Food sovereignty

Food sovereigntyis a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies offood productionanddistribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporatefood regime, in which corporations and market institutions control the globalfood system. Food sovereignty emphasizes local food economies,sustainable foodavailability, and centers culturally appropriate foods and practices.Changing climatesand disruptedfoodwaysdisproportionately impact indigenous populations and their access to traditional food sources while contributing to higher rates of certain diseases; for this reason, food sovereignty centers indigenous peoples. These needs have been addressed in recent years by several international organizations, including theUnited Nations, with several countries adopting food sovereignty policies into law.Critics of food sovereignty activism believe that the system is founded on inaccurate baseline assumptions; disregards the origins of the targeted problems; and is plagued by a lack of consensus for proposed solutions.
The term "food sovereignty" was first coined in 1996 by members ofVia Campesina, an international farmers' organisation, and later adopted by several international organisations, including theWorld Bankand United Nations. In 2007, the "Declaration ofNyéléni" provided a definition which was adopted by 80 countries; in 2011 it was further refined by countries in Europe. As of 2020, at least seven countries had integrated food sovereignty into their constitutions and laws.
Aligned somewhat with the tenets of theSlow Foodorganization, the history of food sovereignty as a movement is relatively young. However, the movement is gaining traction as more countries  take significant steps towards implementing  food systems that address inequities.
At the 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty inSélingué,Mali,  500 delegates from more than 80 countries adopted the "Declaration ofNyéléni",which says in part:
In April 2008 theInternational Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development(IAASTD), an intergovernmental panel under the sponsorship of theUnited Nationsand theWorld Bank, adopted the following definition: "Food sovereignty is defined as the right of peoples and sovereign states to democratically determine their own agricultural and food policies."
Issues of  food production, distribution and access are seldom apolitical or without criticism. For example, the adoption of theGreen Revolutionin countries across the globe has increased world food production but has not "solved" the problem of world hunger. Food sovereignty advocates argue this is because the movement did not address access to land or distribution of economic power. Others argue that food sovereignty is based on incorrect baseline assumptions around the role of subsistence farming in government policy. Agrarian aspects of food sovereignty put the movement in conflict with globalisation, industrialisation, and urbanisation trends.
AfterHugo Chávezwas elected president ofVenezuelain 1998, a new constitution was approved by the people of Venezuela which included the right to food as one of its basic civil rights. The government set upmissionsto deliver the various constitutional rights. Several missions related to food and farming were established by Chávez' government to provide equitable food access. Among these were the Misión Alimentación,Misión Vuelvan Caras,Misión MercalandMisión Zamora. Later the Gran Misión AgroVenezuela was created to increase domestic agricultural production. Among the strategies used to increase food sovereignty for Venezuelans wereland reform,agroecology, use of traditional crops andbiological pest controland the establishment of subsidised food outlets such asArepera Socialista, Café Venezuela and Cacao Venezuela.
In September 2008,Ecuadorenshrined food sovereignty in its constitution. As of late 2008, a law is in the draft stages that is expected to expand upon this constitutional provision by banninggenetically modified organisms, protecting many areas of the country from extraction of non-renewable resources, and to discouragemonoculture. The law as drafted will also protectbiodiversityas collectiveintellectual propertyand recognize theRights of Nature.
Since thenMali,Bolivia,Nepal,SenegalandEgypt(2014 Constitution) have integrated food sovereignty into their national constitutions or laws.
Climate change is impacting thefood securityof indigenous communities as well, including Pacific Islanders and those in the Circumpolar North, due torising sea levelsor erosion.
Activists claim that native food sovereignty is also appropriated as a cuisine for mainstream dining because indigenous foods are framed to be culturally authentic, desired by those outside of these communities. Ingredients that are cultural staples, which are harder for these populations to find, are displaced due to a greater demand for access outside of indigenous populations.
Native Americans have been directly impacted in their ability to acquire and prepare their food and this disruption of traditional diets has resulted in health problems, including diabetes and heart disease.Indigenous food sovereignty activists in the United States assert that the systematic displacement of indigenous communities has led to mass food insecurity.  Activist groups advocate for revitalization of traditional practices, development oflocal foodeconomies, theright to food, andseed sovereignty.
Indigenous people's food sovereignty and food security are closely related to their geographical location. Traditional indigenous foodways in the United States are tied to the ancestral homelands of Native American populations, especially for those with strong subsistence traditions. For instance, it is taught among theMuckleshootthat “the land that provides the foods and medicines we need are a part of who we are."
The disruption of traditional foodways is described to be tied to the disruption of the connection between traditional Native land and their people, a change Rachel V. Vernon describes as being tied to “racism, colonialism, and the loss of autonomy and power.”Pre-colonial lands were expansive and thriving with traditional foods.  Because of disease and war, Native peoples in the early 20th century were directly impacted in their ability to acquire and prepare their food. In addition to this, relocation away from ancestral lands further limited traditional foodways. Many indigenous people in the United States now live infood deserts. Due to inadequate or inhibited access to food, indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately from food insecurity compared to the rest of the US population.At reservations, the “‘highly processed, high sugar, high fat, and processed foods,’” further contributed to health issues in Native populations, leading to indigenous peoples in the United States having the highest rates of diabetes and heart disease in the nation.In addition to this, a majority of Native peoples also live off-reservation, and so are even further removed from traditional foodways.
Because Native American nations are sovereign from the United States, they receive little help in rehabilitating traditional foodways. As defined by the National Congress of American Indians,tribal sovereigntyensures that any decisions about the tribes with regard to their property and citizens are made with their participation and consent.The United States federal government recognizes Native American tribes as separate governments, opposed to “special interest groups, individuals, or ... other type of non-governmental entity.”
Prior to the colonization of the Americas, Native Americans had a diverse diet and food culture, procuring food in various ways across tribes. Depending on the region,Indigenouspeople sourced their food by hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming. Native food pathways revolved around the “three sisters,” or corn, beans, and squash, as staples in their diet.Hunting, gathering, and fishing were the primary means of collecting food.
These balanced ecosystems were disrupted by Europeansettler colonialismfollowingChristopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America in 1492. Upon European arrival, the Indigenous peoples of America were stripped of their supplies and even starved out as a tactic for colonial control over Native lands.Domesticated animalswere introduced into America by European settlers, bringing with them new diseases.Colonizers targeted food stores specifically and drastically changed Native American diets, their ability to acquire resources, and produce food.
New food systems put in place by American settlers, have over time forced a dependency upon processed andmass-produced foodon Indian reservations and indigenous communities at large. Native tribes have been forced into a position offood insecurityand put in a place in society where there is no ability to afford other sources of healthy or food that isorganically farmed.With a loss of food sovereignty, there was also a loss of land, as Indians were relocated and forcibly assimilated. Following Congress' passing of theIndian Appropriations Act in 1851, all Indigenous people were forced ontoIndian reservations, losing the ability to cultivate the earth and rely on traditional means of living.
Native Americans today fight for food sovereignty as a means to address health, returning to culturally traditional foods for healing. Returning to traditional eating is challenging, considering an extensive history ofrelocationandcultural genocide.  Many Native American histories of traditional culture foods have been lost or are now difficult to recreate.
Indigenous food sovereignty activists in the United States assert that indigenous communities have been systematically displaced from their traditional foodways, which has led to mass food insecurity.It is argued that the most effective way to achievefood securityfor indigenous groups is to increase their agency in food production.Some activists also argue for food sovereignty as a means of healing historical trauma and as a means of decolonizing their communities. In the United States the Indigenous Food Systems Network and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance work towards education and policy-making concerned with food and farming security. Another group focused on requiring food and energy sovereignty is the White EarthAnishnaabegfrom Minnesota, who focus on a variety of foods, planting and harvesting them using traditional methods, a form ofdecolonization.Such groups meet to establish policies for food sovereignty and to develop their local food economies at summits such as the Diné Bich’iiya’ Summit in Tsaile, Arizona, which focused on Navajo traditional foods.
Indigenous food sovereignty activists also often advocate for seed sovereignty, and more generally forplant breeders’ rights. Seed saving is important to indigenous communities in the United States because it provides those communities with a stable food source and holds cultural importance.In addition, seed sovereignty advocates often argue that seed saving is an important mechanism in creating agricultural systems that can adapt to climate change.
In 2021, a comprehensive literature review of IFS (Indigenous Food Sovereignty) and the effectiveness of food sovereignty principles concluded that Indigenous people in the United States and Canada have higher rates ofobesity, food insecurity, andType 2 diabetesthan the general population.
Government projects supporting indigenous food systems are new attempts to uplift indigenous communities and are in amateur stages of development. Other countries adopted Indigenous food programs years before the U.S., including Canada.The Canadian Food Guide (CFG)was created in January 2019 as a means to include multicultural diets, instead of basing food standards on one or few cultures — the guide includes Indigenous diets and involved Indigenous populations in consultation.
In 2021, the United States' Department of Agriculture launched the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative. This initiative is designed to "promote traditional food ways" as, similar to Canada, USDA programs have not historically encompassed Indigenous food pathways and diets.The USDA has partnered with organizations already serving Indigenous tribes: The Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, Linda Black Elk & Lisa Iron Cloud,InterTribal Buffalo Council, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, Intertribal Agriculture Council, and the University of Arkansas - Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative.
Non-governmental projects, such as the “Good Life” project in Ecuador, are spearheaded by independent organizations and Indigenous community members. The "Good Life" suggests that there are alternative methods of action through Indigenous community development that do not involve governmental funding or state provisioning. In Ecuador, the Indigenous community has developed the “Good Life” project which drifts away fromcapitalistand western understandings of what a community needs, and rather focuses on cultivating community success through harmony with the people, nature, and defending their land — essentially working directly within an Indigenous community to reclaim food sovereignty.
Organizations in the United States have adopted similar models to Ecuador's "Good Life" project. In California, the UC Berkeley organization, CARES (the Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability) works with thePPN (Pinoleville Pomo Nation)inUkiah, California, to support their tribal sovereignty. This Indigenous community has been working with CARES over the years to design sustainable housing and energy that reflect its culture.
Narragansett peopleexercised their own food sovereignty initiative by reappropriating landscapes, seascapes, estuaries, spaces, and built places from a Rhode Island "Farm",which had, in earnest after 1690, sustained southern New England proprietorship, land banks, andcurrencywithin a Greater Caribbean plantation complex. This carrying trade became a potential leg of theTriangular trade, although historians also argue that the self-contained carrying trade belied the triangle as a sequential circuit. By 1769, the woodlands and wetlands of the Narragansett tribal reserve near Charlestown, Rhode Island, had been reduced to less than five square miles, with multivalent consequences for resource allocation, survivance, religiosity, and race. Census and missionary records appraised the reserve population at approximately 600 tribal members, on the eve of Narragansett tribal veterans' return from the Seven Years' War.But these same records did not address the seasonal fishing exodus and indicated that, for example, the Narragansett "have for ages been intermixing with Whites and Blacks...a number of others, of mixed nations, live among them, who, by their customs, are not of the tribe." One missionary later observed that less than a third of the reserve was available for tillage and sustenance, with the remainder devoted to tenancy and the maintenance of woodlands for timber (sales, etc.).
Previous debts to "Farmers", especially for gunpowder during hunting sojourns and for compensating "seasoned slaves" in assistance with fishing canoe transportation, had resulted in a mid-eighteenth-century emphasis on horticulture and agriculture, with limited animal husbandry. Historian Daniel Mandell argues that, compared to Eastern Woodland Algonquian communities in similar circumstances, "the Narragansetts had even less: in 1810, the tribe told [congregational missionary Curtis] Coe that they had no oxen to plow their fields or haul manure and held only about four cows; he had already noted that families on the reserve generally farmed only about an acre."Despite the antebellum rise of "Greater Northeast" industrial agriculture,the southern New England "Farms" and the carrying tradeinCaribbean sugar,molasses, rice, coffee, indigo, mahogany, and pre-1740 "seasoned slaves",began to dissipate by theElection of 1800and largely collapsed into agrarian ruins by theWar of 1812.
The expansion of the Narragansett tribal project garnered media coverage and incited scholars to reevaluate a diminished focus on, or complete absence of, such "Farms", their proprietors, their multipurposePacers, seaport carriers, land banks, and Narragansettfoodwaysin extant studies on Eastern Woodland Algonquian communities by both historians and anthropologists.
Seed sovereignty can be defined as the right “to breed and exchange diverse open-sourced seeds."It is closely connected to food sovereignty, as seed sovereignty activists argue for the practice ofseed savingpartly as a means of increasingfood security.These activists argue that seed saving allows for a closedfood systemthat can help communities gain independence from major agricultural companies.Seed sovereignty is distinct from food sovereignty in its emphasis on seed saving specifically, rather than food systems in their entirety. Seed sovereignty activists often argue for seed saving based on environmental reasoning, not justfood justiceones.They argue that seed saving fills an important role of restoring biodiversity to agriculture, and producing plant varieties that are more resilient to change climatic conditions in light of climate change.
Movements to reclaim sovereignty over food have existed around the world for centuries; however, the concept of "food sovereignty" itself emerged in 1996.Food sovereignty was initially defined by "small-scale producers [who] organized as the transnational social movement La Vía Campesina (LVC), and was launched globally at the 1996 United Nations World Food Summit."It is a concept that explains how the industrialization of food pathways has decreased one's freedom to choose one's own food source."Food sovereignty movements work hard to increase local community control of the production, processing, and distribution of food, as this is seen as a necessary condition for liberating communities from oppression,"which has transformed food movements toward building more overall security.
In fall 2003, Peter Rosset argues inFood First'sBackgrounderthat "food sovereignty goes beyond the concept offood security... [Food security] means that... [everyone] must have the certainty of having enough to eat each day[,] ... but says nothing about where that food comes from or how it is produced."Food sovereignty includes support for smallholders and for collectively owned farms, fisheries, etc., rather than industrializing these sectors in a minimally regulated global economy. In another publication,Food Firstdescribes "food sovereignty" as "a platform for rural revitalization at a global level based on equitable distribution of farmland and water, farmer control overseeds, and productive small-scale farms supplying consumers with healthy, locally grown food."
In the 90’s the Food and Agriculture Organization definedfood securityas “all people, at all times, hav[ing] physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."Despite the fact that food security has become more widely understood in the US as availability and access to nutritious foods all the time, this definition is not universally applicable. For instance, in the European Union, "the official food insecurity indicator includes the unaffordability of ‘a meal with meat, chicken or fish every second day'"This definition differs greatly from food insecurity measurements of the US for instance. The existence of contradicting markers of food insecurity happening globally reflects different research and interpretations of that research.
Food security, emphasises access to adequate nutrition for all, which may be provided by food from one's own country or from global imports. In the name of efficiency and enhanced productivity, it has therefore served to promote what has been termed the "corporate food regime":large-scale, industrialisedcorporate farmingbased on specialized production,land concentrationandtrade liberalisation. Critics of the food security movement claim that its inattention to the political economy of the corporate food regime blinds it to the adverse effects of that regime, notably the widespread dispossession of small producers and globalecological degradation.
TheGreen Revolution, which  refers to developments inplant breedingbetween the 1960s and 1980s that improved yields from majorcerealcrops, is upheld by some proponents of food security as a success story in increasing crop yields and combating world hunger. The policy focused primarily in research, development and transfer of agricultural technology, such ashybrid seedsandfertilisers, through massive private and public investment that went into transforming agriculture in a number of countries, starting inMexicoandIndia.However, many in the food sovereignty movement are critical of the green revolution and accuse those who advocate it as following too much of aWestern culturetechnocraticprogram that is out of touch with the needs of majority of small producers andpeasants.
While the green revolution greatly increased food production and averted famine,world hungercontinues because it did not address the problem of access.Food sovereignty advocates argue that the green revolution failed to alter the highly concentrated distribution ofeconomic power, particularly access to land andpurchasing power.Critics also argue that the green revolution's increased use of herbicides caused widespread environmental destruction and reduced biodiversity in many areas.
According toPhilip McMichael, a "world agriculture" under the WTOAgreement on Agriculture("food from nowhere") represents one pole of the "central contradiction" of the present regime.  He is interested in the food sovereignty movement's potential to escalate the tension between this and its opposing pole, theagroecology-basedlocalism("food from somewhere") advocated by variousgrassrootsfood movements.Offering slightly different conclusions, recent work by Harriet Friedmann suggests that "food from somewhere" is already being co-opted under an emergent "corporate-environmental" regime(cf. Campbell 2009).
Some scholars argue that the Food Sovereignty movement follows wrong baseline assumptions, citing that small-scale farming is not necessarily a freely chosen lifestyle and farmers in least developed and highly developed countries do not face the same challenges. These critics claim the Food Sovereignty movement may be right about the mistakes ofneoliberaleconomic ideology, but it is silent about the fact that manyfaminesactually occurred under socialist and communist regimes that pursued the goal of food self-sufficiency (cf. Aerni 2011).
There is a lack of consensus within the food sovereignty movement regarding the political orjurisdictionalcommunity at which its calls fordemocratisationand renewed "agrarian citizenship"are directed.  In public statements, the food sovereignty movement urges strong action from both national governments and local communities (in the vein of theindigenous rights movement,Community-Based Natural Resource Management(CBNRM) . Elsewhere it has also appealed to globalcivil societyto act as a check against abuses by national and supranational governing bodies.
Those who take a radically critical view on state sovereignty would argue against the possibility that national sovereignty can be reconciled with that of local communities(see also the debate about multiculturalism and indigenous autonomy in Mexico).
In its strong reassertion of rural and peasant identities, the food sovereignty movement has been read as a challenge to modernist narratives of inexorableurbanisation,industrialisation of agriculture, and de-peasantisation.  However, as part of ongoing debates over the contemporary relevance ofagrarianismin classical Marxism,Henry Bernstein is critical of these accounts. He claims that such analyses tend to present the agrarian population as a unified, singular and world-historical social category, failing to account for: