Food Sovereignty: An Agenda for Faith-based Development Ethics

Liza May Aquino

Rommel M. Dascil

PhD in Development Management
Divine Word College of Laoag, Philippines
Fr. Damianus Abun, SVD (Professor and adviser)

Food sovereignty is 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. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. (Via Campesina 2007)

Abstract

This paper is a critique on the article “Food Sovereignty” by Raj Patel published in The Journal of Peasant Studies in July 2009.  While it affirms Patel’s notion that the shift from food security to food sovereignty as a development discourse touches greatly on human rights, democracy and egalitarianism, it also argues that the peasants’ struggle for food sovereignty should, more importantly, be considered as a relevant and practical agenda for development ethics. It examines why the moral consideration of the current global food system may help sustain the privileged position of peasants to resist the global, corporate-control of modern food economy. Using the Catholic Social Teachings as a looking glass, it extends the idea of food sovereignty one step farther, even as it illustrates how food sovereignty informs and necessitates an ethical basis for challenging and replacing conventional agrarian systems with sustainable and socially just alternatives that promote human dignity and the integrity of creation.

 

Introduction

In the field of development, what inspires the inclusion of development ethics in discourse and practice is the multifarious and multifaceted economic, social and political processes. These processes bring about both opportunities and threats for humankind, hence the problematization of these processes’ capacity to fulfill the ultimate ends of human beings (and the natural world).  Some of the most urgent issues that humanity faces today are the complex issues around the production, distribution, and consumption of food.  As these directly relate to the global issues of human suffering due to poverty and hunger, and the use and control of resources, they are by nature issues of ethics.

The article “Food Sovereignty” by Raj Patel is an attempt to explain an alternative approach to development concerning food.  It touches on the issues of current global food system through an alternative point of view different from Food Security, which is the dominant neoliberal economic development paradigm on food.  As it sorts out the contradictions inherent in Food Sovereignty as a new concept, Patel (2009: 667) argues that

One way to balance these disparities is through the explicit introduction of rights-based language. To talk of a right to shape food policy is to contrast it with a privilege. The modern food system has been architected by a handful of privileged people. Food sovereignty insists that this is illegitimate, because the design of our social system is not the privilege of the few, but the right of all. By summoning this language, food sovereignty demands that such rights be respected, protected, and fulfilled, as evinced through twin obligations of conduct and result (Balakrishnan and Elson 2008). It offers a way of fencing off particular entitlements, by setting up systems of duty and obligation.

 Focusing on the principles of universal human rights to explain this new concept, Patel (2009) tries to question the social and cultural state of food production and consumption in the context of conventional hunger- and poverty-reduction discourse.  This convention, which is what Food Security is all about, shows not only how the subject of development narrative has shifted from communal to individual self-determination through market integration, it also portrays why and how peasants and their traditional roles in agricultural production have been depoliticized and reduced to utter insignificance. In the debate on hunger and poverty alleviation, this is how the neoliberalist perspective pictures the peasants within the major contours of global food economy. 

Tied with the continuously widening corporate-control of food production and distribution through trade liberalization, this perspective is powerfully and cleverly insulated by multinational institutions, like the World Trade Organization (WTO). This neoliberal perspective can be traced back to the modernization of agriculture and its globalization through the green revolution and its most recent version, the gene revolution.  It is boldly branded and promoted by multinational institutions and agro-transnational corporations (agro-TNCs) as the inevitable way towards food security.  The failure of the peasantry in the commodity market is merely a collateral damage that can be corrected in the long run through greater integration of the agricultural processes into the market.   

Patel (2009) believes that the legal developments in the international discourse on food have paved the way for the formulation of three important concepts– right to food, food security, and food sovereignty.  The right to food, and its parallel, the right to be free from hunger, is fully and legally mandated by various international bodies. 

           The term food security, on the other hand, has been used in discourse concerning poverty and hunger since its adoption by FAO in 1974 to address a global food crisis. It was defined as “availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices” (UN 1975). In the 1996 World Food Summit, food security received a more complex definition:

Food security, at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels [is achieved] when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO 1996).

This definition was considered as the vision of food security in life with the World Food Summit Plan of Action in 1996.  Again, in 2001, food security was redefined in the FAO document “The State of Food Insecurity 2001” as a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO 2002).

While food security is largely a definition of the goal of the right to food, although it holds the state accountable in some ways, it does not necessarily rest on specific set of policies (Patel 2009). This therefore allows the state a wide margin of discretion in terms of implementation.  These limitations have opened the two UN-sanctioned policies on food to criticisms and alternative proposals. One proposal that has strongly captured the attention of those involved in the food discourse is the concept of food sovereignty. Following Via Campesina’s concept, Patel (2009:670) argues that the

Claims around food sovereignty address the need for social change such that the capacity to shape food policy can be exercised at all appropriate levels. To make those rights substantive requires more than a sophisticated series of juridical sovereignties. To make the right to shape food policy meaningful is to require that everyone be able substantively to engage with those policies. But the prerequisites for this are a society in which the equality-distorting effects of sexism, patriarchy, racism, and class power have been eradicated. Activities that instantiate this kind of radical ‘moral universalism’ are the necessary precursor to the formal ‘cosmopolitan federalism’ that the language of rights summons. And it is by these activities that we shall know food sovereignty.

 Food Sovereignty, while directly challenging the loopholes of the other two, is a more precise policy and proposes concrete agenda for policy-making especially against the failure of the first two.  It is however important to note that the framework of food sovereignty, although fundamentally premised on rights-based approach, is especially emphatic on the rights of small farmers and peasants to productive resources, and demands the fulfillment of all policies that are recognized in international bodies pertaining to such rights.

Referring to this phenomenon as a new power and social relations, Patel (2009) believes that Food Sovereignty is a critical reaction to the neoliberal notion of food security. Indeed, the concept offers an ethical question on what exactly does the development discourse on food hope to achieve and with what means, and at what or whose expense.   It claims to be a logical precondition for genuine food security, that is, long-term food security, which depends on those who produces food, and on the adequate care for the natural environment including human beings. Arguing that peasants and small farmers are the stewards of productive resources, food sovereignty upholds the following principles as the necessary foundation for achieving genuine food security: (a) food is a basic human right, one which can only be realized in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed, and; (b) it is the right of each nation to produce its basic food through agricultural systems that respect cultural and productive diversity (Patel 2009; Desmarais 2007).

         The question now is why and how should the discourse of food sovereignty be extended to the realm of ethics or morals?

 

Claim

         Initially based on Patel’s notion of Food Sovereignty as based on human rights, this paper claims that the discourse and practice of food sovereignty is by its nature a moral undertaking.  While it is true, as what Patel believes, that food sovereignty is about power and rights, it is rather the moral question on sustainability that makes more explicit the realities of human suffering brought about by the programs patterned through the legal frameworks of right to food and food security.   Indeed, Food Sovereignty is, above all, a paradigm that promotes human dignity and the integrity of creation.

Since the time of its launching at the World Food Summit in 1996, the concept of food sovereignty has rapidly developed.  As a concept, it was introduced to the public by Via Campesina, a global peasant resistant movement.  As an important global organization of peasants and advocates, Via Campesina strongly proposes an integration of new and old agricultural paradigms that fully considers both agricultural production and environmental preservation as an alternative way of modern development (McMichael 2006).  It provides space for dialogue and action among peasant and farmers’ organizations from all over the world and therefore bridges gaps in terms of institutional capacity and strategy among actors (Smith 2002).

In its own words, Via Campesina defines food sovereignty as “the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic food, respecting cultural and productive diversity” and “the right of peoples to define their own agricultural and food policy” (Via Campesina 1996a;  quoted in Desmarais 2007, 34).  Critically challenging the neoliberal concept of food production and distribution, and encouraging other like-minded individuals and organizations, Via Campesina declared in 1996:

We,  the Via Campesina, a growing movement of farm workers, peasant, farm and indigenous people’s organizations from all the regions of the world, know that food security cannot be achieved without taking full account of those who produce food. Any discussion that ignores our contribution will fail to eradicate poverty and hunger.  Food is a basic human right. This right can only be realized in a system where Food Sovereignty is guaranteed” (Via Campesina 1996b). 

To the Via Campesina, food sovereignty signifies the need to shift from the WTO’s technical concept of food security to the political concept of food sovereignty, which includes cultural and productive diversity (Desmarais 2007). Indeed, this change in semantics (from food security to food sovereignty)  is geared toward allowing peasants around the world to insert their local agenda into international discourse by making moral claims on their dignity as human beings and the integrity of their environment.

 

Reason

Food sovereignty as a precondition to genuine food security is premised on seven principles: food as a basic human right, agrarian reform, environmental protection, food trade reorganization, ending the globalization of hunger, social peace, and democratic control (Patel 2009; Via Campesina 2007).   In summary, these principles refer to everyone’s access to sufficient (in quantity and quality), safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food that should be guaranteed by all nations;  agrarian reform is a necessary and fundamental ingredient of food sovereignty in as much as the ownership and control of land by the peasants or tillers allow them to also control the basic processes of food production; the sustainable care of natural resources, which presupposes the practice of sustainable agriculture, means the right of farmers against restrictive intellectual property rights, patenting of the natural world and the use of agro-chemicals; food is primarily considered as a source of nutrition before being considered an item of trade, and this means that local food production and sufficiency should not be displaced by food imports;  globalized hunger can only end with the end of control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies, and multilateral institutions that facilitate macro-economic policies; food and its underlying processes must be not used as weapons of violence, oppression and coercion against small farmers, peasants, and minority and indigenous groups; and, small farmers must have direct input to policy and decision making at the local and international levels (Via Campesina 2007). 

           Evidently, there are very important moral issues that the discourse of food sovereignty tackles – poverty and environmental degradation especially among small farming communities. Food sovereignty argues that green and gene revolutions of liberal agriculture systems have led to the disentanglement of peasant communities and the environment from agricultural production. The disarticulation of agriculture from ecosystems and local communities through the green and gene revolution has negatively transformed the nature of agriculture. The integration of productive input and food into the market system has allowed greater control of agro-TNCs over the means of food production.  With the ultimate goal of higher profit through increased market, agro-TNCs have been

  relentlessly forging input dependence and standardizing the nature of agricultural production, subjecting soaring farm animal populations to brutalizing treatment, toxifying soils and water and externalizing environmental costs, reshaping dietary aspirations, breaking locals bonds between production and consumption, devalorizing labor and replacing it with technology and progressively appropriating control and surplus value from farmers and farm communities (Weis 2007, 162).

            The conventional, corporate-controlled productive models have trapped farmers both in rich and poor countries. With the introduction of high-yielding and genetically modified seed varieties packaged with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and increased level of mechanization, peasants in the rural communities of poor countries were forced to enter into credit arrangements with banks and other credit institutions. Many peasants went into debt, which resulted in the loss of their lands; many others migrated to urban areas, while some committed suicides by drinking chemical pesticides.   For the Via Campesina, the only way to reverse this scenario is through the adoption of food sovereignty as a social policy (Patel 2009).                                                 

              Based on the foregoing, food sovereignty has the capacity to question the sustainability of the market-oriented agriculture model emanates from a moral perspective. As it offers an alternative which basically include community-based agrarian resistance that aims to reframe development in radical ways, it reasserts the significant roles of the peasants, and the importance of environmental preservation and conservation in agricultural production, food sovereignty revalorizes rural cultural-ecology and communal solidarity instead of individual responsibility and competition.

Evidence

        As mentioned earlier, poverty and environmental degradation as a result of the dominant economic paradigm directly justify the need for food sovereignty. These two intertwined realities explicitly inform the need to consider the concept of food sovereignty from the vantage point of ethics above all else.

In the 2010 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit, the United Nations declared that the rate of world poverty and hunger has decreased from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005, or from 46% to 27%, and that the world is on track to meet the poverty reduction target by 2015 (United Nations 2010, 6-7).  This MDG review, although encouraging at face value, becomes quite suspicious and ironic considering the FAO report in 2002 that per capita agricultural productivity has increased since the second half of the last century and that there has been more than enough food for every human being on earth (FAO 2002). 

If the latest MDG report is right that there are still around 920 million poor, hungry and malnourished people in the planet at the moment, how does this data relate to the tenability of the contemporary global food economy?  How does the supposedly sufficient food production explain such disparity? Why does hunger persist in a world of bounty?

Following Jeremy Bentham’s notion of rights as an obligation that certain entities should fulfill, Patel’s immediate answer to the problem is obviously state-centric:

Food sovereignty has its own geographies, one determined by specific histories and contours of resistance. To demand a space of food sovereignty is to demand specific arrangements to govern territory and space. At the end of the day, the power of rights-talk is that rights imply a particular burden on a specified entity – the state (Patel 2009:668).

This is in a way supported by UNDP (2003) which points to several reasons for the massive hunger: from marginal farmland, difficult environment conditions such as drought, flooding, and other natural disasters, to inadequate or lack of access to agricultural resources such land, water, and seed and livestock varieties.  One of solutions therefore to the problem is technical, that is, to provide productive inputs for small farmers. A very important point, however, is that some analysts find the locus of the poverty and hunger problems in the current global political economy of food, which is driven by transnational industrial agriculture and livestock production. These analysts think that poverty and hunger is mainly due to the globalized corporate control of resources, food production and distribution, which is perpetuated by mainstream capital-intensive agricultural systems. 

Indeed, the limitation of Patel’s state-centric approach to the understanding of Food Sovereignty calls for other ways through which the issue of human sufferings such as hunger should be understood.  This paper therefore offers the wisdom of the Catholic Social Teachings, which ultimately provide an ethical foundation upon which to illustrate the disparities in terms of enforced dependence of the poor on the rich as a result of free trade and free market imposed by transnational corporations that increasingly control agro-inputs and distribution of agricultural goods.  The Catholic Social Teachings strongly argue against the strained incorporation of the poor and hungry peasants into the global market relations, which are characterized by long-term price instability and distorted competitions, which result in massive dislocation that further deepens poverty and hunger.

Discussion

The conversion of Food Sovereignty as an ethical agenda is provoked by the reality of human suffering and the possibility of redirecting the global food system through more inclusive policy and practice. Through faith-based ethics, this paper hopes to justify the need to make the issue of hunger and other forms of suffering a moral issue. Specifically, by using the Social Doctrines of the Catholic Church, it emphasizes the need to look at the global food system and therefore the plight of the poor and marginalized peasants in the context of social justice

Domination and Exploitation

 In the last twenty-five years a hope has spread through the human race that economic growth would bring about such a quantity of goods that it would be possible to feed the hungry at least with the crumbs falling from the table, but this has proved a vain hope in underdeveloped areas and in pockets of poverty in wealthier areas, because of the rapid growth of population and of the labor force, because of rural stagnation and the lack of agrarian reform, and because of the massive migratory flow to the cities, where the industries, even though endowed with huge sums of money, nevertheless provide so few jobs that not infrequently one worker in four is left unemployed. These stifling oppressions constantly give rise to great numbers of marginal persons, ill-fed, inhumanly housed, illiterate and deprived of political power as well as of the suitable means of acquiring responsibility and moral dignity (Justicia in Mundo #10)

When poverty, hunger and displacement become part of the lives of the producers of food in spite of the significant amount of global food surpluses, it is an affront not only to the individual peasant but to human society as a whole. It is a contradiction of modernity’s promise of freedom and human development, and fundamentally it is an insult against our notion of human dignity and social justice, and therefore ultimately, of our humanity. The dire situation of the peasant since the globalization of agricultural modernization and introduction of trade liberalization is characterized by capital-driven corporate domination of the social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental spaces. A good number of biblical and doctrinal references, such as the Catholic Social Teachings, can help provide vivid descriptions of how the peasant world looks like.

The church locates the cause of peasants’ miseries in the increased faith by corporate institutions in modern economics, which when “left to itself works rather to widen the differences in the world’s level of life: rich people enjoy rapid growth and the poor develop slowly….some produce a surplus of foodstuff, others cruelly lack them and see their imports made uncertain” (Popularum Progresso #8). 

In the context of the social and economic advances made in many countries, pronounced imbalances are increasingly discernible: first, between agriculture on the one hand and industry and services on the other; between the more and the less developed regions within countries with differing economic resources and development (Mater et Magistra #48). 

According to Gaudium et Spes (#63), the world is in a moment of history when the development of economic life could potentially diminished social inequalities if the development were guided and coordinated in a reasonable and human way; yet all too often, economic development programs, too often, serves to intensify the inequalities and promotes the decline of social status of the weak and in contempt for the poor. While an enormous mass of people still lack the absolute necessities of life, a few number of people live sumptuously and squander wealth. Both in developed and developing countries, there are clear “manifestations of selfishness and a flaunting of wealth which is as disconcerting as it is scandalous” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #14:1). 

Indeed luxury and misery are within each other’s vicinity, that is, while few enjoy very great freedom of choice, many are deprived of almost all possibility of acting on their own initiative and responsibility and often subsist in living and working conditions unworthy of human beings (Gaudium et Spes #63). The contrast “between the economically more advanced countries and other countries is becoming serious day by day, and the very peace of the world can be jeopardized in consequence” (Gaudium et Spes #63), and this gives us “a sign of a widespread sense that the unity of the world, that is, the unity of the human race, is seriously compromised” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 14:2).

The peasant world is ruled by a despotic economic domination and immense power that is concentrated in the hands of the few who exercise a dictatorship through complete control of financial regulations, hence “the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will” (Quadragesimo Anno #106).  This accumulation of power – the characteristic mark of contemporary economic life is a natural result of limitless free competition which permits the survival of those who only are the strongest, which often means, those who fight most relentlessly and pay less heed to the dictates of conscience (Quadragesimo Anno #107).  The dominative financial and social mechanisms, which are denounced by the church, are functioning almost automatically in favor of more developed countries and the people manipulating them, thus accentuating the situation of wealth for a few, and suffocating the economies of the rest (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #16:1-3).  Along the manipulation of financial mechanisms and the unbridled ambition for economic supremacy, conflicts have been generated that are characterized by

bitter fights to gain supremacy over the State in order to use in economic struggles its resources and authority… [and] between States themselves, not only because countries employ their power and shape their policies to promote every economic advantage of their citizens, but also because they seek to decide political controversies that arise among nations through the use of their economic supremacy and strength…. Unbridled ambition for domination has succeeded the desire to gain; the whole economic life has become hard, cruel and relentless in a ghastly measure (Quadragesimo Anno #108-11).

As the developed countries export manufactured goods, which are rapidly increasing in echnological capacity, content and market access, the raw materials from less developed countries are continuously being subjected to price instability, a state of affairs far removed from the progressively increasing value of industrial products (Populorum Progresso #57). The effects of free trade on poor countries are caused by economic inequalities put in place by rich countries which undermine international relations. Populorum Progresso (#58) explains this further:

The rule of free trade, taken by itself, is no longer able to govern international relations. Its advantages are certainly evident when the parties involved are not affected by any excessive inequalities of economic power: it is an incentive to progress and a reward for effort. That is why industrially developed countries see in it a law of justice. But the situation is no longer the same when economic conditions differ too widely from country to country: prices which are freely set in the market can produce unfair results. One must recognize that it is the fundamental principle of liberalism, as the rule for commercial exchange, which is questioned here.

These inequalities are further exacerbated by the phenomenon of international debt crisis. Less developed countries accepted offer of abundant capital from international financial institutions with the hope of accelerating economic development, but served instead as a counterproductive mechanism. Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (#19) argued that the instrument chosen to make huge contribution to development failed because debtor-countries, in order to service their debts find themselves obliged to export capital needed for improving the sectors for development. This brings to mind case of improving the agricultural sector through foreign aid which requires governments, in order for them to obtain new financing, to implement structural adjustment policies (SAPs) that demand a decrease of government subsidies to farmers and opening the market to free trade. This mechanism has eventually placed the debtor-countries in a cycle of debt servicing, new loans, and structural adjustments which has “turned into a break upon development and indeed in some cases even aggravated underdevelopment” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #19:5).

Another disconcerting phenomenon that the neoliberal economic paradigm has introduced is the concept of super-development, which is typified by high consumerism.  With the unacceptable miseries of the underdevelopment, proponents of liberal economic development defines what is good and happiness in the context of excessive availability, multiplication and continual replacement of material goods, which easily makes people to become slaves of possession and immediate gratification.  The church calls this the civilization of consumption or consumerism, which refers to the blind submission to pure consumerism characterize by crass materialism and radical dissatisfaction promoted and motivated by the flood of publicity and tempting offers of products (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #28:2-3).   This is used both in consumption and marketing of productive input to satisfy consumption demands.

The domination of neoliberal economics imposed on the agricultural sector by transnational institutions as discussed above directly reflects not only the greed and corruption in corporate and government structures but also the inadequacy of governments in bringing about genuine development.  The promise of abundance through modern agriculture technology and financial mechanism has produced an unquenchable thirst for riches and temporal possessions. Again, Quadragesimo Anno admonishes that this thirst for material goods, which is conditioned by the present economic development paradigm, has led to the breaking of God’s law and trampling of the rights of neighbors: 

Since the instability of economic life, and especially of its structure, exacts of those engaged in it most intense and unceasing effort, some have become so hardened to the stings of conscience as to hold that they are allowed, in any manner whatsoever, to increase their profits and use means, fair or foul, to protect their hard-won wealth against sudden changes of fortune. The easy gains that a market unrestricted by any law opens to everybody attracts large numbers to buying and selling goods, and they, their one aim being to make quick profits with the least expenditure of work, raise or lower prices by their uncontrolled business dealings so rapidly according to their own caprice and greed that they nullify the wisest forecasts of producers. (Quadragesimo Anno #132).

Indeed, the neoliberal economic policies the control modern life led to the “scandal of glaring inequalities not merely in the enjoyment of possessions but even more in the exercise of power” (Quadragesimo Anno #9). And the above scandalous corporate scenario is ultimately reflective of the degradation of the legitimacy of the state.  It has reduced the role of the state as supreme arbiter for justice and common good to a level of slavery to human passion and greed that result in economic imperialism and oppression of many people (Quadragesimo Anno 109).   The state, weakened by the forces of neoliberal economics has allowed the introduction of the modern agriculture to rural areas, which has led not only to economic displacement but to also cultural displacement that arose when

The conflict between traditional civilizations and the new elements of industrial civilization break down structures which do not adapt themselves to new conditions. Their framework, sometimes rigid, was the indispensable prop to personal and family life; older people remain attached to it, the young escape from it, as from a useless barrier, to turn eagerly to new forms of life in society. The conflict of the generations is made more serious by a tragic dilemma: whether to retain ancestral institutions and convictions and renounce progress, or to admit techniques and civilizations from outside and reject along with the traditions of the past all their human richness. In effect, the moral, spiritual and religious supports of the past too often give way without securing in return any guarantee of a place in the new world (Quadragesimo Anno #10).

After subduing nature through reason and scientific positivism, human beings now faces another form of alienation – their imprisonment within their own rationality and slavery to the scientific:

 The human sciences are today enjoying a significant flowering. On the one hand they are subjecting to critical and radical examination the hitherto accepted knowledge about man, on the grounds that this knowledge seems either too empirical or too theoretical. On the other hand, methodological necessity and ideological presuppositions too often lead the human sciences to isolate, in the various situations, certain aspects of man, and yet to give these an explanation which claims to be complete or at least an interpretation which is meant to be all-embracing from a purely quantitative or phenomenological point of view. This scientific reduction betrays a dangerous presupposition. To give a privileged position in this way to such an aspect of analysis is to mutilate man and, under the pretext of a scientific procedure, to make it impossible to understand man in his totality” (Octogesima Adveniens #38).

In agrarian context, the intensive mechanisms to make agriculture better and to address world hunger have resulted in the introduction of deadly chemicals in the environment.  These chemicals do not only threaten the natural world but also the social world. “All too soon, and often in an unforeseeable way… man is not only subjected to alienation [by what he/she produces] but rather it turns man against himself” (Redemptor Hominis #15).

            While the horizon of man is thus being modified according to the images that are chosen for him, another transformation is making itself felt, one which is the dramatic and unexpected consequence of human activity. Man is suddenly becoming aware that by an ill- considered exploitation of nature he risks destroying it and becoming in his turn the victim of this degradation. Not only is the material environment becoming a permanent menace -- pollution and refuse, new illness and absolute destructive capacity-but the human framework is no longer under man's control, thus creating an environment for tomorrow which may well be intolerable. This is a wide-ranging social problem which concerns the entire human family (Octogesimo Adveniens #21).

The growing demand for resources and energy, in order to support the high rate of consumerism in the developed countries, result in the exploitation of the whole of material world and in irreparable damage to the essential elements of life on earth and the in the destruction of the whole of humanity (Justicia in Mundo #11). This state of destruction demands therefore an awareness of the limitations of the planet which should prompt us to rationally and honestly plan beyond considering the natural environment for immediate consumption (Redemptor Hominis #15).  With the furious development and ascendancy of technology in production processes, development planning must be framed by a proportional development of morals and ethics and “the first reason for disquiet concerns the essential and fundamental question: does this progress, which has man for its author and promoter, make life on earth more human in every aspect of life?  Does it make it more worthy of man?” (Redemptor Hominis 15). In speaking about the world, the church stated that the “modern underdevelopment is not only economic but also cultural, political and simply human….[and] the result of a too narrow idea of development” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #15:5-6).

Exodus from Poverty and Hunger

            Having thoroughly looked at the present social alienations, the church declares that there remains a human aspiration, in which “Women and men… crave a life that is full, autonomous, and worthy of their nature as human beings; they long to harness for their own welfare the immense resources of the modern world” (Gaudium et Spes # 9). The church hereby offers a way of building another world that is founded on the “conviction that humanity is able and has the duty to… establish a political, social, and economic order at the service of humanity, to assert and develop the dignity proper to individuals and to societies” (Gaudium et Spes # 9).

            The Book of Exodus, which is a history of the liberation of the poor, tells the story of a people whose society is founded on liberation from oppression and domination, and the communion of the liberated people in active solidarity. The importance of this historical narrative lies in its pointing out of a people’s intimate experience of the domination of central power, and the emphasis on tradition, as expressed in the ten commandments, and the tribal laws, as the loci of a new ethical and social awareness that served as the basis for a new social formation (Exodus 20:1-2).

            It is a fundamental principle of faith that “In the design of God, every man [and woman] is called upon to develop and fulfill himself [or herself], for every life is a vocation. At birth, everyone is granted, in germ, a set of aptitudes and qualities for him to bring to fruition” (Populorum Progresso #15).  The point of this principle is that the human being is “necessarily the foundation, cause, and end of all social institutions” (Mater et Magistra #219). It is the principle that brings to bear a paradigm of human development toward a just and human society. Through its biblical teachings and encyclicals, the church recommends a path for social renewal – first, the recognition of the sin of social injustice; second, an education on justice, and; third, the practice of justice. This path is embedded in the gospel message and mission of the church:

Listening to the cry of those who suffer violence and are oppressed by unjust systems and structures, and hearing the appeal of a world that by its perversity contradicts the plan of its Creator, we have shared our awareness of the Church's vocation to be present in the heart of the world by proclaiming the Good News to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, and joy to the afflicted. The hopes and forces which are moving the world in its very foundations are not foreign to the dynamism of the Gospel, which through the power of the Holy Spirit frees people from personal sin and from its consequences in social life (Justicia in Mundo #5). 

The church recognizes that the varying degrees of alienation brought about by the globalization and the “the unequal distribution which places decisions concerning three quarters of income, investment and trade in the hands of one third of the human race”(Justicia in Mundo #12) are the primary causes of features of social injustice. With this also comes the recognition of “the insufficiency of a merely economic progress, and the new recognition of the material limits of the biosphere--all this makes us aware new modes of understanding human dignity”( Justicia in Mundo #12).

As the paradigm of liberal economic development continues to evolve and being co-opted by international institutions and transnational corporations, the church warns that “In the face of international systems of domination, the bringing about of justice depends more and more on the determined will for development” (Justicia in Mundo #13).  This will has to be constituted within the political system that works for “a development of economic growth and participation; an increase in wealth implying social progress by the entire community…overcomes regional imbalance and… constitutes a right which is to be applied both in the economic and in the social and political field” (Justicia in Mundo #18).

While the world undertakes rapid globalization, we see various faces of injustice that reflect the problems which every sector and function of society needs to address. With the upsurge of new development agenda and policies, the church in particular needs to prepare for new forms of vigilance and undertake activities that are directed above all to different forms of oppression especially in sectors of society where there are voiceless victims of injustice (Justicia in Mundo #20).  To undertake actions against injustice, the church recommends an education for social justice that requires

a renewal of heart, a renewal based on the recognition of sin in its individual and social manifestations. It will also inculcate a truly and entirely human way of life in justice, love and simplicity. It will likewise awaken a critical sense, which will lead us to reflect on the society in which we live and on its values; it will make people ready to renounce these values when they cease to promote justice for all people. In the developing countries, the principal aim of this education for justice consists in an attempt to awaken consciences to a knowledge of the concrete situation and in a call to secure a total improvement; by these means the transformation of the world has already begun” (Justicia in Mundo #51).

In the process of education, people are decidedly made more human, and they become no longer the object of manipulation by political, economic or cultural forces but they rather become capable of working on their own destiny that brings about truly human communities (Justicia in Mundo #52). Since this process of education involves every person of every age, it can be called a “continuing education” – one that is undertaken “through action, participation and vital contact with the reality of injustice” (Justicia in Mundo #53).  This brings to fore the importance of considering the cultural self-determination that has been severely trampled in the process of globalization.  Gaudium et Spes makes a clear point in saying that culture, if it were to develop toward becoming truly human, needs an

adequate freedom of development… and a legitimate possibility of autonomy according to its own principles. Quite rightly it demands respect and enjoys certain inviolability, provided, of course, that the rights of the individual and the community, both particular and universal, are safeguarded within the limits of the common good. It is not for the public authority to determine how human culture should develop, but to build up the environment and to provide assistance favorable to such development, without overlooking minorities. This is the reason why one must avoid at all costs the distortion of culture and its exploitation by political or economical forces [italics mine] (Gaudium et Spes #59).

This idea is affirmed by another radical encyclical Popularum Progresso, which states that every country, rich or poor, “possesses a civilization handed down by their ancestors: institutions called for by life in this world, and higher manifestations of the life of the spirit, manifestations of an artistic, intellectual and religious character” (Popularum Progresso #40). The reason for this is that when a country possesses “true human values, it would be grave error to sacrifice them. A people that would act in this way would thereby lose the best of its patrimony; in order to live, it would be sacrificing its reasons for living” (Popularum Progresso #40). This also calls to mind Christ’s famous teaching “What profit would a man show if he were to gain the whole world and destroy himself in the process” (Matthew 16:26).

Development through Social Justice Paradigm

Social Justice, not free enterprise, should be the guiding principle of the economic world.  It has been abundantly proven that free enterprise or free market, although within certain limits just and productive of good results, has done more damage than good to many especially the peasants. 

For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching. Therefore, it is most necessary that economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective directing principle. This function is one that the economic dictatorship which has recently displaced free competition can still less perform, since it is a headstrong power and a violent energy that, to benefit people, needs to be strongly curbed and wisely ruled. But it cannot curb and rule itself. Loftier and nobler principles--social justice and social charity--must, therefore, be sought whereby this dictatorship may be governed firmly and fully (Quadragesimo Anno #88).

Free enterprise or the “imperialism of money” (Popularum Progresso #26) as Pope Pius XI called it, can be curbed if institutions of social life are penetrated by social justice that establishes a juridical and social order which will in turn shape economic life (Quadragesimo Anno 88). This proposal of reconstituting the whole of society in justice echoes part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

Let us, then, be children no longer, tossed here and there carried about by every wind of doctrine that originates in human trickery and skill in proposing error. Rather, let us profess the truth in love and grow to whole maturity of Christ the head. Through him the whole body grows, and with the proper functioning of the body joined firmly together by its supporting ligament, builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:14-16).

 

            Popularum Progresso also warns that “individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development” and so therefore the “risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, whilst leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed” must be avoided (Popularum Progresso #33).  This goes to say that free trade is not capable of promoting international relations because it works only in situations when parties involved are not affected by any excessive inequalities of economic power, even if (or especially that) this power is considered by developed countries as the law of justice (Popularum Progresso #58). Indeed the wisdom of Leo XIII applies here: “if the positions of the contracting parties are too unequal, the consent of the parties does not suffice to guarantee the justice of their contract, and the rule of free agreement remains subservient to the demands of the natural law” (Popularum Progresso #59), which means that “Freedom of trade is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social justice” (Popularum Progresso #58).  This notion of social justice resonates the narrative of the Last Judgment, which climaxed in Jesus’ portrayal of his wish to be identified with the poor “I assure, as often as you neglected to do it to the least of ones, you neglected to me” (Matthew 25:45).  It also brings to mind the concept of divine justice in Mary’s Canticle: “He has deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places” (Luke 1:52). With centrality of the poor (the Lord’s least) in social justice, economic reforms must be undertaken intensively. These reforms must focused on         

the reform of the international trade system, which is mortgaged to protectionism and increasing bilateralism; the reform of the world monetary and financial system, today recognized as inadequate; the question of technological exchanges and their proper use; the need for a review of the structure of the existing International Organizations, in the framework of an international juridical order (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 43:2).

The reform of the international trade system is of primal importance as there are frequent discriminations against the products of new industries of the developing countries and an international division of labor whereby low-cost products made in countries without effective labor laws are sold in other parts of the world at considerable profit (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #43:3). And as mentioned earlier, the world monetary and financial system is marked by an excessive fluctuation of exchange rates and interest rates, which worsens the debt situation of the some poor countries; and lastly, many inappropriate and inadequate forms of technology are transferred or enforced in poorer countries to the detriment of people and the environment (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #43:4-5).

 

Just Distribution of Goods

In its discussion on the construction of social order, Pope Pius argues that not every kind of distribution of wealth and property among people is such that it can all adequately attain the end intended by God (Quadragesimo Anno #59).  Wealth therefore which is constantly augmented by social and economic progress, must be distributed among the various individuals and classes of society, that the common good of all be promoted.  In other words the good of the whole community must be safeguarded, and this way one class is forbidden to exclude the other from a share of profit (Quadragesimo Anno #59).  Each class then must receive its due share and the distribution of created goods must be brought into conformity with the common good and social justice, for every sincere observer is conscious that the vast differences between the few who hold excessive wealth and the many that live in destitution constitute a great evil in society (Quadragesimo Anno #60). This concept of distribution is called for in the midst of the immense number of property-less wage-earners on the one hand, and the superabundant riches of the fortunate few on the other, which makes the earthly goods that are abundantly produced far from rightly distributed and equitably shared (Quadragesimo Anno #62).   Gaudium et Spes gives the rationale for this distribution:

             God destined the earth and all it contains for all people and nations so that all created things would be shared fairly by all humankind under the guidance of justice tempered by charity. No matter how property is structured in different countries, adapted to their lawful institutions according to various and changing circumstances, we must never lose sight of this universal destination of earthly goods. In their use of things people should regard the external goods they lawfully possess as not just their own but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as themselves. Therefore everyone has the right to possess a sufficient amount of the earth's goods for themselves and their family (Gaudium et Spes #69:1).

The distribution of goods should go directly toward providing employment and income for the people of today and the future.  Whether individuals, groups or public authorities make the decisions concerning this distribution and the planning of the economy, they are bound to keep these objectives in mind. They must realize their serious obligation of seeing to it that the provision is made for the necessities of a decent life on the part of the individuals and the whole community. They must look out for the future and establish a proper balance between needs of present-day consumption, both individual and collective, and the necessity of distributing goods on behalf of the coming generation. They should also bear in mind the urgent needs of underdeveloped countries and regions (Gaudium et Spes #70).  More poignantly, Popularum Progresso calls on the duty of just distribution because “When so many people are hungry, when so many families suffer from destitution… all public or private squandering of wealth…becomes an intolerable scandal. We are conscious of our duty to denounce it” (Popularum Progresso #P53).

Technology is for human development

Another important part of the proposal of the church for genuine (human and just) development concerns technology.  With the alienations brought about by modern agricultural technologies, the idea of progress that is derived from the positivistic and empirical philosophies of the enlightenment is “seriously called into doubt… A naïve mechanistic optimism has been replaced by a well-founded anxiety for the fate of humanity (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #27:2). Alongside this, the economic development paradigm, in which modern technology is used as instrument, for the accumulation of goods and services is no longer enough for the realization of human happiness.

Nor, in consequence, does the availability of the many real benefits provided in recent times by science and technology, including the computer sciences, bring freedom from every form of slavery.  On the contrary, the experience of recent years shows that unless all the considerable body of resources and potential at man's disposal is guided by a moral understanding and by an orientation towards the true good of the human race, it easily turns against man to oppress him (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #28).

Indeed, technological progress must be fostered, along with a spirit of initiative, for the purpose of production, but the fundamental purpose of this productivity must not be the mere multiplication of products, nor profit or domination. Rather it must be at the service of all people and their humanity, and viewed in terms of their material needs and demands of their intellectual, moral, spiritual and religious lives (Gaudium et Spes #64). 

Pacem in Terris highlights the much needed synthesis between material and spiritual values as it calls on the fact technological capacity and expertise “although necessary, are not sufficient to elevate the relationships of society to an order that is genuinely human: an order whose foundation is truth, whose measure and objective is justice, whose driving force is Love, and whose method of attainment if freedom” (Pacem in Terris #149). It therefore proposes a development that is undertaken within the moral order: “the exercise or vindication of a right, as the fulfillment of a duty or the performance of a service, as a positive answer to the providential design of God directed to our salvation” (Pacem in Terris #150). It further urges the necessity for human beings, in the intimacy of their own consciences, to live and act in their temporal lives towards the creation of a synthesis between scientific, technical and professional elements and spiritual values (Pacem in Terris #150).

 

Conclusion

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.                                                                                 (Matthew 6:11-12; Luke 11:3-4).

While Patel focuses on a rights-based understanding of Food Sovereignty, this paper takes the concept a step farther to the realm of faith-based ethics. Indeed, in this rapidly globalizing world, more and more people turn to faith for meaning, hope and guidance in the midst of miseries and alienations brought about neoliberal development models.  As a relatively new mode of looking at the reality of global food politics, food sovereignty is a timely and necessary historical project through which the faith-based ethics can be fulfilled.

          Food sovereignty and faith-based ethics, when fulfilled in the praxis of peasant resistance against the neoliberal ideology of development, form two sides of the same coin.  These principles work on the same goal of empowering peasants towards liberation from oppressive and alienating corporate-controlled agrarian system.  While the Catholic Social Teachings provide the moral backdrop for the attainment of food sovereignty, the principles of food sovereignty facilitate the realization of the cultural-social-political values within which the teachings are fulfilled.  Indeed, food sovereignty is a practical historical project that completes the praxis and observance the Catholic Social Teachings. 

Social change, such as the fulfillment of food sovereignty, is a continuing process. Framed as a moral agenda through Catholic Social Teachings, food sovereignty offers  a viable and sustainable route to the creation of a just and humane world. Guided by Catholic Social Teachings, those in the center and peripheries of development discourse and practice should continue to assert the dignity of the poor and oppressed, and the integrity of the environment, and hopefully help emancipate all those who suffer from excessive neoliberal politico-economic domination. 

 

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