Paper short abstract:

Achieving food sovereignty, particularly in the Global South, requires a transformation of the food systems away from their current capitalist configuration. In this article, we discuss how politically engaged agroecology offers great potential in this respect, by empowering local communities.

Paper long abstract:

Food systems are at the centre of several environmental, socio-economic and health problems. There is increasing consensus that food systems transformation, away from their current capitalist configuration, is an urgent matter. We begin by noting that food systems are complex adaptive socio-ecological systems (CASESs) and discuss in detail the issue of transformation. In order to do so we build on theoretical ecology approaches to CASESs and bring in the historical materialist (HM) perspective. We show how the HM perspective is consistent with theoretical ecology approaches, while not ignoring issues of power and class (a common critique levied against the theoretical ecology scholarship on CASESs). According to historical materialism, CASESs emerge and persist through a metabolic relationship with the surrounding environment, regulated by a material/economic sphere and a cultural/institutional sphere. The two spheres interact dialectically, thus forming an autocatalytic configuration. Our framework implies that the transformation of food systems requires acting on both the material/economic and the cultural/institutional sphere simultaneously. Politically engaged agroecology, based on the demand for food sovereignty and on the empowerment of local communities, offers a great potential. We discuss it against other approaches that focus mainly on technical solutions (i.e., focusing only on the material/economic sphere while ignoring the cultural/institutional sphere), like for example the use of agro-biotechnology. In our discussion, we pay particular attention to the needs of the Global South.