![]() Compare the language and priorities reflected in the early 1970s definition to this more recent one:įood security a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. ![]() In such a context, when states were the sole authors of the definition, and when there was a technocratic faith in the ability of states to redistribute resources if the resources could only be made available, it made sense to talk about sufficient world supplies, and for the primary concern of the term's authors to lie in price stabilisation. The utility of the term in 1974 derived from its political economic context, in the midst of the Sahelian famine, at the zenith of demands for a New International Economic Order, and the peak of Third Worldist power, which had already succeeded in establishing the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as a bastion of commodity price stabilisation (Rajagopal 2000). The availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has done a fine job of tracking the evolution of ‘food security’ (see FAO 2003), but it is useful to be reminded that the first official definition in 1974 of ‘food security’ was The result of this exploration has sometimes muddled and masked some difficult contradictions within the notion of food sovereignty, and these are contradictions worth exploring.īefore going into those definitions and contradictions, though, it is worth contrasting food sovereignty with the concept against which it has traditionally been ranged – food security. Since food sovereignty is a call for peoples' rights to shape and craft food policy, it can hardly be surprising that this right is not used to explore and expand the covering political philosophy. The proliferation of overlapping definitions is, however, a symptom of food sovereignty itself, woven into the fabric of food sovereignty by necessity. There are so many versions of the concept, it is hard to know exactly what it means. Food sovereignty is, if anything, over defined. The problem with food sovereignty is, however, a reverse one. I have, far more frequently than I'd care to remember, plundered the Oxford English Dictionary for an authoritative statement of terms against which I then tilted. It is, admittedly, the first instinct of an uninspired scholar to head toward definitions. Before introducing the papers that make up the rest of this section, it is worth looking at the etymology of the term ‘food sovereignty’. This is a little unsatisfactory, and this section marks an attempt to put a little more flesh on the concept's bones, beyond the widely agreed notion that food sovereignty isn't what we have at the moment. There is, among those who use the term, a strong sense that while ‘food sovereignty’ might be hard to define, it is the sort of thing one knows when one sees.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |