Food sovereignty: sustainable solution to world hunger and climate change

Resumen

The link between hunger and climate change is already known and is not new in the literature, especially if we take into account only the national level and trade related. The intense land use to produce just one cultivation, the burning and deforestation methods applied to clear the soil and to make the crops rotations, which damage the mineral resources and displace animals from their habitats, jointly with the intense use of pesticides and transgenic technology in the agriculture, such as in soy and corn cultures, are related to the increase of hunger in the world because hunger is not only about production, but also consumption (income of people and quality of food choices) and distribution (food waste and poor people access to food), and the way the soil is managed is crucial for the production of nutritious quality food. However, an underexplored approach has great potential to provide important elements in the search for a sustainable and lasting solution to those issues. This approach is the concept of food sovereignty. The concept of food sovereignty includes production and consumption in local level, but aiming the collective well-being, through using sustainable techniques to produce food (natural fertilizers, adequate planting and collection cycles for each type of food, no use of artificial pesticides and adequate soil management without deforesting, polluting or burning areas), prioritizing family farming and the supply of more nutritious and quality food. This concept addresses some possible solutions to two of the most bother issues in the present time in a multi-level analysis to counter economic and political marginalization. Food sovereignty practices would lead us to end, or at least reduce, the hunger situations and the problems related to climate changes as long as we improve our food systems to efficient, but also more human ones.