What Place for International Trade in Food Sovereignty?

International agricultural commodity trade is central to the livelihoods of millions of farmers across the globe, and to most countries’ food security strategies. Yet global trade policies are contributing to food insecurity and are undermining livelihoods. Food Sovereignty emerged in part as a mobilization in resistance to the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture and its imposition of multilateral disciplines on domestic agriculture policy.

While not explicitly rejecting trade, there is a strong, albeit understated, resistance to international commodity trade that risks marginalizing broader trade concerns in the visioning of what food sovereignty comprises. Our paper argues that trade is important to the realization of food security and to the livelihoods of small-scale producers,including peasants active in the Food Sovereignty movement, yet it remains underexplored in food sovereignty discourse and that further developing of its position on

trade is strategically important.

Yale.edu