What do we mean by food sovereignty? This concept implies the right of peoples to define their own policies and strategies for the production, distribution, and consumption of sustainable food that respect their own cultures and local markets.
Food sovereignty, driven primarily by social movements and peasant organizations, goes beyond food security, which focuses on food availability and access; it emphasizes democratic control over the food system by those who produce, distribute, and consume it, rather than by corporations and global markets.
Working to make food sovereignty a broader reality is a daily endeavor carried out by dozens of peasant leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean. Saludable Saberlo spoke with one of its key figures, Elsa Sánchez, a member of the National Peasant Articulation (ANC) and the National Confederation of Peasant Women (CONAMUCA) of the Dominican Republic.
What is Food Sovereignty?
Food sovereignty in our environment, in our peasant spaces, is first and foremost a political proposal of the peasant movement. Second, it is a response to organized, articulated, and coordinated peasant production.
From what we understand we have to produce, not what large corporations or agribusinesses put in line for us, which is food production, but what we integrate into healthy production in our local communities, from an agroecological approach that guarantees healthy production, production in accordance with nutritional conditions, and the right to produce the food we want.
I mean, I don’t have to be told that I have to produce avocados year-round. If I can create a crop association farm, I don’t have to be told that I have to produce Persian limes because that’s what gives me the most money. Instead, I have to create an association or an agroecological farm that guarantees environmental sustainability, that guarantees saying no to monoculture.
That is to say, food sovereignty is an articulated proposal of the peasant movement in relation to the political proposal, in relation to food, in relation to territories, commons and the entire environment that we have.
That’s why we say that in our communities we have to guarantee this, so that there can be environmental and productive sustainability with the peasants. But it’s a banner of struggle of the movement. We’ve been celebrating it for more than 30 years, because it’s an achievement that the peasants of the world understand that producing from a proposal of food sovereignty means guaranteeing all those elements: land, water, the market, sustainable production, the guarantee of food for the peasantry.
It’s like a whole series of elements that come together to guarantee food production and consumption at those levels, and also to ensure that farmers can also receive some productive benefits from safe markets, from solidarity markets, from seed exchanges, because all of these elements are part of sovereignty.
Who are the key players and what role should they play to make food sovereignty possible?
Recently, we’ve talked about family farming, and in fact, in many places, such as our own country (the Dominican Republic), there is a national family farming plan. Why? Because the key players in this process are families, peasants, and peasant women, with a vision of production also from the perspective of women. In recent years, we’ve also realized that we are part of this productive role in the country and are often invisible.
The same young people who, in some way, through the entire process we’re undertaking, have been getting involved in production at the national level, and that’s why we also understand that they are key players in peasant production.
From those spaces, we have now understood that our countries must embark on what many countries have already achieved, which is comprehensive agrarian reform. And I’ll tell you that in the Dominican Republic, we are currently struggling with the issue of the Dominican Agrarian Institute, which has proposed a resolution to become part of the Ministry of Agriculture, not a private board.
And we understand that this isn’t right, because the first thing a peasant, a peasant woman, must have is land. And legal land, and land that guarantees, through a reform proposal, the possibility of production. That’s why our key players in this country have been fighting over land, despite the fact that we have an agrarian law, a code, and in fact, regarding the gender issue, there’s a resolution within the land code that guarantees land ownership to women. This entire process is underway now, and with that resolution, it will be passed to the Ministry of Agriculture.
This entire lifelong struggle of the peasantry is being lost, because here in this country, the land surveys and reorganization process began in 1951, and that was a process in which peasants participated. So, these key players that we have proposed in legislation today, we have proposed programs to guarantee food sovereignty and the issue of land and resource ownership in this country, we continue, as they say, with that banner of struggle, because we feel that the work of so many years is slipping away from us.
So, those are the key players now in the midst of the process to finalize the response. Women and young people are key for us to make them visible among those players and decision-makers based on the legal proposals I just mentioned, which have been developed directly by the peasantry and which, in fact, today must be implemented more effectively to favor what we do as national producers.
What do you consider to be the main challenges facing food sovereignty in the region?
I think the first challenge is to ensure that it becomes part of the agenda of decision-makers, that food sovereignty continues to be a banner of struggle, of action, of influence for the movement, that it continues to be part of the knowledge and the training of new generations. Because our young people need to understand that this is a concept that has to be transformed into just that, into action, into a guarantee of resources and of what we have.
And I’ll give you an example. There’s also a very strong fight right now over mining. Why? Because it’s destroying our forests, because it’s destroying our waters, because food production has decreased, because it’s also understood that it’s better to introduce food than to produce.
Food production has decreased compared to the last 10 or 15 years. For us, it’s a great challenge to continue sustaining this proposal as a state agenda, as an agenda for the movement, as an agenda for our communities, and for everything that’s happening to us, the new generations coming up. I think a great challenge is also the issue of training based on the goal of food sovereignty.
Now we’re preparing for our major Latin American congress, the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC ), which is a champion of food sovereignty. Although it’s a proposal that emerged from the agenda of the International Via Campesina, it was directly embraced, and the actions emerged from CLOC.
Right now, we’re organizing ourselves so that the line, which isn’t a cross-cutting axis but rather parallels what we’re doing throughout the entire process we’re undertaking for the formation, coordination, and organization of this great congress on food sovereignty that’s going to be held in Mexico.
We have to incorporate it into everything we do as part of that mechanism, of that great international Caribbean agenda, and also with alliances, because we have to make the peasantry understand that they have the right to what they produce and what they consume, and that is only possible if there is a process of education, of empowerment of what they do, of understanding that, for example, we have a very hard struggle with the issue of marketing because the intermediaries surround us and every day they are also replacing peasant production with monocultures.
Because if coffee provides us—for example, I live in a coffee-growing region, and our farms are in association farming, where there’s the berry plantation, the chayote plantation, and all those crops that feed us—well, we’ve gotten it into our heads that we have to harvest the coffee and plant avocados because that’s what brings in the money. So, a production that doesn’t guarantee food for the farmers and that also affects us with the issue of water, which is one of the main pillars we’re currently working to ensure.
What agricultural practices promote and strengthen food sovereignty?
Right now, we’re selling agroecological produce. And to that end, we’re even training agroecologists through a Dominican institute. We have 10 Latin American agroecological training institutes for young people and women, which are like the two pillars, and one of the goals is for these young people to be able to train.
In the Dominican Republic, there’s an institute called the Florinda Soriano Muñoz Latin American Institute, which we call Mama Tingo. One of the key points is that, on the farms we also visit, and within the framework of some projects that reach communities, we emphasize the topic of agroecological farms.
These farms are being prepared, being organized, serving as practice for the exchange process we carry out with the young people and also within the peasantry itself, because our groups are called convites, because we have understood that these are like invitations to meet.
And on these farms, we also take into account a series of measures implemented to guarantee the agroecological aspect of the environment where we operate. That’s why we work on planting timber trees on the farms, evaluating the types of crops available on the farm so that we can expand the crop association based on the size, varieties, and guarantees, for example, water and the impact of climate change in the area.
We’re doing that in different areas where we’re emphasizing where we have students. The measures we’re taking are the seed exchanges through fairs we hold in the communities, and our visibility signage is very much in line with food sovereignty.
We develop brochures and educational materials so farmers understand and share information about all the processes we carry out. That’s the concept, and with farmers, we guarantee that they can not only talk about it but also put it into practice, such as living barriers, crop associations, and animal production.
We also hold fairs. For example, here in my community there’s a fair called Peralta Puede, where everything that’s displayed and sold here in the community and what’s produced in the countryside is displayed and sold.
There’s a lot of exchange, a lot of cultural exchange, and we share knowledge and give many talks about the topics. We prepare a kind of mystical event. The fairs are in August.
I think one has to make it known and raise it with people, because I tell you 30 years celebrated as a celebration of food sovereignty in CLOC-Vía Campesina cost a lot, a lot of effort, a lot of exchange, a lot of visibility, many workshops, forums, webinars, everything, because people still, the concept, and in fact we have a series of negative processes along the way, which also sell us many contrary things, so we are still there.
Because food security isn’t security, it’s sovereignty, and to guarantee security, you must have food sovereignty. There are a number of elements that we’ve also been able to address along the way, without creating retaliation, but rather through the real issues that exist in the communities. So, we’ve sort of been making things visible.
What would you tell people about the importance of food sovereignty?
That this impact, for example, of climate change we’re experiencing now, can be mitigated through agroecological farms, and also through the increase in livestock production in recent years, has been diminishing, something that can unite us as a peasant demand. As I said at the beginning, because this is a peasant proposal, and I understand that it’s only possible if we ally ourselves more closely, if we internalize it, and if we put it into practice.
May the peasant-farmer next to you understand that they cannot lead the way, because the ecological niche there is lost. So, may we raise awareness among those around us that food sovereignty is the guarantee of healthy land, it is the guarantee of our water, it is the guarantee of sustainable peasant production, and it is the guarantee of food with all the necessary health conditions, and that we guarantee our forests and our conditions.
So we have to sell food sovereignty as a whole, as a whole, and, as Central Americans say, as the right to life is food sovereignty and the right to good living; the right to life and the right to good living.
That’s why we say food sovereignty now, not later, because later generations to come won’t find it, so now is the time for us to guarantee it. So the call is that, to unite with one voice, to unite with one hand, with our proposals, with our decisions, and that when we sit down with decision-makers to make decisions, we go with clear proposals.
Now, this year, there will be an event very much in line with food sovereignty, where all the world’s experiences are brought to light. So the call is for this: for us to unite and coordinate, and to join in on everything that can be achieved at the national, regional, and continental levels.
This article is a translated version of the interview that first appeared on Saludable Saberlo
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