Food sovereignty for health, agriculture, nutrition, and gender equity: Radical implications for Haiti

Motivation

Governments usually see food security in terms of the availability of and access to sufficient, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. Food justice scholars, however, see food production and provisioning, diet, nutrition, and health, and women's role in all of these aspects, as inherently political, resulting from, and intertwined with, history, politics, and economics. In state policy, these complex dynamics are often siphoned into separate ministerial silos—health, gender, land, environment, trade, etc. Food sovereignty—a concept that addresses unequal power relations within food systems at scales from household to nation—is increasingly being incorporated into national policies, particularly in the global south. Haiti has recently introduced food sovereignty into its policy landscape, but the degree to which this inter-sectoral approach diverges or coalesces with past policies for food security has not been explored.

Purpose

How does food sovereignty shape policy in ways that differ from conventional food security framings? How would a food sovereignty policy address questions of land, gender, health, trade, and agriculture in ways that differ from past policies?

Methods and approach

We analyse the content of seven Haitian policies and plans, post-2010 earthquake, for agricultural development, food trade and tariffs, land and agrarian reform, gender, food preferences and cultures, and health—themes raised by food sovereignty. We explore how well the existing policies and plans correspond to the 2018 National Policy and Strategy for Food Sovereignty, Security and Nutrition in Haiti (Politique et Stratégie Nationales de Souveraineté et Sécurité Alimentaires et de Nutrition en Haïti—PSNSSANH).

Findings

Haiti's food sovereignty policy diverges significantly from previous policies and plans in the way it brings together related concerns. Specifically, Haiti's food sovereignty policy, in contrast to sectoral plans, focuses on smallholder farming, encourages the production and consumption of traditional foods, and aims to protect domestic food production from competition by imports. It addresses concerns about food safety, particularly aflatoxins in groundnuts. It recognizes the central role of women as farmers, traders of food (Madanm Sara) and guardians of children's diets. The only significant dimension of food sovereignty that is not fully addressed in the PSNSSANH is that of land and its distribution to those who farm it.

Policy implications

The PSNSSANH offers a new approach to food, connecting aspects of the Haitian food system that have previously been isolated—tariffs and trade, nutrition and health, production and consumption of traditional foods, peasant land tenure, and women food traders. It represents a radical reframing of issues and policies. Food security frameworks based on food sovereignty that recognize the links between farming, diet, and health can lead to visions of diets, landscapes, cultures, and economies very different to those of neoliberal analyses that focus on sectors with too little account of key interactions within food systems.