. Likewise, this analysis is
constructed from the perspective of the IPW, as the main subjects and agents of study. Therefore,
the introspective reading of their conditions and roles in life and in the field work, with contextual
contributions and analysis resources from academia, government and non-governmental
organizations, takes precedence. Consequently, it offers an inside look at case studies on IPW as
small or family producers and the interpretations given to the FS system in the north of the
Ecuadorian inter-Andean highlands.

In summary, it provides a conceptual approach to the FS narrative and practice with respect to IPW, modeling the main difficulties and the relevance of their involvement. Specifically, it delves into the role of IPW in FS agri-food systems, inquiring into their roles and conditions within them.
For this purpose, the structure of this research is presented in the following section.

## 1.4 Outline of Dissertation

This research is divided into six chapters. The reading progress is composed of three main axes (see Illustration 2), the first one being the presentation of the theories and conceptual bases; the second at a macro and micro level of analysis, between the overlap between international-national and local ideas; and finally, in the deepening of these concepts in concrete case studies, through the analysis of interviews and participant observation in the field work.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Illustration 2: Organization of the research</figcaption></figure>

*Source:* Own elaboration.

Accordingly, Chapter 2 presents the three key conceptual pillars of the research: FS, GS, Malnutrition and Food Security. Based on the review of these pillars and the delimitation of their areas of study, Chapter 3 presents the historical relationship between them. To this end, we delve into the analytical levels of FS in terms of the theories of agrifood regimes and systems, as well as Agroecological production strategies and SFCs. From the same discussions generated in these sections, we move on to the exploration of the dialectic relationship between FS and Food Security, to finally return to the relationship of FS with Human Rights and Feminist Movements. These chapters make up the theoretical level of the dissertation.

Chapter 4 focuses the discussion on the case of Ecuador. It explores the characteristics and development that place the country as a paradigm in the development of the agrifood system and in the actions of the IPW, framed by the systematization of the laws and regulations in force that affect the legal regulation of these socio-economic areas. Finally, the discussion is focused on
agricultural development models in the localities of the case studies, in the provinces of Pichincha and Imbabura. Chapter 5 analyzes the interviews conducted on the case studies, emphasizing the theoretical, conceptual and local axes that have been placed previously, as a way of exemplifying the analysis. Finally, Chapter 6 presents the conclusions, analyzing the limitations of the FS in its application under the parameters of citizen participation, locating the needs and difficulties of the IPW as a possible result of the confluence in the deficiencies of territorial conformation of the FS at the national level, traced from the process of its conformation; together with the essentialist discourses of gender. Consequently, it is argued that contradictions in state policies have shaped antagonistic development models, which are combined with the historical exclusion of small producers, the most vulnerable being those belonging to indigenous peoples and women.

Consequently, the theoretical framework used is presented below. This is articulated in three main phenomena: malnutrition and food security, FS and GS. As developed, these concepts are considered to be the primary basis for a comprehensive comprehension of the interrelationship between academic domains and for a focused approach to the case studies.
## 2. Theoretical Framing

The bases of this dissertation are found in the concepts of malnutrition and food security, FS and GS. The conceptual relationship is understood from the importance of placing the studies of agri-food systems in the conditions of food and nutrition at regional and national levels. The eradication of hunger is a major concern of both international organizations and the food and agriculture system of the FS. Therefore, the role and conditions of IPW, and the terms referring to malnutrition, are placed at the central node of the discussion. The latter is understood as undernourishment, as well as micro-nutrient deficient food, which can trigger problems of overweight with anemia, non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cholesterol, high blood pressure, undernourishment due to lack of calories, among others.

Both regionally (FAO, 2020) and nationally (INEC, 2017), malnutrition is a chronic problem and is leading to discussions on quality, nutritional information and the right of people to obtain food according to their traditions and customs. As populations of high vulnerability, indigenous communities and women are located (INEC, 2017). Consequently, the connection of food, FS and WS is the transversality of the problem of malnutrition from the study of food production systems. Herein lies the relevance of inquiring into food systems denominated as alternative, in the integration of populations that have been left behind of their benefits or have been in their exploitation their measure of success (Svampa, 2019). The following sections will discuss the definition of these key concepts.

### 2.1 Malnutrition and Food Security

According to FAO (2014), malnutrition is defined as an abnormal physiological condition caused by insufficient, unbalanced or excessive intake of macro and micro nutrients that provide energy (carbohydrates, proteins and fats; vitamins and minerals). Undernourishment or malnutrition is the insufficient intake of these nutrients, which affects growth and physical and cognitive development<fnref n="10" />. It is a main objective of FAO to work on future productivity in collaboration with agriculture and food, focusing on vulnerable populations at the family and local level to reduce the rates and underlying costs of these public health problems. It is also part of its work to advocate for the incorporation of explicit nutritional objectives in agricultural, health, education, economic and social protection policies in developing countries (FAO, 2014). Therefore, institutional and public programs and interests in nutrition frameworks have been

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ Includes anemia, mental retardation and permanent blindness.</footnote>
associated with conceptual frameworks of Food Security, which has maintained a dialectical relationship<fnref n="11" /> with FS (refer to section 3.2).

In recent decades, two main problems have been identified, which add to the costs of malnutrition to the world economy: on the one hand, overweight and obesity<fnref n="12" />, on the other hand, undernutrition. Their consideration as public health problems and the geographical trends of the two differ. Excess weight has increased in recent decades, driven according to FAO (2014) by industrialization and food processing, in conjunction with a nutritional ignorance of populations. To these effects, social inequalities, both at regional or national levels, as well as within nations, has meant the localization of undernourishment in the poorest countries, "thereby affecting their future employment and income opportunities and thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty" (p. 2).

In contrast, globally, approximately 9.9% of the population (720 to 811 million people) do not have access to sufficient food to enable them to lead a full and healthy life (FAO; IFAD; UNICEF; WFP; WHO, 2021). This percentage has increased by more than one percentage point in just one year (2020-2021). It is also estimated that this increase was occurring prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which only exacerbated the perceived trends in the rest of the period. It is estimated that more than 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, 66 million infants attend school with some nutritional deficiency and 45% of deaths of infants under 5 years of age are caused by poor nutrition (FAO, IFAD & WFP, 2015) (FAO, PAHO, 2017) (IFPRI, 2016). It adds that globally, the gender gap in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has widened further with the COVID-19 pandemic. Women are moderately or severely food insecure at a rate of 10% more than men in 2020, an increase of 4% over the previous year (FAO; IFAD; UNICEF; WFP; WHO, 2021).

However, food production, estimated at 3.9 billion tons of food, is sufficient to supply the caloric needs of the world population according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) -approximately 2,000 calories per day-. Of these, it is estimated that distribution and consumption difficulties reduce food production available for consumption by up to one third, which are considered lost or wasted (FAO, PAHO, 2017). As for nutritious foods, they tend to have a rising price index, caused by both external factors to food systems (such as conflicts or climate shocks) and internal ones (such as low productivity and inefficiency of food supply chains) (FAO; IFAD; UNICEF; WFP; WHO, 2021), making it difficult for low-income or

<footnote n="11">¹¹ In the Hegelian sense, it refers to the opposition of two principles that in development produces a superior conciliation over this apparent contradiction (Kojeve, 1975).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Risk of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, some types of cancer, osteoarthritis, etc. Associated with low productivity and increased health care costs.</footnote>
resource-poor populations to access them.

Therefore, it is estimated that one of the greatest difficulties is not, in principle, in the quantity of production or the need for consumption, but in improving access to and distribution of food, as well as nutritional knowledge for adequate nutrition. These items go through a series of phases and difficulties, including social protection, access to income-generating activities, in nutritional education, possibility of self-production or attention to populations in conditions of vulnerability to hunger (Moncayo Miño, 2017). Therefore, addressing the problem at the global level requires political actions, which according to the UN (2014) identifies the need to change the productivist approach, for a comprehensive approach that places equity, well-being, resilience and sustainability among its priorities; which allows the full enjoyment of the right to food.

These dimensions refer to the basic concepts introduced by FAO (2022) to measure food security, which are broken down into the following dimensions: physical availability of food, economic access, food utilization and the stability of these three dimensions over time. Based on these four pillars, indicators are used to determine the degree of food security or insecurity of a population (chronic or transitory food insecurity), the measurement of undernourishment and vulnerability<fnref n="13" />. Therefore, it discusses international actions, but also appeals to the actions of governments and local organizations. Consequently, it is affirmed that the first difficulty to eradicate hunger is public policies at the distribution and consumption levels (FAO, 2021), rather than global technical capacities for food production (Moncayo Miño, 2017). As emphasized by Trueba (2006) and Margulis (2013), cited by Moncayo Miño (2017), ensuring that people have access to sufficient food is directly related to having legal and regulatory instruments that ensure, over time, the availability, access, use and stability of food at the global, national and local levels. This item is essential to stop counting more deaths due to hunger than those caused by complications related to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined (WFP, 2017).

In LA in 2020 it was estimated around 60 million people in undernourishment (9.1% of the population) and 6 million infants with chronic malnutrition. As well as a high rate of malnutrition, which is expressed in overweight and obesity, coupled with related diseases (diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases) (Moncayo Miño, 2017, p. 12). In this area, FAO and PAHO (2017) estimate that 360 million people in the region are overweight and 140 million with obesity, accounting for 4 million infants. According to these organizations, malnutrition problems

<footnote n="13">¹³ These disaggregated indicators are: crude mortality rate, prevalence of malnutrition, food access/availability, dietary diversity, water access/availability, coping strategies and livelihood assets. From which the phases of: general food security, chronic food insecurity, livelihood food crisis, humanitarian emergency or famine/humanitarian catastrophe are classified (FAO, 2022).</footnote>
are associated with just under 70% of registered deaths, and 40% with premature deaths before the age of 70. These deaths are centered in middle- and low-income populations. In recent decades, there have been price crises, which have had an impact on the availability of some foods, in the reconfiguration of production, especially impacting the least developed countries in Latin America. The food demand crises in Asia in 2008, the use of crops for biofuels, the increase in oil prices (wars and external shocks), among others, have led to destabilizations throughout the world. Currently, these factors are part of the crises generated by the impact of COVID-19 and, more recently, the war in Ukraine (2022). These are circumscribed to the consequences in international relations, including in the real or estimated behavior of trade<fnref n="14" />, development cooperation and soft exchanges (Olivié, 2022). It is these factors that are of interest when questioning the dynamics of global exchange, including food production in the insertion in international trade. In this area, a de-globalization<fnref n="15" /> of between 7.5% and 8.8% is estimated, being the greatest negative variation according to the Elcano Global Presence Index (2020), including the years following the disintegration of the Soviet Union or the Great Recession (Olivié, 2022). It is from these same variations that alternatives to Corporate Agriculture (CA) production (FAO, 2022) or the corporate food regime (Giunta, 2018) synchronized with the logic of agro-export of agricultural raw materials gain relevance.

Furthermore, between 60% and 80% of food production in less developed countries is in the hands of women (Vizcarra Bordi, 2008). These same reports show that, despite their active participation in production, there are still no tools that account for their contributions to the economy through reproductive activities (domestic and agricultural work, water collection, firewood, etc.). It has also shown the difficulties of rural women in accessing the economic benefits of work, materialized in land ownership, agricultural training, access to credit, among others (Ladio, 2021). Its importance is also expressed in the declaration of hunger as a governmental priority after the debates of the World Food Summit, held in Rome in 1996. Two fundamental declarations emerged from this event: *the Rome Declaration* and the *World Food Summit Plan of Action*. Among the main consensuses was the political will to maintain adequate food as the *right* of every person to be free from hunger. This proclamation has been taken up over the decades, especially in the recognition of the Millennium Declaration of 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations in 2015¹⁶. This action placed national governments, NGOs and Development

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ According to Olivié (2022), the added value of global economic projection could contract by 12.0%. In addition to being affected by soft dimensions, such as technology, culture and information.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Elcano (2020) defines deglobalization as the decline in international flows of goods, services, capital and people.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ The related SDGs are: SDG 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere; SDG 3. Ensure healthy lives and</footnote>
Agencies at the forefront of action to address the problems of distribution of benefits from agricultural production, the unsustainability of production methods that have led to the marginalization of smallholder farmers and long-term environmental threats (Ruiz Almeida, 2012).

Three initiatives have been identified to address hunger and agricultural production in the region: the so-called Right to Food (RtF), Food Security and Food Sovereignty (FS)<fnref n="17" />. These principles have been shaped through the Latin American Parliament, of which 23 countries in the region are members, including Ecuador, as well as the formation of the Parliamentary Front against Hunger. So food and nutritional security (SAN for its acronym in Spanish), which according to Moncayo Miño (2017) focus on two fundamental aspects in the region: (i) efforts should be guided to populations with conditions of vulnerability in terms of production, consumption and access to food, so actions should be taken on structural aspects in the short, medium and long term; (ii) the support and implementation of initiatives in these areas should be promoted by collaborative structures, with the participation of non-traditional actors, coordination between sectoral ministries and the sharing of a thematic agenda. In other words, it requires coordination between civil society, social movements, governmental actors, parliamentarians, donors and other entities (p. 8-9).

Similarly, in the Digital Forum "Food security as a challenge in post-Covid-19" a call was made to the alarming data on the doubling of extreme poverty in rural areas of the region. It is in this scenario that by the end of 2020 it was estimated a total of 28 million people immersed in the famine phase, being an estimated total of 83.4 million in extreme poverty and in difficulty to access adequate food in Latin America. Based on these data, it is considered necessary to continue with studies related to agricultural production models and the economic cycles concerned (McMichael, 2009; Patel, 2009). In these phases, public economic policies are evidenced as a fundamental axis, especially aimed at indigenous rural communities and rural women. Maintaining a comparative study between different development models, therefore, contributes to think about the current developments and situations, with the possibility of taking as a reference for other studies at the regional level and international cooperation. An agro-food system that has emerged as a strategy to attack these problems has been the FS, which is developed below.

<footnote>promote well-being at all ages; SDG 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; SDG 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all; SDG 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns; SDG 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts; SDG 17.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Right to Food Framework Law (2012); Food Security and Sovereignty (2012); School Food Framework Law (2013); Framework Law on Regulation of Advertising and Promotion of Food and Beverages (2014); Family Farming Model Law (2016).</footnote>
## 2.2 Food Sovereignty (FS)

The FS concept has been shaped primarily through the participation of a set of organizations, groups and collectives at the international level under the umbrella of LVC. This international movement has been able to collaborate in different spaces of the political and organizational life of local producers, as well as to articulate the demands of both the South and the global North<fnref n="18" /> that have taken place since the 1970s. The FS is positioned as a contestation and alternative to the neoliberal policies of international trade, which it points out as part of the problem of the dependence of peoples on agricultural imports, the reinforcement of the industrialization of agriculture, and the endangering of seed, agricultural, cultural and health heritage (LVC, 2022).

The first presentation of this concept in the public debate took place in a parallel event to the World Food Summit (WFS) of the FAO in June 1996, held in Rome. Its main demand was the eradication of hunger at world level, pointing out the problem not in the technical capacities of production, but in the mechanisms of distribution and the impact of corporate interests in/and of public policies. To this end, they have taken refuge in the defense of sustainable food production systems based on family farming and the right of peoples to feed themselves (FAO; MCDSE, 2013). It derives from the concept of national sovereignty, which claims the position of the State and the peoples to define their own food policies, so there is a principle of demand action against the state apparatus and the positioning of small and medium producers in the market (including livestock, forestry and fishing activities) (LVC, 2022). Therefore, it is from their own constitutive root that we begin to glimpse the relationship of agrifood movements in the discourses of human rights and liberal democracy (Patel, 2009). As Patel (2009) points out, the demands of FS are ultimately based on the principles of democracy. A prerequisite of FS is to question and rethink the founding pillars of resource distribution, democratic egalitarianism for the establishment of a food policy in the first place, preferably organic and agroecological (Rivero, 2017).

Just as citizen participation in the construction of these policies is essential, there is an appeal to the organization of movements, in the shaping of identity and in the dialogue between actors. It corresponds to what McMichael (2009) points out in his analysis on the genealogy of food regimes as the structural role of agriculture in the processes of capital accumulation through space and time (p. 140) as a shift in the logics in which capital, resources and decision-making are redistributed. Consequently, it is through the definition of FS as an alternative to the corporate

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ It refers to the power distribution considerations in the international system that groups and differentiates the dichotomous division between rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, industrialized and less industrialized countries, etc. (Reuveny & Thompson, 2007).</footnote>
hegemonic food regime that it is linked to human rights and its social organization of resources and production models are linked to principles and values of social justice and participatory economics, mainly of small producers.

At the regional level, the *Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo* (CLOC-LVC) defines FS as "the right of peoples to produce their own food, nutritious and culturally adequate, accessible, produced in a sustainable and ecological way, it also encompasses the right to decide their own food and production system" (CLOC-LVC, 2022). According to the CLOC-LVC (2022), FS includes: a. prioritizing local agricultural production to feed the population; b. peasants' access to land, water (public good), seeds (against GMOs<sup>19</sup>), and access to credit; c. peasants' right to produce food and consumers' right to decide what they consume; d. countries' right to protect themselves against cheap agricultural and food imports<sup>20</sup>; e. peoples' participation in the definition of agrarian policy. To this end, it proposes five key points on which the FS should work: a. change public policies that regulate the agrarian and food system; b. reclaim the right to land, seeds and common goods; c. oppose the commodification and patenting of common goods; d. create agroecological production systems; e. change the forms of food distribution, promoting local, diversified, solidarity-based and fair markets; f. improve the social and labor conditions of the agrarian food system (CLOC-LVC, 2022).

In sum, FS is understood as a concept forged by a set of organizations at the international level that, through debate, participation and communication, have co-created its meaning. As a main point of reference, it is important to point out its multifaceted and mutable character, although subject to the principles presented in this section. Its advantages lie in this characteristic, as it is capable of containing local interests and articulating them with intra-regional movements, as well as allowing local organizations to articulate their own demands according to the needs of their context. With regard to its interrelation with the gender perspective, the following section reviews the axes that link it to FS, both at the academic and organizational levels.

## 2.3 Gender Studies (GS)

GS are academically differentiated from Women's Studies (WS) and Queer Studies (QS). Although this separation responds to intellectual boundaries often crossed in academic analytical practice, there is a difference in approach and traditions of thought. As a transversal concept of these studies is the notion of gender, which is defined as the role or performance (Butler, 1997) of an

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Genetically Modified Organisms.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Right to levy taxes and motivate the control of structural surpluses in the internal market.</footnote>
individual or collective in society, which defines behaviors, gestures, clothing, etc. Such performativity is cultural and makes sense in particular times and places. Therefore, GS focus on gender roles in society, in a perspective of making visible the inequalities or relations between the *perfomative* spectrum of individuals, which can be centered on access to spaces of power and material and symbolic creation (Butler, 2006). GS also focus on the construction of narratives that shape biological interpretations of sex/gender, as it encompasses both the male/female binary component and the spectrum of bodily and social experiences. Therefore, these studies focus on how gender identity impacts the existence and possibilities of a person in a given society, gathering the situated narratives that shape the social constructions of roles and conditions of existence.

As a practical derivation of GS, used from the formulation of projects and organizational objectives, is the UN's idea of Gender Mainstreaming. For the first time, in the Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997, it is defined as "the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences and integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political and societal spheres so that women and men equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality" (p.2).

On the other hand, LVC is aligned on gender issues with Peasant and Popular Feminism (triple domination: capital, gender and race) to understand the implementation of the gender perspective in its actions (LVC, 2022). It also shows that recognizing the contribution and participation of women in organizations has been a challenge due to the patriarchy and *machismo* rooted in societies, as well as in the practices of peers and organizations of the movement (LVC, 2022). Therefore, a double entry of the agro-food revolution is advocated: one within the movement to incorporate gender issues and one outside, to appeal to societies for justice, equity and human emancipation. As formulated in the last report issued by the International Assembly of Women (2021): "women are exploited for profit, their economic, social, legal and political rights are not fully recognized, and public policies do not guarantee equitable social and economic participation" (p.21).

Its way of incorporating the gender perspective is through the participation of women in spaces of coordination, political representation and decision making. The main lines of action are: care for the land, seeds and ecosystems, the fight against patriarchy, the sexist system and violence in all its forms. These axes articulate the demands for FS with a gender perspective from LVC<fnref n="21" />.

<footnote n="21">²¹ The implementation instrument is the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, which proposes to influence</footnote>
In this meaning of LVC, women's needs are understood as responding to access to material resources, including land ownership, credit (monetary resources and project viability), services (training, technical) and inputs (production materials). Likewise, the central role of public policies is identified, in the development models that direct it, especially in the orientation against agribusiness and the corporate or liberal agrifood model. As a counter-proposal, it appeals and calls for the action of the State and international institutions in the defense of agroecology - as a mode of production in accordance with the principles of FS - and the protection of the diversity and use of native and creole seeds as part of the traditions, knowledge and identity of the peoples. On the other hand, productive and reproductive work is considered invisibilized<fnref n="22" /> by economic, measurement and social tools. These include care and child-rearing activities in the family nuclei, as well as domestic work (firewood collection, care of property, care of communities, domestic work, etc.) (see Table 1).

<table><caption>Table 1: Table: Principles of LVC's Gender-Sensitive FS</caption><tr><td>Access to land</td><td>Demand the legalization or better distribution of land for women. As well as credit, services and inputs. For Popular and Feminist Agrarian Reform.</td></tr><tr><td>Impact of neoliberal policies</td><td>Combat the rural exodus, which diminishes the quality of life of women, both in terms of work and family life.</td></tr><tr><td>Against agribusiness and the neoliberal agrifood model</td><td>Fight against monopolization, agribusiness multinationals that operate with the support of governments and international institutions. Therefore, agroecology and native and creole seeds are defended.</td></tr><tr><td>Invisibilized productive and reproductive work</td><td>Women work in the fields and care for their communities. This results in an unrecognized double workday dedicated to the care and upbringing of their families and the domestic chores naturalized to women.</td></tr><tr><td>Recovery of native and creole seeds.</td><td>Defense of seeds not as merchandise, but as tradition, identity and knowledge.</td></tr></table>

Source: Own elaboration based on LVC (2021).

Therefore, there are two levels in the definition of gender for this research. The first corresponds to the level of analysis used in academia, as a branch of knowledge focused on the reflection of women in GS. This maintains an interdisciplinary approach, making references to

<footnote>international organizations so that governments assume these axes as a legal instrument (LVC, 2021, p. 35).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² In 2017, the share of Gross Value Added (GVA) of Unpaid Labor (NRL) with respect to Ecuador's GDP reached 19.1% (INEC, 2020).</footnote>
class, race, sexuality and social characteristics; the second level corresponds to the demands of the social movements contained in LVC. This movement has been organized in such a way as to articulate not only the main concerns of rural women promoters of FS, but also to articulate its content through Peasant Popular Feminism. Which gives meaning and orientation to the connection between agroindustrial production systems and the gender perspective.

From the definition of these three pillars that represent FS, GS, Malnutrition and Food Security, the transversality of the figure of rural peasant women in relation to the production regime and the disputed agrifood systems is delimited. The contextual interconnection of these is understood from the dialectical history that invites a review of the background, so it is connected in the following section with the development of the relationship between FS and GS.
## 3. Bringing Together: FS, GS & Food Security

In order to meet the objectives and answer the research questions posed, specific theoretical approaches and conceptual references are argued. The purpose of this section is to create the foundations of the research on FS, the context of resource and land distribution models in Ecuador, and their linkage with gender issues in the study areas. Therefore, we start from the definition of agrifood regimes and systems and the historical-conceptual differentiation between Food Sovereignty and Food Security. This ontological separation allows us to delve into the regional definitions of FS, to address more than its technical consequences, in the adoption of political discourses and the importance of placing the theory in territorial practices of Agroecology and SFCs, as a tool for analysis. These conceptual frameworks are of interest to understand local dynamics, the relationship between the state apparatus and producer societies. This first exposition is followed by the intersectional perspective that crosses the social context in which these political narratives are applied. In this way, it takes into consideration the socio-demographic characteristics that affect the distribution of land, access to material, financial and state resources. This section argues and aims to name the frontiers through which the participation of the IWP in studies on agrifood development models can be taken up again.

### 3.1 Conceptual & Analytical Levels of FS

This subchapter develops the ideas of food regimes and agrifood systems as a territorial system approach from the perspective of FS. For this purpose, reference is made to Friedmann & McMichael (1989), who understand and conceptualize FS as a set of power relations between *classes and states*, emphasizing socio-ecological and geographical specificities. These approaches serve as platforms for the analysis of global food production and consumption relations, defined according to periods of capital accumulation. It is argued that in each historical period of capital accumulation there is a type of food regime that defines regional agro-food systems and their interaction, this approach is called the *regulationist approach*, which is discussed in more detail below.

#### 3.1.1 Agrifood Regimes and Systems

According to Friedmann and McMichael (1998), there have been two major historical periods of food regimes. The first is the period of colonialism, when raw materials and commodities, including sugar and wheat, were imported into Europe from conquered territories. It was marked by the expansion of the market and the usurpation of resources, labor and land. Therefore, it is a period of expansionist capital accumulation and growth by dispossession. The
second period is located at the beginning of World War II, when trade flows are reversed and it is
the advanced countries in the industrialization and mechanization of their productions that export
to the former colonies. These shipments were initially carried out as "food aid", which was the
basis for what the authors call the international division of specialized agricultural production
chains developed by agroindustry.

Based on this theory, a number of researchers, including Burch & Lawrence (2009),
Wittman (2011) and Rivero (2017), suggest the beginning of a third regime, although not yet
consolidated, led by global corporations. It is argued that these institutions have benefited from
global agrifood chains and their liberalization, this period being named as that of a "neoliberal" or
"corporate" food regime. In this way, the homogenization of processes is related to industrial
monocultures, the issuing of patents on the genetic modification of seeds, as well as the production
of pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers for their maintenance. In this way, a chain of expulsion of
small producers is created, the concentration of land ownership increases, and food production
and processing chains mediated by large capital or corporations are created.

According to Svampa (2019), this last period can be divided into two decisive phases in
Latin America. The first is the phase of the commodity *boom*, in the export of raw materials on a
large scale. In this phase of extraction, large-scale ventures of the extractive export model are
developed. In this process, according to the author, new economic, social, environmental and
territorial inequalities and asymmetries are promoted. These are the factors that differentiate the
extraction of raw materials in colonial times with the present, in the configuration of new social
dynamics of resistance, concomitant with the subjective constructions that questioned the progress
of natural, cultural and territorial goods. In the face of them, other languages and narratives were
erected, in defense of values and in contrast with the limits in the field of discourse between Latin
American progressive political wings and mobilized social organizations. This second phase is
referred to as neo-extractivist.

This proposal is based on the idea that breaks between cycles can be marked by the
disruption of the norms and powers of a given system of production and distribution. Creating a
space for understanding food regimes as areas historically mediated by power relations. In this way,
the resistances shaped by social movements through divergent proposals -such as LVC-, offer
possibilities of reversing the perspectives of negotiation or openness to other associative logics.
Thus, a starting point for the decline of the current regime can eventually be located in the creation
of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in which LVC emerged as a new actor presenting an
*alternative* paradigm.
It follows from this conclusion that the FS could be understood as an agro-food system, as a symptom of a power struggle and resistance to neoliberal logics of production, distribution and consumption. As well as its association to a technical rupture but also a symptom of regional political changes, driven during the pink tide in Latin America, by progressive parties, understanding their limitations of articulation with rural organizations and the connection between theory and practice. Therefore, the FS would come to signify the germ of a new dynamic with the potential to glimpse a change of regime. However, as Henderson (2016) remarks, not all counter-hegemonic discourse is synonymous with counter-hegemonic practice. In his analysis he proposes that the articulation between the state and the internal structures of peasant organizations is central to determining the nature and relative success of counter-hegemonic struggles in practice.

In this sense, a difference is made between what is a counter-hegemonic movement in the Gramscian sense, where revolutionary political projects seek the profound transformation of capitalist society and its relations, in the construction of new economic systems and a *new* state; as opposed to reactions of social movements in Polanyi's (2002) sense, which are more aligned to a defensive anti-neoliberal counter-movement that does not necessarily seek the transformation of the capitalist state and its relations, but its own protection and survival in the economic system, as Henderson (2016) argues "concrete demands framed in the discourse of food sovereignty often call for more regulation and state oversight to displace the power of transnational capital with territorial state-based policies, not systemic transformation towards a post-capitalist model of food and agriculture" (State-peasant movement relations and the politics of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador, p. 3).

Consequently, Henderson (2016) proposes that movements attempt, through the rules and forces of the (neo)liberal economic market, to build a social market, which seeks protection against the dangers posed to peasants by a corporate agri-food regime. It is from this differentiation that the author argues that the negotiations of the LVC with the national states is a political tool to mobilize the internal organizational forms of the social movements, of which the positions of representation and leadership are not usually questioned. These positions are assumed, without much reflection, as positions of expression of social movements, when in practice, these organizations are complex in their structure and respond to games of power, representation, co-option and negotiations.

In order to understand these internal processes, Rivero (2017) proposes to go beyond the conceptual framework to a territorial level, in which the "processes of dispute" with the agrifood systems can be glimpsed. Continuing the reasoning, the macro levels of explanation bring us to
this research an understanding of the power relations that mediate in an analytical space. Both in
the relations between social movements, the State and political parties. Likewise, in order to
apprehend the FS as an organization, a technical-practical scale must be developed that allows us
to visualize the processes underlying these hegemonic processes. For this reason, a territorial level
emerges from the concept of "agri-food system", which does not cease to be mediated by global
conditions, but also incorporates endogenous contestations. Following the reasoning of Rivero
(2017), the FS can be analyzed as a territorial contestation that emerges as an alternative to the
dominant "corporate" regime, which, however, is not exempt from its own qualities and political
strategies under interests and representatives in international-national-local articulations.

Agri-food systems, therefore, are understood as the set of activities that contribute to the
production and distribution of food in order to satisfy the food needs of a population. In the case
of FS, as reviewed in the previous section, it refers to the territorial dimension of placing the
interests of local agents, the rural producers, before those of the corporations. Under this principle
are a set of food systems, among them Feagan (2007) recognizes the "alternative food initiatives",
the "civic and democratic agriculture", the "post-productivism", the "short or alternative food
chains", the "quality turn", the "local food systems", among others. In this sense, the initiatives that
interest the research are those that include different types of arrangements between producers and
consumers at a local or regional level (Rivero, 2017). From this approach, alternatives to the
agrifood regime are found in the relocation of food sovereignty strategies and sustainable
development<fnref n="23" />.

In the case of FS in the sense of LVC, as well as in the discursive and agro-production
practice, two main economic strategies are identified, one of production and the other of
commodification. The first corresponds to Agroecology, as a way to control the quality and health
effects of food consumption, as well as to take care of the environment and peasants. This modality
is not easy to implement; it has been identified that technical knowledge and soil preparation, as
well as access to products and knowledge, require structural implementation. As for
commoditization, identified as the SFCs, they have branched out into various strategies to reduce
the links between producers and final consumers. In order to detail these two strategies, the
following is a micro-analysis of these patterns of interest in FS.

3.1.2. Agroecology and Short Food Circuits (SFC)

This implies a local approach that focuses on the resources available in a given territory,

<footnote n="23">²³ Sustainability refers to decentralization, democratization, self-sufficiency and subsidiarity (Feagan, 2007).</footnote>
the development of capacity to take advantage of them and fulfill the production cycle to meet all needs. Sovereignty, consequently, has a dimension of non-dependence on exogenous capital for supply, protecting it from the fluctuations and events of the international economy. However, as Rivero (2017) rightly points out, it does not imply autarky either, inasmuch as what it appeals to is localized production as close as possible to the final consumer. This principle, in environmental terms, refers to the reduction of "food miles", promoting the connectivity of social networks, which has been called embeddedness (Murdoch, Marsden, & Banks, 2000). As developed by Rivero (2017), these social and solidarity-based economic dynamics, in search of alternatives for the development of food systems, have developed two main principles that stand out in sovereign systems: (a) Agroecology and (b) SFCs.

(a) Agroecology as a production system refers to the consideration of the environmental impacts of land use for agricultural production. Thus, it is at the intersection between the disciplines of agronomy and ecology, in the search for a sustainable system that is conscious of the surrounding ecosystems. Thus, it seeks to strengthen and enrich both the elements of production, including the richness of the land, as well as the nutritional quality of the products obtained. In this way, it opposes the intensification of production by industrial extraction technologies and practices, based on monocultures, chemical products, genetic modifications of seeds, among others. It is argued that the ways of enriching soil nutrients and practices may vary geographically, according to the traditions and customs of a given productive sector. It is for this reason that it is considered compatible with the diversity of social, cultural and historical contexts (Rivero, 2017).

(b) On the other hand, SFC for food provision refers to the strategy of reducing the number of intermediaries between the producer-consumer, as well as reducing the energy expenditure involved in transporting products. Consequently, it is directly related to the economies of fair trade, in the reduction of external expenses generated by the added profits and headings of corporate processes. In this exchange, where shorter production chains are involved, trust and communication that motivate the maintenance of these trade links are important. This translates into a wide range that includes ecological awareness, but also health and body care, knowledge and information on agrifood systems and a sense of retribution for producers (COAGRO, 2022).

According to Rivero (2017), the possibility of creating these supply chains depends on the realization of what he has called the three dialectical tensions: (a) cultural, (b) organizational and (c) material (Table 1). Although not exhaustive, they provide elements as analytical guides to alternatives to an agribusiness that is described as individualistic, competitive, consumerist and mercantile.
<table><caption>Table 2: Dialectics in the process of alternative food market chains</caption><thead><tr><td>Cultural</td><td>Organizational</td><td>Material</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Values and motives that defend and define a SFC.</td><td>Types of relationships between stakeholders and their arrangements</td><td>Agro-ecosystem design, modes of production and transport</td></tr><tr><td>Attention to basic needs</td><td>Horizontality and cooperation</td><td>Respecting seasonality and limits of local agroecosystems</td></tr><tr><td>Ethical and political motivations</td><td>Assurance mediated by trust</td><td>Physical proximity</td></tr><tr><td>Stability and replicability</td><td>Relational proximity and direct contact</td><td>Biodiversity management and artisanal elaborations</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Distribution of own productions</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Own elaboration based on Rivero (2017) & Soler and Pérez (2013).

In synthesis, the conceptual frameworks of agrifood regimes and systems provide us with tools to understand the macroeconomic dynamics of the configuration of the modes of capital accumulation from a historical perspective. Agri-food systems, on the other hand, give us an account of the territorial political strategies that emplace FS movements, among which short circuits and agroecological methods of production stand out. In these systems, the revolutionary function of FS in economic-social structures is questioned, as it is pointed out that its main motivation is to reconnect with the state apparatus and the market in a movement. As Edelman (2014) comments, the motivation of many peasants to place themselves under the banner of FS movements is the reestablishment or reconnection with the market, as an alternative re-integration proposal based on small agroecological small-scale producers.

Therefore, the debate is based on whether these FS territorial mechanisms respond to a revolution in the agrifood regime itself, or whether they are localized territorial mechanisms that serve as a tool for assimilation for small and family producers. In this space, the questions, still open, about the insertion of state strategies at this level of production and insertion in the markets are glimpsed. In this sense, Clark (2017) defends the incompatibility of the development of FS models in neodevelopmentalist logics of agroexport models, opening the debate in agrarian and political studies, on the role of public policies and the feasibility of their implementation. It also opens the discussion on the relationship between FS territorial strategies and the programs of international organizations, guided by Food Security. These are the questions addressed in the following section.
## 3.2 Contours of the debate: FS & Food Security

As argued by Edelman, et al. (2014), with respect to FS, insufficient attention has been paid to its dynamic processes, specifically to its connections with other movements in favor of food justice, its interrelation with the discourse of rights, the role of the market and the states in its implementation, as well as its social, political and ecological scope and possibilities in different contexts. Based on this first observation, a contextual and historical review of its origin is presented, placing it in explanatory coordinates with respect to the discourses of international agrarian models. It is in this way that its foundation is distinguished from the articulation of various social movements organized worldwide and in dialectic relation with institutional organizations for food and agriculture throughout history. Likewise, Food Security is important to place as it precedes the origins that have been determined for FS in normative terms, being concepts that are currently intertwined in a recurrent manner.

### 3.2.1. Food Safety: Principles & Objectives

The first record of food regulation as a human right was temporally concomitant with the conceptual delimitation of food security. The right to food is recognized in Article 25 of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, providing the first international reference on the respect, protection and safeguarding of citizens' food needs vis-à-vis the State and other powerful actors (Windfuhr, 2002). Consequently, the term is recognized by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which in its General Comment 12 defines that the Right to Adequate Food (RtAF) (1999) "is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement" (p.2).

The official definition in The State of Food Security, which incorporates the 1974 FAO definition (FAO; IFAD; UNICEF; WFP; WHO, 2021), considers that food security is met when all people have physical, social and economic access to nutritious, safe and sufficient food. This definition focuses on the satisfaction of dietary needs and food preferences to achieve a healthy life. Based on this dimension, "access of food-deficient countries to surplus products, import and export quotas, food aid, agricultural techniques to increase production and irrigation" (Ruiz Almeida, 2012, p.3) have been commonly used as indicators of security.

This characteristic of Food Security comes from the First United Nations World Food Conference, which adopted the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition (FAO, 2013). This declaration includes the "Goals and strategies for food production"
in which it is stated that governments "must accept the goal that, within a decade, no child should go to bed hungry, no family should fear for the next day's bread, and no human being should have his or her future or capacity diminished by malnutrition" (FAO, 1996). The political-economic context of these declarations is in the midst of international pressures for a New International Economic Order, in the midst of the Sahelian famine, and at the height of Third World power, which had recently succeeded in incorporating the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as a pillar of commodity price stabilization (Patel, 2009, p. 664).

Thanks to these efforts, progress in these initiatives is associated with the results of the Green Revolution, which for decades sustained agricultural production above global needs. However, this revolution will also be denounced as the protagonist of deepening inequalities between nations and damage to the environment<fnref n="24" /> (FAO; MCDSE, 2013). In this sense, a small number of agribusiness corporations, such as Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont, have considerably increased their role in agricultural production (Rivero, 2017). According to Econexus and Berne Declaration (2013) the top ten fertilizer companies control 55% of the global market; in livestock breeding, four companies control 99% of chicken breeding; as for pesticides, eleven corporations' control 97.8% of the global market<fnref n="25" />. What remains for small and medium farmers is the purchase of patented plants and seeds, as well as subsidies and technical assistance for the use of chemicals and maintenance.

These initiatives, despite including elements to combat hunger, malnutrition and undernourishment, have focused, to the criticism of several movements and producers, on productivist mechanisms and in terms of quantities. This focus has relegated other frames or regulations on the origin of seeds, plant maintenance processes, the relationship and economic distribution of profits, the relationship with the environment, among others. It is these cultural, economic and political aspects that have led the FS-based movements, which are discussed below.

### 3.2.2. FS as an Alternative Agrifood System

On the other hand, the origin of the FS is not free of debate. Consensus is found in the origins of the Mexican government's program in the 1980s, a decade in which market liberalization and openings to economic restructuring in Latin America became globalized. However, many

<footnote n="24">²⁴ The contribution to climate change with greenhouse gases emitted by agri-food activities represent between 11-15%; land use change and deforestation 15%, food processing, packaging, transportation between 15-20% and organic waste decomposition represents between 3-4% (Rivero, 2017).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Top 10 feed corporations: Charoen Pokphand (CP Group) (Thailand); Cargill (USA); New Hope Group (Taiwan); Land O'Lakes Purina (USA); Tyson Foods (USA); Brazil Foods (Brazil); Nutreco Holding N.V (Netherlands); Zen-noh-Co-operation (Japan); East Hope Group (Taiwan); Human Tangrenshan Group (Taiwan).</footnote>
documents place it as a discipline that was born in the 1970s (FAO, 2013) as a technical concept
that aims to address the problems of access to food linked to globalization processes. Back to the
Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1986-1994) (predecessor of the
World Trade Organization - WTO) (Edelman, et al., 2014), where concrete measures were taken
to liberalize food markets (Rivero, 2017), or to the response of the massive corporations in
formation around the sale of seeds. Another important group of studies locates the consolidation
of the FS concept in 1996, at the Rome World Food Summit, where LVC made its first presentation
of the term as a result of the discussions held by a group of agrarian movements with international
representation in Tlaxcala (Mexico). It was not until 2002, in the forum convened parallel to the
"World Food Summit: five years later", that the International Planning Committee for Food
Sovereignty (IPCFS) was created to elaborate and work in depth on the concept of FS.

In this framework, FS is understood as the agricultural development model that calls for
the return to control over food systems by small local producers (peasants or *campesinos*), who are
placed as the central subject of the agrarian development model. In this way, the foundation is
drawn from the social organizations that coined the term as a principle and ethic of life, which
emerges and is shaped by collective, participatory, popular and progressive processes with respect
to agrifood production (Caro, 2011). It focuses, therefore, on the debate exposed by the
transnational network of LVC which has given body to the contemporary agrarian political
discourses of FS. LVC is founded in 1992 in Managua (Nicaragua) during the celebration of the
Congress of the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG). This congress was organized
in response to the rounds of consolidation of the agro-industrial model materialized in the
ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)<fnref n="26" /> (Rivero, 2017). This initiative
was led by peasant and farmer organizations, which is consolidated a year later in Mons (Belgium),
where representatives from four continents meet and give body to this contesting model against
the processes of mercantile globalization of corporate food strategy.

Currently, this movement is made up of 148 organizations from 69 countries in Africa, North America, Central and South America, Asia and Europe. These meet periodically every 4 years in different parts of the world, with the cities of Tlaxcala, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, Maputo and Jakarta as venues (Rivero, 2017). These organizations have established FS as the *right* of peoples to decide for their own food and agriculture; as well as the protection and management of local agricultural production and trade for sustainable rural development purposes (Edelman, 2014).

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Between 1947 and 1994, the GATT was the forum for negotiating the reduction of customs duties and other barriers to trade liberalization, a predecessor to the 1995 founding of the WTO (Government of the Republic of Ecuador, 2022).</footnote>
Thus, it has succeeded in placing in the discussion a concept of food production that links a variety of economic dimensions, with models of agrarian management, social development, cultural properties and shaping of identities. It is from here that four of its main pillars are delimited: "(a) the right to food, (b) access to productive resources, (c) the incorporation of agroecological production and (d) trade in local markets" (Rivero, 2017, p. 24). From these first postulates, the interest in incorporating small and medium-sized producers into short commodity chains that allow local trade flows and access to resources for production is disaggregated. These first pillars also include an awareness of the impact of agricultural activity on the environment, which is why agroecology techniques are immediately incorporated. Subsequently, in Nyéléni it would be aggregated: "(a) focuses on food for people (b) claims food producers (c) localizes food systems (d) puts control at the local level, (e) builds knowledge and skills and (f) works with nature" (Rivero, 2017, p. 25). In these substantial changes, it is inferred that agricultural production for livestock production is a topic of importance to understand the return to production for human and local consumption. Opening the possibility of production techniques, beyond Agroecology, in terms of compatibility with nature, as well as in the rights and need for access to training and production resources.

The interconnectivity of these dimensions focuses on the interest of guaranteeing universal access to food for all peoples (NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty, 2002), as well as on the promotion of diversified and community-based production. In the last meaning of the Nyéléni Declaration (Mali), LVC (2007) defines FS as: "the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems" (p.1) (emphasis added). As Patel (2009) articulates, the call for peoples to be part of the elaboration and drafting of food policies opens the possibility of expanding the political-philosophical surface of the term. Although the postulates revolve around ideological bases of clear trajectory in defense of local social and natural ecosystems, their meaning has varied substantially over time and in localized or geographic practice. In this conceptual openness lies the strength of its proposal, as well as the difficulty of its delimitation. Its modification over time and its over-definition, paradoxically, makes it difficult to interpret. Likewise, the result of this exploration, according to the same author, has masked some of its main contradictions and dialectical relationships. As expressed by Edelman, et al. (2014): "what is clear amidst this cacophony of views is that visions of food sovereignty have evolved and that no consensus exists, a reality which many activists and scholars see as a virtue, a strength and a reflection and acknowledgment of on-the-ground diversity" (p. 914).
The practical implications of the characteristics and definitions of this production system are reflected in research on agrifood *production, consumption* and *distribution* chains. In this field, the dependence on foreign capital and imports of food, inputs, know-how and technologies, especially from less developed nations (Heath, 1985); the role of national control and state strategies through social programs and public policies; as well as the insertion and relationship between national and international trade networks in terms of competitiveness and the need for self-sufficiency (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011) are discussed. In particular, within these studies and from the FS approach, the study of production chains that support the *fair* use and management of water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity; land, water, credit and technical assistance is advocated (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011).

Along this path, a body of theory has delved into the indispensable social and material conditions that allow the implementation of these founding principles of FS. These so-called *preconditions* appeal to political and social models free of oppressions and inequalities, which refer to the models of social, political and economic justice of its foundations. Not without repercussions in the political language that surrounds its conformation, by virtue of which the dimensions of equity based on gender, race, class or generation have been located (Edelman, 2014) (Patel, 2009). Thus, "the language of food sovereignty inserts itself into international discourse by making claims on *rights* and democracy, the cornerstones of liberal governance" (Patel, 2009, p. 665) (emphasis added). This inflection point is of importance to understand the connectivity between agrarian development models and their conjugation with state regimes, human rights and the intersectional perspective. Taken up in recent decades by civil society organizations, state (McKay, Nehring, & Walsh-Dilley, 2014) and international agencies (FAO, 2022), an analytical and critical niche of interest has been created in the connections between public policies of agrarian development models and their relationship with a state guarantor of human rights.

In this area of analysis, emphasis has been placed on the interconnectivity of the previously mentioned dimensions of FS with equity issues, materialized in the work and symbolic and material positioning of the IPWs. Among them, research has been invested in the construction of citizenship, access to productive resources, links with economies for life and care, as well as their link with ancestral practices and knowledge (Fueres, et al., 2012). Consequently, the inclusion of FS in legal and constitutional bodies, with broad contemporary repercussions on development models and consequent state economic policies in agriculture (McKay, Nehring, & Walsh-Dilley, 2014). Not surprisingly, LA is one of the most advanced regions in the inclusion of FS in legislation, public policies and in regional and international instruments (Zeledón, Parada, & Fonteles, 2016).
Indeed, as an echo of the Food Summit held in 2002, in contexts of global food crises (Zeledón, Parada, & Fonteles, 2016), the concept of FS is incorporated in the legal compendium of Venezuela (2008), Nicaragua (2009); and in the Constitution of Ecuador (2008), Bolivia (2009) and Cuba (2020).

The process by which Ecuador was the first country in LA to introduce the FS in its constituent body, concomitant to the democratic popular election of Rafael Correa in 2007 (Sachs, 2014), gives a glimpse of the aspirations of agrarian development models in the conformation of a *new* paradigm of public administration. This proposal was based on the concept of "Good Living" or "Sumak Kawsay" in Quichua language, which interprets the fullness of life by the internal harmony of people, between the material and the spiritual, between communities and with nature (León, 2015). These concepts, rooted in the Andean cosmovision, have been the subject of an important critical theoretical body, in which political interpretations in studies on power, indigenous peoples and national elites are put under review. Similarly, it has been the bastion of the so-called Citizen Revolution. This revolution, according to Sachs (2014) and retaking the defining principles of the FS, reflects the discursive and political-partisan intention to break with capitalist ideology. This term and these principles were adopted in the new Constitution of 2008, in which the FS is defined, according to Rebaï et al. (2016), as a strategic objective in the formation of development networks and sources of production. It is from the postulates of FS and Food Security that the antagonism and convergences in their approaches to production, trade relations, methods and access to resources, among others, begin to be glimpsed. Therefore, in the following section, this correlation is explored in greater depth.

### 3.2.3. Conceptual integration: dialectic relationship between FS & Food Safety

The interaction between both concepts responds to the level of governance in which they have been developed and implemented (Moncayo Miño, 2017). Insofar as Food Security has been associated with the advance of international organizations and state apparatuses in the promotion of technical advances in production and distribution; in contrast to the bottom-up gears that signify the emergence of FS, standard bearer of a discourse that appeals to a set of voices and movements existing and organized in modes of production that call for values of justice, equity and identity. This aspect being central to apprehend the objective of our study, by understanding the roles and conditions of the IPW in the constructions and political participation of its conformation (McMichael, 2009), especially in the Ecuadorian case study, as a research tool to put into practice the theoretical basis.
Thus, in its first approach, FS emerges as a policy proposal to focus on the social sphere of
production, emphasizing the need for partnerships with indigenous peoples, artisanal fisheries,
sustainable food systems. As well as to the production of livelihoods based on *family farming* and
the right of peoples to feed themselves according to their traditions and customs (FAO; MCDSE,
2013). A different emphasis is given to the ways in which it is produced, in terms of the distances
that food travels<fnref n="27" />, the substances used in its growth and maintenance, prices and income
distribution, among other variables. These items reflect a social and ecological awareness that
shows the different interactions between these production and development models and
fundamental rights. As Patel (2009) remarks: "as far as the terms of food security go, it is entirely
possible for people to be food secure in prison or under a dictatorship" (p.665). Therefore, the
institutional difference between food security and FS lies in two main levels, the first in the role of
the state and the macro-micro level in which programs derived from its principles are implemented.

While Food Security is associated with national regulations on access to productive
resources and the incorporation of extraterritorial obligations; FS appeals to individual and group
mechanisms vis-à-vis institutions, generating a legal basis to force the State to address the problems
of malnutrition or access to food internally (Ruiz Almeida, 2012), as well as a territorial recognition
of the diversity of actors and interests, including those of IPW. These actions refer, within the
framework of their foundation, to deploy all tools to sustain the growing food consumption and
counteract fluctuations in production and prices for small producers (FAO, 1996). Although this
research focuses on FS as a political and practical tool, its connection in Ecuador with international
social movements has pointed out the challenge of articulating the role of food as an instrument
for the development of the food system. Likewise, the Coordinating Ministry of Social
Development, Latin America and the Caribbean without Hunger Initiative, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (2013) have pointed out in their report on the nutritional and
agricultural productive situation that the challenge lies in articulating the strengths of Food Security
and FS, as a non-exclusive set.

In this way, a holistic, harmonious and non-sectorized vision is promoted to generate
opportunities for the eradication of hunger in the world, with FS as an *alternative* to the market.
Despite the fact that several researchers suggest that the opposition between Food Security and FS
constitutes an unproductive "global conflict" in defense of agribusiness (Schanbacher, 2010 cited
by Edelman, et al., 2014); as well as the positions that suggest the incorporation of FS in the legal

<footnote n="27">²⁷ In addition to the carbon footprint produced by agro-exports, these exchanges are related to the beginning of European mercantile colonialism, which in the discourse of certain social movements has perpetuated inequalities in exchange, land distribution and social inequalities (Patel, 2009).</footnote>
and constitutional charters "has done relatively little to blunt the country's powerful agro-industrial interests" (McKay, Nehring, & Walsch-Dilley, 2014). In view of these dilemmas and the difficulties previously mentioned in defining FS as a conceptual framework for research, the definitions of Wittman (2011) and Altieri (2009) are taken up again for the purposes of this research. These authors work on FS as a right of local peoples, countries or regions to control their own food systems, which includes markets, ecological resources, food crops and production methods; as well as the ability of people in each territory to control their own capacities with respect to their own cultural and productive contextual diversity.

Thus, FS is understood not as a final result, but as a political space and terrain of disputes and influences on food and agricultural policies (Henderson, 2016). To these delimitations we add the notions exposed by Chaifetz & Jagger (2014) on the relationship of FS with Agroecology, which according to Cuellar & Sevilla (2013) provides a scientific approach to the theoretical-political discourse. Therefore, it opens to the study of the models developed in the territories in relation to governments, in a social dimension that incorporates the "new fronts" (Rivero, 2017) of the local dimension, such as farmers' markets, producers' cooperatives, urban or rural community gardens; as well as new actors such as local governments, citizens, urban populations, NGOs, Associations, etc. As Rivero (2017) points out, from this approach, local *food regimes* are the field and an analytical tool that studies food sovereignty on a territorial scale, taking into account its own characteristics.

At this level of analysis and in consideration of the delimitation of FS both in the LVC version, in the modeling of its principles, as well as in its interaction with Food Security, the interest of investigating the guiding principles directed towards IPW is identified. As previously reviewed, it is this population group that is both at the center of interest in policies with a gender perspective in the implementation of international organizations, as well as in positions of greater vulnerability to malnutrition, access to resources, among others. Therefore, the following is an in-depth analysis of the relationship between FS and GS.

### 3.3 Relationship between FS & GS

The intersectional perspective is a pillar of the research to understand the multidimensional nature of FS as an agrifood system and local strategy. In this sense, it has highlighted the socio-demographic dimensions and the relationship with political regimes, specifically those of SFC strategy and Agroecology with the processes of democracy and social justice. In this way, the leading political and social role played by IPW in various processes in defense of the territory, natural resources and the political debate on their rights is highlighted (Aguinaga Barragán,
### 3.3.1 FS & Human Rights

This protagonism on the part of rural women<fnref n="28" /> contrasts with the living conditions of exclusion, especially for women with fewer resources, indigenous and rural women. As Aguinaga et al. (2019) emphasize, "there is an inescapable weight between the dynamics of the social reproduction of life that have implied that women are the poorest and most excluded because they are indigenous, rural, poor and women, and, at the same time, those who have most driven the processes of social resistance in defense of identity and territorial participation" (p. 229). Which includes processes, on the one hand, of domination that appeal to the theories of the sex/gender system and patriarchal systems of socialization; and on the other, to strategies in the public and private spheres for the defense of life sustainability interests, structural practices that condition their own ethnic and social existence (Aguinaga Barragán, Astudillo Bravo, & López Pazmiño, 2019).

These conditions, in the theories and reports of FAO (2022), UN (2020), among others, are combined with roles in the reproduction of life and functions within the family and community. In these aspects, a double dynamic is identified in the lives of these women, since on the one hand they are assigned roles to fulfill within the home, the family and the community, which are related to the struggle for their recognition and relevance; on the other hand, the struggle for their insertion in the public sphere as defenders of spheres that go beyond their reproductive roles, but also of productive ethics and principles in defense of their symbolic, material and financial resources. This double journey would be crossed, according to the argumentation of critical ecological feminisms, by the essentialist discourse in the construction of the role of women in both spheres, which are built around the image of the fertile woman, creator of life, caregiver and protector.

The incorporation of FS as a fundamental principle of gender justice is a path that other organizations, such as LVC and the *Nuestro Mundo no se Vende* movement, have adopted as one of their main banners. Likewise, studies carried out in the region highlight that the inescapable distribution of power in households' places women at the forefront of the problems derived from hunger and malnutrition (Vivas 2012). Therefore, it is understood from these fundamentals, that claiming FS without addressing the equitable issues of production distribution is a contradiction

<footnote n="28">²⁸ As a result of the Political Meeting of Diverse Rural Women United for Good Living and Food Sovereignty (EPMRDBVS) (2011), rural women define themselves as peasant and indigenous women, rural women, women of the countryside, diverse rural women, fisherwomen, mangrove and shell collectors, caretakers of the family and Pachamama, farmers, defenders of the forest, food sovereignty and defenders of life; small and medium-sized producers.</footnote>
inherent to the proposed agrifood system (LVC, 2021), so that addressing gender justice in FS
becomes a moral issue, if not the very core of its conformation.

3.3.2 FS & Feminist Movements

Beyond this connection between factors, which appeal to an ideal that is not configured in specific geographies, but is based on the understanding of the principles of FS, ecological feminism dives into the matrix or matrices of oppression. It argues, from a critique of rationalism, that violence and the exercise of power over natural resources or the ecosystem itself are based on the same principles of domination that condition legitimacy in power relations and in the experiential construction of bodies and genders (Portman 2018).

These interconnections between systems of oppression are linked at different levels with
those named in the previous section. The connection between sexism, racism, and land distribution
in a shared colonial past in the Latin American region interconnects with the dual idea of meanings
and borders. As Portman (2018) argues, the separations between human/nature, male/female, are
composed of a Cartesian matrix of knowledge, which has been historically constituted in historical
intrinsics and materialized in nationalized interpretations of power. This same principle is echoed
by feminist environmental ethics, which sees in this causality of thought what it calls "the logic of
domination" (Triana 2017). As Triana (2017) points out, the critique of the core of rationalism is
based on the deconstruction of the theoretical assumptions of duality, but also of causality and
complementarity reflected in the economic theories of the "globalized regime", which assume the
superiority of human characteristics over nature itself, as well as of the superiority of values
associated with masculinity, to the detriment of feminized categories. Outside the dominant system
that institutes economic production as a commercial game of commodity production, FS from a
gender perspective manages to bridge the gap between economic activities and ecological and social
contexts with a commitment to sustainability.

Throughout this discourse, what is proposed is to rethink the hierarchical relations and the
way in which bridges of discussion are built between the different thematic axes. When speaking,
therefore, of FS, this presupposes a subject that has the possibility of exercising power, which is
based on the principles of social justice, ethical relations and the dismantling, ultimately, of the
region's insertion into neocolonial economic codes. This relationship can be addressed through the
case studies conducted by Mi Young Park and White (2015), who analyze the gendered and classed
possibilities of farmers themselves to engage in alternative food production practices. What their
studies reveal is that the conditions for economic alternatives are closely linked to the resources
available to sustain them, knowing that local reordering and the interaction between the local-national-international has an important weight in the sustainability of the programs. Furthermore, beyond the political difficulties, which could involve the role of the State, women's groups are immersed in patriarchal life practices, which generate difficulties in access to land, businesses and opportunities for incorporation into trade or production.

On the other hand, especially within LVC, a feminist movement has developed since 1970. This internal organization, which has been called the revolution within the revolution, remains articulated through the International Women's Assemblies, where Peasant and Popular Feminism was promulgated as a guiding and mobilizing principle. This initiative is armed with publications on conceptual delimitation of its terms, principles of action, FS demands with a gender perspective and observations on the need to integrate new demands in the Declaration of Peasant Rights (Article 4) (LVC, 2022). Peasant and Popular Feminism is defended as a political tool against all types of oppression and violence, in the confrontation of patriarchy in peasant practices. In this regard, "in the final declaration [of the VI Conference of LVC in Jakarta, Indonesia] they emphasized the struggle to end injustice in the world, and this involves breaking the circle of poverty and giving the relevant place to peasants to ensure sufficient and balanced food for the people, recognizing the central role of women in food production" (LVC, 2021, p. 15).

Likewise, in the same declarations issued by these Assemblies (see Annex to LVC, 2021), the relationship between FS and GS is understood in two ways: (a) understanding women's participation as fundamental to build and maintain sovereignty and (b) FS as a political space where indigenous, rural and peasant women have found to make their voices and demands resonate. As stated in the Jakarta Declaration (2013): "Our [women's] struggle and action for Food Sovereignty has given us women the opportunity to make visible our historical participation in the development of food systems in the world and the role we have played since the invention of agriculture, in the collection and propagation of seeds, in the protection and safeguarding of biodiversity and genetic resources, placing us as one of the main affective, ethical and social pillars".

In synthesis, the integration of FS with GS is based on two main principles, the first as a prerequisite of sovereignty, the struggle against any type of violence and inequity, which appeals to a discourse of human rights, democracy and social justice, since "it is not possible to think about food production without deeply questioning the conditions in which it is produced, and without recognizing and making visible the knowledge that has been part of the productive systems for years" (Agroecology for Food Sovereignty, Action for Biodiversity, 2020). The other, the FS as a space for channeling the voices of politicized feminist peasant movements, which integrate a task
of self-perception, vindication of positions, demand for change. In both cases, the domination of
a patriarchal system that has meant that women in their identity intersectionality - rural, indigenous,
diverse, etc. - have been conditioned in their possibilities of accessing their demands or have been
placed in situations of vulnerability. The FS is a political space that takes as its basis ethical and
moral values that channels/constructs the voices of these movements. In this sense, it is considered
pertinent to deepen the relationship between these two concepts, in their development and
dialogue, which is discussed in depth in the following chapter.
# 4. Territorial development: FS & GS

The following is a systematization of research at the international, national and provincial-cantonal (local) levels to delimit the development and correlation between FS and GS, in frameworks of analysis of economic policies and their applicability. At each level, the contributions that are rescued for the conformation of the body of this research are highlighted. In this way, a search is carried out by level of production, by thematic of economic policies in the field of FS and GS. Ultimately, it contributes to the answer to the first research question, in understanding why IPW are agents of implementation in FS agri-food systems.

At the international level, FS from a gender perspective has been investigated especially in countries where agricultural production represents an important pillar for their economies and urban-rural relational dynamics. It is therefore a center of production research directed towards LA, in studies from an abundant methodological, theoretical and conceptual variety. For this reason, an effort has been made to identify those publications that contribute substantially to this research, considering that qualitative secondary sources are the main source of information. The main finding in the regional and national literature is the approach to economic policies on FS with a gender perspective, their delimitation and conditions of IPW in the case studies.

## 4.1. FS & IPW Approaches

In this sub-section, the research and findings of the IPW under the FS agri-food system, both at the Latin American and Ecuadorian levels, are discussed in depth. The research presented here meets the thematic criteria of this dissertation, as well as the following criteria: a. it contributes to the development of tools to understand the experiences, *conditions and roles* of IPW, b. it provides theoretical and methodological tools or innovative conclusions of analysis in the field, or c. it represents characteristics found in a set of approaches and results, which is why it is taken as an example of this set.

### 4.1.1 Perspective from and on Latin America

In this sense, Ladio (2021) from a qualitative ethnographic approach carries out an ethical and emic review of her publications concerning IPW of Mapuche-Tehuelche origin and FS in Northern Patagonia (Argentina). This publication is of interest because it compiles a learning curve for the inclusion of the gender perspective in qualitative methodologies. Especially by articulating guiding strategies that systematize efforts to evidence *habitus* in what are called patriarchal biases or misconceptions. In order to make visible the substantial role of women, in methodological and/or
conceptual terms, the triangle of bias is used, which represents a trilogy to be avoided: 1) validation of existing hierarchies (invisibilization), 2) deficiency in examining differences (over-generalization) and/or 3) appeal to double standards (simplification) (p. 10). Based on these first principles, it is taken into consideration a priori that communities are not homogeneous and are affected by historical biases and contextualized conformation. Therefore, we appeal to an intersectional view, including social stratifications by ethnicity (socio-cultural), social class (economic) and age (generational). Consequently, the writing is oriented to the understanding of gender differentiation, which accounts for the complexity of relationships. These observations contribute to rethinking the consequences of bias in the selection of participants and the exclusion of the possibility of generalizing practices to the whole population without distinction. In conclusion, maintaining a gender perspective evokes the integration of variables that account for the cross-cutting and concomitant oppressions of the populations subject to research.

In this sense, González Torres & Pachón Ariza (2022) conducted research in Inzá, Cauca (Colombia) on the relationship between the rights of peasants and FS. It takes up the point of view of peasant women to study the assurance of decent living conditions in the countryside. The approach to the study is of interest, since its strategy is based on the link with the Women's Committee of the Peasant Association of Inzá Tierradentro (ACIT). It is from this link that she manages to compile what she calls the dialogue of knowledge, through which she identifies the community works that improve the conditions of dignified life, of which its communal organization is fundamental to sustain productive links. The methodology is qualitative based on inductive logic, which allowed them to formulate a design of exploratory and descriptive methods of facts and social realities (González Torres & Pachón Ariza, 2022). From this compilation, they interprets the variables studied by means of correlations and associations. For the development of this proposal, a case study is approached; in the contribution of semi-structured interviews, semi-structured collective interviews, open interviews, a focus group and a participant workshop. Thus, in the same methodology of analysis, it already places women producers at the center of their agency, by analyzing, from their situated knowledge, the difficulties and conditions of their existence. From the results obtained, which reflect the problem of access to land and recognition of their work, among others, it creates a localized reference point for a comparative study with the institutional and organizational discourses of their interest.

Moreover, it is of interest in this research not only his approach strategy, but also the one concerning the construction of categories of analysis, that is to say, in the process of operationalization. To this end, he reviews the texts published in the *Nyeleni Forum* for FS, from
which he extracts all references that allow him to define and form an explanatory body of the rights
of peasant populations and rural workers of the world (González Torres & Pachón Ariza, 2022).
In this way, it is identified that LVC references have not only served as contributions to the
understanding of FS, but also as a reference point of analysis that guides the creation of dimensions
and categories of analysis. By being able to manage a reflexive base, a channel is created for
comparative studies, both at regional and local levels. Although these two contributions of the
authors mentioned above are of interest, their shortcomings are also identified. The first lies in the
need to complement the narrative strategies of the actors with census data, since the data collection
techniques are based on productivist operationalizations of agricultural production<fnref n="29" />. The second
lies in the generalization, previously pointed out by Ladio (2021), in the invisibility of the diversity
of actors, in this case by gender, in the analytical dimensions of "peasant populations" and "rural
workers of the world" in the main postulates of the documents issued by the organizations linked
to FS, both at national and international levels.

In this way, the research by Ruiz & Benavidez (2021) analyzed the inequalities and
contradictions that arise in Paraguay with reference to the application of public policies. These
authors refer to the actions of the State and International Organizations in the distribution of
wealth and land, which account for the concepts of security and FS. To this end, they identify key
actors, legal frameworks and conceptual definitions derived from them. As a methodological
framework, unlike the research of González Torres & Pachón Ariza (2021), it performs a
methodological triangulation. It uses the methodology of research, reflection, participatory action,
with in-depth interviews with key referents and a review of the agricultural statistical data used
from the National Agricultural Census (CAN) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG).
This research shows that the contradictions or inconsistencies between the public policies
promoted in Paraguay have direct repercussions on the possibilities of action of the agro-producing
populations. Women are the main ones affected, as they are involved in reproductive activities that
are not considered part of the gears of economic production and in precarious conditions due to
lack of land tenure or material resources on their behalf.

As a whole, the review of regional studies on FS and gender contributes to: (a) the use of a
triangular methodology, (b) the approach strategy is through case studies, specifically through
associations or organizations that work with or are made up of rural women, and (c) the strategy is
taken up again in the creation and substantiation of the categories of analysis. Therefore, a review
of economic policies on FS is proposed, in order to highlight those axes and dimensions that are

<footnote n="29">²⁹ In this regard, the FAO (2021) food security indicators or analysis tools can be used.</footnote>
useful and give way to the operationalization, which is the basis for the interviews and analysis. This review of regional research on peasant women, IPW and FS is relevant due to the lack of statistical references. Both in terms of monitoring FS as a quantifiable or qualifiable term, as well as in census tools that account for the specific situation of IPW. The common characteristic is the invisibility of the variables that explain the livelihoods of their economic activities, which explain their central role in agricultural production dynamics. From this point of view, this leads to dislocated data that show a growing responsibility but less ownership or access to material resources in the IPW.

### 4.1.2. The paradigmatic case of Ecuador

At the national level, two main axes of analysis are identified: research on narratives of political vindication in the positioning of women in FS processes; and a branch of research applied to the evaluation of public policies in case studies and technical evaluation.

In the first of these axes, the book entitled *Food Sovereignty and Women* (2013), published by the Institute of Ecuadorian Studies, UN Women and the Assembly of Popular and Diverse Women of Ecuador, stands out. This book compiles a variety of articles that vindicate, from multiple angles, Andean, popular and everyday feminisms. They place peasant women at the center of discussions on inequalities in access to resources (land, water, productive resources, etc.); in the front line of impact on changes in economic policies (dollarization of the economy), as well as in the node of resistance, characterized as anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist. In the latter, they are articulated against the processes of commodification of the agro-industry and its effects on nature, corporealities and traditions. Thus, issues such as the economies of care, bodily autonomy, appropriation of productive and reproductive activities, in the fulfillment of women in their multiplicity of roles, are maintained.

The legitimate positionings of the researchers in these axes of analysis obtain an echo in the research conducted by Logroño, Borja Naranjo, & Estrella Valdivieso (2018). These authors applied themselves to evidencing the epistemic difficulties or blindnesses that place women in conditions of inequity. They state that the public policies of the 2012-2015 period do not recognize specific needs, "which has a negative impact on their quality of life, and on the development of their capacities and potentialities" (p.8) (own translation). Based on these statements, we analyze how the gender perspective has been addressed in Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (TARE) in Ecuador, both in its legislation and regulatory frameworks, as well as in the procedures and methodological guidelines. The main objective is to contribute to the development, autonomy
and empowerment of rural women, who are identified as responsible for food sovereignty and security. To this end, they use a qualitative methodology, being of interest for this research the search and analysis of documents and bibliographic research. They systematize "(i) Reference framework on rural women and gender, (ii) Documents, studies and technical reports on ATER for rural women, (iii) Public policies related to ATER for rural women, (iv) National regulatory framework, (v) Case studies and (vi) Accountability and evaluation reports on ATER" (p.10). Based on this initial analysis, the research is deepened by interviews with rural women leaders and representatives of several institutions, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture and Fisheries; the National Council for Gender Equality and international cooperation (FAO-Brazil).

In this same line of research is the work of Aguinaga Barragán, Astudillo Bravo, & López Pazmiño (2019), who investigate the situation of Ecuadorian indigenous and peasant women in relation to their living conditions, in the general impact of public policy, national and international regulations and the dynamics of territorial participation. Temporally, it is framed in the years 2011 and 2015, years of the Government of Rafael Correa, of which it concludes had a positive impact on public policies of social reproduction of life. Although the levels of precariousness are maintained, as well as those of social and economic exclusion. Therefore, the authors conclude that the levels of equity vis-à-vis the State and society continue to be a political, economic and social debt. The first characterization of indigenous peasant women is highlighted, as well as the delimitation of the study based on governmental mandates as a study measure for the application of public policies in economic-agricultural matters.

In studies focused on IPW, we find the research of De Veintimilla Donoso (2021), who investigates public health policies in Ecuador in the period 2007-2013. He focuses specifically on indicators related to food and nutrition, which reveal inequities and health problems. In this way, it affirms that the strategic axis of the policies to guarantee the Good Living with FS, contrasts with the real conditions of social reproduction of families. It also analyzes the factors that affect these populations in the north of the Ecuadorian highlands in the strengthening of FS and the formulation of economic alternatives based on family production and the promotion of agroecology. Through this first approach, it is argued the importance of investigating and focusing research on indigenous populations, which represent not only a high percentage in the rural environment and in agricultural production, but also populations with precariousness indexes, poor nutrition and unsatisfied needs. As supported by Peralta, Mejía, & Gavidia (2020), when stating that in the parishes of Chimborazo "there are no individual, family or collective opportunities that
support the food sovereignty of our peoples” (p. 411).

On the other hand, in a second area of analysis are the GS, focused on feminized bodies in the analytical category of women. According to UN Women (2022) in its report on Ecuador in regional publications in Latin America and the Caribbean, important economic, social and cultural gaps are still identified. One of these gaps is that of gender equality; according to the Human Development Report, prepared by UNDP, the Gender Inequality Index, placed Ecuador in 2012 at 0.442 (UN Women, 2022). On the other hand, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) of Ecuador, rural women guarantee 60% of food production through productive diversification and crop rotation. In this regard, the MAG developed the National Agricultural Strategy for Rural Women, which aims to develop tools and studies to make visible, encourage and promote the work of women, that is, to incorporate the gender approach. Among the latest initiatives aimed at rural women producers is the partnership between FAO and the Alliance of Wives of Heads of State (ALMA). The latter, with the presence of Rocío Moreno, president *ad honorem* of the *Toda una Vida Plan*, organized the First Meeting "Super Rural Women" (2021), in which more than 400 regional representatives participated and from which the credits of the same name emerged. These credits are available to women engaged in agricultural activities, whether in family gardens or on farms. Likewise, in response to the pandemic, the program "Rural Women, Women with Rights" was launched, which "intended to highlight the work of rural women during the health emergency. In Ecuador, rural women guaranteed the provision of food on a national scale, through the *AgroTienda Ecuador* strategy and the marketing of 27,383 baskets of agricultural products, which went directly to consumers' homes, with all health safety measures" (Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, 2022).

In the form of systematization, the inquiry in national research contributes in (a) the importance of documentary search and analysis, as well as in bibliographic research, which allows the delimitation of key actors. Likewise, in the channeling of in-depth interviews in (b) the authorities of the organizations mapped in advance, as qualitative resources of interest. As for the population of interest for the semi-structured interviews, (c) the relevance of IPW in terms of participation in food production processes is highlighted. Finally, we address (d) the delimitation of the times of study by means of changes in governmental mandates and turning points in national economic policies. It also shows that the IPW is considered, both by the actions of the Ecuadorian government and by the observations of international organizations, as a cornerstone of agricultural production. Thus, their difficulties in accessing material resources were recognized, and funds and targeted credit activities were created. Their impact or the final evaluation of their success is
unknown. Therefore, we can conclude that women occupy *roles*, at the national level, both in the productive territorial sphere and in the economic gears of agriculture.

## 4.2 FS models in Ecuador

From this first approach to the situations of the IPW in Ecuador, linked to local production systems, the construction of the FS in political and economic terms is explored in depth. The first sub-section explores the process of conformation and discussion of the definition and integration of the FS in the ANC, its path towards the different actors that shaped it and finally the enactment of the LORSA. The second sub-section reviews the judicial framework that intervenes, in one way or another, in agrarian policies and in the implementation of the FS at the territorial level.

### 4.2.1 Social actors and LORSA

Taking up the previous approaches, the description of FS as an inherently multidimensional concept is justified. Thus, this movement, accompanied by LVC, has been the most relevant conceptual aspect in the conceptual and practical delimitation of FS. However, in the case of Ecuador, apparent mechanisms have been created to build their own action frameworks. In this regard, the principles of citizen participation have been taken up again, notably in the design of the new food policies in the ANC. As a break with the agrarian reform laws of 1964 and 1973, which were produced in periods of dictatorship, in negotiations between state representatives and large rural landowners' associations, with the presence of traditional political parties and banks.

These were the antecedents to the developmentalist and export-oriented pretensions carried out by the Durán Ballén government with the issuance of the Agricultural Development Law of 1994, which was based on the 1992 Mexican law of the same name (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011). This law encouraged, according to the reaction and response from local peasant movements, the reconcentration of land and the promotion of agribusiness, which led to the organization of a movement in resistance and response to these initiatives. It is under this historical scenario that, in the 2008 constitution, the majority of social leaders, leaders and professionals of the diverse tendencies of the Ecuadorian left<fnref n="30" /> (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011).

Within this Assembly, organized by working groups, Table 6, Equity and Social Inclusion, made up of 13 assembly members, was assigned the responsibility of processing, drafting and

<footnote n="30">³⁰ According to Muñoz (2008), more than one thousand delegations of organizations and institutions attended the Constituent Assembly. It was through forums, workshops, itinerant tables, reception of proposals, internet, among others, that more than one hundred thousand people were brought together.</footnote>
presenting the section of the FS. Within it, a sub-group called Property, Investment and Food Sovereignty was organized, which carried out the task of regrouping the proposals around the delimitation of the FS for the Constitution, being formed by Pedro de la Cruz, president of the table, Vinicio Calle and Salomón Fadul. No members or representatives of corporate actors actively participated in this discussion, only delegates from the food companies PRONACA and Supermaxi. This low representativeness has been justified by the generalized attrition of the owners' unions and the context of disrepute towards political parties (Restrepo-Ochoa, 2013). The FAO, the Central Government, MAGAP, the Ministry for the Coordination of Social Development (MCDS) and the Legal Secretariat of the Presidency were also present.

The political position of the cabinet delegates, participants and followers of the conversations is presented in the following table of institutional actors and their main arguments:

<table><caption>Table 3: Political positioning of delegates vis-à-vis the FS (2007-2008)</caption><thead><tr><td>Section</td><td>Position</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES)</td><td>Support for the FS thesis</td></tr><tr><td>Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAGAP)</td><td>Defense and promotion of production chains of large agro-industrial and distribution companies.</td></tr><tr><td>Ministry for the Coordination of Social Development (MCDS)</td><td>Defense of agribusiness as a promoter of the economy and employment.</td></tr><tr><td>National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES)</td><td>Oscillation between Food Security and FS proposals.</td></tr><tr><td>National Confederation of Indigenous and Black Peasant Organizations (FENOCIN)</td><td>Presentation of theses elaborated on the FS that were used as the basis for the Working Table. In favor of land distribution, credit, training, social organization, SFCs and seed recovery.</td></tr><tr><td>National Confederation of Peasant Social Security Affiliates - National Peasant Coordinating Committee<sup>31</sup> (CONFESUNASSC-CNC)</td><td>Participant with FENOCIN in the presentation of the brochure "Proposal from the social organizations for the ANC".</td></tr><tr><td>Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)</td><td>Observer of the discussions, promoter of the principles of Food Security.</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Rosero García, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel (2011).

Table 3 shows that the actors involved in shaping the definition and frameworks for action of agrifood systems was a highly complex social dispute, in which not only arguments and levels

<footnote n="31">31 It is a member of the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones de Campo (CLOC) and LVC.</footnote>
of organization, but also political contexts, which led to certain presentation dynamics, played a role. By way of representation, Table 4 shows the box of social actors:

<table><caption>Table 4: Social Actors in the definition of the FS in the NCA (2007-2008)</caption><thead><tr><th>Social Actors</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><ul><li>Colectivo Agrario, made up of the Centro Andino de Formación de Liderazgos Sociales -Cafolis-, Fian, Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos -IEE-, Intermón Oxfam -IO-, Heifer Ecuador and the Sistema de Investigación de la Política Agraria del Ecuador -Sipae-.</li><li>National Federation of Peasant, Indigenous and Black Organizations - FENOCIN-.</li><li>National Federation of Free Industrial, Peasant and Indigenous Workers of Ecuador -FENACLE-.</li><li>National Confederation of Peasant Social Security Confeunass-Cnc.</li><li>National Campesino Coordinating Committee -Cnc-Eloy Alfaro</li><li>Ecuadorian Federation of Indians -Fei-.</li><li>Council of Indigenous Evangelical Peoples and Federations of Ecuador -FEINE-.</li><li>Agrarian Network composed of national peasant organizations.</li><li>Research System on the Agrarian Problems of Ecuador -SIPAE-.</li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel (2011).

As can be inferred from the social and institutional actors previously exposed, the opposition of interests oscillated between the support to agribusiness as a source of employment and development in rural areas, the will to introduce Food Security in the proposals, the will to combine the latter with FS and the positions, especially from the articulation of indigenous peasant movements in coordination or training with LVC, to promulgate the principles of FS. Regarding the levels of organization and presence, a greater number of social, peasant and indigenous organizations were identified. This factor differentiates it from the negotiations previously carried out in the agrarian reforms of past governments and decades. The majority of participation comes from a base of territorial organization. Likewise, participation is understood in this paper not only as presence in the discussions and negotiations, but also in the reflection of the positioning in the result of the writings and resolutions.

Through the Working Groups, the organization of the ANC and the proposals received for the definition of the FS, the discussion reached a culminating point in mid-April 2007, when "they made an effort to understand the new approach to food sovereignty and produced a proposal with echoes of the agrarian policies of the seventies but with a clear will to advance the strategic interests of peasants in relation to land, credit, technical assistance, marketing, recovery and defense of seeds" (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011). Regalado Villaroel, 2011, p. 90). Despite these efforts and the written proposals of each of the parties, which were synthesized and placed under discussion and renegotiation on multiple occasions, the final text was never known in the public arena.
Despite these agreements, and at the urging of the president of Mesa 6, this version was discarded at the last minute and in its place was placed a text supposedly<fnref n="32" /> sent by the President of the Republic (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011). To this movement, it is narrated, the president of the Republic spoke directly with the president of the Assembly, to add the declaration of Ecuador free of transgenics and to incorporate access to land for peasants. These actions triggered reactions from peasant and indigenous organizations, as they did not reflect the proposals and content that had been arduously discussed. The main complaints were the modifications to the proposals of the social movements and the observation that the new text left the doors open to agribusiness, food imports, agrofuels and the ambiguity of the State's obligations (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011).

This denounced "light version" was given a counter-proposal, articulated by the call of the FENOCIN to different social organizations, including women's organizations and development centers. The text that was agreed upon after the sessions held at the FENOCIN facilities is entitled as the "Quito consensus". In this consensus, after profound disagreements among the same social movements, a basis is agreed upon that vindicates state obligations, self-sufficiency of healthy and culturally appropriate food, recognition of small and medium production property, agroecological technologies, free exchange of seeds and public purchases (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011). These are the same social actors involved in the FS constituent policies that were presented in the debate on the LORSA. Since this law is the very tool for applying the principles of agrarian development linked to the FS, the MAGAP was given the task of writing the basic text, to be worked on by the Interinstitutional Commission formed by the MCDS and the Ministry of Economic Coordination (MCE). Likewise, the presence of FENOCIN, CONFEUNASSC-CNC, the Agrarian Collective and the Agrarian Roundtable was important at the level of proposals and articulated texts for the law (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011). Likewise, under the Interinstitutional Commission for Food Sovereignty, a "modernizing" vision of production was promoted, with the presence and participation of PRONACA, SUPERMAXI, NESTLE and GRAIN.

Thus, a proposal was made to articulate the principles of FS with those of Food Security, which was supported by professionals linked to state institutions, some development organizations and international cooperation. The negotiations to obtain the final result account for and explain the ultimate content of the Law, and are shown in Illustration 3:

<footnote n="32">³² There is no official record, however, it is attested from the narratives of the organizations involved in the process, which were collected and systematized by Rosero Garcés and others (2011).</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Illustration 3: Process of modification of the LORSA (2008-2009)</figcaption></figure>

Source: Own elaboration based on Rosero García, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel (2011).
As a result of this process, a result was reached with clear criticisms from multiple sectors. Rosero Garcés et al. (2011) have described the mixed mechanisms between Food Security and FS, added to the multiple and systematically opposing interests of social actors, as having created a proposal that is unfeasible in practice. Thus, it has been pointed out that "while the 2008 Constitution made a qualitative leap by introducing the new FS paradigm, the Organic Law of Food Sovereignty Regime, LORSA, slows down the full application of the constitutional norm and the regulations and reforming law mediatize social participation by submitting it to the will of the executive authorities" (Rosero Garcés, Carbonell Yonfá, & Regalado Villaroel, 2011, p. 102). What is evident in these statements is the political character and disputes in the conformation not only of an agro-productive system, but also in the very delimitation of what is understood in practice and in jurisprudence as FS.

In summary, the coordinates of the FS resulting in the 2008 Constitution are governed by
the following main axes:

* Conservation and free exchange of seeds.

* Differentiated fiscal, tax and tariff policies.

* Preferential credit.

* Animals and healthy foods.

* Research and technological innovation.

* Biosafety regulation.

* Provision of food to vulnerable populations.

* Redistribution of the Factors of Production.

* Own cultures - Ancestral knowledge and technologies.

* Barter and local commerce.

* Agrobiodiversity.

* Centennial social fabric.

* Popular Solidarity Economy.

* Organizational strengthening and networking.

* Public procurement.

* Fair trade.

* Agroecology.

Based on these main axes, it has been systematized, from the debates held from the ANC
to the enactment of the LORSA, as the main articulators of the idea of the FS in Ecuador, at the time of its constitution, from 2007 to 2009. The applicability of these laws and their derivations in local autonomous governments is then explored. What is evident in this process is not only the actors and main meta-narratives involved, but also the absence, at least in principle, of an evident gender perspective in its conformation.

### 4.2.2. FS at provincial and cantonal level

At the local level, the implementation strategies of agrarian models differ by provincial and cantonal strategies. Thus, the case studies share the identification of constituent regulations, laws and agencies responsible for the implementation of public policies related to FS at the national level. However, in terms of territorial planning, a variety of implementation strategies and relationships between the state apparatus and the peasants can be found. In these divisions, those provinces that have shaped and promoted the ordinances stand out. These include the provinces of Pichincha, Azuay, Cotopaxi and Zamora Chinchipe. These ordinances are aimed at new sustainable development schemes that strengthen the principles of the FS.

In the group of case study research in these provinces, Myriam C. Guerra Mena's (2020) master's degree thesis entitled *Análisis de políticas públicas sobre soberanía alimentaria y su incidencia en las comunidades agroecológicas del cantón Pedro Moncayo, provincia de Pichincha (Analysis of public policies on food sovereignty and their impact on agroecological communities in Pedro Moncayo, Pichincha province)* stands out. In this research, Guerra (2020) has as main objective to determine how FS public policies and the actions of local stakeholders promote the implementation of agroecology in selected communities of the canton of Pedro Moncayo. As a result, recommendations on how to improve institutional coordination and a mapping of laws, actors and determining factors in the success of the projects are incorporated. On the other hand, it should be noted that most of the research carried out in the canton of Pedro Moncayo is related to the canton of Cayambe. This relationship is due to the institutional, organizational and geographic proximity of both cantons. Likewise, these two administrative regions are recurrently interrelated and intertwined in the fields of commercialization and in the practice of agricultural activities.

In this sense, the publication coordinated by Requelme (2019), entitled *Women in resistance and agroecological territories: Participatory construction of the Ordinance for the use of public spaces for the commercialization of healthy products in agroecological fairs-Cayambe*. This work systematizes the experience of the creation of the ordinance, the experiences and narratives of the people involved, the moments and phases of construction, objectives and legal frameworks in which it is framed. In
contrast, those provinces that do not have an ordinance in place, the canton of Ibarra in the province of Imbabura stands out. It is in this province that the Multi-Party Trade Agreement between Ecuador and the European Union (EU) was implemented, which focused on the agricultural sector as a free trade agreement. This initiative started in 2014 as an agreement between the EU and the Andean Community (CAN); it was consolidated years later after the bilateral signing of the Protocol of Accession of Ecuador with the European Union (concomitant to the agreements signed with Peru and Colombia, open to all Andean countries), which advocates the progressive and gradual liberalization of trade in goods. Thus, it is emphasized that after the agreement, Ecuador exported 85% of its non-oil products to the European Union (Tadeo, Vinueza, & Machado, 2018, p. 436). As a result of this agreement, the main Ecuadorian products exported to the EU from largest to smallest are: bananas, canned tuna, shrimp, cocoa, shrimp, fresh roses, coffee and canned fish.

These two models of agricultural development, which are configured in fronts of openness to local interpretations of economic public policies concerning agricultural production, as emphasized by Tadeo, Vinueza, & Machado (2018), "the foreign trade policy of Ecuador, has been variable in the last seven years and has transited between arguments of protection of national sovereignty, the so-called change of the productive matrix to stop depending on oil exports and the restriction of imports" (p. 435-436). Therefore, it is of interest to maintain and demonstrate the contrast of strategies and interpretations of action vis-à-vis family and small producers.

In this way, it is possible to highlight (a) two first axes of evaluation in the implementation of public policies, those aimed at agroecological models, hand in hand with organizations that claim sovereignty and food security; versus a second block, which involve producers in the framework of negotiations with international blocs, with a view to inter-regional and bi-regional agreements. (b) In the first block, the province of Pichincha, in the cantons of Cayambe-Pedro Moncayo, stands out for having the first systematization of the process of creating an ordinance in the agricultural area. (c) On the other hand, in the second block, the experience of Ibarra, near the northern inter-Andean highlands, stands out as a starting point in the implementation of the negotiations agreed and opened with the EU.

### 4.2.2 Legal framework

This section is based on the relevance of systematizing the conceptual delimitations and the identification of the actors and legal guides on the FS. In knowledge of the national peculiarities regarding normative hierarchies, Art. 425 of the Constitution is considered, which establishes that
the order of the normative will be the following: The Constitution; international treaties and agreements; organic laws; ordinary laws; regional norms and district ordinances; decrees and regulations; ordinances; agreements and resolutions; and other acts and decisions of the public authorities<fnref n="33" />.

Taking these ranges into consideration, Table 5 presents a summary of the organizations linked to the regulation of the agrarian system at the national level, as well as the suggested regulations:

<table><caption>Table 5: Mapping of actors and legal resources for FS in Ecuador</caption><thead><tr><th>Dimensions</th><th>Categories</th><th>Resources</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">Organization</td><td>LVC Members</td><td><ul><li>Confederación Única de Afiliados al Seguro Social Campesino de Ecuador (COFEUNASSCE) (Sole Confederation of Affiliates of the Peasant Social Security of Ecuador)</li><li>National Federation of Free Agro-industrial and Indigenous Workers of Ecuador (FENACLE)</li><li>Confederation of Peoples, Indigenous and Peasant Organizations of Ecuador (FEI)</li><li>National Peasant Coordinating Committee Eloy Alfaro (CNC)</li></ul></td></tr><tr><td>State institutions in charge of agriculture</td><td><ul><li>Ministry of Environment (MAE)</li><li>National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC)</li><li>Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE)</li><li>Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG)</li><li>COPISA</li></ul></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Legal Compendium</td><td>Women's rights</td><td><ul><li>The Constitution of Ecuador, chapters 1 and 2.</li><li>Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women - 1981 (CEDAW)</li><li>Beijing Platform for Action (1996)</li><li>Security Council Resolution 1325 and its six additional resolutions on women, peace and security.</li><li>Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals (2000)</li></ul></td></tr><tr><td>Rights of small producers</td><td><ul><li>National Constitution 2008</li><li>National Plan for Good Living 2013-2017</li><li>Food Sovereignty Law - LORSA</li><li>Land Law</li><li>Agribusiness and Rural Employment Law</li><li>Animal and Plant Health Law</li><li>Law on Access to Public Credit for Farmers and Indigenous Peoples</li><li>Loans directed to rural women</li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Own elaboration based on LVC (2022); UN - Women, 2022; FAO, 2022; Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1999.

<footnote n="33">³³ Despite the hierarchy of norms headed by the Constitution, the exception applies to international human rights treaties ratified by the State that recognize rights more favorable to those contained in the Constitution, which will prevail over any other legal norm or act of public power. Therefore, it is up to the judges, administrative authorities and public servants to interpret the application.</footnote>
Two main observations stand out in this Table 5. The first one, referring to the organizations involved in the FS application processes, differentiates two branches, those linked to the LVC movement, and those promoting rural agrarian development from state institutions. Those relevant in terms of members, range of action, resources and political strength have been noted. In this way, the multiple organizations, associations and NGOs present at the territorial level are not ignored, however, their direct political weight at the national level is relativized.

The second observation arises from the bulk of laws and legal support for the development of women producers. Thus, most of the mentions, both at the Constitutional level and at the level of laws, appeal to the strengthening of the role and access to resources on the part of women. In them, the contribution of this population is recognized, both in productive and reproductive activities, despite the fact that there are still no statistical tools that fully account for the economic percentage of their contribution. It also appeals to name the inequalities to which they are subject, due to their gender condition, and calls for the promulgation of substantive equity (INEC, 2021) (FAO, 2022) (UN, 1999). Taking this framework into consideration, it is of interest to deepen its applicability at the territorial level. For this purpose, two case studies have been selected in the north of the inter-Andean highlands of Ecuador. These models serve as examples of the levels of development of the ordinance, in the case of Pichincha, and of the development of FS initiatives together with the trade liberalization framework agreement with the EU in Imbabura. These are presented below.
5. Case Study in the Northern Inter-Andean Highlands

This chapter presents the results of the processing of the seventeen interviews (Appendix B) conducted during the fieldwork in Ecuador and those conducted via Zoom. These interviews were conducted with IPW and key actors involved in the studies or in production systems related to FS. The main objectives of the interviews were aimed at understanding the role and conditions of IPW in the production systems, especially with respect to access to resources, the role of state institutions and the intervention of international organizations. This approach is guided by the CGT methodological strategy (Appendix D) and the initial open coding (Appendix A ; A.3.), where seven codes have been identified, which form the discrete parts of the theory.

Insights from the interviews

These codes are specified below, ordered according to their frequency (number of times
used in the interviews as a whole). The review was carried out line by line, identifying indicator
paragraphs by code:

1. **Material and symbolic resources (MSR)** (66): Refers to the resources available to IPW. Be they material, symbolic, knowledge, financial, technical, etc. It involves the family nucleus, ownership of land, animals, crops, training programs.

2. **Difficulties** (43): Refers to any need, lack, lack or obstacle that the IPW may identify in her daily life, associated with her life as a producer or in the production process.

3. **Activities** (37): Refers to activities carried out by IPW in connection with food production, whether at the production, marketing, distribution or consumption stage.

4. **Institutional support / Government support (IGS)** (30): Refers to any initiative or lack of action on the part of an organization that has an impact on productive activities. By organization we mean NGOs, international organizations, the central or autonomous public sector.

5. **Functions** (26): Refers to the social functions assumed by the members of the family nucleus. It refers to the social distribution of work by gender.

6. **Metanarratives** (26): Understood as any narrative that generates a broad and encompassing explanation of a phenomenon, and is capable of encompassing smaller narratives, discussions, nuances, etc. within it<fnref n="34" />.

7. **Generational change** (17): Refers to any allusion to generational changes, whether

<footnote n="34">³⁴ Definition based on Martínez-Guzmán (2010).</footnote>
in lived situation, in facilities/difficulties/changes/continuities with a generational perspective.

8. **Accountability** (16): The set of responsibilities that women have within their households, whether in relation to the family, production, community or household.

9. **Self-perception** (11): IPW's perceptions of themselves, their living or production conditions. Any assessment of their past-present-future situation and possibilities.

From this first open coding, co-occurrence between codes is sought. High co-occurrence accounts for the core of the phenomenon and the relationships that give meaning to the narratives, which is shown in Table 6 below:

<table><caption>Table 6: High co-occurrence between open codes</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>● ◐ Activities<br>ⓘ 37</th><th>○ ◐ Difficulties<br> Rip 43</th><th>● ◐ Functions<br> ⚙️ 26</th><th>○ ◐ Metanarratives<br> ⚙️ 26</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>● ◐ Functions<br> ⚙️ 26</th><td>13</td><td>3</td><td></td><td>10</td></tr><tr><th>● ◐ Material and s...<br> ⚙️ 66</th><td>20</td><td>11</td><td>4</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><th>● ◐ Responsibility<br> ⚙️ 16</th><td>13</td><td>2</td><td>10</td><td>4</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Own elaboration

From this first approximation, it can be inferred that the central axis of the hypothesis rests on two triads of emerging nuclei, the first revolving around the Activities code and the second around the MSR code:

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

Triad 1 of codes corresponds to the category of roles assigned to IPW, while triad 2 corresponds to conditions. Thus, it is interpreted that the roles of the IPW are perceived as functions and responsibilities, which generate and are conditioned by the MSRs. Likewise, the conditions are associated with difficulties and obstacles, which are interpreted from the Metanarratives, which provide a sense of experience. Thus, it is inferred that the construction of IPW narratives on their roles and conditions, which mediate their agency in the production processes, revolve around the feedback between their resources - both material and symbolic - that
enable and feed their productive and reproductive activities. This knowledge has three main
sources: (a) knowledge transfer by generation, (b) technical training for specific care of commercial
seeds, and (c) training in marketing, competitiveness and productivity for the sale of their products.
These relationships are shown in the following excerpt:

*"This knowledge is ancestral, mija. It comes from hereditary, from past times that we have been acquiring knowledge generation after generation. Agroecology is not new, but now it has given more impulse, more boom, because before our ancestors never used chemicals (...) However, they had excellent production (...) with the moons, pruning, cutting, harvesting seasons, all that today, thank God, the compañeras you see, the older compañeras are the ones who pass it on to us (...) and we maintain it and pass it on to our generations. (...) Yes, they have come to help us from NGOs, in different ways, with workshops for production, to improve the harvest, customer service"* P-7 (7:9)

These activities are assumed as gender roles within the family nucleus, and are resented as
a responsibility. These functions are associated with metanarratives that explain the functioning of
their nuclear families, especially those referring to the *essence* or *nature* of women:

*"You know that because we women have encouraged production, sowing is born from women, fertility is born from women. No, I do not mean to say that men are less. But, nevertheless, behind every producer there will always be a husband to help her. The husband, however, always, because the children, a little, very little, but always in everything, in all spaces, it is the women who are more open to the market, more open"* P-7 (7:15)

Likewise, these functions and MSRs are related to the difficulties, since the shortages or
obstacles also affect the activities, functions and resources of the IPW. These difficulties are mainly
associated with the income from the sale of the production, the spaces for the exit of the products,
the difficulty of transportation and the lack of protection for the elderly. This theoretical core
makes sense from the relationships between the codes, which are presented in Figure 4. From this
first scheme, the first analysis of grouping the codes into emerging categories is organized:
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Illustration 4: Relationship between open-source codes</figcaption></figure>

Source: Own elaboration

To the cores of the discrete parts of the theory is added, as peripheries of the narratives of the IPWs and key actors, the signaling of Self-perception associated with the construction of Metanarratives, which support the functions of the IPWs in the production spaces. These go hand in hand with generational changes, insofar as IPWs in old age, when facing the difficulties of physical work, tend to a self-reflective discourse, where they place their difficulties with a narrative of the conditions of rural women. On the other hand, institutional and governmental support is associated with resources, without being the core or main source. The push of this category to the periphery is due to the systematic criticism of the public sector's neglect of IPW. Thus, state institutions are perceived as absent or an obstacle, and NGOs as sources of help or collaboration. In parallel, the main source of training, especially in the use of agrochemicals for their crops, comes from the private sector, which trains them, through engineers and specialists sent to their chakras, to use the products of their commercial companies:

> "The same engineers who buy the fumigating powders from where you buy them go. They help you to see if the leaf is diseased, if the soil needs vitamins, and they leave you the list. And from there you go to buy. Of course. And from there you have to go to where they have the chemical warehouses. They are the same commercial companies. The engineers work in those plants. So, they take the plants to them and they recommend the chemicals for you to go buy from them" P-6 (6:5).
Based on this relationship, the overlapping between the discourses of good living, which support ecological modes of living in accordance with the FS, with agro-industrial farming practices and methods, is drawn. This collision of agro-productive systems is related, in the IPW discourses, to the precariousness of rural life, with unsatisfied basic needs, both in economic and symbolic aspects. Consequence of the ambivalence of the marketing channels, in the competition platforms, in the information to the consumer populations, etc. A way to make up for these structural deficiencies is the metanarratives that encompass the responsibilities and essences of femininity/masculinity. Thus, contextual deficiencies are assumed according to the patterns of available resources and the essentialist construction of gender. Consequently, women absorb both reproductive and productive tasks, while men focus on absorbing especially the productive ones. It is from this first approach to analysis that the first axial categories can be created, which are presented in Illustration 5:

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Illustration 5 Axial categories as the core of the emerging theory</figcaption></figure>

Source: Own elaboration

These are discussed and explained below:

## Structural deficiencies

In the interviews conducted, structural deficiencies in state support to IPW were highlighted. Perceived as such by the interviewees, they appeal to the narratives of the State as an
external entity, distant from the daily problems and unable to act at the territorial level:

"It is true that the municipal government has no direct involvement in production and commercialization, but, nevertheless, indirectly or in the way they can, they have been supporting us in certain ways, no, not as much as one would like or aspire, no, but something" P-5 (5:12).

"No. Something, I don't know, it's every man for himself, every man for himself. It is in that part of the government when there are going to be campaigns no more. And that. In the elections. You can see them and not there, every man for himself. One has to fight. For all. Nobody helps from the government. Nobody helps" P-8 (8:7)

Therefore, these gaps and obstacles in production are reinforced by means of metanarratives that appeal to the categorical functions of women, in the sense of responsibility. This mediation is a form of social burden sharing, in the distribution of responsibility for reproduction and production purposes. Thus, in agroecological practices, it is not unusual for women to find themselves immersed in these associations, while their partners work as laborers in the agroindustry, mainly in flowers and broccoli. On the other hand, generational changes, insofar as the disengagement of new generations in the field, is understood as the conjugation of the precariousness of the working and living conditions provided by agriculture, which are not striking. This situation is accentuated when infants or adolescents reach higher levels of education than their parents, appealing to the fact that urban life channels their expectations:

"Let's see, I tell you. I tell you sincerely, for example, I would like my children to study. Of course, so that they can go out, because agriculture is very hard, it is hard when the price of products is low, as a producer it hits you hard, I know how to say, as if without words, you are left with nothing because you do not earn" P-6 (6:6).

Therefore, it is argued that structural deficiencies have as a reaction the family and community organization. Without this being an unequivocal relationship, it solves the problems in the social distribution of work, functions and responsibilities.

## Collision of production systems

The second axis of the emerging theory is located in the collision of two distant organizational logics, on the one hand, the one aligned with Agroecological practices, in search of SFC; as opposed to the commercial logics of agribusiness. In opposition to initiatives to maintain
parallel production systems as a holistic approach to rural development, the case studies argue that these systems are competitive, as finite resources are hoarded under different logics of use and profit distribution. From this axis, it is clear that the knowledge and activities of the IPW have as their main source the collaboration between peers, family members and the responsibilities assumed. They collide with agro-industrial production in the spaces and resources of distribution (physical spaces, competitive prices, ownership of means of transport), as well as with the logics of consumption. These logics of consumption refer to the (a) knowledge and preferences of consumers and (b) logics of displacement to the purchase of products.

(a) The recognition and knowledge of agrochemical-free sales, or the differentiation between the practices catalogued as Good Living does not seem to have a significant impact on the choice of consumption. Meanwhile, the fairs or initiatives of small producers are not so striking, being the ease of displacement or price, variables of greater interest:

> "Yes, on Fridays they left it to us. We used to have a lot of clients, but now that they have opened in the pandemic, we've been scrubbed, they've taken away our clients. Hopefully. With the support of the opinion and hopefully the customers will come back. Because, as I said, over there they are not healthy products, but here they are healthy products because they are grown with animal manure" P-12 (12:12).

(b) While the strategies of the commercial houses are to create wholesale spaces or consumption spaces in strategic geographical positions to facilitate displacement, small producers seek ways of distributing their products. One of these strategies is the baskets, which are distributed in homes, so that producers absorb the cost of transportation, in addition to competing with wholesale prices:

> "The issue of production has always been a bottleneck where we can, because taking away all our product just because, there are times that we are spoiled for lack of spaces to deliver directly. That is, that they value our product, that they consume what is ours, healthy, organic, clean of pesticides, well, and above all that they help us with the commercialization. That is our issue, our strength, what we lack, what we need, what we need is marketing, direct delivery points" P-9 (9:20)

Therefore, in the case studies, the interaction between FS systems or good living does not work in harmony with agro-industrial systems, with which there is a dispute for resources, such as
water, as well as for customers and commercialization points.

## Sense of community

Finally, the Accountability, Self-Perception and Functions codes show the ways of managing in networks. The family nucleus being the first referent, community meanings are constructed that involve belonging by generation, economic activity, population, gender identity. In this way, networks are created, such as associations, which solve, in one way or another, the immediate needs of their members. Whether in the solvency of the distribution of work, in the distribution of irrigation or financing for micro-projects or the need for "a little more important" investments P-7.

"We both work, you can't see us in our hands. We don't paint our nails with paint, we paint them with dirt. Yes, that's right, we work. You see, I have calluses on my hands. For us and for the association too" P-16 (16:6).

In this way, the basis of a self-perception is understood, which passes through the location of individual and collective situations with respect to the construction of *others*. These narratives allow to have a criterion, which is issued, about living conditions, projections, needs and demands. Without this sense of community, the sense of organizational location, allows for a more or less unified discourse that gives meaning to the present, the past and projects into the future. Therefore, the political spaces of organization are also spaces of responsibility for the needs of future generations, the environment and ancestral knowledge of land and crop use. In this way, there is a reproduction of the discourse that is shaped in temporal modalities and reacts in organic and lively ways to the events, being an example the modalities of adaptation to commercialization in COVID-19 times:

"As we have said, for example, for the baskets, we are going to Quito. We have said that our products themselves were already nearby. If we had to do little things, we would get some paid transportation among ourselves, or a cab. We were leaving" P-2 (2:8).

These community meanings can be considered as spaces for group strengthening in the face of production difficulties, or as meanings of market insertion strategies. Being non-exclusive approaches, the result is the implementation of production and marketing strategies to facilitate a place in the market networks.
## 5.2. Specificities per Case Study

This section presents the characteristics of each case study. As previously mentioned, the local cantons are immersed in ideal types of agricultural development models, so participant observation was carried out at the points of sale, fairs and visits to the chakras, all of which are managed by associations formed by IPW. This section summarizes these participant observations.

The canton of Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo have been organized around the Good Living Ordinance, the promotion of agroecology and marketing strategies by SFC. In contrast, in the canton of Ibarra, wholesale activities and the settlement of large flower and broccoli agro-industries have stood out, which we point out as a collision of agrifood models. The latter has been strongly involved in the bilateral trade agreements between Ecuador and the EU. These two models of agroindustrial systems are immersed in a national context in which the principles of Good Living are established, based on the postulates of the FS of LVC, as a national strategy.

### 5.2.3. Province of Pichinga, Canton of Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo

The specific case of the Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo fairs is an example of Agroecological production organization, which seeks to cut production chains and bring producers closer to final consumers. To this end, they organize themselves in fairs called Buen Vivir, as a way to promote their products free of agro-toxins and as heirs to the ancestral practices of working the land. These fairs and points of sale are smaller in terms of surface area, number of producers and quantity of products, compared to large supply centers or non-agroecological fairs. It is located in an area known in the surrounding area for its insecurity, so accessing it on foot involves a longer walk. In terms of signage, they are not found until they are about 20 meters from the entrance, so the visibility and size do not collaborate with its location. These characteristics are reflected in the attendance, which remained very low throughout the day, regardless of the time of day.

The IPWs participating in the sales commented on their concern about the space dedicated to the sales, which was a relocation made by the Municipality, when allowing the sales again after the lifting of restrictions by COVID-19. Their main concerns, therefore, revolved around the few sales, the competition represented by the non-agroecological fairs held weekly on the days before theirs. In this way, their concerns were linked to the costs involved in the private transportation hired by each of them to transport their products to the fair. There was also evidence of concern about consumers' lack of knowledge about the advantages of consuming food free of agrochemicals. Thus, it was interpreted that consumers are guided by the food sales and prices, ignoring the origin, production process or beneficiaries:
“Well, enough of the same. No, because there are few customers. The clients are few, they don't come much. Before it was good, yes it was good so that the old people who came to sell since the pandemic opened there on Fridays, so they take away our customers. The resellers of Ibarra, people consume there but here they are healthy products, of the Good Living, they have to make, hopefully, a conscience. The prices they sell there are very low... and they buy” P-13 (13:7)

In addition to the aid from the municipality, there was the space provided for them, as well as the donation of plant starch as an incentive for their production. In connection with Ibarra, a canton located to the north, it is referred to as a large wholesale center, which represented a threat in stealing customers, especially during the pandemic. Likewise, during periods of crisis, when there were no outlets for the products for commercialization, there were large transporters, intermediaries, who went to the chakras to look for the products. These agroecological products are bought for very low prices, up to a fifth of the production prices. According to the narratives of the IPWs, these products ended up in the large tariffs of Ibarra. In conclusion, the difficulty of the IPWs to place their food in the market was observed. On the one hand, given the limited resources, in terms of location, transportation possibilities, as well as the population's knowledge of the potential benefits.

### 5.2.4. Province of Imbabura, Canton of Ibarra

On the other hand, the fair in Ibarra (see Appendix E) is located on the outskirts of the canton, near the bus terminal that connects it with the province of Quito, passing through the canton of Cayambe. In this fair there is a group of vendors that have incorporated the principles of FS, but in practice they still use cultivation techniques with agrochemicals, fertilizers and industrial fertilizers. Unlike the fair in the cantons of Cayambe and Pedro Moncayo, this one has the participation of a larger number of IPW and the movement is frenetic from early hours, until the closing with the barter between the producers.

At this fair, the variety of women producers stands out, in terms of age, origin, and products. There are products from Colombia, which are brought because they sell very well, including guava and tropical fruits. Because of this continuous movement, an informal fair is formed on the outskirts, of producers who are not part of the association but are attracted by the constant flow of vendors. The variety is remarkable, from fruits, vegetables, vegetables, legumes, to food, tea and kitchen utensils.
The main challenges of this fair are the production costs. For those IPW that have agro-industrial crops or have a mix of techniques, there are high expenses in the purchase of seeds or plants, pesticides, fertilizers, manure, vitamins, among others. In a general survey, it is the same commercial house that supplies the whole area, being themselves the ones who promote the trainings and the visits of the engineers to the chakras. Therefore, there is an attractive incentive to increase the amount of production, increasing the yield of the land and crops.

In general, there is a lack of knowledge of the substantial differences between FS and Food Safety. As well as the mixture of processes, motivated by commercial companies and NGO training. The latter focus on improving knowledge of food handling and marketing and sales strategies. It is thus learned that the training is mostly aimed at women, thus integrating a discourse of women's empowerment outside the home and in the production chain. This narrative subsists with the responsibilities of the IPW within the home, which is why they are found in all phases of production and in their functions within the family nucleus.

## Concluding remarks

The contrast between the case studies is found in their integration into the markets and outlets for their products. In competitive market logics, high-yield and low-cost production is striking for a population that is guided, especially, by the ease of acquisition of the product and its price. However, in spite of the differences, an emerging theory has been analyzed through the codification of the interviews, which is based on three main axes: 1. Structural deficiencies, 2. Collision of production systems and 3. Sens of community.

Therefore, the literature review, both the process of creation of the LORSA and the modern discourses of international organizations in the regulation of agricultural production, in calling for a hybrid between agri-food systems, make sense in the roles, conditions and needs of IPW in the case studies. In this way, the possible incompatibility of hybrid markets is highlighted, by the very nature of the opposing logics between industrial production and agroecology.

In this context, the roles and conditions of IPWs are mediated by their ability to organize with their peers, taking advantage of NGO programs and in articulation with the needs of the family nucleus. In this organization, metanarratives about the nature of women prevail, which places them at the forefront, as has been repeatedly pointed out, of the tasks of reproduction and production. Given the context of precariousness of their living conditions in times of crisis or falling prices, it is the IPWs who assume the social, economic and political burdens of the structural gaps.
## 6. Conclusion

The FS is a versatile agrifood system, which in the case of Ecuador has been built in the midst of debate, opposition and reformulations. These competing interests have not been limited to the spaces and times of its conformation in order to introduce it into the Constitution; on the contrary, it has been deployed at local territorial levels and has had an impact on the livelihoods of the producing populations. This struggle of interests involves not only a system of agricultural organization, but also a struggle for the values to be emphasized or considered in the production, distribution and consumption of foodstuffs. As we have reviewed, there is an appeal to a value base that goes beyond the economic analysis of yield, and appeals to constituent principles of social order and human rights.

In the heart of Ecuador, being a fertile field for social movements, its co-optation by the institutional gears has been denounced. This politicization in formal spaces has created a gap, still palpitating between the beginnings of a social movement that is shaped from the recognition of peers and common interests, and the state gears. In this dispute, IPWs find themselves at the intersection of systems of oppression. It is in their possibilities of existence that one can clearly perceive how this power struggle has been translated into metanarratives with consequences detrimental to structural change. By appealing to the image of super women farmers, the idea of integrating women producers through empowerment and training programs has been reinforced. Although the benefits of these programs are palpable, in that they incorporate IPW into the market and give them tools and power in decision-making, they do little to address the structural deficiencies that condition their existence.

In this way, unsatisfied needs, due to the absence of state support or protection from agribusiness, are supplied by the family nuclei, where roles are assigned on the basis of the constructs of the sex/gender system. In this way, it is absorbed at the family level, especially in the role of women in the reproductive spheres, to which are added those of the productive sphere. Therefore, women fill roles in the FS at each level, conditioned by the resources in their environment, to the actors present. However, there are roles that only women assume and which are tied to the essentialist constructions of femininities, such as those associated with communication, care -of the family, of the seeds-, reproduction -caring for children, of the plantation-. Thus, FS systems have had little impact on the dynamics of power sharing or on the constructions of oppression between genders. This thesis supports the idea that mixed or hybrid agri-food systems are unfeasible in practice, as the principles of distribution, SFC strategies and agroecology conflict with the principles of industrial production.
The very conditions that influence the capacity of IPW in the north of the inter-Andean highlands of Ecuador are related to the openings for participation of the population and social movements in the formation of FS. Women's organizations, such as LVC, open the possibility that needs, demands and already existing organizations can be echoed in the construction of new forms of food commercialization and production. Thus, despite the limitations and structural difficulties exposed in the emerging theory, the senses of community building give echoes to the voices of the IPW. Therefore, IPWs assume a role as agents of FS by finding a space that makes their roles in production processes visible, providing tools for decision-making. However, their role has also been enhanced as a mechanism to make up for structural deficiencies, by means of a triple journey: reproductive responsibilities, spaces claimed in the productive systems and collective support for the structural deficiencies of the state. Therefore, the construction of FS has benefited from the intervention of NGOs, but not from a State, which has ignored the constructions that have a bottom-up approach. Consequently, a national FS program with a gender approach has not been institutionalized, a characteristic that conditions the dialectical relationship between the government of Ecuador with respect to FS and the practice of IPW.

Consequently, IPWs are agents of FS implementation in Ecuador because they assume the social burdens assigned to women as caregivers and communicators. In this way, they fill the institutional gaps and the absence of the state at the territorial level -coalision of systems-, with the support of training, mostly from NGOs. Thus, they assume community roles, both in the productive, reproductive and collective spheres of organization, being conditioned by the scarcity of material resources. Their strength lies, therefore, in the spaces for collective organization, in their capacity for peer-to-peer agency and in the social movements that have echoed their political and social demands.
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