Adapting established instruments to build useful food sovereignty indicators

Abstract

The recent context of global food emergency and ecological crisis has increased the relevance of people's struggle for food sovereignty (FSv), which promotes the transformation of the dominant food system and claims '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'. Revisiting two Spanish and Catalan articles developing FSv indicators, this article aims at discussing the need and utility of developing FSv indicators at different territorial levels. Confronting these two territorial scales, the paper also identifies common steps that can facilitate other future processes of building FSv indicators. As a conclusion, the paper suggests that these processes of building indicators can contribute to providing political direction at different geographical scales for the implementation of the FSv proposal. At the same time, they favor the movement's self-reflexivity in its practices while supporting the collective shaping of future actions.

From Transition to Domains of Transformation: Getting to Sustainable and Just Food Systems through Agroecology

“…Reductionist approaches focused on indicators, typically used to evaluate and monitor progress in agriculture, are not appropriate for the holistic nature and complex interactions of agroecology, its political-cultural outcomes and its multifunctional benefits [36,80]. They thus serve to further delegitimize agroecological alternatives rooted in community self-organizing.…”

Food Sovereignty in the city?: A methodological proposal for evaluating food sovereignty in urban settings

“…As components of the FS framework, the literature review identified five conceptual axes and three social variables (Ortega-Cerdà and Rivera-Ferre 2010; Binimelis et al 2014) The conceptual axes were access to resources; production models; agricultural policies; food safety and consumption; transformation (processing); and commercialization. Gender, indigenous population, and the percentage of young people in the population were the three social variables.…”

“…Generally speaking, the development of indicators is a three-stage process: (1) defining the components of the concept in question; (2) assigning indicators to each component; and (3) defining scales and threshold values for each indicator (Yegbemey et al 2014;Fraser et al 2006;Badal et al 2011;Mickwitz et al 2006;Binimelis et al 2014).…”

You Can't Grow Potatoes in the Sky: Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in the Potato Park of Cuzco, Peru

“…This work has a strong intellectual background that benefits from the work of other researchers investigating food sovereignty, conservation, and cultural resilience (Altieri ; Binimelis et al. ; Graddy , ; Mamen et al. ; Pimbert ; Woodley et al.…”

“…Yet, Association ANDES and the Potato Park are also focused on documenting cultural resilience and community-based means of protecting and maintaining biodiversity. This work has a strong intellectual background that benefits from the work of other researchers investigating food sovereignty, conservation, and cultural resilience (Altieri 2009;Binimelis et al 2014;Graddy 2013Graddy , 2014Mamen et al 2005;Pimbert 2008;Woodley et al 2006).…”