Abstract
Attempts to democratize the food system and make it more equitable through food sovereignty take many forms across space. In Cuba, food sovereignty is perceived as the promotion of small-scale farming methods informed by agroecology and permaculture. However, these practices are mediated by discourses of self-sufficiency in the context of the US blockade. Simultaneously, in Basque country, Spain, food sovereignty shapes community-supported agriculture initiatives, farmer union and cooperative-based work, and a deep appreciation for regional foods. In this context, food sovereignty is perceived as part of the struggle to maintain Basque identity and autonomy. In this paper, I discuss how food sovereignty is defined and understood by outside actors who traveled to either Cuba or Basque country to understand how food sovereignty is being practiced in place. As educators, farmers, students, retirees, farmworker organizers, and activists meet in these spaces, I ask how do definitions of food sovereignty differ? I argue that food sovereignty ‘sits in places’ and travelers have difficulty discerning what food sovereignty is when confronted with unfamiliar practices. Findings suggest that such educational tourism is an attempt to create a meaningful space for dialogue about food sovereignty and as a touchstone it offers opportunities for participant discussions, however, understandings of food sovereignty are subject to confusion and alternate conceptions and thus, do not always travel well.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The conferences were held at Yale University in New Haven in September 2013 and at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague in January 2014. Special issues of the Journal of Peasant Studies focused on “Global Agrarian Change” (Vol. 41, no. 5 and 6) and “Commentary: Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue” (Vol. 42 no. 1); Third World Quarterly, hosted “Food Sovereignty: convergence and contradictions, condition and challenges” (Vol. 36, no. 3); and Globalizations focused on “Food Sovereignty: Concept, Practice and Social Movements” (Vol. 12, no. 4). It should also be noted that Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies published special issues prior to the conferences on “Food Sovereignty in South Asia” (Vol. 26 no. 1–2).
Here I am not arguing whether either Spain or Cuba is practicing or achieving food sovereignty, but how people build perspectives of how food sovereignty is being practiced in these places. For further reading on the practice of food sovereignty in Cuba, see for example: Reardon and Perez (2010); Rosset et al. 2011; Leitgeb et al. (2016); in Spain see for example: Masso and Zografos (2014); Calvário (2017).
I have supplemented these abbreviated histories in some cases to have a more substantive discussion, but a detailed history is not possible given the scope of this paper. I suggest these resources for further reading: Basque Country: Clark (1990); Mansvelt-Beck (2005); Woodworth (2008); Bakaikoa et al. (2011); On Cuba: Ferrer (1999); Rosset and Benjamin (2002); Gray and Kapcia (2008); Wright (2012); Frank (2015); de la Caridad McCormack Bequer (2017); Fernandez et al. (2018).
References
Alkon, A.H., and T.M. Mares. 2012. Food Sovereignty in US Food Movements: Radical Visions and Neoliberal Constraints. Agriculture and Human Values 29 (3): 347–359.
Bartos, A.E. 2014. Discourses of food sovereignty from somewhere. Dialogues Hum Geogr 4 (2): 190–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820614537158.
Bakaikoa, B., E. Albizu, and Reno University of Nevada, Center for Basque Studies, and Universidad del País Vasco. 2011. Basque Cooperativism. Reno, NV: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno.
Bernstein, H. 2014. Food Sovereignty via the ‘Peasant Way’: A Sceptical View. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1031–1063.
Bilbao, J.Z., and O.O. Irizar. 2017. The Importance of Historical Context: A New Discourse on the Nation in Basque Nationalism? Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 23 (2): 134–154.
Borras, S.M., J.C. Franco, and S.M. Suárez. 2015. Land and Food Sovereignty. Third World Quarterly 36 (3): 600–617.
Burnett, K. 2014. Trouble in the Fields: Fair Trade and Food Sovereignty Responses to Governance Opportunities After the Food Crisis. Geopolitics 19 (2): 351–376.
Burnett, K., and S. Murphy. 2014. What Place for International Trade in Food Sovereignty? The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1065–1084.
Calvário, R. 2017. Food Sovereignty and New Peasantries: On Re-Peasantization and Counter-Hegemonic Contestations in the Basque Territory. Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (2): 402–420.
de la Caridad McCormack Bequer, M. 2017. Agricultural Policy and Rural Development in Cuba, the Public Agriculture Section. Florida Journal of International Law 29: 17.
Carolan, M. 2014. Getting to the Core of Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Relationality with Limits? Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2): 218–220.
Clapp, J. 2014. Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Getting Past the Binary. Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2): 206–211.
Clark, P. 2016. Can the State Foster Food Sovereignty? Insights from the Case of Ecuador. Journal of Agrarian Change 16 (2): 183–205.
Clark, R.P. 1990. Negotiating with ETA: Obstacles to Peace in the Basque Country, 1975-1988. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.
Cresswell, T. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Cresswell, T. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
Desmarais, A.A. 2003. The Via Campesina: Peasant Women at the Frontiers of Food Sovereignty. Canadian Woman Studies 23 (1): 140–145.
Edelman, M. 2014a. Food Sovereignty: Forgotten Genealogies and Future Regulatory Challenges. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 959–978.
Edelman, M. 2014b. The Next Stage of the Food Sovereignty Debate. Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2): 182–184.
Edelman, M., T. Weis, A. Baviskar, S.M. Borras, E. Holt-Giménez, D. Kandiyoti, and W. Wolford. 2014. Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 911–931.
Escobar, A. 2001. Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization. Political Geography 20 (2): 139–174.
Fairbairn, M. 2010. Framing Resistance: International Food Regimes and the Roots of Food Sovereignty. In Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature & Community, ed. H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 15–32. Halifax, CA: Fernwood.
Fairbairn, M. 2012. Framing Transformation: The Counter-Hegemonic Potential of Food Sovereignty in the US Context. Agriculture and Human Values 29 (2): 217–230.
Fernandez, M., J. Williams, G. Figueroa, G.G. Lovelace, M. Machado, L. Vasquez, N. Perez, L. Casimiro, G. Romero, and F. Funes Aguilar. 2018. New Opportunities, New Challenges: Harnessing Cuba’s Advances in Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture in the Context of Changing Relations with the United States. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 6 (1): 76.
Ferrer, A. 1999. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Frank, M. 2015. Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Funes, F. 2002. Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Giunta, I. 2014. Food sovereignty in ecuador: peasant struggles and the challenge of institutionalization. J Peasant Stud 41 (6): 1201–1224. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.938057.
Gray, A.I., and A. Kapcia. 2008. The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Gupta, C. 2015. Return to Freedom: Anti-GMO Aloha Aina Activism on Molokai as an Expression of Place-Based Food Sovereignty. Globalizations 12 (4): 529–544.
Gupta, C. 2018. Contested Fields: An Analysis of Anti-GMO Politics on Hawaii Island. Agriculture and Human Values 35 (1): 181–192.
Hopma, J., and M. Woods. 2014. Political Geographies of ‘Food Security’ and ‘Food Sovereignty’. Geography Compass 8 (11): 773–784.
Jarosz, L. 2014a. Comparing Food Security and Food Sovereignty Discourses. Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2): 168–181.
Jarosz, L. 2014b. Considering Food Security, Sovereignty and Systems Narratives in Colin Sage’s Environment and Food. Sociologia Ruralis 54 (1): 105–108.
Kurlansky, M. 2001. The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation, Reprint ed. New York: Penguin Books.
Kurtz, H.E. 2015. Scaling Food Sovereignty: Biopolitics and the Struggle for Local Control of Farm Food in Rural Maine. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (4): 859–873.
La Vía Campesina. 1996. Policy Paper on Food Sovereignty. (http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/1996%20Declaration%20of%20Food%20Sovereignty.pdf). Accessed 23 October 2011.
Campesina, La Vía. 2007. Nyeleni Declaration. Selingue, Mali: Presented at the Forum for Food Sovereignty.
Lecuona, O.Z., and A.G. Alvarez. 1998. Sugar & Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837–1959. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Leitgeb, F., S. Schneider, and C.R. Vogl. 2016. Increasing Food Sovereignty with Urban Agriculture in Cuba. Agriculture and Human Values 33 (2): 415–426.
Leonisio, R., F. Molina, and D. Muro. 2016. ETA’s Terrorist Campaign: From Violence to Politics, 1968–2015. Abingdon: Routledge.
Levkoe, C. 2012. Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems. The Journal of Peasant Studies 40 (1): 293–297.
Louis, E. 2015. We plant only cotton to maximize our earnings: The paradox of food sovereignty in Rural Telengana, India. The Prof Geogr 67 (4): 586–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2014.983590.
Mansvelt-Beck, J. 2005. Territory and Terror: Conflicting Nationalisms in the Basque Country. New York: Routledge.
Martiniello, G. 2015. Food sovereignty as praxis: Rethinking the food question in Uganda. Third World Q 36 (3): 508–525. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1029233.
Martínez-Torres, M.E., and P.M. Rosset. 2010. La Vía Campesina: The Birth and Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement. The Journal of Peasant Studies 37 (1): 149–175.
Massey, D.B. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Masso, M.D., and C. Zografos. 2014. Constructing Food Sovereignty in Catalonia: Different Narratives for Transformative Action. Agriculture and Human Values 32 (2): 183–198.
McMichael, P. 2014. Historicizing Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 933–957.
McMichael, P. 2015. The Land Question in the Food Sovereignty Project. Globalizations 12 (4): 434–451.
Meek, D. 2015. Learning as Territoriality: The Political Ecology of Education in the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement. Journal of Peasant Studies 42 (6): 1179–1200.
Meek, D., K. Bradley, B. Ferguson, L. Hoey, H. Morales, P. Rosset, and R. Tarlau. 2017. Food Sovereignty Education across the Americas: Multiple Origins, Converging Movements. Agriculture and Human Values 1–16.
Meek, D., and R. Tarlau. 2016. Critical Food Systems Education (CFSE): Educating for Food Sovereignty. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 40 (3): 237–260.
Mees, L. 2015. Nationalist Politics at the Crossroads: The Basque Nationalist Party and the Challenge of Sovereignty (1998–2014). Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 21 (1): 44–62.
Miller, S.W. 2007. An Environmental History of Latin America, 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Muro, D. 2013. Ethnicity and Violence: The Case of Radical Basque Nationalism. New York: Routledge.
Murphy, A.B. 2018. Geography: Why it Matters. Cambridge: Polity.
Naylor, L. 2012. Hired Gardens and the Question of Transgression: Lawns, Food Gardens and the Business of ‘Alternative’ Food Practice. Cultural Geographies 19 (4): 483–504.
Naylor, L. 2017. A Place for GMOs in Food Sovereignty? Geographical Review 107 (4): 572–577.
Patel, R. 2009. Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (3): 663–706.
Pérez-Agote, A. 2006. The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.
Ramos, E. 2012. Fair Trade and the Role of Small Farmers and ARBs on Food Sovereignty in the Philippines. Kasarinlan Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 26 (1–2): 414–421.
Reardon, J.A.S., and R. Alemán Pérez. 2010. Agroecology and the Development of Indicators of Food Sovereignty in Cuban Food Systems. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 34 (8): 907–922.
Rosset, P. 2009. Fixing Our Global Food System: Food Sovereignty and Redistributive Land Reform. Monthly Review An Independent Socialist Magazine 61 (3): 114–128.
Rosset, P., and M. Benjamin (eds.). 2002. The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba’s Experiment with Organic Agriculture. Melbourne, Vic. Australia: Ocean Press.
Rosset, P., R. Patel, and M. Courville. 2006. Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Spinney, J. 2010. Performing Resistance? Re-Reading Practices of Urban Cycling on London’s South Bank. Environment and Planning A 42 (12): 2914–2937.
Trang, T.T.T. 2012. Food security versus food sovereignty: choice of concept, policies, and classes in Vietnam’s post-reform economy. Kasarinlan Philippine J Third World Stud 26 (1–2): 68–88.
Trauger, A. 2014. Toward a Political Geography of Food Sovereignty: Transforming Territory, Exchange and Power in the Liberal Sovereign State. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1131–1152.
Trauger, A. 2017. We Want Land to Live: Making Political Space for Food Sovereignty. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Tuan, Y. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Tuan, Y. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Williams, J.M. 2017. Otros Caminos: Making an Alternative Agriculture Movement in Everyday Cuba. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina.
Wilson, M. 2016. Cuban Exceptionalism? Alternative Food Networks in the (Post)Colonial Caribbean. In Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggles for Food Sovereignty: Alternative Food Networks in Subaltern Spaces, ed. M. Wilson, 146–174. New York: Routledge.
Wittman, H., A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe. 2010. Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature & Community. Halifax, CA: Fernwood.
Woodworth, P. 2008. The Basque Country: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, J. 2012. Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity: Lessons from Cuba, 1st ed. New York: Routledge.
Wright, T.C. 2001. Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the writing group in the Department of Geography and the participants in the UD Food Intersections paper workshop: Ali Alkon, Kristin Reynolds, Sarah Lyon, and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern for their initial review of this manuscript. Additional thanks to Joe Jasper for support during fieldwork and writing. Above all, I am indebted to the tour participants for many great chats over good food and for their time following the trip as well. This paper was substantially improved through the peer review process and I am grateful to Harvey James and the anonymous reviewers for their care and generous reviews of the manuscript. Funding for the larger project from which the data in this paper is gleaned was supported by the University of Delaware: Global Area Studies Program Faculty Research Award and the General University Research Program Award.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Naylor, L. Food sovereignty in place: Cuba and Spain. Agric Hum Values 36, 705–717 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09938-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09938-x