Toward Food Sovereignty for All

Food sovereignty—or people’s food sovereignty—centres on the idea that people must reclaim their power of decision-making in the food system by rebuilding the relationships between people and the land, and between producers and consumers. At the same time, it “calls for a fundamental shift in focus from food as a commodity to food as a public good. As such, it can once again assume its central role in strengthening communities, ecosystems and economies” (PFPP, 2011, p. 9). Michel Pimbert (2008) notes that food sovereignty is “best understood as a transformative process that seeks to recreate the democratic realm and regenerate a diversity of autonomous food systems based on equity, social justice and ecological sustainability.”. La Via Campesina, an international movement of small-scale farmers, speaks of food sovereignty as the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (italics added) and thus focuses on the empowerment of people to create a food system appropriate for their needs. Food sovereignty recognizes both the role of women as the primary producers and preparers of food throughout much of the world as well as the value of Indigenous agricultural systems and traditional knowledge in food production.

The seven key principles or pillars of food sovereignty endorsed and lifted up in this report are: