Abstract
A postcolonial feminist social work (PCFSW) perspective is an essential theoretical framework with which to analyze global food insecurity and proposed solutions to this urgent social problem. In this article, the PCFSW perspective is elaborated, and the arguments of two groups of global stakeholders that identify women’s empowerment and gender equity as crucial to the solution are presented and analyzed. The analysis concludes that food sovereignty aided by agroecology is most suited to social work as it is grounded in the concerns of peasant women, the group most affected by food insecurity and the proposed policies to combat this problem.
Food security has been identified as an urgent global problem by a wide range of stakeholders, from transnational corporations (TNCs), governments, foundations, and international institutions to civil society organizations and social movements. There is agreement among these groups that women are disproportionately burdened by food insecurity and that women’s empowerment and gender equity are key to addressing the problem, but there are vast differences in the two proposed solutions. In this article, the arguments and proposed solutions are analyzed through the lens of a postcolonial feminist social work (PCFSW) perspective.
The article will begin with an overview of the concepts of food security and food sovereignty, the connection between climate change and food security, and the current state of global food insecurity and hunger and its impact on women and girls in smallholder agriculture in their roles as producers, laborers, processors, and traders. A PCFSW perspective will then be introduced and elaborated as a critical theoretical lens with which to unpack proposed approaches to global food security initiatives that highlight gender equity and women’s empowerment. The context of globalization will be presented to provide a frame of reference to the subsequent analysis of the two different approaches to food security, and finally, a PCFSW will be applied to those arguments.
This article concludes that the food sovereignty movement, led by La Via Campesina, an international movement of peasant farmers, and supported by multiple allies, is most suited to social work as it is grounded in the concerns and knowledge of peasant women, the group most affected by food insecurity and the proposed policies to combat it. The work on gender equity and food sovereignty by the women and men of La Via Campesina is highlighted as a challenge to contemporary discourse on peasant farmers as uneducated, uninformed, and bound to their traditional patriarchal practices, unwilling or unable to make change without the assistance of powerful global forces.
Food Security and Food Sovereignty
Food security was first defined at the 1996 World Food Summit in the following language; “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2008, p. 1).
Food sovereignty, an alternative concept advocated by the international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, combines the definition of food security with the idea that people should have control and power over their food systems, inclusive of production and consumption (Patel, 2012). Patel (2009) argues that food security is incomplete as a definition, as it only refers to having enough to eat and says nothing about how to get to that point. He uses an example of a ruler providing vouchers for McDonald’s and vitamins; a case in which a country could be considered food secure. Instead, as Patel explains, the argument of La Via Campesina is that “it's impossible to have food security if the people affected by the policy don't have a say about…A precondition for everyone having something to eat is a genuine and direct democracy, which has been systematically denied to the world's rural poor” (P 9).
La Via Campesina is a loose transnational network of 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Membership includes peasants, smallholder and medium holder farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants, and agricultural workers (La Via Campesina, 2011). The movement first coined the term in 1996 and subsequently elaborated the definition: 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.… Food sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal-fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just income to all peoples and the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage our lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes, and generations. (Declaration of Nyeleni, 2007, p. 1)
Food Insecurity and Hunger
According to the FAO (2012), in the period between 2010 and 2012, 870 million people in the world were undernourished. This is of the global population, one in eight people; almost all of these people (96%) live in developing countries. It is estimated that 75% of all hungry people live in rural areas, primarily in villages of Asia and Africa, and depend on agriculture for their food with no other source of income. About 50% of hungry people are from smallholder farming communities, 20% of hungry people belong to landless families dependent on farming, and 10% depend on herding, fishing, or forest resources. Finally, 20% live in shantytowns of developing countries; many of these people are economic migrants from rural areas, searching for employment (FAO, 2012).
Women represent 70% of the world’s hungry and are disproportionately affected by malnutrition, poverty, and food insecurity. Women also represent the majority of smallholder farmers (Fook, 2011); they serve as producers, laborers, processors, and traders within domestic markets and are responsible for 60–80% of food production in most developing countries and approximately half of the world’s food production (World Economic Forum [WEF], 2013a). Women farmers lack access to agricultural extension training, agricultural inputs, land, water, technology, innovation, credit, financial services, and markets (WEF, 2013a). In addition, they are discriminated against in wages and land tenure (Patel, 2012). Policy makers and global stakeholders are now taking note of the important role of women farmers and estimate that women’s equal access to agricultural resources could reduce world hunger by 12–17% (FAO, 2012).
The Impact of Climate Change on Food Security
Climate change affects food production and thus has an impact on food security. Stakeholders agree that current greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change and that raising global average temperatures lead to change in precipitation patterns, more extreme weather, and shifting seasons, which affect food production systems (International Assessment of Agriculture Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, 2009) and have contributed to food price spikes in 2008, 2010, and 2012 (World Bank Group, 2013). The long-term impact of climate change on agriculture is expected to be an increasing threat to global food security through a direct impact on crops and livestock productivity and an indirect impact on availability/prices of food domestically and internationally and on income from agricultural production at farm and country levels (Takle et al., 2013).
There are marked differences in what the causes of food insecurity and climate change are attributed to between the two groups of global stakeholders. Before presenting and analyzing the arguments of the two groups of stakeholders, it is necessary to describe PCFSW in more detail.
A PCFSW Perspective on Food Security
A PCFSW perspective incorporates the social work values of social justice and self-determination with postcolonial feminist theory. As applied to the issue of food security, it highlights (1) the historical and current context of global inequality and its impact on food security, (2) the collective agency of women of the global South expressed through resistance to patriarchal and global economic oppression through their engagement with La Via Campesina, and (3) the power of discourse in erasing the knowledge and experiences of peasant farmer women and men in contributing to solutions to the issue of food security.
Postcolonial Feminist Theory
A core component of postcolonial feminist theory is a focus on the agency of women of the global South who have been represented in colonial and development discourse as passive victims of unchanging religious and cultural traditions in need of being saved by Western men (Chatterjee, 1993; Mohanty, 1991; Spivak, 1995) and sometimes by Western women (Syed & Ali, 2011). Postcolonial feminist theorists challenge these constructions based in development and colonial discourse just as they reject nationalist constructions of women in the global South as willing participants in oppressive patriarchal practices (Spivak, 1995), unquestioningly devoted to their nation, home culture, and family, in opposition to representations of the selfish, promiscuous, brazen, and materialistic Western woman (Chatterjee, 1993).
Postcolonial feminist theory recognizes the oppression of women in the global South in multiple sites, through colonialism, nationalism, fundamentalism, patriarchies, and global economic structures, while still affirming their agency. This agency, however, is partial and limited by historical and structural constraints, shaped by their social location as is the case for women in the global North (Deepak, 2012). This nuanced approach to critiquing colonial and nationalist discourse is reflected in an examination of power relations within and between macro, mezzo, and micro systems, on multiple axes of identity is also reflected in transnational feminism, which examines these intersections along with “changing economic, social and environmental conditions on a multinational scale” (Moosa-Mitha & Ross-Sheriff, 2010, p. 108).
Postcolonial Feminist Theory and Social Work
The development of this perspective is the result of the search for a theoretical framework that would be responsive to concerns raised by critical feminist social work scholars that feminist social work incorporate a structural analysis and attention to the global context (Gringeri & Roche, 2010; Kemp & Brandwein, 2010). The PCFSW perspective incorporates the macrostructural social environment of globalization, the historical background of colonization, and power relations at every level. It enables a dual focus on the gendered impact of global inequalities produced historically through colonialism and currently through economic dimensions of globalization (Deepak, 2011), and the technological dimensions of globalization that enable collective agency through participation in social movements and partnering with allies to mobilize locally and globally to fight against these inequalities. Thus, a PCFSW perspective facilitates analysis that can shape thoughtful, just, and ethical action grounded in the concerns voiced by marginalized people and their allies (Deepak, 2011), reflecting the core commitments of social work to work with, and on behalf of, vulnerable populations.
The application of postcolonial feminist theory to social work, through a PCFSW, provides a tool with which to integrate rigorous theoretical analysis with the profession’s commitment to social justice and self-determination. This integration is crucial in order to avoid the errors of social work history, of facilitating injustice through implementing programs and policies such as the administration of the Japanese Internment camps in World War II (Park, 2008) and carrying out the involuntary sterilization policies of North Carolina into the 1970s (Anastas, 2012).
In order to apply a PCSFW to the issue of global food security, the context of globalization will be described in order to frame the subsequent discussion of the two groups of stakeholders. The first group aims to solve the problem of food security through the methods of biotechnology in an agro–industrial model, and the second group aims to solve the problem of food security through food sovereignty, using agroecology as a method.
The Context of Globalization
Globalization comprises both social and economic processes “via the mobility and flows of culture, capital, information, resistance, technologies, production, people, commodities, images and ideologies” (Gunewardena & Kingsolver, 2007, pp. 7–8). There are numerous benefits associated with globalization, but the economic dimensions of globalization have had “a negative impact on the balance of economic, political and cultural power between individuals and communities” (International Federation of Social Workers, 2012).
Economic Dimensions
The economic dimensions of globalization refer to the global economic integration of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and the economic model of neoliberalism that has guided the policies of these institutions and the United States and European Union since the 1980s. The IFIs include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy based on the belief that individual initiative and private enterprise are the keys to the creation of wealth, the elimination of poverty, and improving human well-being (Finn, Nybell, & Shook, 2010). The policies of neoliberalism include free trade, privatization of public enterprise (including water and natural resources), deregulation, cutting public expenditure for social services, weakening union power, and an assumption that the rules of the market rather than public purpose should govern societies (Kreitzer & Wilson, 2010, p. 703). Neoliberal policies are enforced on developing countries through binding agreements tied to membership in the WTO, conditions on loans and development aid from the WB and IMF, and free trade agreements.
Global Food Security Initiatives
The Global Stakeholders
Private–Public Partnerships (PPPs)
The first group, composed of TNCs, foundations, governments, and international institutions, embraces a neoliberal approach and employs an agro–industrial model that includes biotechnology in the form of genetically modified (GM) seeds. Global food security initiatives such as Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the U.S. Government Feed the Future Initiative, and the G8 Alliance for Food Security represent these partnerships, the majority of which are with the largest agribusiness corporations in the world (O’Driscoll, 2012).
One of the most recent global initiatives representing this group of stakeholders is the WEF New Vision for Agriculture Initiative formed in 2010. WEF is an international nonprofit organization composed of the top global businesses, dedicated to “improving the world by engaging business, political and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas” (WEF, 2013b). The New Vision initiative is led by 29 private partners, among them Cargill, DuPont, General Mills, Heineken, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Syngenta, and Wal-Mart (WEF, 2013b), a group that “represents the entire supply chain, from seeds, chemical inputs, production, processing, transport and trade, to supermarkets” (Paul & Steinbrecher, 2013, p. 2).
The arguments
From this perspective, food insecurity is caused by the lack of sufficient food production, a lack of gender equity, and lack of economic resources to buy food. Private investment in commercial high-input agriculture in Africa using biotechnology will lead to increased food production and increased international trade which will result in increased incomes; smallholder farmers can be a part of this supply chain, or value chain, by earning income through working as contract farmers or wage laborers (WEF, 2013b). Women smallholder contract farmers can produce more food if they have equal access to the inputs of market agricultural extension programs (Fan, 2013) where they can be educated on the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and GM seeds that are drought-resistant and/or have other properties that lead to increased yields. Participation in the marketplace will be achieved by selling their crops to the companies they have contracted with. This will increase women’s economic resources rather than relying on subsistence farming to supplement their family’s nutrition. Biofuels are embraced by this group of stakeholders as the best solution to reduce greenhouse emissions; women can also participate in contract farming or wage labor in harvesting these crops as an avenue to generating more income (Nadelman, 2010). Violence against women is considered a crucial problem that impacts food security through disabling women’s agricultural productivity (WEF, 2013a).
Civil Society Organizations, Social Movements, and Allies
The second group of stakeholders is composed of food sovereignty advocates including civil society organizations and social movements representing farmworkers, farmers, consumers, and women, La Via Campesina, and their allies such as the U.N. Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Shutter, and the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition from the FAO-based World Committee on Food Security (High Level Panel of Experts, 2013). This group of stakeholders supports agroecology as a sustainable and productive alternative to biotechnology that will lead to increased food security: The core principles of agroecology include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather than introducing external inputs, integrating crops and livestock, diversifying species and genetic resources in agroecosystems over time and space, and focusing on interactions and productivity across the agricultural system, rather than focusing on individual species. Agroecology is highly knowledge-intensive, based on techniques that are not delivered top-down but developed on the basis of farmers’ knowledge and experimentation. (De Shutter, 2010, p. 6)
Agroecology is environmentally sustainable method of food production because it encourages biodiversity and produces food efficiently without the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. Research to date on crop yield in agroecological projects have shown an average increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, and an average increase of 116% for all African projects (De Shutter, 2011).
The arguments
Food sovereignty stakeholders argue that the cause of food insecurity is not a lack of food production but a lack of entitlement and equitable distribution of food, an analysis supported by the research of the economist Amartya Sen (Patel, 2012). They clearly identify the economic dimension of globalization and the agro–industrial model as threats to food security and sustainable development, an argument supported by a recent report by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (2013) that incorporated the views of more than 60 international experts. Food security is threatened by IFI-determined conditions of international trade, and countries relying on the increase of food exports to grow their economies in order to buy imported food. Instead, it is argued that local and national economies should be able to protect their markets if they choose to and rely on their own food production for food security.
Food security is also threatened by the agro–industrial model itself, which depends on large-scale monocultures (the cultivation of a single crop in a given area) of GM crops that are modified for use with specific herbicides and pesticides which strip the soil of its nutrients, threatening biodiversity, the environment (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2013), and ultimately food production. This group of stakeholders attributes 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions to the globalized food production system through production and distribution, including the production of biofuels (GRAIN, 2011).
Gender equity is addressed through the food sovereignty movement as led by La Via Campesina through multiple strategies. One of these strategies is the development in 2008 of the
Applying a PCFSW to Global Food Security
The application of a PCFSW facilitates an analysis of these two very different positions. In the analysis, the discussion will begin with the (1) the context of globalization and global inequality and its impact on food security, (2) the collective agency of women expressed through resistance to patriarchal and global economic oppression through their engagement with La Via Campesina, and (3) the power of discourse in erasing the knowledge and experiences of peasant farmer women and men in contributing to solutions to the issue of food security. Finally, social work implications will be discussed.
Globalization and Global Inequality: Threats to Food Security
Unfair Trade
In relation to food security, developing countries that join the WTO must agree to open their markets by removing tariffs on imported goods and agricultural subsidies, while the United States, European Union, and Japan maintain these subsidies, enabling lower prices for their agricultural goods in the global marketplace. These policies have resulted in the inability of two thirds of developing countries to produce food to feed their own populations, having become net food exporters to net importers of food since the 1980s (Fritz, 2011).
From a neoliberal perspective, this situation is not a barrier to food security because expanding cash crop exports is a strategy to increase economic growth, which will result in more income to spend on food imports which will to decrease food insecurity (WEF, 2013b). However, because poor households in developing countries spend most of their income on food (Plan UK, 2010), dependence on imported food increases their vulnerability to global price hikes. Higher food prices mean less money for education and health care, both of which require user fees as required by neoliberal policies imposed by IFIs and put additional pressure on strained household budgets (Fook, 2011).
Gendered Threats to Food Security
The economic dimensions of globalization have a gendered impact on food security. First, the commercialization of land use for large-scale agriculture for the production of export crops has disrupted rural livelihoods, resulting in male migration to cities to find work. Women are left as the sole caregivers for their families and are still central to household food security and their children’s health (Paul & Steinbrecher, 2013). Women take on the full responsibility for subsistence farming, often with no legal protection or rights to property ownership. These added responsibilities are in addition to the work they normally do gathering resources for the household such as firewood and water, preparing meals, and tending livestock (Gender Action, 2012) often on common and customary lands. The commercialization of these lands for the agro-industrial food production supply chain undermines poor rural women's control over their lives and increases their food insecurity through the combination of land loss and rising food prices.
Feminization of agricultural wage labor
These economic disruptions contribute to the growing “feminization of the lowest rungs of labor on commercial farms” (Oxfam, 2013, p. 6). Women represent 20–30% of all waged agricultural workers in the world and are disproportionately perform unskilled labor, without a formal contract, for work that is often seasonal or temporary. Payment for work is calculated on a piece-rate basis, according to task completion. Women often bring their children to work with them as “helpers” in order to make enough money to survive, thus contributing to the problem of child labor, 70% of which is agrarian (De Shutter, 2012). Finally, women are often “assigned the worst jobs … such as spraying chemicals with inadequate or no protective clothing and often little access to water to wash off residues” (Paul & Steinbrecher, 2013, p. 11).
Seeds and agricultural knowledge
Women are often the seed-keepers of communities, using locally adapted seed that has been handed down, with special skills in selecting and storing it. Agricultural inputs in the form of GM seeds that are dependent on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, deprive women of the important role they have historically played in agriculture and dismisses their specialized knowledge and skills (Paul & Steinbrecher, 2013). Because agroecology emphasizes the capability of local communities to experiment, evaluate and scale-up innovations through farmer-to-farmer research, and grassroots extension approaches (Altieri & Toledo, 2011) the agricultural knowledge of women can be honored and shared, providing an opportunity for women’s empowerment (Lopes & Jomalinas, 2011).
Collective Resistance to Patriarchal and Structural Oppression
While the economic dimensions of globalization create new forms of structural oppression, the social dimensions of globalization create new opportunities for organized resistance through exchanges of information via the Internet and social media. La Via Campesina is a prime example of this, as an international peasant farmer movement with regional and international conferences, a website that includes blogs, pictures, videos, and campaigns, a Facebook fan page, LinkedIn, and a twitter account.
The movement is unique due to the role of women as key participants and leaders; it stands out in the history and current day practices of peasant movements and international social movements and organizations (Wiebe, 2013). The women of La Via Campesina resist both patriarchy and neoliberalism through their engagement with feminism using a variety of methods: by creating spaces to develop leadership in the organization, by initiating campaigns, and by fighting for food sovereignty. The women of La Via Campesina address this complexity through a variety of methods, by creating spaces to share their voices and develop leadership, by participating and influencing decision making within the organization, by initiating and managing campaigns, and by fighting for food sovereignty.
In 2000, women initiated the first women’s assembly at the international gathering, which has been continued at every subsequent international conference. The women’s assembly has been a powerful space for sharing experiences and developing leadership capacity. During this same conference, women successfully advocated for structural changes within the organization to ensure gender parity in leadership by changing the International Coordinating Committee, the decision-making body of the organization, to include two members from each of the regions, one male and one female (Wiebe, 2013).
In 2008, women of La Via Campesina launched a global Violence Against Women campaign, which includes training and education within local movements, targeting both women and men. Violence against women is defined as a product of patriarchy and capitalism that is manifested interpersonally and structurally. Structural violence is perpetrated against peasant women by agribusiness through environmental destruction, dispossession of land, poor working conditions, and through exposure to pesticides and chemical poisons that lead to illness and infertility (La Via Campesina, 2012).
The goal of food sovereignty captures the vision of a world for women and men without exploitation and domination. At the most recent international conference, a member of women’s assembly who fought Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Cuba, “I am a peasant and a feminist. And I recognize that ours is a long struggle even within our peasant movement but we must fight on to achieve food sovereignty in the fullest sense of the term, which of necessity means the full sovereignty of women” (Aziz, 2013, ¶ 6).
The Power of Discourse
Through the neoliberal discourse on the impact of gender equity on food insecurity, there is an echo of the colonial discourse that women are oppressed due to their patriarchal cultures and are in need of being saved. A PCFSW perspective acknowledges this oppression but cautions against decontextualizing women's experiences and denying their agency in defining their own problems and participating in the design of proposed solutions.
When patriarchal oppression is seen outside of the context of history and power, the responsibility of IFIs’ neoliberal policies and agribusiness practices in creating and exacerbating these conditions is erased. The subtext is that men and women of the global South are uneducated, uninformed, and bound to their traditional patriarchal practices, unwilling or unable to make change without the assistance of powerful global forces.
All women, especially those who are marginalized, must have the power to define their own experiences and to participate in the analysis of, and solutions to, the problems they face. They are part of communities that include marginalized men, who have also been denied access to power in decision making. Finally, the local knowledge and expertise of peasant men and women must be acknowledged and built upon, rather than being dismissed in favor of biotechnological knowledge. Within the constellation of neoliberal global food initiatives, women are targeted to benefit from their interventions, but their voices are not represented as partners in leadership and decision making in world agriculture and food policy, as is also the case of peasant farmer men (GRAIN, 2013; De Shutter, 2012).
Implications for Social Work
The goal of eradicating food insecurity requires a thorough analysis of the historical and current injustices that shape the current food system. A PCFSW perspective enables this analysis and reveals that the route to achieving this goal that is most in concert with social work values of self-determination and social justice is food sovereignty via agroecology, as it reflects the concerns of those most affected by the policies, peasant women and men.
This analysis provides a clear path forward for social workers and change advocates to follow the lead of La Via Campesina in identifying the gendered impact of the global, national, and local policies we need to be engaged with: international financial policies, free trade, and agricultural policy. Increasingly, global women’s advocacy organizations are taking on a focus on women’s rights and human rights that includes attention to social and economic justice, community rights, and the role of IFIs in compromising these rights (Baruch, 2013). An innovative campaign initiated by the group Gender Action is the Global Gender IFI Watcher Network, which aims to allow “large numbers of activists to collectively hold IFI investments accountable to prevent negative gender impacts and ensure positive gender outcomes” (Bretton Woods Project, n.d., ¶ 1). After joining the networks, members can access online training modules and find information on how to conduct gender analyses, hold IFIs accountable, and collaborate and form coalitions.
The groundbreaking work of La Via Campesina on gender equity and food sovereignty is a model of the type of internal-organizational and global social movement work that is necessary to achieve women’s rights within the context of social and economic justice for communities. It is important that change advocates and social workers to find ways to further understand and support La Via Campesina. This work should include internal and external advocacy targeted toward global food security initiatives led by PPPs for inclusion of the perspectives of the members of La Via Campesina and their allies. Through these strategies, contemporary discourse on peasant women and men can be challenged.
A PCFSW perspective can be applied in a variety of areas for future research such as human trafficking, sweatshops, risk, and resilience within migrant and refugee communities. Research using this perspective can contextualize the historical and global backdrop from which these phenomena occur, and the individual and collective agency of women and the communities they come from.
The constraints and possibilities introduced by globalization are complex and can be overwhelming. It is urgent that we take the time to wade into this complexity in order to ethically teach, research, and practice in such a way that we can contribute to the possibilities rather than add to the constraints. It is hoped that a better understanding of the application of this theoretical perspective can facilitate this challenge.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.