Farmers, Foodies & First Nations: Getting to Food Sovereignty in Canada

This article explores the various meanings of food sovereignty developed by distinct actors in Canada to better understand existing challenges, tensions, convergences and divergences in developing a national movement for food sovereignty. It begins with some theoretical reflections on food sovereignty that have informed our analysis of food sovereignty movements in Canada. It then focuses on how food sovereignty is manifested in Canada by exploring how three distinct sectors of society — farmers, foodies, and First Nations — use food sovereignty discourse. It then critically assesses how the “unity in diversity” principle of food sovereignty functions in the Canadian context, paying particular attention to the policy implications of debates about the meaning of food sovereignty.

Annette Aurélie Desmarais is Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba. She is the author of La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (Fernwood Publishing and Pluto Press, 2007) which has been published in various languages. Annette co-edited Food sovereignty: Reconnecting food, nature, and community and Food Sovereignty in Canada.

Hannah Wittman is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She conducts collaborative research on food sovereignty, local food systems, and agrarian citizenship in Brazil and Canada and is co-editor of Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects, and Struggles; Food sovereignty: Reconnecting food, nature, and community; and Food Sovereignty in Canada.

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.