Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty refers according to the understanding of its advocates the right of all peoples, countries and groups of countries to define their agricultural and food policy itself. The term was coined during the World Food Conference in 1996 by the international small farmers and rural workers' movement Via Campesina, this is not a scientific concept but a political concept.
Topic
Guiding model of Via Campesina here is a small-scale agriculture, which is mainly produce food for the local population in a sustainable way. Self-sufficiency, local and regional trade should have priority over exports and world trade.
In support, reference is made to the fact that hunger and malnutrition, mainly, the rural population around the world. Two-thirds of the hungry live in rural areas that would hardly be considered by the government development cooperation and international institutions like the World Bank. Nevertheless, most of the food would produce approximately one billion small-scale farmers, small-scale fishermen, pastoralists worldwide. Therefore, any approach to sustainable global food security should pay particular attention to these small producers.
The concept of food sovereignty includes land reforms, respect for the rights of farmers and farm workers, as well as the human right to food, the rejection of the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, the protection of small farmers from cheap imports ( dumping ) and social justice. Often this concept is summarized in the words " bread, land and freedom."
Food sovereignty can be, but need not be synonymous with the self-sufficiency of a country or people.
Among the representatives of the concept of food sovereignty include numerous non-governmental organizations such as Via Campesina, the Brazilian landless movement MST, the MIJARC ( International Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth ) or the human rights organization FIAN. A prominent supporter of the food sovereignty is the Indian activist Vandana Shiva. Venezuela, Nepal and Senegal have enshrined the concept of food sovereignty in their constitutions, and Mali plans to do so. In Bolivia also made efforts to commit the food sovereignty in the proposed new constitution.
From 23 to 27 February 2007, the first World Forum for Food Sovereignty was held in Mali. Participants were over 500 people from eighty countries, different continents and stakeholders represented justice as specified by the organizing committee. On February 27, they adopted in Nyéléni, a specially built for the Forum village, the declaration of Nyéléni.
The next step in this process to strengthen the global movement for food sovereignty was the first Europe-wide forum that Nyeleni -Europe Forum 2011 in Krems in Austria.
Criticism
The movement of food sovereignty is accused of scientists like Philip Aerni, William A. Kerr, Ramesh Sharma, Douglas Southgate and others, politically confrontational and ideological to act. Even some of their basic assumptions were misleading as regards the influence of the World Trade Organization or the solution to the world hunger problem through redistribution or a right to food. The movement also conceal that the famine occurred mostly in socialist and communist countries that pursued the goal of self-sufficiency. Protectionist measures are propagated a means of movement, in order to achieve food sovereignty. These measures, however, had neither the stated objectives of food sovereignty, food security or even poverty.