5.6 Reading: Connecting land and food sovereignty

  • How are land and food politics linked?  

In land politics, the leaders at every level determines who get right to how many portion of land, at what time and how long.  This is directly linked with food system in production, trading and consumption. Land has forever been an assets acquired through politics and war in the ancient time. Territorial fighting in the ancient time gives a fraction of fighter large amount of land. This has continued until those fractions has been turned into political fractions whose rule the world in countries, regions and continents.

The political power has great influence over the use of land and it resources over the people they rule. The politics of land is inflicting some kind of human right against the “peoples” people working for the land according to Saturnino M. Borras Jr.a, Jennifer C. Francobc & Sofía Monsalve Suárez d 2015.  In an article titled “Political Ecology of the World Food System” the author referred to rich countries who acquired large scale land from poor countries as “Land grabbers”. This is evident in Africa where large thousand hectares of land are taken away from poorer communities’ wholes livelihood depend pure on farming by the government in the name of development for palm oil plantation.

In sierra Leone for minute example, each time we have a new government, hundreds of hectares of land are shared amongst members of the ruling party as donation to ministers and party stakeholders. The non-political participants are them left out. The political parties therefore have the control over, what should be done in state lands and communities lands. This is limiting the growth of land sovereignty and affecting food sovereignty.

 

  • What is food sovereignty?  

According to web search Wikipedia Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to…

 

  • Land sovereigntyGoole search described Land sovereignty as the the right of working peoples to have effective access to, use of, and control over land and the benefits of its use and occupation, where land is understood as resource, territory, and landscape.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=%E2%80%98land+sovereignty%E2%80%99&form=ANNTH1&refig=3bd363353ee9419197b67af76839ed15

 

  • Why is land reform for food sovereignty important?  

 

  • What are the risks of land reform as a policy framework and political platform? 

 

 

 

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