The Central and Eastern European Perspective of Food Sovereignty
Food Sovereignty has emerged as a response and alternative to the neoliberal model of corporate globalization. Here are five reasons to take into consideration as to it.
Industrialized agriculture, intensive animal husbandry methods, and overfishing are destroying traditional farming and poisoning the planet and all living beings. Subsidized exports, artificially low prices and constant consumption are increasing food insecurity and making people dependent on food they are unable to produce.
Food Sovereignty emerged as a response and alternative to the neoliberal model of corporate globalization. Food sovereignty is a concept that refers to peasant and human rights to food, to choose their food, to produce food, and to shape policies that govern food and agriculture in their regions.
Food sovereignty is defined by six pillars:
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focused on food for people
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values food providers
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localises food systems
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puts control locally
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builds knowledge and skills
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works with nature
To guarantee a right to food, we need food policies that future-proof the food system based not on the pursuit of profit but on the needs of people. Food sovereignty is a framework through which we can begin to map out and achieve the Right to Food.
The European Perspective
Europe is the world's largest importer and exporter of food while the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union’s most important piece of joint legislation on food production. Unfortunately, the main original aims of the CAP — to guarantee minimum production in Europe to ensure a food supply and secure livelihoods for food producers — have largely been damaged by the stakeholders of economic growth and capitalism. The CAP has, in the meantime, focused on increasing and industrialising agricultural production, as well as processing capacities. This has been accompanied by massive increases in the market share of supermarkets and large distributors; however, European agriculture has lost hundreds of thousands of farms and farm livelihoods — one-third of farms have disappeared in Europe in the last ten years.
In the absence of a genuine long-term vision for the reform or renewal of these systems from governments, European citizens are already building alternative food systems. Farmers, environmental groups, social justice organizations, workers' unions, consumer groups, and other organisations are constructing alternatives to the current model and organising for change on the following topics:
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Agroecology
Agroecology is concerned with where food comes from, how it is produced, who produces it, and how knowledge and skills around food and agriculture are shared. It provides a holistic understanding of our place in natural cycles and how our farming systems must adapt to and enhance the ecosystems and societies they depend on.
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Distribution Chains
One of the most important changes in food systems in the last 50 years has happened in the distribution sector. Highly processed foods have replaced natural products. Supermarkets demand uniformity of shape, colour, and size in their vegetables and fruits, and seed companies have responded by breeding varieties that prioritize shelf-life and colour over nutrition and taste. Across Europe, many people are resisting this and instead supporting their local and regional markets and producers. An abundance of community food hubs and Short Supply Chains (SSCs) — such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects, cooperatives, buyers' clubs, and other systems — have emerged as a citizen–led response to the governance failure in food distribution and production.
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The Right to Land, Seeds, Natural Resources and the Commons
According to Via Campesina, with more than half of EU farmland controlled by only 3 % of farms, land grabbing is a real threat to the social structure of rural areas and the capacity to build sustainable food systems in the future. Citizens fight both the right to protect seeds, animal breeds, lands, waters, and other resources, and also to reproduce and share genetic resources for food production, but also to collectively access and share resources in their areas.
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Trade
Bilateral trade agreements in the EU — such as with the United States, South Korea, Colombia, Canada, etc. — include aggressive market access for European overproduction of agricultural products, threatening the livelihood of farmers in those areas, or enabling access to EU markets for external agribusiness forces, threatening the livelihoods of farmers in Europe. Food Sovereignty in Europe means building a new farming model that reverses the application of industrial processes to food production, ensures quality food for people in Europe, reverses the disappearance of European farms, supports new farmers and farming methods based on agroecology, guarantees farmers can make a living from their production and protect agricultural workers. The principles of International Trade based on Food Sovereignty means basing trade on solidarity instead of competition.
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Women and Youth
There is a predominance of men in agricultural organizations, policy bodies, agribusinesses, and other areas in Europe and globally, which hides the huge amount of work and labour undertaken by women in farms across Europe, much of which goes unrecognized or quantified. A reorganization of this should see women taking their rightful equal place in participating in discussions and decisions about food and agriculture policies. Young people also need support to access land and establish new farms, many of which are innovative and are bringing life back into rural areas. Farming should be a respected profession where farmers can ensure a living from their production in a thriving rural environment. This means changes in how we teach agriculture and the functioning of state research, development, and training bodies, as well as broader support for rural social and economic development.
Food Sovereignty is about systemic change — about human beings having direct, democratic control over the most important elements of their society — how we feed and nourish ourselves, how we use and maintain the land, water, and other resources around us for the benefit of current and future generations, and how we interact with other groups, peoples and cultures.
For further insights, you can follow the work of Nyéléni Forum and also CEEweb's projects, policy work and actions to learn more on the topic.