How to Build Food Sovereignty

Around the world, rural social movements and urban food activist-citizens have proposed that food sovereignty has the potential to be the foundation of an alternative food system that can transcend the deep-seated social, economic and ecological contradictions of the global food economy. However, food sovereignty advocates rarely discuss the kinds of concrete changes to global and local food systems that would be necessary in the messy reality of the present if food sovereignty is to be built. As an entry point into this important discussion, and drawing in part on the author's recent book, Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question, this work-in-progress will present a series of ideas that, it will be suggested, are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the realization of food sovereignty.

Agrarian political economy at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada; Fellow, Food First; Associated Research Professor, Academic Unit in Development Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico; Adjunct Professor of Economics, Master’s in Development Practice program, James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, USA.
Professor Akram-Lodhi’s most recent book is Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question.

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.