Does Food Sovereignty Exist in the United States? Food and the Community Rights Movement

A critique of the Food Sovereignty movement in the US, through a Community Rights lens, by Trisha Mandes.

The International Peasant’s Movement—La Via Campesina, defines food sovereignty as “the human right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate, sustainably grown food, and the right of communities to determine their own food systems” (1).

Are our current food movements working to not only empower local control of food, but to takedown the forces that are preventing it? Food sovereignty strives to dismantle the neoliberal political powers that stop communities from deciding what food is imported or grown in their localities. Unfortunately, U.S. food justice and food security strategies are stuck battling these neoliberal harms from within corporate constraints that fail to fundamentally change the barriers faced by localities.

Despite the well-intentioned efforts of farmer’s markets and community gardens, this article aims to demonstrate how food security and food activism movements, especially through the regulatory system, are not moving towards food sovereignty. MORE…