Food Sovereignty: A Critical Case

Abstract

For decades, the global food security strategy has operated on the assumption that poverty and hunger result from a state of underdevelopment, which can be alleviated through the distribution of technology to increase farm-level productivity. In more recent years, transnational corporate involvement within food security has led to a global imposition of intellectual property rights over seed and agriculture science, thus catalyzing a process of accumulation by dispossession. Those who have been dispossessed of their seed, knowledge, food cultures, and social relations of production, however, have not stood idly by. NGO, peasant and human rights organizations have galvanized around food sovereignty, a radical-rights based alternative to the business as usual approach of food security. Broadly defined, food sovereignty is the peoples’ right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It has also been described as ‘repossessing the commons’, or taking back those aspects of life, like seed, which have been commodified through corporate/neoliberal projects. One fall back to this approach is that it does not address the crucial difference between having a right and doing what is right. The thesis explores this topic by reviewing the meaning of rights for both food security and food sovereignty. Then, using Robert Sack’s theoretical framework, the thesis suggests that we may use intrinsic geographic judgments to know whether the rights we promote actually lead to intrinsic progress, or a heightened awareness of the real and the good. Lastly, an empirical case study in Guatemala is explored to reveal how the power of place affects the sort of progress food sovereignty can achieve.