The perspective of food sovereignty of Landless Workers Movement (LWM)

• Grant number: 20/12014-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): May 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Rural Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Henrique Tahan Novaes
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Soares Somini
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to understand the concept of food sovereignty of the Landless Workers' Movement (LWM), having as specific objectives: a) Check if there are practical actions by the LWM to operationalize the concept of food sovereignty; and b) Analyze the LWM's concept of food sovereignty, verifying its origin and its relationship with practical actions. The research will be carried out through bibliographic and documentary research. The LWM is a peasant movement that has been part of La Via Campesina since 1993. After the neoliberal onslaught implemented in the brazilian state during the 1990s, the LWM had to reorient itself politically, assimilating environmental causes advocated by La Via Campesina, such as Agroecology and Food Sovereignty, as flags that oppose agribusiness, monoculture, latifundio and the Green Revolution. The Food Sovereignty carried out by agroecological bases, object of the main analysis of this research, is an alternative formulated by La Via Campesina to counter the concept of Food Security formulated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in line with neoliberalism and the Green Revolution. Food Sovereignty defends the right of peoples to the production and distribution of their own food, through access to land, seeds and means of production, making them sovereign over their own existence.