5 A’s of Food Security

From Ryerson University

Accessibility – physical and economic access to food for all at all times

Availability – sufficient food for all people at all times everywhere

Acceptability/Appropriateness – access to culturally acceptable food, which is produced and obtained in ways that do not compromise people’s dignity, human rights or self-respect

Adequacy – access to food that is nutritious and safe, and produced in environmentally sustainable ways

Agency – the policies and processes that enable the achievement of food security

Food Sovereignty

from Via Campesina

1. Food as a Basic Human Right
   Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in a suffficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.
2. Agrarian Reform
   A genunie agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control over the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples.
3. Protecting Natural Resources
   Ensures ustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, seeds, and livestock breeds. Includs the right to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights.
4. Reorganizing Food Trade
   Food is the first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National food self-sufficiency must be prioritized through agricultural policies for domestic consumption.
5. Ending the Globalization of Hunger
   Food sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and speculative capital. An enforced code of conduct for Transnational Corporations is needed.
6. Social Peace
   Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, oppression and increasing incidence of racism against smallholder farmers must not be tolerated.
7. Democratic Control
   Small holder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The UN and other related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.