Entitlement vs. Food Sovereignty Approaches Challenges for sustainable food and nutrition security in the changing agrarian landscape in Tamil Nadu, India
The present day reality is that the laudable economic growth has not able to conquer the alarming rate of poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the world. The support-led and growth mediated intervention measures provide grounds for farmers to opt for different livelihood options, determining their access and rights to food.
Autores
Based on the fieldwork carried out in Anchetty panchayat in the northwest corner of Tamil Nadu, India, the paper examines how the entitlement and food sovereignty approaches to food security interact with the aspirations and rights of small farmers to seek diverse livelihoods in the changing landscape of agrarian economy and livelihood opportunities.
It demonstrates that while entitlement approach lacks recognition of local actors and remains silent about ecological resources and biodiversity, food sovereignty approach seems too ideological to the rights of local actors and fails to capture the limitation of their freedom of choice and creating strategies to benefit from the contemporary knowledge economy.
The paper suggests that any intervention for promoting food and nutrition security must understand the process of changes in the agrarian landscape, as they are based on the context specific ecology of practice.
Hom Gartaula, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba and International Development Studies, Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg With the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, Hom Gartaula’s current research focuses on food security and wellbeing of small farmers in South Asia.
Kirit Patel, Assistant Professor, International Development Studies Program, Menno Simons College, affiliated with the University of Winnipeg & Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg.
Derek Johnson, Associate Professor, socio-cultural anthropology, University of Manitoba Professor Johnson works in the areas of international development and natural resource governance with a primary focus on small-scale fisheries.
Dinesh Moghariya, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and the Department of International Development Studies, Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg Dineshkumar Moghariya holds a PhD in environmental Science from SUNY ESF, Syracuse, NY.
Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.