Summary

The concept of food sovereignty was created by the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis - the Indigenous people who protect the earth and the peasants who produce 70 percent of the calories consumed by people. Food Sovereignty is the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sustainable means, and the right to determine their own food systems. It means placing the needs and desires of the people who produce, distribute, and consume food at the cornerstone of how food systems work, not the demands of markets and corporations.

Food sovereignty is a framework to free people from the threat of starvation and the compulsion to become laborers to generate profit for a corporation that doesn’t care about them because our food system is not just capitalist, but the backbone of capitalism. While the climate justice movement has highlighted the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation as being the leading causes of the climate crisis, the role of agribusiness and factory farming have received far less public attention. Climate justice advocates need to operate within the framework of food sovereignty because it directly undermines the root causes of the climate crisis - capitalism and colonialism - by demanding people’s right to live outside of these exploitive relationships.