Food Sovereignty Discourse Research Articles

Urban Food Advocates' tactics to rebuild food systems

Food movement advocates articulate a diversity of approaches to address the current food crisis. These approaches resonate with both food security and food sovereignty discourses and range between reform and radical rights-based theories of change. This paper draws from research with urban food advocates in Australia to provide insights into the relations between tactics to change food systems and their resonance with food security and food sovereignty discourses. On the basis of this analysis, the paper concludes that tactics for social change – or the food politics enacted by urban food advocates – both converge and diverse with food security and food sovereignty discourses. These outcomes point to the diversity of approaches for identifying and evaluating pathways for rebuilding food systems.

Comparing food security and food sovereignty discourses

This essay conceptualizes food security and food sovereignty as fluid and changing discourses that define the problem of hunger. I trace the discursive geohistories of food security and food sovereignty in order to identify oppositions and relationalities between them. I argue that the interpretations of, and relations between, food security and food sovereignty vary by geography and scale, as well as by the conceptual and theoretical differences within the discourses themselves. When and where these discourses develop and emerge is central to understanding their oppositions and convergences. How scale is constructed within particular discourses is also important to understanding how they co-exist relationally or in opposition. Food security and food sovereignty discourses are tied to distinctive political and economic histories, ecologies, and identities at the national and local levels. They are differentially deployed depending upon geographic context and the political economy of development and underdevelopment. Both discourses are dynamic and changing in relation to the wider political and cultural economies of food system dynamics across scale. Uniform definitions of each term should be resisted. The point is to understand the geographies of their relational overlap and their continual difference.

Whose right to (farm) the city? Race and food justice activism in post-Katrina New Orleans

Among critical responses to the perceived perils of the industrial food system, the food sovereignty movement offers a vision of radical transformation by demanding the democratic right of peoples “to define their own agriculture and food policies.” At least conceptually, the movement offers a visionary and holistic response to challenges related to human and environmental health and to social and economic well-being. What is still unclear, however, is the extent to which food sovereignty discourses and activism interact with and affect the material and social realities of the frequently low-income communities of color in which they are situated, and whether they help or hinder pre-existing efforts to alleviate hunger, overcome racism, and promote social justice. This research and corresponding paper addresses those questions by examining food justice and food sovereignty activism in the city of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina as understood by both activists and community members. I argue, using post-Katrina New Orleans as a case study, that food projects initiated and maintained by white exogenous groups on behalf of communities of color risk exacerbating the very systems of privilege and inequality they seek to ameliorate. This paper argues for a re-positioning of food justice activism, which focuses on systemic change through power analyses and the strategic nurturing of interracial alliances directed by people residing in the communities in which projects are situated.

Peasant-driven agricultural growth and food sovereignty

The concept of food sovereignty presents us with an important theoretical and practical challenge. The political economy of agriculture can only take up this gauntlet through improving its understanding of the processes of agricultural growth. It is very difficult to address the issue of food sovereignty without such an understanding. Developing such an understanding involves (re)combining the political economy of agriculture with the Chayanovian approach. This paper gives several explanations (all individually valid but stronger in combination) as to why peasant agriculture results in sturdy and sustainable growth and also identifies the factors that undermine this capacity. The paper also argues that peasant agriculture is far from being a remnant of the past. While different peasantries around the world are shaped and reproduced by today's capital (and more specifically by current food empires), they equally help to shape and contribute to the further unfolding of the forms of capital related to food and agriculture. It is important to understand this two-way interaction between capital and peasant agriculture as this helps to ground the concept of food sovereignty. The article argues that the capacity to produce enough food (at different levels, distinguishing different needs, and so on) needs to be an integral part of the food sovereignty discourse. It concludes by suggesting that peasant agriculture has the best potential for meeting food sovereignty largely because it has the capacity to produce (more than) sufficient good food for the growing world population and that it can do so in a way that is sustainable.

The Securitisation of Food Security in Colombia, 1970–2010

AbstractAfter the world food crisis of the early 1970s, food policies became a ‘national priority’ for Colombian development. Colombia was the first country to implement the multi-sectoral approach proposed by international organisations. However, in the past 30 years Colombian governments have presented nutrition as a minor health issue. During the recent world food crisis, the government insisted that Colombia was one of the most food-secure countries in the world. In seemingly similar circumstances, why was food policy made a priority in the 1970s and not in the new millennium? We address this question with the help of securitisation theory. We argue that in the 1970s, the government successfully securitised the food issue in the context of a reduction of external food aid and a failed land reform. Recent national governments (as opposed to some local governments) have had little interest in a securitising move since the related food sovereignty discourses threaten their free market policies.

The politics of international agri-food policy: discourses of trade-oriented food security and food sovereignty

How have the discourses of ‘trade-oriented food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ contributed to a politics of international agri-food policy? Discourse is understood as the meanings given to phenomena (both social and physical) and the practices associated with those meanings. Consequently, metaphors are regarded as powerful sense-making constructs. In their classic forms, these two discourses constitute seemingly irreconcilable paradigms: one representing a hegemonic assertion of neoliberal economic rationalism, the other an oppositional and populist social movement. Analysis of public-facing discourse reveals distinctive meanings and metaphors concerning the role of trade in food security and in the conceptualisation of nature (particularly in reference to agricultural biotechnology) along with elements of co-construction. While both forms of discourse face challenges in retaining coherency, trade-oriented food security enunciates a poorly specified and increasingly arcane vision, relatively unconcerned with ecological sensitivities and resource constraints. New opportunities for the discourse of food sovereignty may involve continuing to specify and exemplify a politics of the particular founded on agro-ecological practices.

Local Stagings, Global Productions: The Theatricality of Food Rituals in Landless Movement

While most scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the use of ethnic identity and indigeneity as a critical tool for movement building in Latin America, this article turns toward new performative strategies in the 2000s. Through food performances—from showing and boasting about small-scale production to collective practices of cooking and feeding activists from a common pot—MST-Bolivia teaches campesinos about the importance of reclaiming land, territory, and food systems for indigenous peoples. The discourse of food sovereignty respatializes agriculture from global and corporate arenas to the local, as MST activists demand that food should be first and foremost a right and secondarily an item of trade. Yet there is no purity to their politics: daily contradictions exist between public declarations of sovereignty and collectivity and individualistic needs and desires. Despite such tensions, MST transports food traditions from regional to international arenas where they reassemble highly flexible organizational strategies capable of providing food for thousands of activists.