Food Sovereignty

Food waste has emerged recently as one of the major environmental and socio-economic issues that humanity faces. Analysis on the subject are at the early stage and the concordance on methodologies need to be developed. This report reviews international literature and analyzes the most relevant links between food wastage and other issues, such a land/soil, water, energy consumption, degradation of biological integrity, climate change, alteration of the nitrogen cycle, food safety and sovereignty, circular bioeconomy, in order to build a socio-ecological vision. From the examination of existing conceptual frameworks, we come to a proposal of systemic definition which includes basic elements of waste (or wastage, to use a wide-ranging term) so far not considered. Determining the causes and structural constraints along the chains, in particular, revealing different amounts of wastage associated with different food system patterns. The report then analyzes the available data at global, European and Italian level, highlighting the critical extent and effects of food wastage. The need to shift focus from recover and recycling to the indispensable structural prevention is identified as a means to reduce surplus formation and consequent wastage. Prevention proposals are widely dealt and aimed at a strategy that increases ecological and social resilience by structurally transforming food systems.

reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. We see Agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life. [...] Our diverse forms of smallholder food production based on Agroecology generate local knowledge, promote social justice, nurture identity and culture, and strengthen the economic viability of rural areas. As smallholders, we defend our dignity when we choose to produce in an agroecological way.”

The Green Revolution not only failed to ensure safe and abundant food production for all people, but it was launched under the assumptions that abundant water and cheap energy to fuel modern agriculture would always be available and that climate would be stable and not change. In some of the major grain production areas the rate of increase in cereal yields is declining as actual crop yields approach a ceiling for maximal yield potential. Due to lack of ecological regulation mechanisms, monocultures are heavily dependent on pesticides. In the past 50 years the use of pesticides has increased dramatically worldwide and now amounts to some 2.6 million tons of pesticides per year with an annual value in the global market of more than US$ 25 billion. Today there are about one billion hungry people in the planet, but hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity due to lack of production. The world already produces enough food to feed nine to ten billion people, the population peak expected by 2050. There is no doubt that humanity needs an alternative agricultural development paradigm, one that encourages more ecologically, biodiverse, resilient, sustainable and socially just forms of agriculture. The basis for such new systems are the myriad of ecologically based agricultural styles developed by at least 75% of the 1.5 billion smallholders, family farmers and indigenous people on 350 million small farms which account for no less than 50% of the global agricultural output for domestic consumption.

Every civilization has specific social-cultural rituals for eating, and contemporary Japan is a particularly interesting case. The architects of the Japanese food policy use a special respect for food in two ways: first, as a tool of soft power to spread Japanese influence worldwide; second, as an effective way to ensure food security. It is the second component that interests the authors. The article identifies key issues of Japan’s food policy. Based on the institutional analysis and the food regime theory, the authors identify the structural nature of food import dependency of the Land of the Rising Sun. The combination of the comparative approach and retrospective analysis allowed to discover a number of elements that are closely connected with the idea of food sovereignty, especially the concept of shokuiku (food education). Based on the historical-genetic method, the authors suggest a cognitive route of the terminological unit “from the component of folklore to the legislative...

Las mujeres, particularmente las campesinas, han tenido un rol fundamental en la construccion de procesos de soberania alimentaria. Distintas investigaciones, como Lara (1995), Deere y Leon (2000) y Mundubat (2012), han evidenciado la importancia que tiene el trabajo femenino en la economia familiar campesina y los retos que las mujeres han desafiado. Sin embargo, sus funciones y contribuciones, hasta antes de los estudios de la nueva ruralidad, ver por ejemplo los trabajos de Llambi y Perez (2007), Cepal (1982), Gomez (2003), Kay (2009), Zepeda (1988), Moreno (1988), Perez (2001) y Toledo (2006), habian sido invisibilizados ocasionando que las mujeres no fueran consideradas como sujetas de derechos capaces de tomar decisiones. En este contexto, el feminismo y la perspectiva de genero emergieron como eje de analisis para entender lo rural, ampliar sus discusiones y ofrecer nuevas miradas sobre la participacion de las mujeres en el desarrollo. Situadas desde estos margenes, en el pre...

Health food access continues to be a focus of research, policy, and activism on a global scale. In the USA, healthy corner store initiatives seek to improve food access and health outcomes, with particular attention to urban, low-income neighborhoods where Black and Latinx populations reside. However, a nutritional perspective alone deflects attention from changing contexts and from the meaning of stores for residents. As cities gentrify, who will these renovated corner stores serve? Do they abet or stem displacement? How do locals “make sense” of themselves and their relationships through corner stores? These questions urge attention to corner (or convenience) retailers from a critical and relational perspective, one that addresses power dynamics such as race and racism as well as the role relationships may play. In this chapter, I visit three corner stores with African-American and Afro-Latinx youth in their gentrifying neighborhood. Their experiences in Austin, Texas illustrate d...

Moveable Gardens explores how biodiversity and food can counter the alienation caused by displacement. By offering in-depth studies on a variety of regions, this volume carefully considers various forms of sanctuary-making within communities. This book seeks to address how carrying seeds, plants, and other travelling companions is an ongoing response to the grave conditions of displacement in today’s world. The destruction of homelands, fragmentation of habitats, and post-capitalist conditions of modernity are countered by the individuals in this volume through thoughtful remembrance of tradition and the migration of seeds, which are embodied in gardening, cooking, and community-building. Moveable Gardens includes research located in distant yet connected places, where the authors examine how biodiversity fares in food, memory, and commensality. In highlighting itineraries and sanctuaries in an era of massive dislocation, this volume addresses concerns about finding comforting and familiar refuges in the Anthropocene. The worlds of marginalized individuals who live in impoverished rural communities, many Indigenous peoples, and refugees are constantly under threat of fracturing. Yet, in every case, there is resilience and regeneration as these individuals recreate their worlds through the foods, traditions, and plants they carry with them into their new realities. This volume offers a new understanding of the performances and routines of sociality in the face of daunting market forces and perilous climate transformations. These traditions sustained our ancestors, and they may suffice to secure a more meaningful, diverse future. By delving into the nature of nostalgia, burrowing into memory and knowledge, and embracing the specific wonders of each deeply-rooted or newly displaced community, endlessly valuable ways of being and understanding can be preserved.

Nutrition, food systems, and the biodiversity of food and agriculture (agrobiodiversity) are rapidly changing among indigenous smallholders in the Andean countries, across Latin America, and globally Urgent calls for food sovereignty recognize global transformations of nutrition, food systems, agriculture, and climate change amid geographically uneven development and vulnerability to these shocks that recently include the coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic Collaborating with a praxis-oriented institution focused on social nutrition and public health in Peru, we conducted mixed-method research on landscape and livelihood transformations among indigenous smallholders in the Huanuco region Our approach utilizes place- and region-based research that integrates a relational framework of emergent agrobiodiversity interactions with a model of coupling/de-coupling in production-consumption linkages Conceptual insights and empirical results demonstrate varied but widespread food and nutrition insecurity, moderate agrobiodiversity, and innovative agrobiodiverse maize fields and home gardens Part-time farming and predominant purchased food are dual pillars amid precarious livelihoods and land use that condition food sovereignty prospects Cultural affect strongly influences emergent agrobiodiversity utilized in food consumption through relations of gender and intersectional social factors Global transformations fuel the substantial albeit partial decline of agrobiodiversity Emergent agrobiodiversity in food-growing spaces can enhance nutrition security and food sovereignty, lessen vulnerability, and strengthen agroecological adaptive capacity and resilience

This paper discuses integration between Green Islam and an agro - ecological movement in establishing food sovereignty practiced by a community of  Pesantren Ath - Thariq  Garut, West Java. They have struggled for food sovereignty through agricultural production models by prioritizing local wisdom, respecting to organisms, dividing land with zoning systems, planting with  polyculture  system, consuming diversified food, and self-mastering to make fertilizer. Furthermore, they also have preserved local and inherited seeds as an approach to cultivate their farming.

Food sovereignty is an alternative approach attempting to resolve the world’s current food crisis. This approach emphasizes small-scale farmers as the main actors in a food and agricultural system. It encourages small-scale farmers to fully participate in the decision-making process of national and/or international agreements regarding food and agriculture systems in order to benefit and empower them. Food sovereignty aspires to return the food and agriculture system to a domestic level, which gives freedom to small-scale farmers to produce foods reflecting their knowledge and experience and suited to the local conditions. Agroecology is a management approach aimed at achieving a sustainable agricultural ecosystem utilizing local resources, local wisdom, and local farmers’ knowledge in producing foods. Thus, agroecology minimizes production costs, increases the quality and quantity of foods, and gives smallscale farmers more benefits. According to knowledge-sharing, an educational t...

The Venezuelan food sovereignty movement represents an attempt by the government to establish a national food system that strives to provide equitable food access by offering multitiered, decentralized strategies supported by legislation. The movement emerged during Hugo Chavez’s period as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It encompasses aspects of land reform, agroecology, and distribution and is supported by principles of independence from corporate control, equality, social inclusion, shared wealth and resources, endogenous development, and participatory democracy. The food sovereignty movement represents a strategy toward greater social equality. The desire for food sovereignty arose from a history of political and economic instability that created the conditions for Dutch disease, inflation, unequal land distribution, urbanization, and poverty. While the exact outcomes of Venezuela’s food movement remain unclear, its multiple strategies offer an attempt to incorporate social, cultural, and environmental ethics within a national food system.