Seed struggles and food sovereignty in northern Malawi

In this paper I use seeds in Malawi as both an analytical lens and an empirical focus of study to examine how food sovereignty is threatened or enhanced in a particular location and time. I argue that while food sovereignty was eroded for smallholders through neoliberal reforms to the agricultural system, community and kin practices help to maintain food sovereignty. The intersection of gender and class dynamics, combined with state policies, however, works to undermine food sovereignty for particular groups in northern Malawi. Historical processes of exclusion, dispossession and exploitation changed the division of labour and reduced time and land for diverse farming systems. State policies reduced knowledge and availability of preferred local varieties. While peasants, particularly women, have considerable knowledge of seed varieties, and seeds continue to be exchanged in agrarian communities, young women, tenant farmers, food insecure younger couples and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-affected families are particularly vulnerable to reduced food sovereignty, in part due to gender inequalities, unequal land distribution and social stigma. New efforts to strengthen food sovereignty need to build on community and kin relations, while addressing social inequalities. Understanding the struggles and relations linked to seeds helps us to understand ways in which food sovereignty is undermined or strengthened.     

La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement

The origin and evolution of the transnational peasant movement La Vía Campesina is analysed through five evolutionary stages. In the 1980s the withdrawal of the state from rural areas simultaneously weakened corporativist and clientelist control over rural organisations, even as conditions worsened in the countryside. This gave rise to a new generation of more autonomous peasant organisations, who saw the origins of their similar problems as largely coming from beyond the national borders of weakened nation-states. A transnational social movement defending peasant life, La Vía Campesina emerged out of these autonomous organisations, first in Latin America, and then at a global scale, during the 1980s and early 1990s (phase 1). Subsequent stages saw leaders of peasant organisations take their place at the table in international debates (1992–1999, phase 2), muscling aside other actors who sought to speak on their behalf; take on a leadership role in global struggles (2000–2003, phase 3); and engage in internal strengthening (2004–2008, phase 4). More recently (late 2008–present, phase 5) the movement has taken on gender issues more squarely and defined itself more clearly in opposition to transnational corporations. Particular emphasis is given to La Vía Campesina's fight to gain legitimacy for the food sovereignty paradigm, to its internal structure, and to the ways in which the (re)construction of a shared peasant identity is a key glue that holds the struggle together despite widely different internal cultures, creating a true peasant internationalism.     

Neoliberalising the food regime ‘amongst its others’: the right to food and the state in India

ABSTRACT

This contribution explores the role of the state in the contemporary food regime in light of critical theories of neoliberalisation. Heeding recent calls for downscaling food regime analysis, I suggest a Gramscian reinterpretation of recent right-to-food legislation in India on the backdrop of longer histories of capital, power and nature. I argue for seeing the recent right-to-food case in India as partaking in a longstanding hegemonic process of neoliberalising the country’s agro-food system, where hegemony is negotiated through unstable equilibria facilitating renewed capital accumulation for dominant classes.     

Meeting peasants where they are: cultivating agroecological alternatives in neoliberal Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Social movements increasingly embrace agroecology as an integral part of food sovereignty. This essay has two related aims: first, to highlight the barriers to agroecology and explore how these can be overcome; second, to deepen understandings of how agroecology can strengthen movements for food sovereignty or extend neoliberal governance. I ground these questions by examining state and social movement agroecological programs in Guatemala. I argue that strict rejection of conventional inputs and market production, in addition to insufficient state investment and redistribution, creates barriers to participation among a rural peasantry whose livelihoods have been transformed by decades of scientific, market-led development. Facing these limits, agroecology can work to strengthen food sovereignty movements, but can also reinforce the neoliberal food regime by promoting resilience and indigenous agriculture as sufficient to resolve the food crisis.     

Tracing the terrain of Indigenous food sovereignties

Food sovereignty scholars are increasingly re-conceptualizing sovereignty by accounting for its diverse expressions across space according to specific histories, identities, and local socio-ecological realities and dynamics. In grappling with the multiple bases of sovereignty, attention has been directed toward Indigenous food sovereignty in North America. Specifically, food scholars are examining how the regeneration of Indigenous food harvesting and sharing practices shapes movements for decolonization and self-determination. While this is a crucial and much-welcomed intervention, much more is needed to understand the diverse Indigenous political and legal orders and authorities that shape how multiple Indigenous food sovereignties are lived every day across diverse landscapes. In this contribution, I examine how Anishinaabe people in and beyond the Treaty 3 territory in Ontario, Canada, protect and renew their food harvesting grounds, waters and foodways through everyday acts of resurgence that are rooted in their law of mino bimaadiziwin.     

生产销售食品犯罪几个疑难问题的认定——不卫生食品与有毒、有害食品罪名认定

不符合卫生标准的食品是指不符合《食品安全法》规定的食品卫生及安全标准的食品,它包括两层含义：一是这些食品的原料是食品原料,而不能是掺入的非食品原料;二是该食品是不符合卫生标准的食品。有毒、有害食品是指掺入了有毒、有害的非食品原料的食品。区分两种生产销售食品犯罪的根本在于两个：一是毒源不同,二是掺入方式不同。     

Further improvement on the regulation of food safety in China

Market mechanisms in food safety management can not fully play its role, together with food producers, processors, distributors and other stakeholders＇ breach of competition rules, so food safety management must rely on government regulation. But at this stage, government regulation of food safety in China is not perfect, vicious food safety incidents that continuously occur seriously endanger lives of people, reduce the credibility of government functions and hinder the stable development of social harmony. Therefore, improving the food safety laws and the food safety regulatory system, establishing food safety credit system and expanding social participation of food safety supervision mechanism are the top priority of the government to regulate food safety.     

粮食安全的经济属性与成本补偿模型分析

一般的粮食具有私人物品属性。粮食安全的经济属性为准公共物品。模型分析表明,为保障国家经济安全所提供的粮食是市场失灵的领域,需要政府“埋单”。然而,在正常情况下,豉府和市场在粮食安全活动中应互为补充,有机耦合。     

Globalized economies or globalized bodies？ The economical and cultural factors of obesity in China

This paper is a review of the literature that examines obesity in China. Multiple factors that contribute to this phenomenon are investigated, such as globalization, urbanization and cultural changes. Most of the researches reviewed in this paper concern urban, coastal populations of China. Obesity is defined differently for Asian populations; thus, diagnosis has been underestimated in the past. As China＇s economy develops, the country may now be gaining western problems, such as obesity. Obesity is related to economical causes as China participates in international business and trade. Furthermore, the role of the globalized food industry is reviewed. More western food companies and restaurants have infiltrated Chinese cities, causing mass changes in the traditional Chinese diet. Likewise, employment is a significant factor examined since more occupations in Chinese cities have transitioned to the service sector. Cultural attitudes differ from those of the West in which the Chinese view heavier bodies as healthier than thinner figures. Interventions that have been attempted are reviewed.     

Dining with Sam Orr: Nation Review and the Restaurant Reviews of Richard Beckett

In Australia in the 1970s, restaurant dining became a popular middle-class pastime, and restaurant criticism began to play an important role in the shaping of Australian tastes. Richard Beckett was one of the most prolific Australian food writers of the 1970s and 1980s and one of the first to write a regular column devoted to restaurant reviews. Writing as Sam Orr, a satirical character invented to suit the ethos of the irreverent Nation Review, Beckett produced highly original reports of his dining experiences. He aimed to both educate and entertain his readers and to subvert the perception of restaurant dining as an elitist pastime. Beckett’s contribution as a tastemaker was disparaged at the time and has been largely neglected since. Through a consideration of the role of Nation Review, Beckett’s reviews, published responses to Sam Orr by both his critics and his fans and unpublished correspondence from readers, this article offers a reassessment of Richard Beckett’s role in the shaping of Australia’s tastes in restaurant dining through his endorsement of the distaste of taste.