Abstract
The first conference will review the conditions of emergence of the notion of food sovereignty. Championed by the transnational peasant movement La Via Campesina in the early 1990s, the idea of food sovereignty was put forward as an alternative to the competition between the world's agricultures heralded by the adoption of the Agreement on Agriculture as part of the World Trade Organization agreements.
As the Punta del Este round of GATT trade negotiations (1986-1994) drew to a close, leading to the creation of the WTO in 1995, the peasant movement expressed its refusal to see the development of agriculture subjected to the demands of international trade, and proposed instead that priority be given to food production that meets the needs of local communities, relegating international trade (and export agriculture) to a subsidiary role. This debate between the progressive liberalization of trade in agricultural products on the one hand, and food sovereignty on the other, goes beyond the scope of international trade organization. It also covers agronomic, sanitary and geopolitical issues, as well as democratic ones : behind the demand for food sovereignty, in fact, is also expressed a demand for autonomy and the democratic re-conquest of food systems, to avoid agricultural and food policy choices being dictated by the need for competitiveness, and therefore by the quest for economies of scale, leading to the subordination of small-scale peasant farming to the expectations of large agri-food firms and global value chains.
This opposition between two development models for agriculture and food systems has structured debates on the reform of food systems since 1990, and has led to a gradual substitution of the paradigm of food sovereignty for the paradigm of agricultural trade liberalization : the adoption by the UN General Assembly, in December 2018, of a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, which includes the notion of food sovereignty, consecrates this reversal.
