I know fb is not for deep and meaningfuls, but this is worth it. A synopsis of a paper presented at Yale last month by Philip McMichael (had lunch with him last week in Rome). For my farmer and foodie mates - please read and inwardly digest. Conference Paper # 13: Historicizing Food Sovereignty: a Food Regime Perspective, by Philip McMichael To historicize food sovereignty is to situate it: first, as a strategic countermovement in/of the food regime; and second, by historicizing the food regime itself to identify the shifting terrain of food sovereignty politics. While the global agrarian crisis of the late-twentieth century precipitated the movement, it was part of a continuing crisis accompanying the long-twentieth century food regime and its competitive assault on farming systems across the world. This assault, in the name of free trade, development and food security, has imposed a model of ‘agriculture without farmers’ in a world equating industrial efficiency with human progress. Food sovereignty is a culminating protective movement against the deceit of ‘feeding the world’ by undermining farming with the false economy of value relations of the food regime. At the same time, transformation of the current food regime poses new challenges with schemes to capitalize lands in the global South. Whereas in 2000 Vía Campesina claimed: “the massive movement of food around the world is forcing the increased movement of people,” now the massive movement of capital around the world increases the movement of people, and food. Beyond deepening this unsustainable scenario, the capitalization project aims to feed the world a new deceit by converting smallholders into value-chain ‘outgrowers’ for world markets. Such appropriation of food sovereignty claims for smallholder recognition nonetheless confronts smallholders with extractive market relations including a form of land grab. Fallout from the recent ‘food crisis’ indicates that neoliberal re-colonization has the potential to consolidate food sovereignty alliances around the politics of food grabbing.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 10:54:28 +0000
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