Comparing food security and food sovereignty discourses

Abstract

This essay conceptualizes food security and food sovereignty as fluid and changing discourses that define the problem of hunger. I trace the discursive geohistories of food security and food sovereignty in order to identify oppositions and relationalities between them. I argue that the interpretations of, and relations between, food security and food sovereignty vary by geography and scale, as well as by the conceptual and theoretical differences within the discourses themselves. When and where these discourses develop and emerge is central to understanding their oppositions and convergences. How scale is constructed within particular discourses is also important to understanding how they co-exist relationally or in opposition. Food security and food sovereignty discourses are tied to distinctive political and economic histories, ecologies, and identities at the national and local levels. They are differentially deployed depending upon geographic context and the political economy of development and underdevelopment. Both discourses are dynamic and changing in relation to the wider political and cultural economies of food system dynamics across scale. Uniform definitions of each term should be resisted. The point is to understand the geographies of their relational overlap and their continual difference.

Food security and food sovereignty in West Africa

“…The complex interaction between local communities and national governments is a controversial issue in the food sovereignty debate: while the initial definitions of the concept were more focused on national sovereignty 15 , further analysis has emphasized the role of local communities, sometimes in opposition to national policies (Jarosz, 2014).…”

“…The focus on vulnerable small-scale farmers, the systemic perspective on food and agriculture and the concern for the control over food supply are central issues in this study and highlight the different food trade perspectives between the food sovereignty paradigm and the trade-oriented food security approach (Patel, 2009;Lee, 2013;Jarosz, 2014). Authors and institutions that support the food security perspective tend to see a positive link between trade openness and food security.…”

Lettuce learn: Student reflections on building and sustaining a community donation garden

“…These interrelated concerns for the emergency food system are situated in a scholar-activist and practitioner movement to advance social justice and raise awareness about a food system that is built on a neoliberal political economy, which rests on the belief that individual well-being is best realized when the free market operates without state intervention (Alkon, 2014). This political economy gave us pause to consider underlying economic structural issues such as inequitable resource ownership and distribution identified by the food sovereignty movement (Holt-Giménez & Wang, 2011;Jarosz, 2014 We may make do with the stopgap structure and function of the emergency food system, but it is not a viable path forward because it neglects issues underlying food injustice such as oppression and racism. In addition, the emergency food system reinforces a food system that is based solely on economics and production rather than people and the health of the environment.…”

Food sovereignty: alternative policy for a sustainable national food system in Timor-Leste under climate change

“…The best possible pathway to assure the right to food, particularly in the context of climate change is using a combination of approaches, radical and reformer, in a mutually reinforcing way to affect change to the current elites top-down model of scientific planning and decision-making. This resonates with how divergent and convergent approaches between food sovereignty and food security discourses can help to achieve food security in Timor-Leste in a sustainable manner (see Lyons, 2014a;Jarosz, 2014).…”

“…This would allow agents of change to work directly with decision-makers and urban citizens who might have no problems with a market-based approach to food security. In addition, the experience of Bello-Horizonte discussed earlier in this chapter provides some insight into how decision-makers, citizens, producers and consumers can work together to set priorities, which enable ordinary people to have a voice and be part of the change (see also Jarosz, 2014). The collaboration between decisionmakers and citizens to achieve food security can be understood as a ''political contract'' between the Government and the people.…”