Abstract (eng)
Recalling the global food crisis in 2007/08, this thesis seeks to shed light on the complex linkage of three trends and their implications for the human right to food and other dimensions of food sovereignty from a food regime perspective: the consolidation of the neoliberal international trade regime, persisting large inequalities in government support for domestic agricultural producers between so-called developed and developing countries, and increasing industrialization pressures on agricultural systems in developing countries.
Based on a critical realist ontology and epistemology, these linkages are examined in two ways, following an introduction into the principles of food sovereignty:
In a first step, the thesis confronts the orthodox, neoclassical understanding of free trade, subsidization and industrialization of agriculture with perspectives of political economy, illuminating their social, political, economic, cultural and ecological effects in general terms. In a second step, these linkages and effects are discussed empirically on the basis of
*) the subsidization scheme of the EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy),
*) the industrialization pressures arising from the AGRA network (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa),
*) and the economic liberalization processes connected to the EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreements), free trade agreements between the EU and the ACP states currently under negotiation.
The findings show that political economic theory is better suited to explain and predict the effects on food security and sovereignty in developing countries than economic orthodoxy: agricultural subsidization in the Global North leads to dumping, and thereby the displacement of smallholders in the so-called developing countries. This displacement is facilitated by increased trade liberalization and intensified by the power and wealth concentration processes inherent in industrialized agriculture. Further effects discussed in this thesis include
*) the increasing poverty, unemployment, urbanization and food import dependency connected to the displacement of smallholder farmers;
*) environmental degradation and climate change, as well as detrimental effects on human and animal health associated with industrialized agriculture;
*) and increased vulnerability to price volatility, a loss of self-determination and policy space, as well as the loss of land and seed rights of farmers, due to the integration of smallholders in global supply chains and various WTO rules and provisions of free trade agreements.
Overall, the orthodox paradigm, promoting agricultural industrialization and trade liberalization, leads to a loss of food sovereignty in the Global South. In order to ensure food sovereignty sustainably, a paradigm shift towards agroecological small-scale farming is proposed, in combination with a relaxation of liberalization pressures on developing countries, and especially LDCs.