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Food sovereignty policies and the quest to democratize food system governance in Nicaragua

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Abstract

This article explores the question of the efficacy of state-level food sovereignty projects for democratizing local control over food systems by examining the case of Nicaragua, where the Ortega administration (2007–present) adopted food sovereignty into policy. The main task of food sovereignty is to transform the power relations that govern food systems. This article builds on the previous work of food sovereignty scholars by arguing that devolving power to local territories is necessary but insufficient for deepening democracy, and rather must be coupled with broader transformations in state-society relations. In particular, it argues that how power is exercised in different sites and scales of decision-making is critical for gauging the extent to which local democratic control of food systems is realized. This study examines the implementation of two models of food governance that emerged in Nicaragua in the years immediately following Ortega’s election in 2007. It finds that while the two models created opportunities to deepen democracy, the state’s lack of support for autonomous citizen mobilization and their attempts to co-opt spaces for participatory democratic governance have strongly contributed to the failure of these mechanisms to enhance local control over food systems.

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Notes

  1. The concept of food sovereignty is defined here as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (Nyéléni 2007), and it is also a movement and a policy framework.

  2. These states were committed members of the Bolivarian Alliance for Our Peoples of the Americas (ALBA), a regional alternative to free trade agreements, emphasizing cooperative social development, direct democracy, and poverty alleviation. In 2008, ALBA formally adopted FS as its approach to ensuring food security (ALBA 2008). Despite efforts to promote FS legislation elsewhere in the region, legislative proposals for FS generally failed in Pink Tide states with center-left governments (e.g., El Salvador and Peru) and non-Pink Tide states (e.g., Guatemala).

  3. Borrowing Roman-Alcalá’s (2016) distinction, here I am referring to the global movement for FS that is unified around a common discourse and set of principles encapsulated in documents like the Nyéléni Declaration drafted through deliberation between FS activists. This is not meant to overshadow FS as a “movement of movements” comprised of distinct actors with unique agendas.

  4. Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

  5. soberanía y seguridad alimentaria y nutricional.

  6. Initially FS recognized the right of states to determine their own food and agriculture policies and later expanded to recognize peoples’ right to define their own food and agriculture systems (e.g., Trauger 2014, for a discussion of the concept’s evolution).

  7. Hannum (1990, p. 5) explains how the concept of autonomy is used as a solution to conflict between minority ethnic groups and the majority group in situations of domestic conflict, with one or both of them drawing on discourses of international human rights norms, like self-determination, sovereignty, and human rights, to defend their claims.

  8. Pratchett (2004) discusses different dimensions of local autonomy as “freedom from higher authorities,” “freedom to achieve particular outcomes,” and a “reflection of local identity” (p. 363).

  9. More specifically, clientelism inhibits citizen autonomy by “creat[ing] groups of clients who participate in the political community as beneficiaries of the patrons’ unequal access to power and resources, in a relationship of control, where political support for the incumbents is the prerequisite for receiving necessary state resources” (Montambeault 2016, p. 36).

  10. Mass organizations in Nicaragua were popular organizations formed during revolutionary struggle that declared support for the FSLN. In the 1980s, they were involved in socioeconomic policy, defense, and the growth of participatory democratic structures pioneered by the Sandinista government (LaRamée and Polakoff 1997).

  11. In the early 1990s, UNAPA was created as an initiative by ATC to unite small producers and strengthen the weakened cooperative sector.

  12. Nuñez was one of Ortega’s campaign advisors. He worked for the state during the Nicaraguan Revolution at the Center for Research and Studies on Agrarian Reform. After the Revolution ended, he founded UNAPA, and then became the director of the Center for Social and Rural Research, Promotion, and Development (CIPRES). He served for five years as the Presidential Advisor on Food Sovereignty.

  13. The new FSLN business elite includes Bayardo Arce, one of the nine members of the 1979 FSLN National Directorate and part owner of Agricorp, one of the largest agribusiness conglomerates in Nicaragua (Robinson 2018).

  14. This fieldwork was conducted as part of a broader research project on Law 693 and FS policy from 2011 to 2013 (see Godek 2014). Additional insights were gleaned from my observations and interactions living and working in rural development in Nicaragua from 2012 to 2018.

  15. But was actually very different. See García Rocha (2009) for a discussion of this, and Orlando Nuñez’s critique of Fome Zero in Gómez-Bruera (2016, p. 240).

  16. UNAPA reportedly experimented with BPA projects in FSLN-led municipalities during the 1990s when Nuñez was working with the organization. Later, CIPRES, under Nuñez’s leadership, implemented BPA projects with 3500 beneficiary families in the departments of León and Chinandega.

  17. At the center of this logic was the belief that women were better household financial administrators and more concerned with the well-being of their children than men (Carrión 2018, p. 100, citing MAGFOR 2008, p. 12).

  18. Called Instancias de Coordinación Departamental, Municipal y de Comarca.

  19. MAGFOR was dissolved in 2014 and divided into two separate government entities: the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Forestry Institute, the latter of which was placed under the president’s direct control.

  20. One condition of the BPA was that voucher recipients send their children to school (Chamorro and Utting 2015).

  21. See Footnote 1.

  22. While UNAG was a founding member of La Vía Campesina, it left the movement. It was a member of GISSAN.

  23. Interview, July 27, 2011; Interview, August 16, 2011.

  24. Interview, 6 July 2012.

  25. GISSAN, on the other hand, worked with the Sandinista Renovation Movement, a party formed by a group of former FSLN members who left the party in the early 1990s in protest of what they saw as a decline of Sandinista principles within the FSLN.

  26. Interview August 24, 2011.

  27. Personal communication, May 24, 2013.

  28. The Caribbean Coast region of Nicaragua is divided into two self-governing autonomous regions, the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region.

  29. Article 3 of the law discusses citizen participation, and was one of the first four articles of the bill approved in 2007 before the debate and approval of the bill was suspended. Since these articles were drafted before Ortega’s return in 2007, they draw on Law 475.

  30. Personal communication, February 12, 2013. The “inverted pyramid” referenced here is the structure of the COMUSSANs at the top, followed by the departmental committees and regional committees, and finishing at the bottom with the national committee.

  31. Field Notes from the Intercambio de Experiencias Municipal, San Dionisio, Matagalpa, November 30, 2012.

  32. Field Notes from the Intercambio de Experiencias Municipal, San Dionisio, Matagalpa, November 30, 2012.

  33. See Footnote 19.

Abbreviations

ALBA:

Bolivarian Alliance for Our Peoples of the Americas

ATC:

Rural Workers Association

BPA:

Food Production Voucher

CPC:

Councils of Citizen Power

CIPRES:

Center for Social and Rural Research, Promotion, and Development

COMUSSAN:

Municipal Council for Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security

COSEP:

Superior Council of Private Enterprise

CSO:

Civil society organization

FAO:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

FS:

Food sovereignty

FSLN:

Sandinista National Liberation Front

GFCV:

Family, Community, and Life Cabinet

GISSAN:

Interest Group for Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security

GMO:

Genetically modified organism

LVC:

La Vía Campesina

MAF:

Agriculture and Forestry Roundtable

MAGFOR:

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry

NGO:

Nongovernment organization

PPA:

Food Production Program

SSAN:

Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security

UNAG:

National Farmers and Ranchers Union

UNAPA:

National Union of Associated Small Farmers

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Acknowledgements

My deepest gratitude goes to the participants in the initial doctoral study that served as the basis for this inquiry. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 60th Annual International Studies Association Convention, Toronto, Ontario, at the panel, “Food Politics,” in March 2019. Many thanks to fellow panelists and attendees for their questions and comments, and especially Simon Nicholson for his feedback and encouragement. I am particularly indebted to Christina Schiavoni for her careful review of the paper and insightful comments and suggestions, and also to the three autonomous reviewers who provided valuable, constructive comments on the piece. Responsibility for any errors remains my own.

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Godek, W. Food sovereignty policies and the quest to democratize food system governance in Nicaragua. Agric Hum Values 38, 91–105 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10136-3

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