The right to food and to choose what we plant, how we plant it, how we harvest it, how we distribute it, and even how we cook it is what is known as food sovereignty: a central concept when discussing people’s sovereignty, introduced by the international peasant movement known as La Vía Campesina during the World Food Summit in 1996.
Food sovereignty is defined as ‘the right of peoples, their countries, or unions of states to define their agricultural and food policies without the interference of third countries.’ It differs from food security, a term used by multilateral organizations such as the FAO, which focuses solely on the guarantee of having food regardless of its origin, how it was produced, or the consequences of that production. This concept does not include vitally important elements such as land ownership, the rights of farmers, or the use of agricultural techniques that harm nature, among others.
According to a 2020 FAO report, 690 million people worldwide suffered from chronic malnutrition. That number rose to 733 million in 2024 and is estimated to reach 840 million by 2030. If we include those with moderate malnutrition, the figure rises to over 2.5 billion people. In 2020, it was expected that between 83 and 132 million people would be added to the list of those suffering from malnutrition solely as a result of the pandemic.
To speak of food sovereignty is to speak of humanity’s viability. In times of climate crisis, the contradictions of the civilizational model have become evident. Indicators from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reveal that enough food is produced globally to feed the entire population. The problem, then, is not producing more. The problem lies in the type of food being produced, the technologies used, and the way food is distributed. Within the context of a deadly model like capitalism, food production does not aim to feed humans but to generate capital for a handful of corporations. These corporations, like the arms and pharmaceutical industries, are among the most powerful in the world. These companies promote the Green Revolution, which includes intensive agriculture, seed patents, the use of GMOs, and with these, the market for fertilizers and pesticides, as well as control over decisions regarding what and how much to plant, how to distribute crops, whom to finance, and so on. Under capitalism, food is a commodity. It is valued not for its use value. It is valued because it can be exchanged. It has value because it generates capital.
Colonization dismantled local agricultural systems, exchange networks, and the very concept of land as a common good. Hunger is linked to poverty. The poor are the most affected, and within this group, women, children, and the elderly suffer the most. Hunger is not democratic. A clear example is what was observed in the Sahel, where European colonizers reorganized the land and identities, causing divisions and rivalries between those who practiced transhumance (herders) and those whose traditional activity centered on agriculture. Granting privileges to one group created social classes and a conflict that was intensified by land loss, water constraints, and desertification caused by climate change. A case described in a recent study by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research shows us that climate change is not the primary cause of the problem but rather its accelerator. It is modern civilization, the processes of colonization, and the development of capitalism that produced the oppressions of class, race, and gender—oppressions that manifest, among other ways, as hunger in vast sectors of the world’s population. A system based on the dispossession of land and technological dependence on predatory agricultural systems that deny peasants their rights and deal a fatal blow to any semblance of food sovereignty.
On 28 February of this year, we woke up to (yet another) terrible piece of news: the criminal U.S.-Israel alliance attacked the Islamic Republic of Iran. This illegal and ruthless aggression is producing consequences apparently not calculated by the aggressors: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. What does this have to do with food? The Persian Gulf countries are major producers of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, and some 16 million tons of fertilizers (between 20 and 30 percent of the global total) pass through the Strait of Hormuz annually. It is not only gas and oil that are transported through this corridor.
As revealed by the FAO in its report CL 180/3, dated 28 April, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects the central hub of energy supply chains and threatens a strategic chokepoint with consequences that will impact the global food production chain. A decrease in fertilizer supply will lead to a reduction in cultivated land, which will significantly affect food prices. India and China, for example, import 20 percent of their fertilizers from the Gulf. Bangladesh is even more vulnerable, relying on the Gulf for 53 percent of its fertilizers. In Latin America, the effects will not go unnoticed. Brazil obtains one-fifth of its fertilizers from the Gulf. Since it is also a major exporter of corn, soybeans, and sugar, the concomitant decline in its production will affect third countries that depend on imports from Brazil. The report estimates a decline in agricultural production by the end of this year, with longer-term consequences if the closure of the Strait lasts more than three months.
We see that a system that turned food production into a commercial chain dependent on industrial inputs, long-distance transport routes, and growing energy needs is caught in a vicious cycle when that same system, through its wars, disrupts its entire functional foundation.
Fortunately, many communities have responded to this trap by building networks and reviving or adapting ancestral knowledge and techniques for sovereign food production. Examples can be found among the farmers of Tanzania, organized in the Mviwata Association, the women of the Watinoma Association in Burkina Faso, or the thousands of activists in Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement who have reclaimed lands that are worked collectively and whose vision is agroecology, which frees them from dependence on agrochemicals and the predatory networks of agribusiness.
In Venezuela, the Scientist-Farmer Alliance is a living testament to how the productive capacities of communities are combined with the capabilities of universities to address extreme and dire situations through seed banks. These efforts yield gains in knowledge and in the empowerment of methodologies for agroecological farming and seed preservation. Organizing into networks allows for connecting producers and consumers and making decisions in a truly sovereign manner. It is worth noting that it was these networks that made the difference, producing food at a time when the more than one thousand unilateral coercive measures imposed on Venezuela sought to prevent access to food for the majority of the Venezuelan people.
The defense of food sovereignty is a struggle for the liberation of peoples against a system of death—capitalism—which, in times of decline, attempts to impose itself through wars and increasingly violent forms of domination. Against that system, the peoples of the world say yes to life and to a reconnection with their roots and with Mother Earth.
