Celebrate Food Sovereignty this Holiday Season!
By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders
The holidays are when many people happily rediscover that there is still culture left in agriculture. A delicious homemade meal of traditional bioregional fare in a relaxed “slow food” atmosphere is often the highlight of any gathering among friends and family this time of year. In fact, it is almost hard to imagine a seasonal celebration without turkey, wild rice, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie – all foods that have become a proud part of the culinary heritage of the Americas.
Yet, nowadays one can’t always count on the integrity of such a feast. Where there were once dozens of heirloom turkey varieties to choose from, most people are now stuck with one type of standard bird raised in a factory farm to corporate specifications. Wild rice still gathered by canoe from lakes in the Upper Midwest is now more often machine harvested from paddies in California. The cranberry sauce may contain high fructose Bt corn syrup, while the mashed potatoes are slathered in rBGH butter. And don’t even ask about the chemistry behind the synthetic “whipped topping” on the pumpkin pie…
What is sadly missing from many of our holiday celebrations is a hearty affirmation of food sovereignty. Most people in the U.S., even those engaged in agriculture, are often unfamiliar with the concept of food sovereignty. Food security is a much more common concept in mainstream media and popular consciousness. Unfortunately, food security has also become a “Trojan Horse” for creeping corporatization of our food/farm system. As a simplistic technical question of how best to get food to those who need it, food security ignores the deeper political debate about why hunger exists at all in a world that has plenty of food – just not available to those who are poor, landless, or marginalized.
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the world’s hungry actually dwell in rural areas once famous for their agricultural expertise. This reversal of human history has not been an inevitable consequence of the “Green Revolution” – rather it is due to deliberate policies that have violently transformed local food/farm economies. To paraphrase the corporate “free trade” apologist, Michael Friedman, one can’t have Mc Donalds? without Mc Donnell? Douglas. Within this brand of neoliberal food imperialism, only those who are willing to play the game and pay the going price can evade the specter of hunger.
Thus one finds the Spanish continuing their war against conquered Andean peoples by criminalizing the cultivation of quinoa. It didn’t matter that quinoa was better adapted to mountain climates or that it provided a complete protein source, rare among plants. It was more important to the conquistadors to destroy the agricultural self-sufficiency of indigenous peoples and force them to grow barley for making beer. The French launched a similar campaign against the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans, and squash) to break the Iroquois Confederacy, while the British prohibited agroforestry and intercropping in order to better “pacify” and “modernize” African societies who fell under their rule.
History is replete with examples of food sovereignty struggles – from the Digger Revolt and the Boston Tea Party to the Irish Potato Famine and the Zapatista Uprising. Today we are still faced with countless challenges to community food sovereignty – whether it is USAID dumping biotech crops on the global south under the guise of food aid or FEMA parking trailers on top of community gardens in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. Powerful institutions such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank continue to push export-oriented cash cropping over subsistence agriculture, while demanding privatization of essential common property resources (land, biodiversity, water) - all in the name of competitive advantage and economic efficiency.
Thankfully, outside the U.S. one seldom hears about food security unless one comes across western trained technocrats, academic researchers, and disaster relief managers. Local people in the global south are much more likely to talk about food sovereignty. That is because they still believe food is a basic human right, not just another market commodity, and they treat peasant farmers with respect and dignity, rather than dismissing them as backward and anachronistic. Food sovereignty valorizes common sense principles of community autonomy, cultural integrity, and environmental stewardship. In other words, people determine for themselves just what seeds they plant, what animals they raise, what type of farming occurs, how water and soil are treated, and ultimately what they eat for dinner. In fact, some would argue that genuine food security is impossible without first having food sovereignty. The masses may have been fed in the 1970s eco horror film, “Soylent Green,” but fear lurked in every mouthful.
In 1996 Via Campesina, the largest umbrella organization for peasant farmers, fishing folks, and hunter/gatherers in the world, set forth seven principles of food sovereignty (see sidebar). Food sovereignty was among the leading protest demands before the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and it reemerged as a major theme in 2001 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Following the collapse this summer of the latest round of WTO negotiations in Geneva over the issue of northern agricultural subsidies, food sovereignty is once again on the front burner for many grassroots movements worldwide. In 2006 Michael Windfuhr and Jennie Jonsen, published an excellent 50+ page report titled: “Food Sovereignty: Towards Democracy in Local Food System,” which is available free online at: http://www.ukabc.org/foodsovereignty_itdg_fian_online.pdf.
Adopting internationally recognized principles of food sovereignty would have sweeping implications in a setting such as the U.S., which is probably why the concept has been so fiercely resisted by corporate agribusiness and their allies. For instance, preemptive legislation that takes away local control over the regulation of largescale livestock confinement operations (aka factory farms) – such as that recently passed in Wisconsin – fundamentally violates food sovereignty, as does crass food industry attempts to block mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) which would allow consumers to actually know where their food comes from. The patenting of lifeforms, expropriation of indigenous knowledge (aka biopiracy), and extortion of contaminated farmers for alleged theft of proprietary biotechnologies are other clear challenges to food sovereignty worth resisting. Sadly, food security has nothing to say about any of these issues.
For years groups such as Family Farm Defenders have sought to popularize the concept of food sovereignty in hopes of bringing U.S. food/farm activists into a closer solidarity relationship with their counterparts abroad. FFD has now been joined in this effort by the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) and Grassroots International, both of which have adopted food sovereignty as a principle campaign and this fall they jointly published a brochure on the topic. Copies are available locally at the Madison Infoshop (1019 Williamson St.), Rainbow Bookstore (426 W. Gilman) and Two Degrees Coffeeshop (307 W. Johnson) or by contacting FFD at #608-260-0900.
In terms of celebrating food sovereignty this holiday season, here are a dozen ideas to put on one’s “to do” list of New Year resolutions:
1.) Create a local food policy council! There are now over 30 in the U.S., including the first in WI in Dane County established in 2005 after activists convened a local food summit that drew hundreds of people: www.countyofdane.com/foodcouncil
2.) Adopt a socially responsible procurement policy for your school, church, or hospital that gives priority to fresh local produce and fair trade products! Back in 1995 Northland College in Ashland, WI became one of the pioneers in this area by incorporating local organic food into its cafeteria menu: www.cias.wisc.edu/northland
3.) Patronize your local farmers’ market! Between 1994 and 2004 the number of farmers markets in the U.S. doubled to over 3700. To find the market nearest you, check out the USDA’s national directory at: www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets
4.) Invest in a community landtrust! Over 1500 landtrusts now protect 9.5 million acres across the U.S. from urban sprawl and reckless development. Gathering Waters serves as a clearing house for the 50 landtrusts now active in WI: www.gatheringwaters.org
5.) Implement policies encouraging conversion to sustainable agriculture! Woodbury County, IA recently passed a creative property tax rebate policy to encourage farmers to go organic: www.woodbury-ia.com/departments/Economic Development?
6. ) Compile a farm fresh atlas to help connect consumers with farmers! There are now four different atlases just for Wisconsin. The oldest is that for southern WI compiled by REAP available at: www.reapfoodgroup.org
7. ) Publish a local food fair trade directory for your bioregion! One example is that put together by Family Farm Defenders and the WI Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ) available online at: www.wnpj.org
8.) Organize a local food fair trade holiday fair! Community Action in Latin America (CALA) will be hosting its 10th annual fair trade holiday fair in Madison the first Sat. of Dec. which now attracts thousands of people: www.calamadison.org
9.) Launch a socially responsible fundraising project for your school! Just Coffee and Family Farm Defenders began such a project in spring 2005 and dozens of schools are now promoting fair trade and local food alternatives: www.justcoffee.net/fundraising
10.) Cultivate a garden! During WWII over 40% of U.S. vegetables were grown in Victory Gardens, and Madison alone now boasts seventeen community gardens producing over a million pounds of produce annually: www.cacscw.org/gardens
11.) Join community supported agriculture (CSA)! Originating in Japan, there are now over 1700 CS As? that have taken root across the U.S.. For local details, contact the Madison Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC): www.macsac.org
12.) Encourage urban agriculture! Over 15% of the world’s food is now grown in cities (three times that entering global commodity markets). Cuba is a world leader in this area. For a U.S. example, check out the Intervale in Burlington, VT: www.intervale.org
