Food Sovereignty and Agrarian Reform as Social Protection

Dr. Markus Kröger Anthropology, Development Studies

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

- Pro-poor land reform that addresses the “land question” of land concentration and landlessness by distributing land-access more equally.

- Currently includes “rurban” lifestyles, and not only food production but also e.g. services and small-scale industries.

Examples: - Finland until the 1950s (almost complete agrarian reform); - Many Latin American countries in the past decades

(incomplete and partial reforms, e.g. Brazil, Venezuela)

Concepts: Agrarian Reform

Food Sovereignty: “The right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (Shattuck et al. 2015, Globalizations)

Not just food security: the concept also incorporates power

analysis, international justice, and criticism of transnational corporations and the current food regime.

Concepts: Food Sovereignty

Examples: -Some nation’s/group’s food security increase (via leases

abroad) may be away from other one’s subsistence (e.g. global farmland grabbing, which is taking place not just in Africa).

-Goes beyond right to food, which does not necessarily open

up what kind of food, produced by whom, and with what consequences (environmentally, socially, politically), one has the right to.

Concepts: Food Sovereignty

SOURCE: LVC, ”16th October - International Day of Action for Peoples’

Food Sovereignty and against transnational corporations”

Published on Monday, 12 October 2015.

A concept originally coined by La Vía Campesina, key arguments: - Globally, over 1.2 billion peasants and their families “ensure

food sovereignty and the right to food by providing up to 80% of locally consumed food and cool the planet and conserve biodiversity and seeds.”

- “The current climate, hunger and migrant and refugee crises affecting millions of peasants, small farmers, families, especially women and youth show that corporate solutions are false and won’t yield human dignity.”

Concepts: Food Sovereignty

Food sovereignty, and the points above, have led in the past few years to research that enhances the concept’s analytical usability. Examples:

- Tanya Li: ”Surplus population”: there is not enough work today or tomorrow for all people, and the number rises: a reform needed.

- Chatterjee: Historically, capitalism has managed to ”rid itself” of such pressures, by colonization, world wars, epidemics etc, but

When these options are unavailable, we can see as results new alternative movements; wars; and refugee crises.

Food Sovereignty: Academic research

The problems of ”surplus populations” has gained weight with: • land grabs; • Continued geopolitical interests (e.g. Iraq, Afganistan new

seed laws after occupations, pressure also in Western Ukraine now).

• The global climate change • And free trade deals (e.g. NAFTA, Mexico to US)

Food Sovereignty: Academic research

The movement was born in the 1990s, when several new free trade agreements were signed: As cheap commodities flood rural economies, the agricultural sector consolidates dramatically

This weakens the state apparatus and the capacity to regulate flows of food peasants cannot compete against subsidized, agribusiness-scale producers

whose ecological footprint is heavier rural exodus ensues huge social problems in urban areas and across the impacted countries

(e.g. Mexico, Central America, the areas of Brazil with large plantation investments)

“Invoking sovereignty as a rallying cry framed hunger, agrarian reform, and rural economies as an issue of human rights and national control” (Shattuck et al. 2015, 423)

Food Sovereignty and Free Trade Pacts

Towards Food Sovereignty: some Demands

-The Seed Treaty: an international agreement that recognizes the right of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell their seeds (needs to be enforced).

-The agroindustrial food system causes half of global greenhouse gas emissions => shifting to products from local markets / small farmers can significantly decrease the impacts => this supports social protection, both directly and indirectly.

=> Agroecology has become the practical method for building food sovereignty at the farm scale (Altieri 2012).

Questions?

Thank you for your attention!