Food sovereignty and the work of La Vía Campesina

 

"Our land is our identity, it is not for sale … We need to fight against all forms of expulsion of peoples from their territories and against mechanisms that favour remote, corporate or centralised control of territories … " /La Vía Campesina/

Food sovereignty is a political movement which advocates for the right of people to produce healthy and sufficient food in sustainable and culturally appropriate way, as well as their right to determine the shape of their food and agriculture system.

Food sovereignty priorities local trade and markets, empowering peasants and family farmer-driven agriculture, food production, distribution and consumption that is grounded on environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade which guarantees incomes to all people and protects their rights to use and manage their land.

With less then twenty large food corporations controlling the global food system, food sovereignty is under threat - creating inequality in the poorest regions of the world, deepening poverty amongst peasants and small farm producers, and causing biodiversity loss.

La Vía Campesina is an international organisation comprising 180 local and national organisations in 81 countries, representing about 200 million small-scale food producers. Founded in 1993, it brings together peasants, landless workers, indigenous people, pastoralists, fishers, migrant farmworkers, small and medium-size farmers, rural women, and peasant youth to defend peasant agriculture for food sovereignty and to oppose corporate-driven agriculture.

The organisation represents and advocates for rights of small farmers at the level of many global institution of governance including the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the UN Decade of Family Farming, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and more. The work of La Vía Campesina is an example of bottom-up approach where community-led initiatives are working towards influencing a governing body, raising voice of smaller actors against larger players. 

Apart from representing a small and medium size farmers at international forum, La Vía Campesina is involved in several campaigns against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Free Trade Agreements. They argue that free trade movements deregulated agricultural sectors around the world and contributed to a raise of industrial food system, causing an unprecedented crisis for the people and the planet.