Through the project we defined food sovereignty as an individual and collective right to nutritious food that was sustainably produced and sustainably traded. Our definition was adapted from the Nyeleni Declaration in 2007:
―Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self-reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets and to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of, and the rights to, aquatic resources. Food sovereignty does not negate
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trade, but rather it promotes the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to food and to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production‖ (www.viacampesina.org, 2007).
With EU project partners from six countries the shared vision was global and embraced perspectives from civil society, indigenous people, adult and community educators, teachers, activists, farmers, rural development workers and social movements. Many of our partners were part of the Via Campesina International Peasants Movement and had participated in the Nyeleni Conference during 2007 in Senegal.
Through global learning attention was drawn to how values are determined and influence wider concepts of global social justice, focusing on eating - something everyone does. Values can be defined as psychological representations of what one believes to be important in life (Rokeach, 1973) and as ―desirable trans- situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or other social entity‖ (Schwartz, 1994: 21) as discussed in Chapter 2. Sen (1999) sees capability as being able to determine the choices that individual and societies make and the identity assumed through what is valued. In order to identify the project partners ‗desirable transitional goals‘ or values I facilitated a food-mapping exercise with the project partner representatives to identify what we eat, what decisions we make and what influences them, how this changes throughout the year, where our food comes from, how it is produced, who produces it and where we access it.
Embracing food sovereignty, project partners cited the importance of the Freirean concept of conscientisation and the provision of information about rights as individuals and as citizens of both local and global society. From an
130 ecological and institutional context, partners sought more diverse and egalitarian food and value systems and ways of looking at the world. This was seen as critical to improving the livelihoods of people everywhere, working towards a shared obligation to deliver sustainable, human development and to protecting human rights.
In doing this the partners acknowledged what Pimbert (2009:9), in his global study of food sovereignty refers to as ―the corporate thrust for radical monopoly control over the global food system.‖ He cites this and the modernist development agenda as two mutually supportive elements of the same paradigm of economic progress. The first element is the monopoly of a few transnational corporations over the food chain, which Illich (1997) regards as radical in that industrial services and or products can lead to the deterioration of autonomous systems by replacing activities in which people do or would otherwise engage in. The second element is the continual focus on food security within the Millennium Development Community. Food security and right to food have been endorsed at high level UN summits and conferences. Yet the collective priority on having access to enough good food to eat each day, does not include any stipulation as to where the food comes from or how it is produced. In effect, this opens the door for the same transnational corporations to provide cheap imports as ‗food aid‘ rather than supporting local production systems.
―If the people of a country must depend for their next meal on the vagaries of the global economy, on the goodwill of a superpower not to use food as a weapon, or on the unpredictability and high cost of long-distance shipping, that country is not secure in the sense of either national security or food security.‖ (Rosset 2003:3)
131 In relation to global learning there was also a strong consensus that the shared focus on food should highlight the inter-dependence and inter-connectedness of the Global North and South. All of the EU project partners had examples, or were examples, of how localised food systems helped to sustain local economies and how the biggest threats were transnational corporations and international trade agreements. The Italian partners, Associazione Italiana Agricoltura Biologica (AIAB, the Italian association of organic farmers) cited the demise of family businesses caused by the growth of the Ipermercati superstores (AIAB 2009 pers comms). This was mirrored by UK partner experiences of supermarkets (WEA 2009, pers comms). The partners in Zanzibar, Tanzania shared the fact that imported frozen chicken from Brazil was cheaper and easier to buy than locally produced chicken (LDF 2009, pers comms). There was a collective view on ―food sovereignty‖ as a citizens‘ response to the multiple social and environmental crises induced by modern food systems everywhere that sought to embrace Via Campesina‘s slogan (accessed 12.01.2013) through the project: ―Globalise the Struggle – Globalise
Hope‖.
Through these discussions the EU project partners evolved from a disparate group of people from different places, backgrounds and with different perspectives to a community of enquiry engaged in identifying commonalities. This important change was enabled by focusing on the practice-based knowledge or sense making of the complex issues shared by the partners. In embracing such a constructivist perspective on knowledge ‗ideal speech conditions‘ were created (Habermas 1972).
132 The partners engaged in a deliberative dialogue that explored facts and values from each of the individual perspectives, drawing on inter-dependencies through a discursive and contextual understanding of each other and of situated knowledge and experiences, stimulating a debate that would continue through the project. Thus the initial meeting in 2009 created a dynamic, fluid, yet safe space for all of the EU project partners to move together from their intention of strategic action to a shared one of communicative action. Through facilitating this interpretive interaction between the partners‘ different perspectives, the consensus that was reached provided the foundation for each of the partners to engage as participatory action researchers with mutual methodological considerations for researching, analysing and interpreting good practice in each of the partner countries.
This was a significant, positive starting point. Otherwise how would and could the partners engage in researching empowerment if unable to engage in a reflexive and appreciative practice with each other? The partners had, in response, achieved an ‗ideal speech‘ condition and ‗communicative rationality‘ (Habermas 1987).