As the current food and agriculture model degrades the environment and creates social inequalities, there is an urgent need to transform existing food systems, according to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. Food sovereignty, along with agroecology, is a concept that can help to address these issues. While being part of legislation in some countries, food sovereignty is barely known in others. Nonetheless, the private sector has been developing practical solutions in this direction which prompted the CEO of the Open Food Network UK, which is working towards building a new food system, to tell DevelopmentAid that a transformation is needed but, to achieve this, the whole system needs to work together.
This article sheds light on what food sovereignty stands for, its place in the development of sustainable food systems, and, last but not least, on how the concept can take on a practical meaning for producers and consumers.
Food Sovereignty as part of development
The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) acknowledges Food Sovereignty as an essential part of change in its recent report, ‘A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045’:
“Four pathways of civil society-led food system transformation could shift US$4 trillion from the industrial chain to food sovereignty and agroecology, cut 75% of food systems’ GHG emissions, and deliver incalculable benefits to the lives and livelihoods of billions of people over the next 25 years,” (IPES-Food, 2021).
As a matter of fact, food sovereignty has been advanced by several nations that try to include the concept in their constitution and in law in general. Developed to promote alternatives to policies that would help to achieve food and nutrition security, food sovereignty is emphasized in a range of legislative initiatives promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and parliamentarians from Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the case, for instance, with the Law on the Right to Food Security and Food Sovereignty in Argentina as well as the Dominican Republic. Other examples include that of Nepal which enacted the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act in 2018 and of Bolivia, which, in spite of questions regarding the implementation, attracts particular attention as not only does food sovereignty form part of its Constitution, it is also included in multiple pieces of Bolivian legislation.
Recently, Victor Suarez, Undersecretary for Food and Competitiveness of the Ministry of Agriculture of Mexico, emphasized the role of this framework for autonomous and inclusive food systems in Mexico:
“Regarding agri-food systems in Mexico, we want to recover self-sufficiency that is based on food sovereignty and giving priority to small producer, small farmer and within agroecological transition.”
Thus, food sovereignty represents a concept much larger than food security and value chains, as stated in the project launched last year by the World Bank.
Lynne Davis: you put the community first
As policy and law for food sovereignty takes its course, civil society and the private sector are developing practical solutions. This is the case with the Open Food Network, a platform whose goal is to make food systems more equitable by helping both producers and consumers who use it to ‘create food collectives, manage food hub stock, or to take their farmers’ market online with pre-purchases to give stallholders more secure sales’.
In a conversation with DevelopmentAid, Lynne Davis, a Food Systems specialist, the CEO of Open Food Network (OFN), and a board member of Ecological Land Cooperative in the UK revealed how her work helps to build food systems based on food sovereignty principles.
It all began with the Dean Forest Food Hub, a project Lynne worked for prior to joining OFN and which represents an online farmers market whose ‘goal is to ensure that everyone in the Forest of Dean can access affordable local produce that is fair for the producer as well’. Lynne shared that the project came about because she had witnessed how at one point producers from three farms in the Forest of Dean completely lost their local market overnight and had to find new ways to sell:
“I was working for one of them and I heard of this model of a food hub. So, I thought – maybe we could try this?” recalls Lynne.
They created an online market with a food hub model where they would put the produce from different farms onto the website and people could order what they wanted. They also did the packing and delivered once a week and, over time, brought more people on board. Ultimately it provided an extra outlet for each of the farmers who had completely lost their existing markets.
Although the profit made was enough to pay people to run the hub and get the project underway, the software being used was out of date and the existing model did not provide sufficient resources to fund a replacement.
“We were trying to support the producers with good prices and trying to make food as affordable as possible for the community and that is a tough balancing act to play,” she says.
Seeking a way to develop the software together, the team found other groups and similar initiatives within the UK and discovered the Open Food Network (OFN) which existed in Australia, and started to collaborate with them. Thus, they adapted the model to the UK context and helped all those using the old software to move across to the OFN which was more effective. They are growing this model globally and it is now in operation in 20 different countries (e.g., France, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Ireland).
“We are trying to support people doing community food enterprises, and this brings us back to food sovereignty. Food sovereignty to us is about communities taking control over their food systems and what that means, there is no one size fits all solution to building a food system. You put the community first”.
According to Lynne, “market forces have disempowered communities a lot”. Although some time ago there used to be a bakery, a butcher, and a grocery meaning people would purchase their food from lots of different shops that local producers were supplying, this option now no longer exists. Instead, there are nine supermarkets selling 95% of the food in this country. With this system in place, the community is less or not at all engaged in the food system in a traditional way.
She explained that when the groups define their path, they look at how to reduce the environmental impact, address social issues, and how to nurture the community they live in. Although in the beginning consumers might not seek organic or agroecological produce, the OFN invests in these and works more closely with its producers to enable them to better understand sustainable production, how to create a market for it and how to create social impact through this market.
When the community begins to define its path, there is an immense variety of options to choose from and in fact, the OFN is looking at an infrastructure layer that might enable even more diversity to come about. The OFN software reduces administration costs and supports producers to access new markets through several different hubs thus allowing for diversified food systems to exist. The purpose is to assist the community to make distribution more environmentally cost-effective but each one in its own way. This diversity reflects the specificity of each community and its needs:
“Diversity is so important in our fields, in business in representation, and our economy and that is integral to food sovereignty in so many different ways,” says Lynne.
Food sovereignty to dismantle the class system
Lynne also referred to the aspects of fairness and justice in the food systems. She pointed out that the organic movement has relied on higher prices to incentivise better ecological practices for farmers. However, this has created a dynamic in which many people see organic produce as unaffordable. While organic and even agro-ecological production is part of a more expensive food market, genuine food sovereignty will continue to be hindered by cheaper mass-produced food that comes with environmental and social costs.
See also: Economics of externalities: Is food as cheap as we think it is?
According to Lynne, this represents a class system that goes against food sovereignty principles:
“We are trying to dismantle the class system that exists in food systems. Everyone in the world deserves to eat good food,” she said.
Through the support of community-based systems where consumers and producers are better connected, there is more ‘relationship’ between the two parties, a factor that is fundamental in the transition to a sustainable and fair food system:
“How much relationship can we put into our food systems? That is really a good metric to work to,” she added.
Lynne concluded by stating the importance of policy and regulation to support the work of the OFN as well as community-led initiatives in general:
“We operate in a space that needs a regulation as well. We need to have baseline environmental regulation, baseline nutrition, and health regulation to try to support this to make the transition happen faster. This transition will not happen through market forces alone. It needs to have the whole system working together to make this transformation”.
