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Food sovereignty or the human right to adequate food: which concept serves better as international development policy for global hunger and poverty reduction?

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Abstract

The emerging concept of food sovereignty refers to the right of communities, peoples, and states to independently determine their own food and agricultural policies. It raises the question of which type of food production, agriculture and rural development should be pursued to guarantee food security for the world population. Social movements and non-governmental organizations have readily integrated the concept into their terminology. The concept is also beginning to find its way into the debates and policies of UN organizations and national governments in both developing and industrialized countries. Beyond its relation to civil society movements little academic attention has been paid to the concept of food sovereignty and its appropriateness for international development policies aimed at reducing hunger and poverty, especially in comparison to the human right to adequate food (RtAF). We analyze, on the basis of an extensive literature review, the concept of food sovereignty with regard to its ability to contribute to hunger and poverty reduction worldwide as well as the challenges attached to this concept. Then, we compare the concept of food sovereignty with the RtAF and discuss the appropriateness of both concepts for national public sector policy makers and international development policies. We conclude that the impact on global food security is likely to be much greater if the RtAF approach predominated public policies. While the concept of food sovereignty may be appropriate for civil society movements, we recommend that the RtAF should obtain highest priority in national and international agricultural, trade and development policies.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed overview of the history of the human right to adequate food please refer to section “The right to adequate food”.

  2. La Via Campesina was founded in 1993. It is an influential international movement with 148 member organizations of small and medium-size farmers, rural women and workers and indigenous groups from 69 countries (La Via Campesina 2008).

  3. While the term ‘peasant’ in everyday English usage is a rather pejorative term, the national and international farmers’ movements embrace the term ‘peasant’ with pride (Desmarais 2008). We use the term in line with the understanding of these movements.

  4. The majority of hungry people live in developing countries, especially in rural areas, and are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture (UN-HRC 2010). 50% of hungry people are peasants, 20% landless workers, 10% fisherfolk, pastoralists and forest dwellers, while 20% live in urban areas (UN Millennium Project 2005).

  5. For purposes of simplification, in the following these various groups are gathered under the overarching term ‘peasants’.

  6. Searching the UNEP and World Bank homepage, there are some documents which indicate contacts to NGOs/CSOs favouring the concept of food sovereignty (for examples, please see http://www.unep.org/GC/GC23/documents/GC23-INF16-Add2.pdf; http://go.worldbank.org/O0JOO2HJC0; http://go.worldbank.org/SQWUA7UDH0; http://go.worldbank.org/WLQOGIHCL0). The World Bank supports the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) which list food sovereignty as one of their main objectives for agriculture (see below).

  7. The documents, like their discussion series, do not necessarily express the views of UNCTAD. Documents, where the concept of food sovereignty at least appears, are for example UNCTAD, 2009, Food security in Africa: learning lessons from the food crisis (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/tdbex47d3_en.pdf), or the Civil Society Forum Declaration to UNCTAD XI in 2004 (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/td407_en.pdf).

  8. The IPC is a global network of CSOs and social movements concerned with food sovereignty issues. The IPC serves as a facilitation mechanism for the dialogue between social movements/CSOs and the UN agencies dealing with food and agriculture.

  9. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) replaced the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in 2006.

  10. For its work, ECOWAS requested support from the World Bank. The World Bank approved funding for the first phase of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP) in 2007. (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0,,contentMDK:22931606~menuPK:2246551~pagePK:2865106~piPK:2865128~theSitePK:258644,00.html).

  11. Participating countries were Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Venezuela, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Haiti, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and the Dominican Republic.

  12. The FAO has calculated that an increase in agricultural production of 70% is necessary by 2050 to feed the world population (FAO 2009).

  13. For example, the anticipated welfare effects of the WTO on developing countries vary from negative to positive depending on the models used (see Bouët et al. (2005, 2007), Stiglitz and Charlton (2007)).

  14. There are 77 of low-income food deficit countries (FAO 2010).

  15. An overview of their documents is provided on their homepage: http://www.fao.org/righttofood/publi_en.htm.

  16. The homepage provides an overview of relevant documents: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/annual.htm.

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Correspondence to Tina D. Beuchelt.

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Beuchelt, T.D., Virchow, D. Food sovereignty or the human right to adequate food: which concept serves better as international development policy for global hunger and poverty reduction?. Agric Hum Values 29, 259–273 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9355-0

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