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FooD SUPPLY AS A GLOBAL CHALLENGE 197
animal husbandry (the emission of harmful substances and water consumption,
as well as aspects of animal welfare).
However, a vegetarian diet or the growing, selling and consumption of bio
products do not offer solutions to the systemic problems that have been identified
as the greatest challenges in the global food system. Soy, which is of decisive
importance for bio products and a vegan diet, also travels halfway around the
globe, like any other food item. Vegetables and fruits produced with industrial
methods can be as harmful to health and the environment as a traditional diet.
Changing individual eating habits does mean a step towards sustainability, but it
leaves the systemic problems unchanged, and more importantly, it often leaves
them unproblematized. In the review of systemic alternatives given below, we wish
to draw the reader’s attention to existing theories and practices which may help,
either alone or together, to solve such fundamental problems as having control
over our food, settling the relations between humans and nature, or linking expressly
agro-technical questions to the social conditions with which they are interlinked.
Systemic alternatives in food provisioning
In response to the challenges of the 60s and 70s, several green movements evolved.
Among these, bioregionalism, agroecology and permaculture will be discussed
here. While bioregionalism emphasizes geographical organization, the tools for
the systemic transformation of the food system are developed in permaculture and
agroecology. Agroecology and permaculture can be interpreted in the food
sovereignty framework which evolved in the 90s in equal measure.
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty is a political framework which points out the systemic challenges
generated by globalized food systems. It seeks possibilities of resistance and the
systemic transformation of food provisioning (Patel 2007; McMichael 2008). As
a movement, food sovereignty takes a stand against the Green Revolution and the
dominance of industrial agricultural practices, neoliberal free trade policies
(particularly the dumping of agricultural surplus into foreign markets), and the
undemocratic governance of food and agricultural trade (particularly the
organizational structure and rules of the WTO) (Carlile et al. 2021).
The framework emerged as a result of the ongoing internal dialogues of rural
social movements in the early 1990s and was introduced by La Via Campesina
(founded in 1993) at the FAO food summit in 1996. La Via Campesina is an
international social movement of nearly 200 organizations from 81 countries,
divided into national, regional and continental units. It represents the interests
of farming families, peasants, indigenous people, landless peasants, agricultural
laborers, rural women, and young people, totalling some 200 million families
across the world (Martinez-Torres — Rosset 2014). The public forums organized
in parallel with the FAO World Food Summits in 1996 and 2002 served as
important venues for the strengthening of the food sovereignty movement.
Food sovereignty was a consensually accepted narrative used by NGOs