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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
