South Africa: New Food and Nutrition Policy Fails to Address Constitutional Right to Food

opinion

Everyone seems to have an interest in food policy these days, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with its 'Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa', to the G8 with its 'New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition', to social movements, civil society networks and those who simply care about what they eat. Of course, some voices are more powerful than others. It is for this reason that movements of peasants and other small-scale food providers from around the world decided to amplify their voices in the midst of an onslaught of neoliberal policies by forming the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina in 1993, coining what we've come to know as "food sovereignty".

Today, the concept of 'food sovereignty' is broadly defined as "the rights of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems". Food sovereignty has since served as an alternative paradigm to the current global 'food security' narrative. However, it is 'food security' that is on everyone's lips. Governments are concerned to ensure it, international organizations like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are keen to measure and promote it.

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