Food Sovereignty Explained in Simple Language in Booklet

All people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone. This is the basic principle behind food sovereignty. If you want to support domestic food security through the production of healthy food at a fair price, and you believe that family farmers and fishers should have the first right to local and regional markets, then food sovereignty is for you.

Food sovereignty is essential because our current food and farm system is broken. Small farmers in the US and globally cannot earn a fair price for what they raise, despite their high productivity. Meanwhile, more than 1.2 billion people around the world go hungry every day. As corporate-controlled agriculture spreads across the globe, the social and environmental costs weigh heavily on our communities. Driven by big corporations, the agricultural system no longer values healthy, delicious food, productive and sustainable rural communities or people’s right to make decisions about their communities and their farms.

Fortunately, an alternative exists: Food sovereignty for all.

The National Family Farm Coalition and Grassroots International have joined together to build U.S. support for a growing international food sovereignty movement – one which seeks to guarantee the human right of communities to choose where and how their food is produced and what food they consume. The vision undergirding the movement is a food system that ensures health, justice and dignity for all, and in which farmers, ranchers and fishers have control over their lands, water, seeds and livelihoods.

This booklet explores how small producers, environmentalists and social justice activists around the world are embracing food sovereignty, the right that all people have to decide what they eat and to ensure that that agriculture in their community is fair and healthy for everyone and to fix the broken food and farming system.

The booklet is currently available in English. Spanish Portuguese and French.