Food Sovereignty perspectives on Crises and Conflicts
An Interactive Panel Discussion on Responses to Natural Disasters, Occupations and Wars

Grassroots International (lead organization presenting this proposal) with National Family Farm Coalition*, Rural Coalition*, Federation of Southern Cooperatives*, Food First, World Hunger Year, Friends of the Earth-USA, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Action Aid-USA are pleased to submit this proposal for a panel on Food Sovereignty Responses to Crises and Conflicts. This is one of a slate of 4 related proposals on food sovereignty.

* Includes member organizations.

The panel facilitated by Nikhil Aziz (Grassroots International), will include Cornelius Blanding (Federation of Southern Cooperatives), Camille Chalmers (Haitian Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development, Haiti), Kelly Morrison (World Hunger Year), and Karen Hansen-Kuhn (Action Aid-USA).

Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labor, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies.

Around the world, the devastation caused by natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina is compounded by government inaction or incompetence undermining food sovereignty. In many other places, wars and military occupations like the 40 year Israeli occupation of Palestine or the more than 4 year U.S. war on and occupation of Iraq violate food sovereignty. In all of these instances, women and children, racial and ethnic minorities, and the poor suffer disproportionately. Their food security and right to food is typically at most risk. Ironically, it is food producers like the fishers and shrimpers of the U.S. Gulf coast, the farmers and farm workers of Palestine’s Jordan valley, and women everywhere including Iraq, who make up the majority of the world’s food producers that are the most adversely affected.

Wars, military occupations and other such conflicts are directly linked to imperialism and come out of an imperialist agenda, with corporate involvement through the ever growing military industrial complex and desire for opening up new markets. Such an agenda is often driven by the logic of neoliberalism and the exploitation of resources to feed the needs of dominant economic and political powers. Iraq’s oil resources and the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ water and land resources provide clear examples.

Government and private responses to natural disasters, even if well-intentioned, often end up further undermining food sovereignty, with much food aid serving the political self-interest of donor nations and their corporate backers. Both domestic emergency food programs and foreign food aid often hurt local farmers and producers by flooding the market with imported food. Even in famine situations, food shortages often result from political decisions rather than natural causes; as has been well documented in the case of Ethiopia, which in the 1980s exported food even as drought ravaged many parts of the country.

This panel will examine various conflicts and crises such as Hurricane Katrina, the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and the U.S. War on Iraq from a food sovereignty lens and creative responses to them. For example, the fishers of Plaquemines Parish working with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to rebuild their lives; and the Palestinian farmers in the West Bank working with the Stop the Wall Campaign to keep their farms, which the Wall has cut off access to, from being confiscated by Israeli authorities.

What they have in common is a creative response to emergencies. Fighting hunger, homelessness, war and occupation, yet digging deeper for long-term solutions. Critically important, they are based on advocacy strategies that strengthen powerful organizations capable of pressing for lasting social change. That way, access to food isn’t simply a human right on paper. It’s a reality on a plate.

The panel will seek to engage the audience in understanding how natural disasters, war and military occupations, and even government and private aid violate food sovereignty and food security. We seek to motivate their participation in reforming U.S. disaster relief and foreign policies to embody people’s rights to food sovereignty.

The goal of the panel is to:

Educate people about the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative vision rooted in social justice and sustainability
Reflect on how U.S. disaster relief and foreign and military policies undermine food sovereignty for people all over the world
Envision collectively how we can act together to change those policies and support food sovereignty

The panel directly addresses many of the cross-cutting themes of the USSF including neoliberalism and imperialism by focusing on U.S. policies that are neoliberal and imperialist, including the conflicts that are fostered by the growth of the military-industrial complex. It provides an internationalist and solidarity perspective by focusing on the challenges faced by U.S. and global South citizens including family farmers and farmworkers. It supports movement building by seeking to educate U.S. audiences and enlisting their support for the global movement for food sovereignty which is rooted in social justice and sustainability.

We seek to reach out to an audience that comprises various sectors including family farmers and farm workers, consumers’ organization members and food activists, hunger activists including members of faith-based and international development organizations, and members of environmental and sustainable agriculture organizations, students and others who are interested in learning more about these issues.