World Food Policy
Food Sovereignty for Resilience?
W
hat we are dealing with here,
beyond the specifically tech-
nical aspect, is the role given
to family farmers in agricultural devel-
opment and food security in the Sahel.
This reveals the ambiguity of the pro-
grams implemented on behalf of food
security and family farming. On the one
hand, we say that we expect a lot from
these peasants to feed their contempo-
raries and provide jobs, etc. On the oth-
er hand, we tend to support practices
contrary to the development of these
peasantries. The suspicion that family
farmers use outdated practices, already
central to modernization policies sev-
eral decades ago, is never far away. In
short, we support peasants, but only in
the absence of a better alternative.
A case in point are the large-
scale agricultural investments that the
World Bank and, to a lesser extent, the
FAO continue to support, driven by a
vision of development based on free
investment and free trade. They are
content to remind investors of their
“responsibility” to limit the social and
environmental externalities, or to con-
sider the modalities of the least unequal
partnership possible between fami-
ly famers and large estates, based on
contract farming (Lallau 2012). In the
same way, despite numerous studies on
this issue (De Schutter 2014), the main
funding bodies strongly reject the idea
of re-establishing border protection
(without which, however, local agroin-
dustries and supply chains will be un-
able to thrive) and make the case, on
9
the contrary, for greater liberalization.
The EPA 9 between West Africa and the
European Union is a good example of
this: it places European producers and
West African producers in competition
within a single market, considering
them as equals and equally capable of
taking advantage of such a free trade
agreement. European officials con-
firmed in 2015 that excess in milk pow-
der production caused by the end of
milk quotas in Europe could easily find
outlets in emerging markets, including
in Africa. The European Union could
be accused of lacking consistency, given
the extent to which the EPA and AGIR
initiative appear to be in total contra-
diction. What about the resilience of
Sahelian agro-pastoralists? What about
the growth of West Africa’s milk supply
chain?
This also requires us to go be-
yond an often “nature-centred” con-
ception of resilience. Examining the
resilience of Sahelian farmers unique-
ly from the point of view of climate
change is far too limited. Of course, the
limitations imposed by the climate are
very real, and they are likely to increase
in the future. However, shocks and
stresses caused by global markets and
land grabbing are equally important
factors, and indeed more meaningful
than climatic variations for under-sup-
ported and under-equipped Sahelian
farmers. Such resilience should also be
considered in terms of a clash between
a Green Revolution model and alterna-
tive conceptions, based on agroecology,
food sovereignty, and peasant farming
Economic Partnership Agreement.
140