Introduction
The global food system illuminates one dimension of the massive socioeconomic inequality that characterizes the world today. In a global population of over seven billion people, roughly 795 million people remain undernourished as of 2014–2016, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) estimates (FAO 2015: 8). Despite progress made over the last 20–30 years, inequalities in the global food and agricultural system have generated heated debate about policy solutions as well as galvanized diverse sectors of society – whether national governments, nongovernmental organizations, multilateral institutions, and grass-roots social justice movements, among many more – to challenge the current state of the system.
It is in this context that La Vía Campesina, one of the world’s most powerful social justice movements dedicated to food and agricultural justice, emerged in 1993. Translated as the “peasants way” or “peasants road” (Desmarais 2007: 8), the organization is:
Keywords
- World Trade Organization
- Trade Liberalization
- Member Organization
- North American Free Trade Agreement
- Food Sovereignty
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Desmarais, A. A. (2007). La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the power of peasants. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Desmarais, A. A. (2008). The power of peasants: Reflections on the meanings of La Vía Campesina. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 138–149.
Desmarais, A. A. (2014). Food sovereignty: Some initial thought and questions for research. In W. D. Schanbacher (Ed.), The global food system: Issues and solutions (pp. 1–12). Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Edelman, M. (2005). Bringing the moral economy back in…to the study of 21st-century transnational peasant movements. American Anthropologist, 107(3), 331–345.
ETC Group. (2013). Putting the cartel before the horse … and farm, seeds, soil, peasants, etc. Communiqué 111. http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/Communiqué%20111%204%20sep%203%20pm.pdf. Accessed 12 Mar 2016. See also, http://www.etcgroup.org/content/new-report-putting-cartel-horse…and-farm-seeds-soil-peasants. Accessed 12 Mar 2016.
FAO. (2015). The state of food insecurity in the world: Meeting the 2015 targets: Taking stock of uneven progress, Rome.. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4646e.pdf. Accessed 10 Mar 2016.
La Vía Campesina. (2011). The international peasant’s voice. http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44. Accessed 12 Mar 2016.
La Vía Campesina. (2013). Women of Via Campesina International Manifesto. http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/women-mainmenu-39/1450-women-of-via-campesina-international-manifesto. Accessed 13 Mar 2016.
Martínez-Torres, M. E., & Rosset, P. M. (2010). La Vía Campesina: The birth and evolution of a transnational social movement. Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1), 149–175.
Patel, R. (2010). What does food sovereignty look like? In H. Wittman, A. A. Desmarais, & N. Wiebe (Eds.), Food sovereignty: Reconnecting food, nature and agriculture (pp. 186–196). Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Schanbacher, W. D. (2010). The politics of food: The global conflict between food security and food sovereignty. Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Shiva, V. (Ed.). (2007). Manifestos on the future of food & seed. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Schanbacher, W. (2016). La Via Campesina. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_526-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_526-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6167-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social Sciences