The Hindu Business Line : Food sovereignty and agriculture

A community meeting in progress... It is essential that communities maintain sovereignty over their own systems of food production, distribution and supply.

SOVEREIGNTY implies self-governance. Being sovereign, as against being reigned over, means having freedom of choice and autonomy of decision-making. Freedom struggles against colonial rule have been fought for sovereignty. Today, the same is threatened by neo-colonialism which manifests itself in the growing influence of a handful of transnational corporations and governments that harbour them.

Through their operations the multinational corporations usurp from supposedly sovereign nation-states the power of self-determination. This makes vital sectors, both formal and informal, vulnerable to unwarranted interference — so it is in food and agriculture.

By being able to control who grows and eats what, and in how much quantity, it finally means being in charge of people's lives and livelihoods. From the sowing to the harvesting, if an MNC is under protection from national and international law and policy, then the sovereignty of people's agriculture is severely at risk.

For instance, if a seed company is able to ensure that there is no other way that a farmer can re-sow a particular crop but by repeatedly procuring the seed from them, the farmer is made dependant on the company. Traditionally, a farmer would have been able to generate the seeds for the next crop from the produce of the present one.

The simple act of seed-saving has for eons been accepted as a natural right of the farmer. In the present situation, this and several other farmers' rights are threatened.

It is this very reality that the concept of "food sovereignty" questions and attempts to reverse. Though farmers all over the world have lived and believed in it, it was first brought into international attention by Via Campesina (an international peasant movement) and others at the Food and Agriculture Organisation's World Food Summit in Rome in 1996. Since then it has been discussed, developed and reiterated in a number of farmer's gatherings and so on. The important question is how can "food sovereignty" be realised in people's lives?

People's food, people's farming

For food sovereignty to be guaranteed, agriculture has to be under the local control of those who have made it possible in the first place. This requires governments to facilitate farmer-centred and people's agriculture.

It also necessarily mandates that peoples' food sovereignty take precedence over any other public or private policies or actions. It necessitates freedom from the control of agrochemical and food MNCs.

Chemicals, homogenous seed, mono cropping, and genetic-engineered seeds, all reduce biodiversity and negate local and national control over food production.

Through international trade agreements, food production is being increasingly diverted to focus on export commodities at the expense of local food security.

It is essential that communities maintain sovereignty over their own systems of food production, distribution and supply. Efforts at ensuring food security, thus, need to focus on improving their ability to maintain food sovereignty.

People's homes, people's lands

Understanding food sovereignty also warrants a deeper understanding of the intrinsic link between agriculture and livelihoods. Crisis of food threatens life and livelihood, making people vulnerable to poverty, hunger and trafficking. The disruption of biodiversity-based livelihoods results in rural farming communities moving out.

In most local communities food security depends primarily on the knowledge and activities of women. The mechanisation of agriculture and emphasis on cash crops marginalises women and irreversibly erodes the knowledge, control and, hence, autonomy of traditional livelihood systems. The situation is aggravated by the increasing threat to land ownership by farmers and lack of pro-poor legislative support for the access to land and housing.

Moreover, small farmers tend to get pushed off the land by industrial agriculture, because it is a system outside their control.

People's knowledge, people's resources

The customary rights of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell seed and other planting material are the foundation of agricultural practices.

The capacity of farmers to develop and maintain their own seed and other planting material enables them to keep control of their livelihood systems.

It also enables them to continue the development and intergenerational transfer of their biodiversity and associated indigenous knowledge, innovations and practices. Seed security is, therefore, a foundation of food. The current intellectual property systems allow transnational corporations to have exclusive rights over the planting material so that they control it. This has disastrous implications for farmers, since for the first time in history they are losing control of the foundation of their livelihoods the "seed". Keeping seed free is critical to guaranteeing food sovereignty.

Household food security, and especially security in planting material, is the basic building block for both community and state food security.

This is achieved within a decentralised system of food production in which local communities are autonomous in the decision-making, control and management of their resources.

Agro-biodiversity is the essential basis of household food security and food autonomy. In turn, food autonomy is the basis of political and ecological security.

Given the increasing climatic instability, a strong local management and a large biodiversity base provides the best insurance for both food security and political stability. Agro-biodiversity can only be assured if the people's vast and varied traditional knowledge base is guaranteed an enabling environment to survive and thrive.

Finally, it is necessary to situate these discussions on food sovereignty and agriculture vis-à-vis international trade rules with particular reference to the World Trade Organisation.

There is an urgent need to not only know the changes induced in law and policy due to external factors, but also make an assessment of the implications that these changes have on food and farming. It is critical that agricultural policy objectives, such as food sovereignty, are put first and trade rules subject to them and not vice-versa.

In June 2002, civil society, non-governmental and farmers' organisations, at their Forum for Food Sovereignty issued a political statement rejecting the official FAO Summit documents and developed a "Food Sovereignty Action Agenda" which focussed on several points, including getting the World Trade Organisation out of agriculture; the rejection of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and Patents on Life. It also highlighted the need for developing a new approach to agriculture through locally controlled, small-scale agro-ecological production and so on.

Where do things stand today? Are countries such as India any nearer to being food secure? Are our people any more self-reliant in agriculture? Certainly not till the time we can truly exercise sovereignty in as basic as sectors as food and agriculture.

(The author, the Regional Programme Officer-Asia, GRAIN, is based in Delhi.)