Abstract
The first lecture will examine the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the concept of food sovereignty. Driven by the transnational farmers’ movement La Via Campesina in the early 1990s, the idea of food sovereignty was put forward to offer an alternative to the global competition among agricultural systems heralded by the adoption of the Agreement on Agriculture as part of the World Trade Organization agreements.
Indeed, it was as the Punta del Este round of trade negotiations within the GATT (1986–1994)—which would lead to the establishment of the WTO in 1995—was drawing to a close that the farmers’ movement expressed its opposition to subjecting the development of agriculture to the demands of international trade, and instead proposed that priority be given to food production that meets the needs of local communities, relegating international trade (and export agriculture) to a secondary role. This debate between the gradual liberalization of trade in agricultural products on the one hand, and food sovereignty on the other, extends beyond the realm of international trade organization alone. It also encompasses agronomic, health, and geopolitical issues, as well as democratic concerns: behind the demand for food sovereignty, in fact, there is also a demand for autonomy and the democratic reclaiming of food systems, in order to prevent agricultural and food policy choices from being dictated by the need for competitiveness—and thus by the pursuit of economies of scale—which leads to the subordination of small-scale peasant farming to the expectations of large agribusiness firms and global value chains.
This contrast between two models of agricultural and food system development has shaped debates on food system reform since 1990 and has led to the gradual replacement of the paradigm of agricultural trade liberalization with that of food sovereignty: the UN General Assembly’s adoption in December 2018 of a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, which includes the concept of food sovereignty, marks this shift.
