Food Sovereignty: What is it and does it matter?

Food sovereignty and what that means will be an ongoing series of posts.  Access to food is an important issue.  How that is achieved is the debate.

“As is often the case, critics of markets and private property mistake means with ends, and assume a lack of concern for ‘human’ considerations is necessarily bound up with rigorous concern for material considerations.” Jeff Deist[1]

What does that even mean?

Food sovereignty seems an odd phrase. It is either freedom from the government to raise, buy, consume the food you wish to or it is not.

I posted the question in a Facebook group, “When you read the phrase food sovereignty, what comes to mind? I have an idea, but I’ve read an alternative, so I’m curious. Whatever is your first thought, let me know, please.”

For the most part, the sentiment was growing, eating, selling food free from government interference. One chap responded it was “commie shit.”

What was intended?

The term food sovereignty was coined in 1993 by La Via Campesina, the International Peasant’s Movement, and now has organizations in 81 countries. They mean, by the phrase food sovereignty, that people who make and eat the food should be in charge of the production and the distribution of that food.

That doesn’t sound too bad. They contrast that position with the current corporate food system. Since La Via Campesina is international, there are aspects to food systems abroad I cannot address.

Functionally, La Via Campesina is a union. They are fighting, in part, for peasants’ rights to land and food and water. On their page about peasants’ rights, this line stands out, “[w]e dedicate this work to more than a billion people living in rural areas, who exist and resist the assault of global capital.”[2]

International food systems cannot be addressed. US commercial food systems, however, are known and can be addressed.

Commercial food is in at least two parts. The part you see in the grocery store and the part you see in restaurants.

There is a third part of the food system which starts to get to what food sovereignty means to both La Via Campesina and those people I asked on Facebook: the food they make, share, sell, and eat is produced and distributed by them.

The good parts

La Via Campesina is fully committed to fighting industrial agriculture and industrial livestock.

I’m in.

The government picked winners and losers in the Great Depression when FDR’s administration slaughter tens of thousands of livestock and plowed under fields of cotton.  Earl Butz’ “go big or get out” philosophy of planting corn turned agriculture, then livestock, into big business for a precious few.  The Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 cause more problems than it fixed.  Industrial, as I read it, means government-favored massive business.

Decentralized food is key to making sure everyone can eat safe food. Decentralized food is also key to making sure the small family farmer produces food for profit.

Decentralized food may mean we don’t get asparagus in December or oranges in July.  If you are going to be against global capital, you are also against global shipping.

Capitalism for the confusion

Capitalism is a horrible word. It means only what the speaker intends and the listener doesn’t know what was meant. Capitalism is a very emotionally charged word. Capitalism is just too subjective to be useful when attempting to communicate ideas. Tell a painter he has too many colors of red and he’ll point out the crimson and garnet and vermillion and scarlet but what he really needs is red.

Sellers of things want an income from that sale. If there is only one art supply store or one farmer then there is no problem. Even if there is competition, that benefits the consumer with better prices. Where it gets wonky is when the government subsidizes one company over the rest in the selling of similar items.

To illustrate, take corn. No one would voluntarily make ethanol from corn and add it to gasoline. The government has provided an income stream to growers, who grow more corn than is needed, then convert corn into ethanol or high fructose corn syrup or corn starch other products. The small farmer trying to get his corn to the market has little hope of competing with the giant farms.

The corporate farms, the kind La Via Campesina are against, choke out the small farmer. That may be seen as an assault, but it is not a global assault. It is an assault by the government.

A fight against the central planner?  I’m in.

Markets are the solution

Gary Chartier, Associate Dean of the School of Business at La Sierra University, is quite plain about what capitalism ought to be.  “If, by capitalism, you mean absolutely free markets, we have no problem with that.”[3]  But, of course, that isn’t what we have, regardless of what La Via Campesina intends.  In the US,  various levels of government is in your business.  Hardly absolutely free markets.

La Via Campesina seems to want for the peasants and farmers a level of freedom.  Freedom to grow and sell and earn.  The reason those farmers don’t have the freedom to do that is the various markets are not free.

Get government out of the way, free the markets from the overlords, and the people are able to trade as they prefer.  Now, that’s a system I can get behind.

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Here are some podcasts I’ve made with relavent content to some of these issues.

Episode 86 Pete Kennedy and the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967

Episode 85 John Moody and the farm food fiasco

Episode 41 Jerica Cadman and chicken farming

Episode 27 Michael Boldin on food sovereignty

 

[1]  https://mises.org/power-market/was-mises-neoliberal

[2] https://viacampesina.org/en/undrop-illustrations/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdrBeBwHenk

 

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