What is food sovereignty?

Brut America

The alter-globalization movement promoted this concept in the 1990s. Now, it's once again a key issue in the context of the current health crisis.   But what exactly is food sovereignty?

Transcript

00:00It goes far beyond the only self-sufficiency, because it also speaks about how food is produced,

00:11who produces it.

00:25Government organizations there were worried about vanishing state support for agriculture

00:31and about increasing food imports from the U.S.

00:39It was really brought upon to fight the neoliberal system and the globalization of the food system

01:07that was occurring at that time.

01:27This agro-industrial food system is based on long-distance exchanges,

01:32with a very strong distance between the final consumer of the product and the initial producer.

01:38Typically, we can give the example of palm oil or soy.

01:42Palm oil is produced in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Papua New Guinea, etc.,

01:50where it gives rise to deforestation fronts that destabilize ecosystems and cause a lot of problems.

01:58This palm oil is mass-imported into industrialized countries to make food products.

02:06There was, for a lot of reasons, speculation, stock retention, climate change in different parts of the world,

02:33a surge in international food prices, in particular cereals,

02:39which led to certain populations, especially urban populations,

02:44who were not able to produce their own food,

02:48were in situations where they could no longer afford to eat.

03:04What is the role of biocampesina?

03:15Biocampesina, which has been around since the beginning,

03:20aims to defend a particular model of agriculture, which is peasant agriculture,

03:26in opposition to industrialized chemical agriculture,

03:32which operates over long distances with long-distance exchanges.

03:38So it means good policy that takes care of how it is produced,

03:43how it is distributed, to have local markets,

03:46to have a secure access to land for small and young farmers,

03:52and also that the whole system is organized so that there is no shortage of food

03:59and also that there is real access for everyone.

04:02Food sovereignty includes a certain level of food self-sufficiency,

04:07but it does not exclude food exchange and trade as part of a mix to achieve food sovereignty.

04:14Food sovereignty also puts agroecology, sustainable methods of farming, in the front.

04:23And it goes against industrialized farming,

04:27where you have a lot of very large animal farms with a big concentration of animals.

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05:20Food sovereignty is heavily criticized for questioning the high dependency on long food supply chains and global trade.

05:28But now the COVID-19 crisis shows us what happens if food is dependent on long supply chains.

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05:57What this pandemic reveals is that there are goods and services

06:03that must be placed outside of market laws.

06:07Delegating our food, our protection, our ability to care, our way of life to others is madness.

06:18We must regain control of it.

06:21Well, the fact that everybody now is using food sovereignty,

06:26even big factories, big companies, is not completely good news.

06:32But it means that everybody sees the limits of the globalized food system.

06:37So this is why it is very important to have food produced locally with peasants

06:42and for them to have secure access to land and to all resources like seeds, like water,

06:48and everything that is necessary to be a farmer and to be able to produce.

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