food sovereignty

(noun)

A policy framework advocated for by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth, and environmental organizations, which consists of the right of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock, and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces.

Related Terms

Examples of food sovereignty in the following topics:

  • Hunger, Malnutrition, and Family

    • Undernutrition is the result of chronic underconsumption of food.
    • Starvation describes a state of exhaustion of the body caused by lack of food and may be fatal.
    • The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations purports that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone–over 6 billion people–and could feed double that number of people.
    • Amartya Sen won his 1998 Nobel Prize in part for his work in demonstrating that hunger in modern times is not typically the product of a lack of food, but rather problems in food distribution networks and governmental policies in the developing world.
    • Some organizations raise the issue of food sovereignty and claim that every country on earth (with the possible minor exceptions of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the free trade economic order prevents this from happening.

  • Monarchies and Liberal Democracies

    • Monarchies, in which sovereignty embodied in a single individual, eventually gave way to liberal democracies.
    • A monarchy is a form of government in which sovereignty is actually or nominally embodied in a single individual, the monarch.

  • Characteristics of the State

    • States differ in sovereignty, governance, geography, and interests.
    • Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state.

  • Democracy in the U.S.

    • The United States is a federal constitutional republic in which the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.
    • The United States is a federal constitutional republic in which the President of the United States (the head of state and government), Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.

  • Democracy

    • Democracy is a form of government in which sovereignty is held by the majority of citizens within a country or a state.
    • More formally, we might say that in democracy, the right to govern, or sovereignty, is held by the majority of citizens within a country or state.

  • Democracy

    • In the United States, separation of powers is often cited as a central attribute, but in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the dominant principle is that of parliamentary sovereignty (while maintaining judicial independence).
    • According to some theories of democracy, popular sovereignty is the founding principle of such a system.
    • In the United States, separation of powers is often cited as a central attribute, but in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the dominant principle is that of parliamentary sovereignty (whilst maintaining judicial independence).

  • Monarchy

    • Historically, this was the case in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta or 17th-century Russia, and there are examples of joint sovereignty of spouses or relatives (such as William and Mary in the Kingdoms of England and Scotland).

  • Colonialism and Neocolonialism

    • It is a process whereby the metropole, or parent state, claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economy of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole.
    • In ideal cases, decolonized colonies were granted sovereignty, or the right to self-govern, becoming independent countries.

  • Functions of the State

    • States are considered to be subject to external sovereignty, or hegemony, if their ultimate sovereignty lies in another state.

  • Population Growth and Overpopulation

    • On a global scale, however, food production has grown faster than population.
    • In fact, the population is decreasing in some countries with abundant food supply.
    • Thus, human populations do not always grow to match the available food supply.
    • In either case, since populations are tied to the food they consume, discussions of populations should not take place without considering the role played by food supply.
    • A shortage of arable land (where food crops will grow) is also a problem.