The Struggle for Food Sovereignty

Description

The world's food system is broken, and today's peasant societies are at a crossroads. This collection explores the multiplicity of problems faced by global family agricultures in the current neoliberal era.



The contributors, including include Samir Amin, Joao Pedro Stedile and Utsa Patnaik, argue that an understanding of the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land is essential. Financialisation is undermining their work, and must be resisted if they are to construct a new, socially just food system.



This is a response to the confusion surrounding how these urgent problems are understood, with the authors offering solutions as to how they should be resolved. They express the importance of the co-operation and cohesion of the various struggles taking place across Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, and how they must share a common vision for the future.
World Forum for Alternatives

List of Abbreviations

Introduction - Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau

1. Theoretical Framework - Samir Amin

2. Latin America - João Pedro Stedile

3. Africa - Sam Moyo

4. Asia (I) - Erebus Wong and Jade Tsui Sit

5. Asia (II) - Utsa Patnaik

6. Oceania - Rémy Herrera and Poeura Tetoe

7. Europe - Gérard Choplin et al.

Conclusion - Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau

References

List of Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Industries
• Development studies
• General officer
• Papua New Guinea
• Primary sector of the economy
• Economics
• Development
• Business
• General
• Agriculture
• Industrie
• Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783715060
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty
The Struggle for Food Sovereignty
Alternative Development and the Renewal of Peasant Societies Today
Edited by Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
With Samir Amin, Gérard Choplin et al., Sam Moyo, Utsa Patnaik, Jade Tsui Sit, João Pedro Stedile, Poeura Tetoe and Erebus Wong
First published 2015 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau 2015
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN   978 0 7453 3595 7   Hardback
ISBN   978 0 7453 3594 0   Paperback
ISBN   978 1 7837 1505 3   PDF eBook
ISBN   978 1 7837 1507 7   Kindle eBook
ISBN   978 1 7837 1506 0   EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
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CONTENTS
World Forum for Alternatives
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Family Agriculture in the Present World: Regional Perspectives
Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
1 Theoretical Framework
Food Sovereignty and the Agrarian Question: Constructing Convergence of Struggles within Diversity
Samir Amin
2 Latin America
Reflections on the Tendencies of Capital in Agriculture and Challenges for Peasant Movements in Latin America
João Pedro Stedile
3 Africa
Rebuilding African Peasantries: Inalienability of Land Rights and Collective Food Sovereignty in Southern Africa?
Sam Moyo
4 Asia (I)
Rethinking ‘Rural China’, Unthinking Modernisation: Rural Regeneration and Post-Developmental Historical Agency
Erebus Wong and Jade Tsui Sit
5 Asia (II)
The Political-Economic Context of the Peasant Struggles for Livelihood Security and Land in India
Utsa Patnaik
6 Oceania
The Papua Niugini Paradox: Land Property Archaism and Modernity of Peasant Resistance?
Rémy Herrera and Poeura Tetoe
7 Europe
An Overview of the European Peasants and Their Struggles
Gérard Choplin et al.
Conclusion
Facing the Domination of Financial Capital: The Convergence of Peasant Struggles Today
Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
References
List of Contributors
Index
WORLD FORUM FOR ALTERNATIVES
The World Forum for Alternatives (WFA) is a network of individuals and institutions committed to a progressive and anti-imperialist perspective, supporting the aspirations of the nations of the ‘South’– i.e. the dominated peripheries in the global capitalist system – to become equal to the ‘North’ in all the dimensions of life: economic development, social welfare, political independence and cultural respect. WFA members are intellectuals, sharing modest but nonetheless ambitious targets: modest because they do not consider themselves ‘leaders’ of progressive social and political forces in struggle, and ambitious in the sense that they do feel that they are among those who can provide in-depth analyses of the realities and challenges, and can thus be ‘useful’ for the progressive forces in struggle. They also allow themselves to suggest strategies for action and are keen to see those analyses and suggestions move out of ‘restricted’ teams of thinkers to reach the political and social progressive forces.
Since its creation in Cairo in 1997, after a first meeting in Louvain-la-Neuve in 1996, the WFA has conducted activities in accordance with its purpose and platform. Some of its main activities have included the ‘Anti-Davos in Davos’ (in January 1999, a media event which gave visibility to the network); the Bamako General Assembly (in January 2006, attended by around 200 members of the Enlarged Council of the WFA); and the Caracas General Assembly (in October 2008, attended by 250 members of the Enlarged Council). A great number of other events have been organised or co-organised by the WFA, such as round tables in the successive rounds of the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre, Mumbai, Nairobi, Dakar and Tunis), as well as in other continental, regional and national social forums. Numerous activities have also been co-organised by the WFA in association with various partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
What we might call the ‘WFA political platform’ has been formulated, in particular, in the 2006 Bamako Appeal (available in several languages). This has inspired many progressive think tanks. In this spirit, the WFA has organised much debate during the last 15 years in several key areas on such challenges as building the unity of the labouring classes; constructing peasant perspectives for the half of humankind still living in rural areas; associating the democratisation of societies with social progress; building a ‘multi-polar’ global economic system in lieu of the ‘integrated’ capitalist global economic order, and a ‘multi-polar’ global political system; constructing patterns of regionalisation in keeping with the strategic targets mentioned earlier; delegitimising the dominant social thought and discourse conceived to perpetuate capitalist order and annihilate the potential of a radical critique and positive alternative; and finding new alternatives in the ongoing phase of the crisis of the global capitalist system.
Among the leading members of the WFA are: S. Amin (Egypt, France), A.K. Bagchi (India), P. Beaudet (Canada), A. Buzgalin (Russia), B. Cassen (France), H. Chalbi-Drissi (Morocco), A. Conchiglia (Italy), Dai J. (China), A. Dansoko (Senegal), W. Dierckxsens (The Netherlands), B. Founou-Tchuigoua (Cameroon), J.B. Foster (USA), P. Gonzalez Casanova (Mexico), M. Habashi (Egypt), R. Herrera (France), F. Houtart (Belgium), Huang P. (China), V.H. Jijon (Ecuador), B. Kagarlisky (Russia), A. El Kenz (Algeria), M. Katsumata (Japan), Z. Kowalewski (Poland), Lau K.C. (China), I. Lindberg (Sweden), H. Marais (South Africa), I. Monal (Cuba), S. Moyo (Zimbabwe), P.K. Murthy (India), K. Mushakoji (Japan), P. Nakatani (Brazil), I. Rauber (Argentina), F. Rochat (Switzerland), I. Shivji (Tanzania), H. Shaarawi (Egypt), C. Tablada (Cuba), A. Tujan (Filipina), Wang H. (China), Wen T. (China).
ABBREVIATIONS AGRA Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa AusAID Australian Agency for International Development CAP Common Agricultural Policy CLOC Latin American Coordinating Committee of Rural Organisations COPA Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations CPC Communist Party of China CPE European Farmers’ Coordination DRC Democratic Republic of Congo ECVC European Coordination Via Campesina EPA Economic Partnership Agreements FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FDI Foreign direct investment FTLRP Fast Track Land Reform Programme GM[O] Genetically modified [organism] IALA Latin American Institute of Agroecology IFAP International Federation of Agricultural Producers IIRR International Institute of Rural Reconstruction IMF International Monetary Fund ISI Import substitution industrialisation LSCF Large-scale commercial farming MIJARC International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth SACU Southern African Customs Union SADC Southern African Development Community SAPs Structural adjustment plans SCTL Civil Society for Land in Larzac SEPA State Environmental Protection Agency SEZ Special economic zone USAID US Agency for International Development WFA World Forum for Alternatives WTO World Trade Organization
INTRODUCTION
Family Agriculture in the Present World: Regional Perspectives
Rémy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
This book, driven by a collective reflection within the framework of the World Forum for Alternatives, is dedicated to the problems faced by Southern and Northern family farms in the current neoliberal era of financial capital domination worldwide, and to the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land and food. Obviously, such struggles also concern all categories of workers and the people as a whole because what is at stake is the challenge to reach food sovereignty and to build our societies, at the local, national and global levels, on the principles of social justice, equality and real democracy.
The food and agricultural crises, which erupted in 2007–08 and resulted in catastrophic effects on the peoples of numerous countries of the South, especially Africa, as well as popular rebellions, represent two of the many dimensions of the crisis of the capitalist world system. Other very worrying aspects include socio-economic, political and ideological ones, energy and climatic ones. The food and agricultural dimensions of the current systemic crisis reveal the global failure and deep dysfunctions that characterise the agricultural ‘model’ imposed worldwide by financial capital and transnational agribusiness corporations since the beginning of the neoliberal era in the late 1970s, along with the implementation of austerity policies in the North and the structural adjustment plans (SAPs) in the global South. For more than three and a half decades the peasantries of the world have been suffering an intensification of attacks by capital on their land, natural resources and means of production. These attacks have also been eroding national sovereignty and the role of the state, destroying individuals, families and communities, devastating the environment, and threatening the survival of huge numbers of human beings across the world.
The dysfunctions affecting the agricultural sectors can be perceived by identifying a series of str