ABSTRACT
While its origins can be traced back to the early 1980s (Edelman 2014), the concept of food sovereignty most commonly deployed by social movements today emerged in a 1996 declaration presented by La Via Campesina at the World Food Summit of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. In this document, food sovereignty is defined as ‘the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods, respecting cultural and productive diversity’ (Via Campesina 1996, emphasis added). This notion echoes earlier conceptions of food sovereignty used in Mexico to imply ‘national control over diverse aspects of the food chain, thus reducing dependency on foreign capital and imports of basic foods, inputs, and technologies’ (Heath 1985, 115, quoted in Edelman 2014, 6). In good part, Via Campesina’s 1996 declaration was motivated by the failure of the World Trade Organization’s 1995 Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) to adequately address the issue of agricultural subsidies in the United States and Europe, and in
An early version of this paper was presented at the Yale Conference on Food Sovereignty, and benefited from the comments received there. The authors would also like to acknowledge the editors of this special collection, chiefly Saturnino M. Borras Jr., and three anonymous reviewers as well as Sara Keene and Stalin Herrera, who provided helpful comments and constructive criticism. Authors are listed in alphabetical order.
