Toward a Model of Food Sovereignty in Egypt and Tunisia

Jennifer Shutek

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2020.094.039

Abstract

First paragraph: Food sovereignty,” write Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush, “is a framework and set of policy praxis that prioritises the principle and policies to deliver food as a human right rather than as just another commodity exchanged for cash or kind. People’s survival depends on growing and distributing food, which can only be provided in a sustainable way if it is made part of national and public sovereignty” (2019, p. 150). This insight lands with particular poignancy in the context of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when urban and rural communities across the globe face issues of food access and agricultural laborers are constantly exposed to COVID threats in order to continue supplying consumers with produce (Wozniacka, 2020). Ayeb and Bush’s monograph thus centers around food sovereignty, a concept which advocates for not only access to food, but the ability of producers and consumers to participate in decisions around what is produced and how it is produced and consumed (La Via Campesina, 2003). . . .

Highlights

Review of Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush. (2019)
In Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush undertake the ambitious project of surveying and analyzing data on agrarian systems in Egypt and Tunisia from the 1800s to the present moment
They argue that policies on farming and agriculture, both in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and internationally, often occlude farmers’ voices, and that Egypt and Tunisia have been incorporated into the world economy in ways that have negatively affected small-scale farmers

Summary

Introduction

Review of Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush. (2019). Review of Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush.

Results

Conclusion