Stories of Food Sovereignty

The PFPP has published a series of pamphlets on different aspects of food sovereignty. Click on the titles on the list to the left to read and download them for local distribution.

These pamphlets were produced with financial support from Heifer International Canada, Inter Pares, and USC Canada.

What is Food Sovereignty?

For a full-colour PDF version of this pamphlet to download and distribute, click here.

About Food Sovereignty

The heart of food sovereignty is reclaiming decision-making power in the food system. This means that people have a say in how their food is produced and where it comes from. Food sovereignty seeks to rebuild the relationship between people and the land, and between those who grow and harvest food and those who eat it.

La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement, proposed the concept of food sovereignty at the World Food Summit in 1996. Since then, peasants and marginalized people around the world have anchored this vision of a just and sustainable food system in six interlinked Pillars of Food Sovereignty (see left side-bar to download).

Food Sovereignty in Canada

Canada is a wealthy country, where the food system has for two generations been industrialized and integrated into the global food market. This process has been driven by government policy, which has shifted power from the state to corporations. Our work on food sovereignty in Canada involves uncovering and opposing these policies at the same time as we build alternatives. In this process, we are expanding the global framework with other principles of food sovereignty.

Food Security /Food Sovereignty

The food movement in Canada has generally used the term food security, defining it very broadly. It says that “universal access to appropriate food at all times” requires a local food system which can ensure a basic diet for the population and a living wage for food providers while protecting, if not actually enhancing, the environment upon which it depends. So when we in Canada talk about food security we are talking about equitable access to food and also about extending respect and appreciation to food providers, traditional knowledge, cultural differences, and nature. The language of food sovereignty, as opposed to food security, is more explicit about food citizenship: that people, communities, assume responsibility in maintaining healthy relationships within our food systems.

Food sovereignty includes Indigenous peoples, not just as victims, but as teachers of food systems that have been sustainable for thousands of years. Indigenous food sovereignty understands food as sacred, part of the web of relationships with the natural world that define culture and community.

Food sovereignty also puts us in a global context, since we know that neither climate nor justice pay much attention to national boundaries. Food sovereignty means working with people who are struggling to overcome the effects of colonialism, and to learn from their strategies for sustainable livelihoods.

Sovereignty is not just talk and policy analysis, important as these are. Sovereignty means action. It means doing those things that make our communities food secure (like saving and swapping seeds). In that process we identify the policy barriers that are getting in our way, and so together we must also advocate for policy change.

The People's Food Policy Project

The People’s Food Policy Project links people from across Canada to find ways that ordinary people can reclaim decision-making power in our food system. This is the core of food sovereignty, and the base of our project to create Canada’s first comprehensive federal food policy. The People’s Food Policy will reflect and support the work of Canadians to create a food system based on care and respect for humans and the natural world.

The Food Sovereignty movement emerged from the Via Campesina in Brazil. Watch this video to learn more or visit their website at http://viacampesina.org/en/