The alter-globalization movement promoted this concept in the 1990s. Now, it's once again a key issue in the context of the current health crisis.
But what exactly is food sovereignty?
But what exactly is food sovereignty?
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00:00It goes far beyond the only self-sufficiency, because it also speaks about how food is produced,
00:11who produces it.
00:25Government organizations there were worried about vanishing state support for agriculture
00:31and about increasing food imports from the U.S.
00:39It was really brought upon to fight the neoliberal system and the globalization of the food system
01:07that was occurring at that time.
01:27This agro-industrial food system is based on long-distance exchanges,
01:32with a very strong distance between the final consumer of the product and the initial producer.
01:38Typically, we can give the example of palm oil or soy.
01:42Palm oil is produced in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Papua New Guinea, etc.,
01:50where it gives rise to deforestation fronts that destabilize ecosystems and cause a lot of problems.
01:58This palm oil is mass-imported into industrialized countries to make food products.
02:06There was, for a lot of reasons, speculation, stock retention, climate change in different parts of the world,
02:33a surge in international food prices, in particular cereals,
02:39which led to certain populations, especially urban populations,
02:44who were not able to produce their own food,
02:48were in situations where they could no longer afford to eat.
03:04What is the role of biocampesina?
03:15Biocampesina, which has been around since the beginning,
03:20aims to defend a particular model of agriculture, which is peasant agriculture,
03:26in opposition to industrialized chemical agriculture,
03:32which operates over long distances with long-distance exchanges.
03:38So it means good policy that takes care of how it is produced,
03:43how it is distributed, to have local markets,
03:46to have a secure access to land for small and young farmers,
03:52and also that the whole system is organized so that there is no shortage of food
03:59and also that there is real access for everyone.
04:02Food sovereignty includes a certain level of food self-sufficiency,
04:07but it does not exclude food exchange and trade as part of a mix to achieve food sovereignty.
04:14Food sovereignty also puts agroecology, sustainable methods of farming, in the front.
04:23And it goes against industrialized farming,
04:27where you have a lot of very large animal farms with a big concentration of animals.
04:44Food Sovereignty
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05:20Food sovereignty is heavily criticized for questioning the high dependency on long food supply chains and global trade.
05:28But now the COVID-19 crisis shows us what happens if food is dependent on long supply chains.
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05:57What this pandemic reveals is that there are goods and services
06:03that must be placed outside of market laws.
06:07Delegating our food, our protection, our ability to care, our way of life to others is madness.
06:18We must regain control of it.
06:21Well, the fact that everybody now is using food sovereignty,
06:26even big factories, big companies, is not completely good news.
06:32But it means that everybody sees the limits of the globalized food system.
06:37So this is why it is very important to have food produced locally with peasants
06:42and for them to have secure access to land and to all resources like seeds, like water,
06:48and everything that is necessary to be a farmer and to be able to produce.