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Understanding Links Between Food and Social Justice as Expressed Through Food Sovereignty
Introduction
Up till the advent of capitalism and the industrialization of food production and agrarian processes,
the right to access food was essentially "imbedded in social relations within each society through a
variety of redistributive mechanisms" (Spitz 1985). However, the 20th century and beyond has been
witness to direct attacks on the sovereignty of communities to manage their food systems from a
cartel of transnational corporations, international financial institutions, think-tanks, philanthropic
organizations and geopolitical entities. Consequently, food sovereignty has arisen as a concerted
international grassroots movement to challenge a global food regime, and reclaim the power to
produce food for a future defined by human dignity and prosperity.
This essay critically evaluates the various facets of the reigning paradigm linking food and social
justice in a broader scheme of things rather than within the scope of specific case studies. The
undercurrent of food sovereignty is explored in an ontologically constructive manner, which
demanded more philosophical insight and reflection into the subject matter. However, varied
examples taken from journals, reports, books and news articles have been used throughout to
illustrate the analytical thought process.
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(WTO) as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). After bearing the brunt of the
conditionality measures and structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), it finally emerged as a social "movement, not just a mere
coordination" at the turn of the century (Torres and Rosset 2010, pg. 159). Henceforth, new human
rights, referred to as the "rights master frame," would shape the "cosmopolitan, multicultural, and
anti-hegemonic" assertions of a transnational agrarian movement (Claeys 2012).
It was in the setting of the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) World Food Summit of 1996
that food sovereignty was formally expressed by Via Campesina as being integral for ensuring social
justice on a global scale (Hickey and Mitta 2003). The statement by the NGO Forum, representing
1,200 such organizations, stressed upon the de jure recognition of food sovereignty as a basic human
right and not as an "international political weapon" (FAO 1996).
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resource depletion. The synthesis that emerges is that unabated human existence itself is the root of
the problem.
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Plant and agricultural biodiversity is both the backbone and the safety net of the food security and
sovereignty of communities across the world. However, hybrid seeds developed under the
Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) consortium of research centres
have served as mini Trojan horses in hijacking access to indigenous seed varieties and agrarian
knowledge. The magnanimously dubbed 'Miracle' rice seeds developed by the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI) destroyed around 4,000 traditional rice cultivars alone (GRAIN and PEAC
2010), thus earning the former the reprehensible moniker of 'Seeds of Imperialism' (Shiva 1992, pg.
44). Such seeds were the veritable harbingers of the invasion of industrial agricultural technologies
such as petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides and farming machinery that subjected not just the local
growers but also the consumers to a form of corporate colonialism.
Codex Alimentarius
The Codex Alimentarius Commission of the United Nations is one body that can be credited with
ushering in a 'New Food Order' for the world at large. Under the pretext of food safety standards,
the Codex is going to serve as the ultimate challenge to food sovereignty and social justice. Having
been elevated from a voluntary agency since its creation in 1963 to a global regulatory agency by the
WTO Appellate Body in the last two decades, the Codex is "part of a more general trend of
transferring power from national governments to international organizations" in a legal and binding
framework (Livermore 2006, pg. 769). The Codex is creating a precarious slope for future food
sovereignty to tread on, where "technocratic rationality and universal claims of science" trump
consumer food choice and personal freedom (Winickoff and Bushey 2010, pg. 360).
The indefatigability of the human will is indeed admirable and would be our only hope if we are to
avert a future portrayed in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where humans are grown from
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embryos in a giant incubator facility and fed food through tubes. As one of the characters after
witnessing it remarks, "even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even
science" (Huxley 1932). Certainly not Humanity.
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