Food Sovereignty
The concept of food sovereignty was coined by the international peasant movement ’Via Campesina’.
It was developed as a reaction to the official definition of ‘food security’, which simply refers to the amount of food that is available to the population of a country or a region. Food sovereignty goes beyond this, focusing on the way food is produced, consumed and distributed.
The IAASTD was the first intergovernmental, UN-led process to introduce and promote the concept of food sovereignty. >>more
Liberalisation of International Trade Threatens Food Sovereignty
Global trade has a significant influence on agricultural policies in many developing countries.
Rather than providing the population with food or promoting the development of domestic markets and rural areas, governments and local elites frequently try to generate foreign currency and tax revenue from agricultural exports.
Although their populations are suffering from hunger, many countries supply cheap raw materials to the animal feed, fibre, (bio)fuel and luxury food industry in the North, bringing both ecological and social costs.
Facts & Figures
"Food sovereignty is 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. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations."
Food Sovereignty rejects corporate control. It "requires that women and men who provide food have control of land and resources such as water and seeds, to be used and shared in socially and environmentally sustainable ways. Privatisation of such resources, for example through intellectual property rights regimes or commercial contracts, is explicitly rejected."
"Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets, and; to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of and the rights to aquatic resources."
