Food Sovereignty
“Food sovereignty is peoples' right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute, and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.”
Excerpted from the Declaration of Nyéléni, 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali.
WHAT IS FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
Food sovereignty efforts feed the revolution and lead from the heart.
Impactful work from organizations and communities, like our own and our partners and comrades, seeks to:
Ensure food security
Promote self-determination, social equity, and ecological sustainability
Heal our communities and provide nourishment for our health
Preserve our cultures, heritage, and ancestral knowledge
Create economic opportunity within our communities
Activate others toward community advocacy
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The six (6) principles of food sovereignty as outlined in the Declaration of Nyéléni, 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali.
Focuses on Food for People: Food sovereignty stresses the right to sufficient, healthy and culturally appropriate food for all individuals, peoples and communities, including those who are hungry or living under occupation, in conflict zones and marginalized. Food sovereignty rejects the proposition that food is just another commodity for international agribusiness.
Values Food Providers: Food sovereignty values and supports the contributions, and respects the rights, of women and men, peasants and small scale family farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, forest dwellers, indigenous peoples and agricultural and fisheries workers, including migrants, who cultivate, grow, harvest and process food; and rejects those policies, actions and programs that undervalue them, threaten their livelihoods and eliminate them.
Localizes Food Systems: Food sovereignty brings food providers and consumers together in common cause; puts providers and consumers at the center of decision-making on food issues; protects food providers from the dumping of food and food aid in local markets; protects consumers from poor quality and unhealthy food, inappropriate food aid and food tainted with genetically modified organisms; and resists governance structures, agreements and practices that depend on and promote unsustainable and inequitable international trade and give power to remote and unaccountable corporations.
Makes Decisions Locally: Food sovereignty seeks control over and access to territory, land, grazing, water, seeds, livestock and fish populations for local food providers. These resources ought to be used and shared in socially and environmentally sustainable ways which conserve diversity. Food sovereignty recognizes that local territories often cross geopolitical borders and advances the right of local communities to inhabit and use their territories; it promotes positive interaction between food providers in different regions and territories and from different sectors to resolve internal conflicts or conflicts with local and national authorities; and rejects the privatization of natural resources through laws, commercial contracts and intellectual property rights regimes.
Builds Knowledge and Skills: Food sovereignty builds on the skills and local knowledge of food providers and their local organizations that conserve, develop and manage localized food production and harvesting systems, developing appropriate research systems to support this and passing on this wisdom to future generations. Food sovereignty rejects technologies that undermine, threaten or contaminate these, e.g. genetic engineering.
Works with Nature: Food sovereignty uses the contributions of nature in diverse, low external input agroecological production and harvesting methods that maximize the contribution of ecosystems and improve resilience and adaptation, especially in the face of climate change. Food sovereignty seeks to heal the planet so that the planet may heal us; and, rejects methods that harm beneficial ecosystem functions, that depend on energy intensive monocultures and livestock factories, destructive fishing practices and other industrialized production methods, which damage the environment and contribute to global warming.
HISTORICAL HARM AND ABOLITION
In the United States, Black people have a long history of being denied equal rights, land, and food sovereignty. From slavery to sharecropping, Black labor and culture has been exploited for the wealth of the ruling class, White people, and foreign allies of the state. Throughout the 20th century, Black farmers lost and were displaced from millions of acres of land to racist, violent, and discriminatory practices such as denied access to credit, capital, and loans, unjust land seizures, legal challenges, and the loss of their property.
“As a result of colonial genocide, land grabbing, USDA discrimination, state-level nativism, lynching, and expulsion, over 98% of the farmland in this county is owned by white Americans today. Ralph Paige of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives put it simply, “Land is the only real wealth in this country and if we don’t own any we’ll be out of the picture.” We need a nationwide commitment to share the land back, so that all communities can have the means of production for food security.”
Leah Penniman, founder and director of Soul Fire Farm.
This systemic land dispossession is not only an economic loss; it is a direct attack on the self-determination, cultural preservation, and the wellness of Black communities. Without control over land and food, the foundations of life, Black people are denied the ability to nurture our families, build generational wealth, and pass on our ancestral wisdom. This is where the connection to abolition becomes clear. Abolition, an effort to dismantle the carceral state, challenges all forms of structural oppression, including those that deny Black people the right to land and food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is vital to liberation because it creates conditions where we are no longer dependent on or exploited by systems that have historically sought to harm and oppress us.
Our organization, which takes a home on the Confederated Villages of the Lisjan (Ohlone), cannot reckon with any discussion of land and food sovereignty without also reckoning with the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples, upon whose lands these struggles take place. The fight for Black liberation and food sovereignty is intrinsically linked to the Land Back movement, which seeks to return stolen lands to Indigenous peoples. Solidarity between these movements is essential because both are rooted in the right to self-determination, the need to heal from the traumas of colonialism, and the shared goal of creating resilient, just, and equitable food systems.
Together, these movements confront the intertwined legacies of settler colonialism, genocide, slavery, and capitalism. By supporting both food sovereignty and Land Back, we recognize that true liberation for Black and Indigenous peoples in the U.S. requires the dismantling of the systems that have stolen land, labor, and life from marginalized communities. This solidarity strengthens the resilience of all oppressed peoples, offering a path toward collective healing, justice, and a future where everyone has the right to land, food, and freedom.
When we are engaged in struggles against racist violence, for example, we have to talk about the militarization of the police. And if we talk about the militarization of the police, we are compelled to connect that to what is happening in occupied Palestine.
Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
FOOD AS A POLITICAL WEAPON
In many parts of the world, food is more than sustenance; it has become a political weapon wielded by those in power to control, oppress, and starve entire populations into submission.
From Palestine to Sudan to the Congo, structural starvation and food insecurity are not the results of natural scarcity or mismanagement but are deliberately engineered by regimes, occupying forces, and multinational corporations to maintain dominance and suppress resistance.
"Food is used as a political weapon but if you have a pig in your backyard, if you have some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and your family & nobody can push you around…"
Fannie Lou Hamer
In Palestine, the Israeli occupation uses food and resources as tools of control, enforcing blockades that limit the import of food, water, and agricultural supplies to the people of Gaza. This manufactured scarcity is a form of collective punishment, meant to weaken the Palestinian people’s resolve and force them into submission. Despite these efforts, the Palestinian people fight for their land, lives, sovereignty, and the basic right to feed their families.
Similarly, in Sudan, the ongoing conflict and political instability have led to the deliberate destruction of agricultural infrastructure, displacement of farming communities, and manipulation of food aid. The weaponization of food in this context exacerbates existing inequalities and leaves millions facing starvation, all while those in power use hunger as a means of quelling dissent and controlling the population.
In the Congo, rich in natural resources, food insecurity is driven by the exploitation of land and labor by multinational corporations and armed groups. The plundering of resources for profit, combined with the violence and instability it fuels, has led to widespread hunger and displacement. Here, food is both a casualty of conflict and a tool used by various actors to exert control over vulnerable populations.
These examples are not isolated incidents but are part of a broader pattern of using food as a weapon of war and oppression. Structural starvation is a deliberate act of violence, designed to destroy communities from within by depriving them of the most basic human need. It is a tactic of control that cuts across borders and connects struggles from Black America to Palestine to Sudan to the Congo and beyond.
As we build movements for food sovereignty and justice, we must recognize that the struggle is global. The same forces that deny Black communities in the U.S. the right to land and food are at work in the ongoing oppression of people around the world. By linking our struggles and standing in solidarity with those facing structural starvation, we strengthen our collective resistance against all forms of oppression and move closer to a world where food is a source of nourishment, not a weapon of control.
We stand in love and solidarity with the people of Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, and others fighting for liberation around the world.
OUR ROLE
Feed Black Futures uplifts this movement through ecosystem building, advocacy, and education. We connect people, in all roles: community members, organizations, farmers, and market representatives together with a shared vision; liberating the land commons. Read more about our work on the Our Work page
