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Although evidence continues to indicate an urgent need to transition food systems away from industrialized monocultures and toward agroecological production, there is little sign of significant policy commitment toward food system transformation in global North geographies. The authors, a consortium of researchers studying the land-food nexus in global North geographies, argue that a key lock-in explaining the lack of reform arises from how most food system interventions work through dominant logics of property to achieve their goals of agroecological production. Doing so fails to recognize how land tenure systems, codified by law and performed by society, construct agricultural land use outcomes. In this perspective, the authors argue that achieving food system “resilience” requires urgent attention to the underlying property norms that drive land access regimes, especially where norms of property appear hegemonic. This paper first reviews research from political ecology, critical property law, and human geography to show how entrenched property relations in the global North frustrate the advancement of alternative models like food sovereignty and agroecology, and work to mediate acceptable forms of “sustainable agriculture.” Drawing on emerging cases of land tenure reform from the authors’ collective experience working in Scotland, France, Australia, Canada, and Japan, we next observe how contesting dominant logics of property creates space to forge deep and equitable food system transformation. Equally, these cases demonstrate how powerful actors in the food system attempt to leverage legal and cultural norms of property to legitimize their control over the resources that drive agricultural production. Our formulation suggests that visions for food system “resilience” must embrace the reform of property relations as much as it does diversified farming practices. This work calls for a joint cultural and legal reimagination of our relation to land in places where p

While social and political movements are the scale of action most often identified with food sovereignty-related struggles, everyday provisioning practices are critical for sustaining the distinctiveness and relative autonomy of localised food systems. We examine gendered provisioning in a Colombian, Afro-descendent community as a case study of how food sovereignty is enacted in daily life. Women’s everyday food provisioning practices nourish households, sustain socio-cultural and ecological relationships, and maintain greater self-sufficiency within market economy integration processes. Deeper analysis of gendered provisioning highlights complexities, power relationships and challenges within localised food systems and contributes to greater understanding of the gender dimensions of food sovereignty., Si bien los movimientos sociales y políticos son generalmente el ámbito de las luchas por la soberanía alimentaria, las prácticas cotidianas de aprovisionamiento son fundamentales para la persistencia de sistemas alimentarios locales y relativamente autónomos. En esta investigación examinamos el aprovisionamiento desde una perspectiva de género en una comunidad colombiana afrodescendiente como un caso de estudio de "soberanía alimentaria desde el territorio". Encontramos que las prácticas cotidianas de aprovisionamiento de las mujeres sostienen los hogares, mantienen las relaciones socioculturales y ecológicas y permiten una mayor autosuficiencia en el contexto de procesos de integración económica al mercado. Aproximarse al aprovisionamiento desde una perspectiva de género deja entrever las complejidades, relaciones de poder y desafíos que subyacen a estos sistemas alimentarios locales. Indagar sobre esta dimensión frecuentemente ignorada puede contribuir a identificar y comprender mejor el aporte de las mujeres a la construcción cotidiana de la soberanía alimentaria.

This article analyzes the roles, relations, and positions of scholar-activists in the European food sovereignty movement. In doing so, we document, make visible and question the political dimensions of researchers' participation in the movement. We argue that scholar-activists are part of the movement, but are distinct from the affected constituencies, put in place to ensure adequate representation of key movement actors. This is because scholar-activists lack a collective identity, have no processes to formulate collective demands, and no mechanisms for inter-researcher and researchers-movement communication. We reflect on whether and how scholar-activists could organize, and discuss possible pathways for a more cohesive and stronger researcher engagement in the movement.

Exclusionary and regressive politics are on the rise globally. How do food sovereignty struggles help counter these forces? We ground our analysis on how EHNE-Bizkaia, a Via Campesina member organisation in the Basque Country, conceptualises and practices food sovereignty. Inspired by Massey's 'politics of place beyond place' and Featherstone's work on left politics and solidarity, we shed light on the ways that this organisation mobilises food sovereignty to establish political bonds between those marginalised by neo-liberalism, helping to construct political identities and enact forms of subaltern agency that challenge uneven power relations and geographies. We argue that 'solidarity from below' is key in building an emancipatory rural politics rooted in class-based alliances, intersectionality, and internationalism as well as non-exclusionary notions of sovereignty. The article provides theoretical and empirical insights on what constitutes an emancipatory politics of food sovereignty that has the potential to act as a counterforce to right-wing populism.

This chapter examines La Vía Campesina’s strategy of consolidating strategic alliances in its global struggle to build food sovereignty. After discussing some of La Vía Campesina’s initial challenges in working with nongovernmental organizations we focus on two case studies: first, La Vía Campesina’s work with Veterinarios Sin Fronteras, based in Spain, and second, the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty. In both cases we analyze some of the convergences and divergences experienced by the social actors in efforts to build strategic alliances.