ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some suggestions about what an affordable foodscape might look like. A truly affordable, and affording, foodscape is dependent upon the needs of communities and the constraints and opportunities of agroecosystems, rather than something shaped heavily by the wants of corporate shareholders and the drive for quarterly returns. Cheap food, by nature of its design, a design predicated upon the socialization of most costs, is not affordable. The chapter includes biofuels for two reasons: to critique them but also to remind readers that they could be a part of an affordable foodscape. The term "food security" was first used in a policy context at the 1974 World Food Congress. Food security, as currently conceived, operationalized, and measured in policy circles, leaves too much unquestioned and too many problems ignored. The Ecuadorian Constitution declared food sovereignty a strategic goal and a government obligation, embracing many of the proposals put forth by Ecuadorian federations linked to La Via Campesina.
