Land Politics & Food Sovereignty

The research on this site delves into the theory, practice, politics, potential and challenges of food sovereignty in Canada and beyond.  While some projects provide case studies of food sovereignty, others highlight the land politics that enhance and/or hinder the implementation of food sovereignty.

The transnational agrarian movement, La Via Campesina, introduced the concept of food sovereignty in 1996 as a political challenge to the globalization of the corporate food regime. Food sovereignty entails the radical transformation of food systems as it seeks to keep small-scale producers on the land and enable them to make a living from growing food and live in dignity.  Food sovereignty is fundamentally about changing the ways we think about and relate to food, agriculture, land, nature, and each other.

Going far beyond food security, food sovereignty digs into key questions such as: what food is produced/harvested, who grows/harvests the food, where and how it is produced/harvested, and at what scale. In doing so, food sovereignty politicizes food systems as it reveals who has the power to make decisions about food and agriculture. In essence, food sovereignty is a radical democratic project because it puts decision-making power into the hands of local communities as they work together to create socially just and ecologically sustainable food systems.

The distribution of, access to and control over land is critical in many food sovereignty struggles. How land is held shapes the particular model(s) of agriculture adopted.  Land politics addresses a number of questions about the control and use of land: Who gets land, how much land, what kind of land, where, how is the land used, and who decides?  

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Research Chair program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada that made this research possible.