Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users.

Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal – fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and generations.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, in a debate about how we organize our global food systems, La Via Campesina coined the term food sovereignty; to insist upon the centrality of the small-scale food producers, the accumulated wisdom of generations, the autonomy and diversity of rural and urban communities and solidarity between peoples, as essential components for crafting policies around food and agriculture. In the ensuing decade, social movements and civil society actors worked together to define it further. The introduction of Food Sovereignty as a collective right changed how the world understood poverty and hunger. Until then, especially in the early years of the 21st century, a narrow idea of “Food Security” dominated governance and policy-making circles.

DOWNLOAD THE 1996 DECLARATION

In 2007, 500 representatives from more than 80 countries, of organizations of peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers and environmental and urban movements had gathered together in the village of Nyéléni in Sélingué, Mali to strengthen a global movement for food sovereignty. This collective endeavor was named “Nyléni” as a tribute to and inspiration from a legendary Malian peasant woman who farmed and fed her peoples well. At this forum, through numerous debates, we deepened our collective understanding of food sovereignty and the struggles of our respective movements to retain autonomy and regain our powers.

DOWNLOAD THE NYELENI (2007) DECLARATION

THE FILM

ON FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

This animation film succinctly explains the Food Sovereignty principles. It explains how Food Sovereignty places us – the peasants and all other small-scale food producers- at the heart of food systems, instead of powerful corporations, by building on the principles of solidarity, collectivism and social justice. Food Sovereignty defends our past, present and future generations, and is an alternative to a destructive and harmful industrial food system.

In 2021, while marking the 25th anniversary of bringing food sovereignty principles to the debate around global food and agriculture policies, La Via Campesina launched a series of postcards* that define our collective construction and envisioning of Food Sovereignty. The series, prepared with the help or artist Rosanna Morris, illustrates the key pillars of the Food Sovereignty Declaration developed and shared during the 1996 UN Food Summit held in Rome.

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