The Geopolitics of Food Security and Food Sovereignty in Latin America: Harmonizing Competing Visions or Reinforcing Extractive Agriculture?

ABSTRACT

In Latin America — the region with the biggest tropical forest on the planet and the largest potential for agricultural expansion — food security and food sovereignty are two competing approaches to food policies. Drawing on decolonial approaches to political geography, this paper provides a comparative analysis of food policies in the four countries (Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia) that make up the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), a supranational organisation that has enacted a regional food policy aimed at reconciling neoliberal and social orientations of its country-members. The paper contributes to the literature that highlights the multi-scalar nature of food security and food sovereignty by exploring the contentious building of food institutions from the grassroots to national and supranational scales in the Andean region. It also contributes to the critiques that highlight the limits to decolonization by explaining how – apart from hydrocarbon and mining dependence – food policies also express the permanence of coloniality in plurinational states. The paper argues that Andean supranational policies are apparent efforts to balance and harmonize the different interests at stake when actually reinforce a neocolonial sovereign state power that deepens the scalar tensions by intensifying the extractive transnational agriculture over pro-indigenous agriculture.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I also thank Mistra Geopolitics for funding the research for this paper.

Notes

1. In Peru, the rural poverty rate is 42% and extreme rural poverty is 10% (Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática, INEI, Evolución de la Pobreza Monetaria 2007–2018. Informe Técnico (Lima: INEI 2018)). In Bolivia, the rural poverty rate is 55.1% and extreme rural poverty is 34.6% (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE, Encuesta de Hogares 2017 (La Paz: INE 2018)). In Ecuador, the rural poverty rate is 39.3% and extreme rural poverty is 17.9%. In Colombia, the rural poverty rate is 36% and extreme rural poverty is 15.4% (CEPAL, Panorama Social de América Latina (Santiago: Naciones Unidas, CEPAL 2018)).

2. Supreme Decree 102–2012-PCM.

3. Supreme Decree 08–2015-MINAGRI.

4. Constitutional Court of Colombia, Decision C-077/17.

5. Constitutional Court of Colombia, Decision C-644/12; Constitutional Court of Colombia, Decision T-348/12.

6. Law 27360/2000 “Norms for the Promotion of the Agricultural Sector” approved special labour and tax rules for ten years, extended in 2006 until 2022 (Law 28810) and in 2019 (Emergency Decree 043–2019) until 2031.

7. The CNA; the Peruvian Peasant Confederation (CCP); the National Federation of Peasant, Artisan, Indigenous, Native and Wage-earning Women of Peru (FEMUCARINAP); and the National Organization of Indigenous, Andean, and Amazonian Women (ONAMIAP).

8. Law 30984/2019 on the promotion of farmers’ markets; Law 30983/2019 on certification of organic products; Law 30982/2019 on strengthening the role of women in peasant communities.

9. Author interview with activist, 7 October 2019.

10. Author interview with activist, 1 October 2019.

11. Author interview with activist, 7 August 2019; Author interview with activist, 7 October 2019.

12. Indigenous resguardos already represent 27.5% of the territory, and Afro-Colombian communities 4.1%: National Planning Department of Colombia, ‘Asignación especial del Sistema General de Participaciones para resguardos indígenas, una propuesta de distribución’, December 2017.

13. Author interview with activist, 7 October 2019.

14. Law 29811 of 2011.

15. Author interview with CNA representative, 20 February 2019.

16. Author interview with Ketty Marcelo, 21 February 2019.

17. Author interview with CAN official, 20 February 2019; Author interview with CNA representative, 6 February 2019.

18. Author interview, 25 February 2019.

19. Author interview, 20 February 2019.

20. Author interview, 22 February 2019.

21. Author interview with CIP official, 28 October 2019.

22. Author interview with Laura Gutierrez, 1 October 2019.

23. Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas Indígenas y Negras (FENOCIN); Corporación Nacional Campesina-Eloy Alfaro (CNC-EA); Confederación Nacional de Afiliados al Seguro Social Campesino (CONFEUNASSC); Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Agroindustriales, Campesinos e Indígenas Libres del Ecuador (FENACLE).

24. Organic Law on Agricultural Health (July, 2017), Organic Law on Rural Lands and Ancestral Territories (March, 2016), Organic Law on Agrobiodiversity, seeds and agriculture promotion (June, 2017).

25. Law 300 of 2012.

26. Law 71 of 2010.

27. See Supreme Decree 3920 of 2019, article 1.

28. Supreme Decree 2167 of 2014 – Policy of nutrition for living well; Law 144 of 2011 on Productive, Communitarian and Agropecuarian Revolution; Law 300 of 2012 on Integral Development.

29. On ‘Acceso a la tierra y territorio en Sudamérica’ see IPDRS.

30. On ‘Acceso a la tierra y territorio en Sudamérica’ see IPDRS, p. 301. Also, Vía Campesina chapter Ecuador: FENOCIN, FEI, CNC-EA, FENACLE, CONFEUNASSCE, ‘Sovereign Agreement for Good Rural Living. Sumak Kawsay’, 10 February 2017, available at <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6wJrsxILA__ZDBxUHYySmRRdlE/view>.

31. CAN, 17th meeting of the Ad-hoc group, July 23, 2010.

32. CAN, 3rd meeting of the Expert group, 17 September, 2009.

33. CAN 6th meeting of the Expert group, December 2, 2009.

34. CAN, 23rd meeting of the Ad-hoc group, September 7, 2010.

35. Author interview with CAN official, 14 April 2019.

36. Author interview with CIP official, 28 October 2019.

37. Author interview with FAO official, 6 February 2019.