In the industrialized world, sustainable agriculture has remained a fringe agricultural experiment, unable to provide a large-scale alternative model. Cuba provides a case study of a massive agricultural shift to sustainable farming brought about by economic crisis. In 2009, 31 farmers and 6 key informants from 4 provinces in Cuba were interviewed and 12 women participated in a participant driven photography project about their involvement in small-scale agroecological farming. The research found that the inability to purchase imported chemicals and fertilizers has encouraged farmers to innovate their own solutions to maintaining soil, plant, animal and ecosystem health. Institutional support through academic institutions and non-government organizations is facilitating the spread of agroecological education through farmer-to-farmer exchanges. Economically, farming as a profession provides a fair income; although, farmers’ wealth was tied to other industries in their respective regions, and influenced by tourism. The need for housing and land tenure are large barriers, but the government’s opening up of land for farming in usufruct has been a successful strategy for encouraging new farmers. Allowing for subsistence growing, has been historically and is currently an important incentive. Cooperatives allow for the distribution of scarce inputs, provide educational and social opportunities for farmers and can provide retirement benefits, administrative and legal help. However, women tend to participate less in cooperatives, and traditional household roles and machismo are still an undercurrent in the Cuban countryside. Cuba’s agricultural story is rich in lessons that can be applied globally, learned from its requirement to respond quickly to change during economic crisis. These lessons are simple; productivity and happiness increase with worker autonomy, support from government and institutions works better when it is participatory, and social groups whether cooperatives, family or neighbourhoods, provide an essential human support system. / Graduate / 0366 / 0453 / 0473 / 0733 / lisawillott@gmail.com

Recognition of the world food crisis has increased popular and scholarly work on alternatives to corporatized agriculture. Among many alternatives, fair trade and food sovereignty are two movements that have received a substantial amount of attention. Scholarly work on these topics, however, has focused on larger-scale issues of policy, access and benefits accrued to producers and consumers within such alternative food systems. Producer-focused studies of fair trade--a broader certification system designed to ameliorate inequalities in the marketplace--have examined access to markets, producer benefits and fairness. Analyses of struggles for food sovereignty in the developing world--which are directed at producer control over agricultural systems--are focused on creating radical alternatives to neoliberal food systems. However, very little is known about the everyday agricultural and food production practices which farmers deploy as part of their involvement with these broader politics. Attempts to create secure livelihoods and food resources do not exist in a vacuum; they take place alongside other strategies for survival. This is a situation that is well illustrated by indigenous farmers living in self-declared autonomous communities in Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico, where, cultivating subsistence crops and cash crops represents an effort to advance a political agenda for indigenous autonomy and create secure sources of food and income. Based on research and fieldwork from 2010-2013, in this dissertation I examine how farmers who are linked up with broader networks (such as fair trade certification) understand and practice autonomy. Drawing on a feminist geopolitical approach, this research presents a `scaled-down' analysis of autonomy, fair trade certification and practices of food sovereignty which is focused on the experience of farmers in self-declared autonomous communities. This approach provides critical insight into the daily negotiations of farmers as they interact with a range of networks. / 2015-10-17

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First Nations communities in northern Ontario continue to grapple with food insecurity despite community leaders, social justice activists, reporters, and scholars drawing attention to this multi-faceted issue for decades. Improving food security has been approached by many different actors and directions, such as neo-liberal initiatives to make market food more financially accessible, alternative food procurement programs such as incorporating greenhouses and gardening, and food system resurgent efforts such as increasing funding and training for land-based harvesting practices. Compared to food security, which focuses on access to affordable and nutritious food, food sovereignty offers a more compelling framework to understand food shortages in the settler-colonial context of northern Ontario as it emphasizes the roots of that insecurity, specifically at the way that colonial impositions disrupted Indigenous food systems. Using a community-based participatory methodology within a decolonial feminist theoretical lens and a community of practice of political ecology, this thesis will explore the ways that First Nations communities in northern Ontario are working against and within colonial impositions to improve access to traditional foods in their communities. I will examine some of the tensions and opportunities community members experience and the various approaches they are using or imagining for the future. Lastly, I will explore the ways that the concept of food sovereignty risks becoming symbolic in northern Ontario unless it is accompanied by movements towards land restitution. At the same time, I will argue that food and land sovereignty are inextricably linked, and that practicing Indigenous food systems can lead to food sovereignty with or without government approved land restitution. Finally, I will suggest that sovereignty of and through food may be a more appropriate voicing or inversion of the term to more explicitly acknowledge that food sovereignty and land restitution are inherently and intimately tied.

Ohio is one of the largest agricultural producers in the United States and yet Ohioans experience food insecurity at a rate two percent higher than the national average. An analysis of Ohio's agricultural sector in relation to the current global food system suggests that the neoliberal imaginary orders social and ecological relations at both the international and domestic levels. This ordering perpetuates and justifies the continued exploitation of both labor and land and is based on ontological separation of human and ecological systems. This imaginary has given rise to the framework of food security, which has become the singular framework under which solutions to food and climate challenges are outlined by both local policy makers and major development and agricultural organizations. This effectively limits the possible solutions to only those solutions that fit within this imaginary. In considering the continued prevalence of food insecurity in both national and international contexts, it is necessary to explore other avenues for proposing solutions to the current food challenges, which will only grow as the impacts of climate change worsen. Food sovereignty, more specifically urban food sovereignty, offers an alternative ontological framework that expands the realm of possible solutions to food insecurity as a feature of the food sovereignty movement's recognition of multiple ways of being. / Master of Arts / Ohio is one of the largest agricultural producers in the United States and yet, Ohioans experience food insecurity at a rate two percent higher than the national average. An analysis of Ohio's agricultural development in relation to the rise of the current global food system illustrates the ideological connections between the two systems, and the dependencies of these systems on the continued exploitation of both land and labor. Thus, these systems and the food security framework that has arisen from the same ideology or imaginary, can only provide limited solutions to food insecurity at the national or international level. The solutions that have been proposed and implemented under the security framework maintain dependency and vulnerability of insecure populations. As the impacts from climate change worsen and threaten to disrupt food systems, there is the need to move away from the food security framework towards a framework of food sovereignty and the incorporation of urban spaces into the solutions proposed.

Garden Hill is a remote fly-in First Nation community in Northern Manitoba with a very high incidence of food insecurity. This study examined food security and food sovereignty of the Garden Hill community by reinvigorating an environmental stewardship-driven food system. This research used community-based participatory research approach, and both qualitative and quantitative research tools to generate data and information. Findings reveal that only 3% households are food secure, 66% households are moderately food insecure, and 31% households are severely food insecure. Once self-sufficient with foods gathered from the local, natural foodshed, the community experienced a radical shift in food habits with a greater dependency on processed market foods. Such transformation in food habit and dietary balance, coupled with limited economic opportunities, made the inhabitants increasingly food insecure and vulnerable to multiple health complications. This research demonstrated the community has potentials for local food production. A pilot agricultural farm collaboratively established with a local social enterprise Meechim Inc. grew local food to help address the food insecurity situation. / February 2017

One of the most pressing challenges facing the world today is how to sustainably feed a growing population while conserving the ecosystem services we depend on. Coffee landscapes are an important site for research on agrifood systems because they reflect global-scale dynamics surrounding conservation and livelihood development. Within them, we find both what is broken in our global agrifood system, as well as the grassroots struggles that strive to change the system by building socio-ecologically resilient, sustainable livelihoods. Research shows that smallholder shade coffee farmers steward high biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. At the same time, studies in the last decade demonstrate that many smallholder coffee farmers in Mesoamerica suffer annual periods of seasonal hunger, as well as pervasive poverty. This dissertation explores household livelihood strategies, with a particular emphasis on agroecology, and how they can contribute to build sustainable systems that secure food and maintain biodiversity in coffee communities of Chiapas, Mexico. Research was conducted using a mixed methods approach, which included the collection of quantitative and qualitative socio-ecological data through focus groups, surveys, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and plant inventories. Surveys were conducted with 79 households in 11 communities, all located within the buffer zone of a biosphere reserve. A stratified random sample of 31 households from these 79 were surveyed again to collect more in-depth data, including the collection of biophysical data in their subsistence and coffee land use systems. The following research questions were explored: 1) What are the major ecological, social, economic, and political drivers of seasonal hunger? 2) What is the relationship between agrobiodiversity (plant and livestock diversity) and food security (months of adequate household food provisioning and dietary diversity)? 3) What household livelihood assets and strategies contribute to or limit food security and food sovereignty? Across the sample population, total agrobiodiversity and maize and bean production were strongly correlated with improved food security. Coffee income was not strongly correlated with improved food security, which suggests that income is used for priorities within the household other than food, despite seasonal food shortages. Results demonstrate the importance of balancing subsistence and commodity (i.e. coffee) production in these communities, where subsistence food serves as a risk management strategy to buffer against volatility in coffee prices, in addition to offsetting income that might be used for food towards non-food expenses. Subsistence production, which typically applies agroecological practices in this site, also holds important cultural and environmental value. The results of this research indicate that government policy and development practice should enable farmers to maintain the social, ecological and cultural processes that support the management of agrobiodiversity for subsistence and coffee.

Vermont prides itself on being a national role model in developing innovative models for community-supported, ecologically responsible agricultural practices. However, Vermont's largest sector of agriculture, the dairy industry, has increasingly relied on Latinx* migrant farm laborers who face significant challenges. Due to a lack of a year-round agricultural visa program, most farmworkers on Vermont's dairy farms are unable to receive proper documentation. This circumstance has a significant impact on migrant workers, particularly those living and working closer to the border, as those areas fall within federal jurisdiction of US immigration enforcement. In these borderlands, surveillance is intensified and so the pressure to be invisible is heightened. The current availability of agricultural visas is limited to seasonal migrant farmworkers, and because dairy is year-round work, farmworkers in the dairy industry are barred from accessing proper documentation. Increased patrolling along the northern border results in extreme isolation, fear, and the inability to access basic human rights. For migrant workers on Vermont's dairy farms, just taking a trip to the grocery store is to risk deportation. This thesis examines systemic barriers, complex relationships, and resilient responses of Vermont's farmworkers, drawing upon applied, mixed methods. The first article uses ethnography to examine food access and food sovereignty through Huertas, an applied garden project in northern VT. The second article analyzes the methodologies connected to El Viaje Más Caro/The Most Costly Journey, an applied cartooning project that shares farmworker stories with other migrant farmworkers as a tool to break cycles of isolation and relieve psychological distress. Both projects illustrate resilient responses to the barriers associated with being undocumented along the Northern border. While the thesis is based on research conducted in Vermont, the significance is broader in scope, and representative of national and international trends. The food system is built upon those who are continually stripped of and denied rights. While this is about Vermont, it is not only about Vermont: these stories are symptomatic of a larger structural violence. This thesis situates itself in a multi-scalar context-Vermont, the US, international- in which the stories conveyed are indicative of political and economic systemic obstacles, and the potential for human creativity to subvert and respond to systems of oppression. *I use the term "Latinx" throughout my thesis because it is a gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. It is pronounced "La-teen-ex". This is a term that has been introduced by the trans/queer community, but is increasingly being adopted by scholars, activists, journalists, and social media. (Ramirez & Blay, 2016)

International Relations Masters Research Thesis, 2015 University of Witwatersrand / The G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition (NAFN) is a new, under-researched and rapidly spreading partnership initiative. As the latest attempt to target hunger in Africa by developed countries, it deserves a certain level of scrutiny to decipher the intended development trajectory for African food systems and the possible implications for smallholder farmers, since these smallholders produce more than ninety percent of the continent’s food supply. Food sovereignty provides the ideal lens through which to analyse the New Alliance, being a political economy critique of agro-industrial food systems, as well as a constitutive approach to rights and the building of a grassroots movement and alternative. This research seeks to ascertain how the New Alliance may globalise African agriculture and undermine food sovereignty. An exploratory research design was used, first historicising African globalised agriculture, then decoding the main objectives of the New Alliance, and finally using the African Food Sovereignty Alliance as a case study to critique its translation into African countries’ commitments. The first few predictions of the hypothesis were strongly validated with findings that the New Alliance will result in large-scale investment of land, the commercialisation of the seed industry and an increased use of agro-chemicals and GMOs, increased foreign investment, and monopolisation of agribusiness by MNCs. To a lesser degree, the prediction that it would decrease barriers to trade and increase imports and exports was confirmed; however, there was little evidence that it intends to cut domestic support measures like some previous development programmes. The New Alliance is beyond reform, built on flawed neoliberal assumptions about development. This and further research could contribute to a movement to abolish the New Alliance before it induces negative long term effects, and to warn off other African countries contemplating this initiative.

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar as políticas públicas de desenvolvimento rural no Brasil e na Argentina sob o prisma da nova concepção de ruralidade e de desenvolvimento rural, e, ainda, discuti-las a partir do conceito de soberania alimentar. Para tanto foram analisadas as políticas públicas em vigência no ano de 2010. Observa-se a partir dos anos 1990 a emergência de uma nova concepção de rural e de ruralidade, que deixam de ser compreendidos como setor produtivo ou como área de pobreza para serem encarados como um ambiente com amplas e diversificadas possibilidades de desenvolvimento. Esta nova concepção de rural influenciou diretamente o conceito de desenvolvimento rural, que aos poucos começa a deixar o traço setorial para assumir novos contornos, com destacado enfoque para o território. As políticas analisadas nesta dissertação surgem, em grande medida, sob a influência dessas novas concepções. Analisou-se ainda a relação de tais políticas com os conceitos de segurança e soberania alimentar, observando-se a operacionalização dos mesmos no interior das políticas analisadas. / This thesis has the aim to analyse the public policies of rural development, in both Brazil and Argentina, through the prism of the new conception of rurality and rural development, discussing them since the concept of food sovereignty. The public policies in progress in the year of 2010 were examined. Since the 1990s, its notorious the rise of a new rural and rurality conception that are no longer comprehended as productive sector or poverty area but as an environment with extensive and diversified development possibilities. This new rural conception influenced directly the rural developments concept that gradually starts to leave the sectorial trait to assume new features, with significant focus on the territory. The policies analysed in this thesis emerge, under the influence of these new conceptions. There was also analysed the relation between such policies and concepts of security and food sovereignty, watching its operationalization in the core of the studied policies.