La Via Campesina: Peasant-led agrarian reform and food sovereignty

Development ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faustino Torrez
Keyword(s):  
Agrarian Reform ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
La Via Campesina

scholarly journals Forging Political Cadres for Re-Peasantization: Escuela de Acción Campesina (Spain)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4061
Author(s):  
David Gallar-Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Training Process ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Participatory Workshop ◽  
Global North ◽  
Training Schools ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology ◽  
La Via Campesina

Bolstering the political formation of agrarian organizations has become a priority for La Vía Campesina and the Food Sovereignty Movement. This paper addresses the Spanish case study of the Escuela de Acción Campesina (EAC)—(Peasant Action School), which is a tool for political formation in the Global North in which the philosophical and pedagogical principles of the “peasant pedagogies” of the Training Schools proposed by La Vía Campesina are put into practice within an agrarian organization in Spain and in alliance with the rest of the Spanish Food Sovereignty Movement. The study was carried out over the course of the 10 years of activist research, spanning the entire process for the construction and development of the EAC. Employing an ethnographic methodology, information was collected through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, a participatory workshop, and reviews of internal documents. The paper presents the context in which the EAC arose, its pedagogical dynamics, the structure and the ideological contents implemented for the training of new cadres, and how there are three key areas in the training process: (1) the strengthening of collective union and peasant identity, (2) training in the “peasant” ideological proposal, and (3) the integration of students as new cadres into the organizations’ structures. It is concluded that the EAC is a useful tool in the ideological re-peasantization process of these organizations.

The Prism of Expanding Peasants’ Rights: A Critical Investigation of Diverse Frames Applied to La Vía Campesina’s Human Rights Engagements

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pratik Raghu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Sustainable Agriculture ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
La Via Campesina ◽  
Critical Investigation

Abstract Since its foundation in 1993, La Vía Campesina has surged to the forefront of the global alter-globalization movement of movements, mobilizing human rights discourse to promote small-scale sustainable agriculture as a key component of social justice, equity, dignity, and autonomy everywhere. This literature review argues that food sovereignty—La Vía Campesina’s best known, rights-based innovation—inflects a range of other interrelated but distinct frames that variously foreground peasants’ rights, “peasantness,” land, cultural recognition, and collective emancipation, prefiguring an array of prospects for the expansion of human rights to peasants and other marginalized populations confronting the failures of capitalist globalization.

Diálogo de saberesin La Vía Campesina: food sovereignty and agroecology

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 979-997 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Elena Martínez-Torres ◽  
Peter M. Rosset
Keyword(s):  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
La Via Campesina

scholarly journals Peasants’ Transnational Mobilization for Food Sovereignty in La Vía Campesina

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delphine Thivet
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
National Level ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Food Activism ◽  
La Via Campesina

This paper examines how small farmers and landless rural workers have developed new modes of food activism at the transnational level. It explores in particular how the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina advocates and seeks to build – through the concept of the “food sovereignty” – an alternative frame for food production and distribution enabling communities and people to determine at the local/national level their own food systems. Based on a multi-sited fieldwork including participant observations and interviews with organizations’ members from three different countries involved in La Vía Campesina (France, Brazil and India), my study analyses the various and unstable definitions of the concept of “food sovereignty” in the movement. It examines the process of adding new meanings to its definition according to its circulation across different scales and specific cultural and geographical contexts, its attempted legal translations, and its local reconfigurations in sometimes nationalistic and protectionist ways. The aim is first to show how the demand for “food sovereignty” has emerged at the international level so as to reframe politically global food relations and compete with a more technical response to world hunger promoted by global institutions - the notion of “food security”. The paper then traces the various strategies used by La Vía Campesina’s activists to legitimize and promote their cause, trying to make small-scale farmers “visible” – both in international and national public arenas – and recognized as those assuming a leading role in food production throughout the world. Finally, it addresses the way the food sovereignty framework catalyzes social mobilization across borders by constituting transnational interests and provides to marginalized social agents in the countryside a conceptual frame for making sense of the process of dispossession from the means of production they have been undergoing since the early 1980s.

scholarly journals Hungry for Progress? Enacting Food Sovereignty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Natasha Kula-Kaczmarski
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Potential Market ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Constructing Knowledge ◽  
La Via Campesina

<p>This research builds upon and utilises an emerging field of food and development theory – food sovereignty – as it discusses possibilities for an alternative food system, where the production, distribution and consumption of food may be guided by principles that foster a holistic, ethical and sustainable approach.  The theory of food sovereignty has grown from the writings of La Via Campesina (a global movement of food producers in the Global South) and offers critiques of the current food system, food security and corporate globalisation. As I grapple with the key principles of food sovereignty and explore the ways in which they are visible within Wellington, Aotearoa, I interact with five key organisations and present ways their actions foster a food sovereignty paradigm. By blending the theoretical with the practical, this thesis presents the lived experiences of people working in; Koanga Institute, Biofarm, Commonsense Organics, Workerbe and Kaibosh.  Bringing together the perspectives of these five organisations with relevant literature, this thesis first discusses some potential market-based solutions for achieving ethical consumption. It then examines ideas around the move to ‘grow something’ as a tool for resistance, reclaiming spaces and healing; to finally explore the ways in which a more holistic approach to food can nurture spiritual connections in profound and unique ways.  Hungry for Progress? Enacting Food Sovereignty is a qualitative research project that embraces notions of positionality and reflexivity and shares my journey of living this research. Through exploring the food sovereignty narratives and worldviews, I seek to promote empowerment among individuals and organisations through constructing knowledge that supports postcolonial, feminist and activist interactions so that good change in the food system (and beyond) may become a reality.</p>

Peasant Resistance to Neoliberalism: La Via Campesina and Food Sovereignty

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
Rural Development ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Peasant Resistance ◽  
La Via Campesina

Since emerging in 1993, La Vía Campesina has become a powerful voice of opposition to the globalization of a modern, industrial and neoliberal model of rural development. By “building unity within diversity” La Vía Campesina pulls together rural movements to work for an alternative model of agriculture and community based on food sovereignty. This article sheds light on La Vía Campesina's contributions to this growing food sovereignty movement.

scholarly journals Peasant activism and the rise of food sovereignty: Decolonising and democratising norm diffusion?

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Dunford
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Diffusion Process ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
United Nations Declaration ◽  
La Via Campesina

‘Food sovereignty’ emerged from grassroots peasant mobilisations, and has been spread globally by a democratically organised social movement, la Vía Campesina. This process has seen food sovereignty influence global political discourse, transform national constitutions and be incorporated into a proposed United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. By examining the role of grassroots actors in the global South in the construction of this emerging global norm, I militate against tendencies of West-centrism and elitism in existing literature on the contemporary diffusion of norms. By also discussing the potential marginalisation of grassroots peasant voices in recent United Nations discussions, I suggest that these elitist and West-centric tendencies may also exist in the norm diffusion process itself.

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