Food Sovereignty and Pachakuti: An eco-justice perspective on the food system

by Alexan­dra Buck Toledo, Food Sovereignty Tour participant, Bolivia 2013

I am in a farm­ing com­mu­nity on the shores of Lake Tit­i­caca. The table is set and the steam from the hot food rises into the heav­ens. We take a moment to thank all those peo­ple who con­tributed their effort, sweat, work, and care to pre­pare this food that we are about to eat. A sacred moment.

I can feel the qual­ity of the food and the intense fla­vor that was trans­ferred through its con­nec­tion to the earth. How deli­cious it is to eat fresh food, with no pro­cess­ing! A boiled potato, recently taken from the earth, peel­ing back its skin and see­ing under­neath the vari­ety of col­ors, gifted from the Pachamama—Mother Earth. And even bet­ter than that:  the farm­ers them­selves are proud of their har­vest and the pos­si­bil­ity to share it with us. Absolutely sacred moments.

 All of this took place in March when I trav­eled to Bolivia with a Food Sov­er­eignty del­e­ga­tion coor­di­nated by the U.S. orga­ni­za­tion Food First. It formed part of my research of look­ing at world food sys­tems from a polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, social and—for the first time here—spir­i­tual per­spec­tive. I begin this reflec­tion with a geo­graphic image of the global food sys­tem and con­tinue with an intro­duc­tion—both polit­i­cal and spir­i­tual – to the con­cept of food sov­er­eignty, con­clud­ing with an exam­i­na­tion of the con­nec­tion between food sov­er­eignty and eco-justice.

The signs of the times: plants and plates

What I see in the cur­rent world food sys­tem is a ten­sion between two ways of eat­ing: the indus­trial style and the agroe­co­log­i­cal method. The first exam­ple is cer­tainly more “typ­i­cal” in the United States: super­mar­kets, processed foods in bags and cans, and fast food. This style of eat­ing is based on the mar­ket sys­tem where every prod­uct is always avail­able—fruit in the frozen win­ter imported from the South. What the cus­tomer wants, there it is, with­out bruises, with­out dirt and without . . . flavor.

This model is what Philip McMichael (2005) calls the “cor­po­rate food regime,” char­ac­ter­ized by agribusi­ness, indus­tri­al­ized agri­cul­ture, super­mar­kets and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of food. The cur­rent regime also includes within itself the con­tra­dic­tions of the project in devel­op­ment: “[T]he cor­po­rate food regime embod­ies the ten­sions between a tra­jec­tory of ‘world agri­cul­ture’ and cul­tural sur­vival, expressed in the pol­i­tics of ‘food sov­er­eignty’” (p. 278) and based in the prac­tice of agroecology.

Here, then, we have the alter­na­tive option. Agroe­col­ogy does not sim­ply mean “organic” because organic can also be indus­tri­al­ized and com­mer­cial­ized. This alter­na­tive option is based in the move­ment for com­mu­nity gar­dens, access to farm­ers’ mar­ket, and the revalu­ing of local, fresh food.

Both mod­els respond to the global prob­lems of hunger, mal­nu­tri­tion and food inse­cu­rity. In the first model, the idea is that hunger is resolved through greater avail­abil­ity of prod­ucts with inter­na­tional com­merce (facil­i­tated by Free Trade Agree­ments) and indus­tri­al­ized pro­duc­tion, pushed by agribusi­ness multi­na­tion­als. And yes, these advances help pro­vide food prod­ucts on a global level. There are cor­po­rate inter­ests, how­ever, that profit from tak­ing advan­tage of the neolib­eral model and agri­cul­tural mech­a­niza­tion with­out con­cern for nutri­tional qual­ity or envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Another path towards food secu­rity is through food sov­er­eignty, a very dif­fer­ent pro­posal from that of the neolib­eral model of food.

What is food sovereignty?

I trav­eled to the shores of Lake Tit­i­caca, the south­ern high­lands and the salt flats of Bolivia to learn about the way of life there and the pro­duc­tion of quinoa. In each place, I asked myself: Is this food sov­er­eignty? In Lake Tit­i­caca, where peo­ple live from their har­vest, but the younger gen­er­a­tions have mostly gone to search work in other places? Or, in Rodeo, the model com­mu­nity with organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to get a bet­ter price to export their royal quinoa vari­ety? Pos­si­bly the salt flats, where the quinoa and the alpacas live in interdependence…but where the vil­lages are aban­doned and fam­i­lies only come to harvest?

Is that food sov­er­eignty? Well, yes . . . and no. It is not so sim­ple to find “food sov­er­eignty” as a way of life. I think that I saw, felt, ate and shared pieces of food sov­er­eignty in the com­plex­ity of poverty, lack of rural infra­struc­ture and polit­i­cal battles.

The fam­i­lies of this com­mu­nity have cared for these seeds  and for these foods for gen­er­a­tions, and so we are not just thank­ing the friends who planted, cul­ti­vated and har­vested what is on the table, but also gen­er­a­tions before and gen­er­a­tions after.

Food sov­er­eignty is a polit­i­cal pro­posal from civil soci­ety as an alter­na­tive way of orga­niz­ing the world food sys­tem. It emerged in 1996 in reac­tion to the World Food Sum­mit about food secu­rity orga­nized by the United Nations Food and Agri­cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion (FAO). Vía Campesina, the inter­na­tional peas­ant move­ment, was excluded from this meet­ing. Dis­pleased and unsat­is­fied with the offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion of food secu­rity and its use to con­sol­i­date projects of free trade and multi­na­tional invest­ment in agri­cul­ture, Vía Campesina devel­oped the frame­work of food sov­er­eignty. They define food sov­er­eignty in their dec­la­ra­tion Food Sov­er­eignty: A Future with­out Hunger in this way: “Food sov­er­eignty is the right of each nation to main­tain and develop its own capac­ity to pro­duce its basic foods respect­ing cul­tural and pro­duc­tive diver­sity. We have the right to pro­duce our own food in our own ter­ri­tory. Food sov­er­eignty is a pre­con­di­tion to gen­uine food secu­rity” (Vía Campesina 1996).

From that point, the plat­form of food sov­er­eignty has been used by var­i­ous groups in var­i­ous ways, so there is no sin­gle def­i­n­i­tion or man­i­fes­ta­tion of food sovereignty.

What could food sov­er­eignty be?

From my per­spec­tive, food sov­er­eignty is a vision­ary pro­posal of a dif­fer­ent future. Within this frame­work, then, instead of ask­ing our­selves what it is, we can ask what it could be. If we see it from this per­spec­tive, we are rec­og­niz­ing the pos­si­bil­ity for a time of trans­for­ma­tion that in Bolivia is called Pachakuti or “change of the earth.” This seems to me an appro­pri­ate vision if we ana­lyze trans­for­ma­tion from the level of the earth and its fruits.

Food sov­er­eignty could be right rela­tions between the earth and the farm­ers, the peas­ants and the mar­kets, the sell­ers and the buy­ers. It could be fair poli­cies devel­oped demo­c­ra­t­i­cally and in the best inter­est of the peo­ple. It could be healthy, suf­fi­cient food for all peo­ple so that they grow to their max­i­mum poten­tial in this world, leav­ing behind poverty, hunger, and ill­ness. It could be Pachakuti.

How­ever, food sov­er­eignty scares the mar­ket and state forces. For them, food sov­er­eignty could be an auto­cratic threat to their way of orga­niz­ing food sys­tems. It could be a loss to their gains, their polit­i­cal power, and their con­trol of deci­sions. It could risk inter­na­tional agree­ments and under­mine the national econ­omy at an inter­na­tional level. Yet at the same time, it could be an oppor­tu­nity to inte­grate the voices of the social move­ments into the poli­cies of the state and thereby dis­suade them from protest.

How could food sov­er­eignty be a man­i­fes­ta­tion of eco-justice?

Food sov­er­eignty is about the con­struc­tion of a bet­ter world, made of faith, love and right rela­tions respect­ing Mother Earth, or Pachamama. It is expressly spir­i­tual and simul­ta­ne­ously absolutely com­mon­place regard­ing the rit­u­als prac­ticed for the plant­ing and the har­vest in many Andean farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Inte­grat­ing this respect into world agri­cul­ture would mean a “change of the earth,” a trans­for­ma­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion of the world food regime. It would be eco-just agriculture.

There are seven ele­ments to the food sov­er­eignty plat­form that we can con­nect with the con­struc­tion of eco-justice: food as a basic human right; agrar­ian reform; pro­tect­ing nat­ural resources; reor­ga­niz­ing the food trade; end­ing the glob­al­iza­tion of hunger; social peace; and demo­c­ra­tic con­trol (Vía Campesina 1996).

I think that the chal­lenge for each one of us that plants, cul­ti­vates, har­vests or—at the very least—eats, is to try to do so in the most just way, to con­tribute to food secu­rity and sov­er­eignty. Each one of us can con­struct a more just food sys­tem, start­ing with our own plants and plates.

I look at the table in that com­mu­nity on Lake Tit­i­caca in Bolivia, and I see so many vari­eties of native foods: potato and quinoa, corn and beans. The fam­i­lies of this com­mu­nity have cared for these seeds  and for these foods for gen­er­a­tions, and so we are not just thank­ing the friends who planted, cul­ti­vated and har­vested what is on the table, but also gen­er­a­tions before and gen­er­a­tions after. For those who pro­tected, those who pro­tect, and those who will pro­tect. Truly a sacred moment.

Alexan­dra Toledo is an MA  stu­dent at Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity, Bloom­ing­ton, pur­su­ing a Mas­ter of Pub­lic Affairs at the School for Pub­lic and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs and a Mas­ter of Arts in Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Stud­ies. Her the­sis explores food secu­rity and food sov­er­eignty poli­cies in Peru.