Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
“The problem isn’t that we lack
the technology for sustainable
agriculture, but that there is
lack of structural support.”
– Eric Holt-Giménez
“You’ll pay to feed the same
people through welfare if
they’re not able to produce
food by working. Ecological
agriculture is socially more
productive than capitalintensive
agriculture.”
– Richard Levins
“Food sovereignty should
respect the cultural rights of
indigenous peoples, and
protect our economies.”
– Jesús León Santos
This theory assumes that Costa Rica’s comparative advantage lies in low-wage factory
exports and that food production in our country is not important.”
Carlos Perez, a sustainable agriculture researcher at the University of Georgia,
pointed out that it’s not a question of “food security” versus “food sovereignty”; it’s a
matter of scale. “Food security applies at the household level; food sovereignty makes
sense at a larger scale. The food sovereignty concept is good because it shows that
food security isn’t just about technology; it’s about policy and power, both within
states and across nations. It shows the politics behind food. Choice is important, too:
trade and markets are not bad in themselves, but they can have bad effects when you
have no choice of whether or how to participate in them. Food sovereignty is necessary
for real democracy.”
Eric Holt-Giménez, Latin America Program Manager at the Bank Information
Center, said that we need to work at all scales on a food sovereignty agenda but that
“the key is who has control over the labor process, over the different factors of production.
When the Green Revolution and other high-external-input technologies are
brought in, farmers lose control over labor, fertilizer, seed, and post-production
processes. The big companies – agrochemical and processing and marketing – take
away farmers’ control, their relations with consumers, and farmers are stuck producing
one commodity. Now, genetically modified organisms are the latest form of this
colonization of agriculture by big capital.”
Karl Zimmerer, from the University of Wisconsin’s Geography Department, raised
the idea of “foodsheds” that has emerged from the community-supported agriculture
movement in the U.S.: “An idea parallel to watersheds: semi-autonomous growing sheds
for supplying regions of people with food. That’s an example of a scale to work at.”
Richard Levins, from the Harvard School of Public Health, believes that “there has
to be a national-level policy because countries need a buffer against the rise and fall
of international markets in food and farm inputs. Even a small change in world food
prices can bring a big change in food availability and sovereignty.” He offers the case
of Cuba, where diversification of food production in space serves as a buffer against
natural or manmade disaster.“You produce a diversity of crops, so in case of disaster,
you have a food commodity to fall back on....You use a mix of technologies: animal
traction as well as mechanical – the key is to diversify.”
A number of participants brought up the relationships between hunger, food aid,
and food sovereignty.
Jesús León Santos, farmer and president of CEDICAM (Centro de Desarrollo
Integral Campesino de la Mixteca), said that seeking food security was not enough
and that farmers in Mexico needed to work for food sovereignty. He added: “Now, too
much comes from other places – it’s too risky. Food aid and food trade can be used
against us if we take decisions contrary to what our trading partners want. Food sovereignty
should respect the cultural rights of indigenous peoples, and protect our
economies. It must be tied to controlling the whole chain of our farm inputs, too.”
Ivette Perfecto, from the University of Michigan, warned that we should not disregard
the concept of food security because hunger is still a problem and food security
is a way to address that. But the issue is the way that hunger and malnutrition prob-
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