Food Sovereignty means a Free Palestine
How can food sovereignty movements act in material solidarity with Palestinians?
The beyond words horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians over the last nearly 2 months has shocked so many of us to our core. Not that genocide of Palestinians is new, not that the ethnic cleansing is new—they have been subject to slow (and fast) death since at least 1948 as a result of Israeli settler colonialism.
For those of us involved in the movements for food sovereignty this moment must be provide a rupture from which everything changes. The centrality of anti-colonial struggles, embodied through the Palestinian resistance and will to exist as a free people, must become central to our struggle for food sovereignty. Palestine and anti-colonial struggles must no longer be ignored. Otherwise food sovereignty—in the Global North—is a continuation of Western imperialism.
Food sovereignty has to be based on land back and liberation for all on earth. It cannot be some niche rhetorical phrase that is invoked to signal something radical sounding when convenient. It has to be backed up a substantiation of its claims and promises. It cannot just be reduced to “localism” as some authors claim. It has to mean something more than the continuation of the colonial, capitalist food system dressed up in a new “regenerative” outfit. The ongoing and rapid cooptation of regenerative agriculture cannot also mean the cooptation of food sovereignty, and it’s time for the movement, in the UK at the very least, to have a serious think about what it enables and what it constrains. Whose interests does it serve? The overwhelming public response in solidarity with Palestine is a wake-up call and our movements must raise their expectations of themselves.
So what does material support for Palestine mean for organisations involved in food sovereignty? Let’s look at the actions of those organisations who are leading the way.
La Via Campesina are boycotting COP28 in solidarity with Palestine, due to the ongoing genocide and the fact that Israel will be allowed to participate at COP28. They have also called for targeted BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction). They call on other organisations to do the same. Land In Our Names have been attending the national marches for Palestine in London. A Growing Culture have been relentlessly speaking out and raising awareness and political consciousness through social media. CASAS and the Agrarian South Network have both released strong petitions. Joanne Coates started #Farmers4Ceasefire. There will be many others in different places and in different languages doing the same. However, unfortunately there are still some food sovereignty aligned organisations that have not even released statements, or some that have released statements many weeks ago, and shared occasional petitions, but done no more. Now is the time to act, not to carry on as if we are not witnessing one of the worst atrocities in human history.
There is much we can do as the previous examples show. We can be forming food sovereignty blocs at national marches, organising and supporting BDS actions, establishing reading and study groups for raising political consciousness, and working to ensure that the liberation of Palestine (and other colonised peoples) is central to our struggles for food sovereignty.
The struggle for Palestinian liberation is also central to our own liberation. In Western countries like the UK, where I am, there is much we can do to undermine imperialism, and there are many ways we are also subject to its death-dealing and oppressive mechanisms (even if we are protected and in so many ways beneficiaries of value flows from the South, uneven ecological exchange and so on). In Western countries we are seeing rising fascism and this will be a threat to food sovereignty movements and there is risk of cooptation into a more nationalistic, colonial, racialised conception of food security carried by a greenwashed conception of regenerative agriculture. This is epitomised by the way Israel steals land, subjugates the Palestinian population and exports their labour as Israeli food produce all in service of a racist narrative of “greening the desert”. All whilst murdering Palestinians, extracting their water and making parts of Palestine uninhabitable and in the process unable to produce food. Israel is waging a high tech siege on Palestinians. This is clearly antithetical to food sovereignty.
If Food sovereignty as a movement is to rise to the challenge it must organise towards the material downfall of imperialism. That starts now in this moment. It’s time to increase the demands of our organisations and of ourselves. Food sovereignty means fighting our own colonial, imperial and increasingly fascists governments in the West. It means material solidarity with those in Global South who break their backs sending us cheapened goods. Food sovereignty means the downfall of imperialist agriculture, a free Palestine and liberation for all.
