GGR329H1 Study Guide - Final Guide: Via Campesina, World Trade Organization, Food Sovereignty
11 May 2018
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Class 1: January 5 Geographies of the Global Food System
CHAPTER 8 – Albritton, Robert – Two Great Food Revolutions: The Domestication of Nature and the
Transgression of Nature's Limits
• This chapter explores the two major food revolutions; the first revolution gave us agriculture and animal
husbandry, the 'second great food revolution' which began in 1945 and continues to present, includes the
changes in food provision that have occurred since world war II. This revolution combines the mechanical,
chemical and biotech revolutions, which together enable global capitalism to increasingly enter and control
the food system.
• The author, Robert Albritton focuses on the second revolution in this chapter and the capitalist takeover of
agriculture. He further argues that capitalist market prices have become increasingly irrational because they
exclude most social and environmental costs, and that capitalism's orientation toward short term profits is
also irrational, when what is needed is long range democratic planning informed by the best science
available to bring prices into line with real social and environmental costs and benefits.
Bernstein, Henry (2006). Is There an Agrarian Question in the 21st Century? Canadian Journal of
Development Studies, 27(4): 449-460
• This paper explores the lineages and applications of the "classic" agrarian question, including its fateful
adaptation in the early Soviet Union, as the agrarian question of capital.
• Agrarian question – Agrarian citizenship = a concept that links agricultural practice to environmental
sustainability and social justice, thus defining new ways of being and interacting with nature and one
another
• Argues that the agrarian question of capital has been superseded in the current period of globalization.
• There are no longer classes of predatory pre-capitalist landed property of any major weight, nor is it useful
to regard today's small farmers as 'Peasants" in any inherited historical sense.
• Struggles over land may manifest an agrarian question of (increasingly fragmented) classes of labour, but -
for all their importance - do not have the same systemic (or world-historical) significance as the agrarian
question of capital once had.
• Challenges of capitalism entering into agriculture.
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Class 3: January 19 Food Sovereignty
CHAPTER 24 – Desmarais, Annette Aurélie - Building Food Sovereignty: A Radical Framework for Socially
Just and Ecologically Sustainable Food Systems
• 2007- 2008 Food Crisis triggered many food riots and hit national headlines in many countries.
• La Via Campesina (an international peasant movement) argued that the food crisis, now linked to the
economic and environmental crisis- is the result of decades of destructive policies that spurred the
globalization of neoliberal industrial corporate led agriculture and that the time for food sovereignty has
come.
• Sustainable agriculture; reflects the respect for ecology through focus on local production and local
consumption and required environmentally friendly practices such as, integrated pest management, organic
or low- input and small scale agricultural production, and polyculture.
• Brundtland Commission Report- Sustainable development - Power holders re- envisioned 'sustainability' in
the practice of sustainable agriculture as the successful integration of food and agriculture into the global
marketplace.
• The signing of Uruguay Round of the GATT in 1994 that created the World Trade Organization (WTO), all
agricultural policies now had to comply with regional trade and WTO agreements, The WTO's agreement
on agriculture reflected on the belief that food security could be best reached by increasing agricultural
trade accompanied by expanding the power of the WTO in global governance over food, genetic resources,
natural resources and agricultural markets.
• The United Nations and Agricultural Organization defines food security as; a situation that exists when all
people, at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that
meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
• Food Sovereignty emerged as peasants and small scale farmers struggled to survive in this harsher political
and economic environment that effectively threatened their very modes of existence.
• Food Sovereignty is the right of the peoples and nations to control their own food and agricultural systems,
including their own markets, production modes, food cultures and environments.
• Global Movements for Food Sovereignty
• Right to Food
• Challenges to Food Sovereignty
Rosset, Peter (2011). Food Sovereignty and Alternative Paradigms to Confront Land Grabbing and the Food
and Climate Crises. Development, 54(1): 21-30.
• The author, Peter Rosset argues for a paradigm shift toward food sovereignty based on genuine agrarian
reform and sustainable peasant agriculture, which he sees as the only way to address the multiple crises.
• Farmers are over-represented in food production and under-represented in export and agrofuels production,
because they have a food-producing vocation. Yet, the continued growth of the dominant model directly
undermines food production, driving small farmers off the land and into migrant streams.
• In order to reverse these trends and provide a life with dignity for farming people, protect rural
environments, and correct the structural causes of the food crisis, we need to revitalize family and peasant
farming; restoring the public sector rural budgets that were cut under neo-liberal policies, restore minimum
price guarantees, credit and other forms of support, and carry out redistributive agrarian reform.
• The peasant and family farm sectors in most countries cannot be rebuilt without land reform, which
redistributes land from export elites to food producing peasants and family farmers. This is a central pillar
of the alternative proposal for our food and agriculture systems, as put forth by the international farmers’
movement.
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Document Summary
Class 1: january 5 geographies of the global food system. Chapter 8 albritton, robert two great food revolutions: the domestication of nature and the. Chapter 24 desmarais, annette aur lie - building food sovereignty: a radical framework for socially. Food sovereignty and alternative paradigms to confront land grabbing and the food and climate crises. Yet, the continued growth of the dominant model directly undermines food production, driving small farmers off the land and into migrant streams. It also refers to large-scale land acquisitions in the form of leasing or purchasing by wealthy countries, funds, or individuals, especially in developing countries following the rise in agricultural commodity prices in 2008: land sovereignty - Transition: providing alternatives to the industrial food system, 3. Transforms: opposition, protest and food sovereignty , 4. M ndez, v. ernesto, christopher m. bacon, and roseann cohen (2013). In the last decade, the number of publications and initiatives that people describe as agro ecological has exponentially increased.
