Entitlement vs. Food Sovereignty Approaches: Challenges for sustainable food and nutrition security in the changing agrarian landscape in Tamil Nadu, India.
ABSTRACT
The present day reality is that the
laudable economic growth has not able to conquer the alarming rate of poverty,
hunger and malnutrition in the world. The support-led and growth-mediated
intervention measures provide grounds for farmers to opt for different
livelihood options, determining their access and rights to food. Based on the
fieldwork carried out in Anchetty panchayat in the northwest corner of Tamil
Nadu, India, the paper examines how the entitlement and food sovereignty approaches
to food security interact with the aspirations and rights of small farmers to
seek diverse livelihoods in the changing landscape of agrarian economy and
livelihood opportunities. It demonstrates that while entitlement approach lacks
recognition of local actors and remains silent about ecological resources and
biodiversity, food sovereignty approach seems too ideological to the rights of
local actors and fails to capture the limitation of their freedom of choice and
creating strategies to benefit from the contemporary knowledge economy. The
paper suggests that any intervention for promoting food and nutrition security
must understand the process of changes in the agrarian landscape, as they are
based on the context specific ecology of practice.
This is copyright protected material.
For details, please hit Entitlement vs. Food Sovereignty
