This guest blog post was written by Martha Page, Executive Director of Hartford Food Systems. The concept of food sovereignty was brought up at reSET’s Food For Thought event, a panel discussion about the role of entrepreneurship in CT food systems. It was a concept that intrigued the audience, and here, Martha gives an overview of what food sovereingty means from the perspective of a leader in CT food systems, and what it would look like in Hartford, the state, and the world.

Across the nation and here in Hartford, many people and organizations are part of the exciting and encouraging movement to bring good food to more people. The proliferation of farmers’ markets and local-sourcing in restaurants, the burgeoning wave of community garden and urban farming, and the efforts to preserve and even increase farmers and farmland all represent opportunities for entrepreneurs and food producers to promote “good food as good business.” Unfortunately, the undeniable benefits of this movement do not accrue to all equitably.  For many who experience significant economic challenges, the good food revolution may often seem like a realm for the privileged that does not pertain to their day to day economic realities.

For more than three decades, the anti-hunger forces here in the United States have untiringly focused their efforts on increasing individual, household, and community “food security”, meaning access by all persons at all times to enough nutritious, culturally acceptable food in their community for an active, healthy life. More recently, though, a newer concept- food sovereignty- has taken hold globally, deepening the conversation and focus on healthy food as a fundamental democratic right for all.  The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty  defines this concept:

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.” 

For many organizations that work on food security and food justice, the definition and associated principles of food sovereignty help to provide a framework for determining whether a local, regional, national, or international system of food is fair, just, sustainable, democratic, and responsive to those who both produce and consume food. With principles that include individual rights to sufficient, healthy, and culturally appropriate food; acknowledgement of the value of direct producers of this food; the importance of local food systems that are under local control; the critical notion of building and preserving knowledge about healthy, sustainable food; and, the health and preservation of the food producing ecosystem, food sovereignty has applicability at every level and in every facet of the food system.

Yet, one might ask what does this global concept of food sovereignty have to do with food deserts and healthy food in Hartford? What does it have to do with the extraordinarily high number of our children suffering from overweight and obesity? If it’s a struggle for so many to get enough food on the table every day of the month to keep hunger at bay, why would and why should we care about this somewhat academic, somewhat political sounding concept? Said another way, are calories produced by any means from any source sufficient, or should we all be concerned about where those calories came from and how they came to be?

At Hartford Food System, we believe that the food sovereignty frame provides a way to think about and discern answers to very complicated questions about the food system and may offer an approach for solving entrenched problems of hunger, food access, and the corporatization of our food supply. Most importantly, it offers a framework for engaging people in their food system in a more active, democratic and empowered manner. Ashoka Finley, a self-described food sovereignty activist from Urban Tilth in California argues that, while both food security and food sovereignty are about “rights”, food sovereignty calls on the power and rights inherent in any community to “take part in effecting those [political and economic] conditions” that determine our food system, using “food-based activism to transform the political and economic system we live in.”

While the idea of ordinary community residents “taking on” the giant corporate producers of processed food may seem daunting, it does bring into focus the importance of critical thinking and action at the local level that goes beyond simple consumer choice to a realization that each one of our food decisions can help or harm democracy, can help promote or abdicate accountability, can move toward or away from equity for producers and eaters, and can encourage or discourage food system resilience and sustainability.

When the question is asked about our food system “Who’s in charge here?” the answer that food sovereignty suggests is never farther away than the nearest mirror.