Social Movements,the State,and the Making of Food Sovereignty in Ecuador

Abstract

The 2008 Constitution was the political opening for food sovereignty in Ecuador. By framing food sovereignty as a right to sumak kawsay (living well), the indigenous and peasant movements garnered support from diverse social groups and sectors forming coalitions like the Red Agraria. Through these coalitions, the social movements have shaped and negotiated policy in new ways. The Red Agraria works with the state’s Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (COPISA) to formulate policies at local and regional levels and then negotiates these policies in the National Assembly. In this process, COPISA has helped create a synergistic relationship between civil society and the state. While it remains unclear whether social movements and the state will move toward implementation and practice, current gains in terms of synergies and opportunities for negotiation have been instrumental in institutionalizing food sovereignty.

La Constitución de 2008 fue la apertura política para la soberanía alimentaria en el Ecuador. Los movimientos indigenistas y campesinos han recibido el apoyo de diversos sectores y grupos sociales al concebir la soberanía alimentaria como un derecho a sumak kawsay (vivir bien). Al formar coaliciones como la Red Agraria, los movimientos sociales han formulado y negociado la política pública con nuevas estrategias. La Red Agraria trabaja con la Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (COPISA) del Estado para formular políticas a nivel local y regional y luego negociar estas políticas en la Asamblea Nacional. En este proceso COPISA ha ayudado a crear una relación sinérgica entre la sociedad civil y el estado. Aunque todavía no está claro si los movimientos sociales y el estado avanzarán hacia la implementación y la práctica, los logros alcanzados en términos de sinergias y oportunidades para la negociación han sido fundamentales para institucionalizar la soberanía alimentaria.

Keywords

Ecuador Social movements Food sovereignty Participatory organizations Policy making

The concept of food sovereignty was introduced by the transnational social movement La Via Campesina in 1996 as a counterframe to the food security paradigm. La Via Campesina represents peasants, small and medium-scale farmers, rural women, farmworkers, and indigenous organizations that promote food sovereignty as an alternative model for agriculture, one based on a value system in which culture and social justice ensure a future without hunger (Desmarais, 2007: 38). This model is farmer-driven and based on peasant production using local resources, ecological practices, and traditional knowledge. When the concept of food sovereignty was introduced, it focused on the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods while respecting cultural and productive diversity (Patel, 2010). Since then, the definition has expanded to include a variety of demands that makes food sovereignty what Patel (2010) calls a “big tent” of a word that lacks a central and consistent set of ideas or what Boyer (2010) describes as having “multiple layers” of understanding. An illustration of the range of demands within the conceptual framework of food sovereignty, is the following definition formalized by over 500 representatives of social organizations at the Nyéléni International Forum on Food Sovereignty in what is known as the Declaration of Nyéléni (2007):

Food sovereignty is the right of peoples 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. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users. Food sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal—fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and generations.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2014) defines “food security” as the situation in which “all people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” “Food sovereignty” goes beyond “food security” by including rights and decision making about “what is produced, how it is produced, and at what scale” (Desmarais, 2007: 34). In the simplest terms, food sovereignty is “precisely about invoking a right to have rights over food” (Patel, 2010: 186). The food sovereignty movement advocates for a new international trade regime, agrarian reform, a shift to agroecological production practices, attention to gender relations and equity, and the protection of intellectual and indigenous property rights (Wittman, 2011). Several countries have incorporated food sovereignty into their national constitutions and laws, including Venezuela, Mali, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nepal, and Senegal. However, the practice of food sovereignty, creating the structures and mechanisms to implement food sovereignty politics, remains “elusive” (McMichael, 2010) and “contentious” (Wittman, 2011), leading scholars like Patel (2010) to ask, “What does food sovereignty look like?”

This study focuses on the role that social movements and the state have played in the making of food sovereignty policy in Ecuador. Specifically, it seeks to understand how and why food sovereignty was incorporated into the 2008 Constitution and what relationship has developed between social movements and the state since then. Ecuador was one of the first countries to incorporate the concept of food sovereignty into a national constitution, offering a case study that Wittman, Aurelie, and Wiebe (2010: 9) suggest can “hold important lessons for food sovereignty movements and national governments elsewhere.” Through an in-depth analysis of the food sovereignty policy process—especially the policy-making workshops that the state agency Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (Plurinational and Intercultural Conference for Food Sovereignty—COPISA) organized between 2010 and 2012—this research advances understanding of how social movements and the state articulate food sovereignty policy while contributing to the literature and study of peasant and indigenous movements in Ecuador.

Drawing on data collected during fieldwork in 2012 (in-depth interviews and participatory observations) and employing the theoretical frameworks of political opportunities, strategic framing, and resource mobilization, this research posits three main arguments.¹ First, the 2008 Constitution was the political opening for food sovereignty. The process was participatory and decentralized, allowing social movements the opportunity to influence the writing of the food sovereignty principles of the constitution. Second, by broadening the scope of land use and territorial issues and framing food sovereignty as a right to the attainment of the Kichwa worldview sumak kawsay, peasant and indigenous movements have garnered support from a wide array of social groups and sectors. Third, this particular framing of food sovereignty is forging multiscalar alliances and coalitions that are providing the peasant and indigenous movements with the resources and organizational capacity to engage with the state to shape and negotiate policy in ways that differ from previous state-society interactions. This difference is evidenced in the way the coalition Red Agraria (Agrarian Network) works with COPISA to formulate policies at local and regional levels and then works within the National Assembly to negotiate these policies.

In this process, COPISA has cultivated a synergistic relationship between civil society and the state. However, despite early success, it remains unclear whether the evolving relationship between social movements and the state will move from food sovereignty policy formation and negotiation to food sovereignty policy implementation and practice.

Contextualizing Peasant and Indigenous Movements

The peasant and indigenous movements in Ecuador have a tradition of protest dating from the postcolonial land tenancy arrangements of the huasipungos and the agrarian reforms of the mid-twentieth century. The huasipungo was the socioeconomic organization in the Highlands based on territorial control, where the hacienda economy was linked to communities of huasipungueros, peasants who contributed permanent quotas of labor in exchange for small subsistence plots and low wage supplements (Zamosc, 1989). In the 1930s the Ecuadorean Communist Party organized unions to demand higher wages and better working conditions in the huasipungos. In 1944 the party helped form the Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (Ecuadorean Indian Federation—FEI) to advocate for the legal codification of the huasipungos and for indigenous rights (Becker, 2007). Demands to eliminate the hacienda system did not come till the 1950s, but more so in 1961 when the FEI organized 13,000 peasants to march in Quito calling for an agrarian reform (Barsky, 1988; Zamosc, 1989: 12).

Since then, the number of social movement organizations has grown considerably, calling attention to issues of land, territory, and indigenous rights. The most memorable mobilization was in 1990, when the indigenous movement led the National Indian Uprising, a 10-day protest that paralyzed the country with the removal of agricultural products from the market and the blocking of commercial transport on the Pan-American Highway. Among the demands of the uprising were recognition of indigenous territories in the Amazon, the continuation of the agrarian reform, and the expropriation of large landholdings (Deere and León de Leal, 2001: 240). As Yashar (2005: 146) documents, “the protest and demands highlighted the centrality of indgeneity and land in ways that had not been seriously considered by national politicians and the nonindigenous citizenry.” The indigenous national-level social movement organization at the forefront was the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador—CONAIE). However, other indigenous and peasant-based national organizations were also influential in this mobilization, primarily the Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas, y Negras del Ecuador (Federation of Peasant, Indigenous, and Black Organizations—FENOCIN), the Federación Ecuatoriana de Indígenas Evangélicos (Council of Indigenous Evangelical Peoples—FEINE), and the Confederación de los Pueblos de Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador (Federation of Peoples of the Kichwa Nationality of Ecuador—Ecuarunari).

In 1994 another rebellion provoked by peasants and indigenous people forced the government to form a commission with 50 percent indigenous membership to reform the Law of Agrarian Development. As Deere and León de Leal (2001) observe, several of the provisions of this law were “victories” for CONAIE and the indigenous and peasant movements. CONAIE was successful in requiring a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority for communal lands to be parceled and sold (Article 22) and in blocking the attempt to privatize water rights and requiring the state to recognize the rights of indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorean, and Montubian communities to their ancestral land (Article 36). Most notably, it achieved the inclusion of a provision that ensured that agricultural development would support national food security. As Clark and Becker (2007: 2) note, “the image of erudite Indians, in indigenous dress, negotiating directly with the national government . . . [was] a potent symbol of the changing relationship between Indians and the Ecuadorean state.” The success of the negotiations reflected the role of the indigenous movement as a “widely acknowledge[d] political actor” (Yashar, 2005).

CONAIE entered electoral politics by becoming part of the national political coalition the Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik (Pachakutik Movement for Plurinational Unity—or Pachakutik) in 1996. Changes in electoral procedures opened the door for CONAIE to influence legislation, negotiate constitutional changes, and gain access to state resources (Mijeski and Beck, 2011). Pachakutik was successful in winning eight seats in the National Assembly and several local and national-level races, and as a political movement it opposed Ecuador’s neoliberal economic policies. However, as Mijeski and Beck (2011: 128–129) point out, its potential for transforming the political system was “extremely limited from the start,” given its inability to garner more than 5 percent of the vote. To this end, they argue, CONAIE (as a social movement) has been far more strategic and effective in negotiating with the state than Pachakutik (as a political party).

The indigenous movements of Latin America are mounting a “postliberal challenge” that aims to restructure the way citizenship and democracy are conceptualized (Yashar, 2005: 285). The indigenous movement of Ecuador has been characterized as the most successful movement in Latin America (Jameson, 2011), having ousted three governments (those of Bucaram in 1997, Mahuad in 2000, and Gutiérrez in 2005), pushed for electoral recognition with the formation of the political party Pachakutik in 1996, and incorporated the recognition of indigenous rights into the 1998 Constitution (Becker, 2007) and the notions of sumak kawsay and plurinationalism into the 2008 Constitution (Becker, 2011).

The following research contributes to this literature by showing how the indigenous and peasant movements are pushing the state to restructure the politics that govern food with the making of a food sovereignty legal framework. It also shows how social movements and the state articulate the concept of food sovereignty as a national policy, contributing to literature on food sovereignty.

Institutionalizing Food Sovereignty

In 2007 over 80 percent of the Ecuadorean electorate approved a referendum to convoke a constituent assembly for the writing of a new constitution. With the election of President Rafael Correa in 2005, there was a political shift to the left, and, as Becker (2011: 48) notes, the new constitution was a “critical juncture for [the] indigenous movements [and a] historic opportunity to decolonize the country’s political structures.” The 2008 Ecuadorean Constitution is based on sumak kawsay, a Kichwa indigenous worldview that “embod[ies] the values of social justice, inclusion and equality” (Zimmerer, 2012: 602). Sumak kawsay is biocentric, integrating the natural with the human-social world. Indigenous movements of the Andes advocate for sumak kawsay as an alternative to capitalism, neoliberalism, and the classical traditions of modern Western thought (Gudynas, 2011; Muñoz, 2010; Walsh, 2010; Zimmerer, 2012). Food sovereignty was incorporated into the constitution as an entitlement for the attainment of sumak kawsay (Article 13). It is in the framework of sumak kawsay that food sovereignty emerges as a right, a strategy, and an obligation of the state to ensure that everyone can achieve self-sufficiency with respect to healthy and culturally appropriate food (Article 281). The state is also held responsible for regulating the use of and access to land to prohibit the (re)concentration of land (latifundios and minifundios) and the privatization of water resources (Article 282).

In 2009, the Food Sovereignty Law was approved to provide a general framework for food sovereignty. To develop this framework, the law created COPISA and made it responsible for fostering spaces for the deliberation and formulation of nine supplementary laws (Article 32). The food sovereignty supplementary laws are intended to address (1) land and the productive resources to produce on that land, (2) artisanal fishing, aquaculture, and the conservation of mangrove fisheries, (3) seeds, agrobiodiversity, and agroecology, (4) ancestral territory and communal property, 5) food safety regulations, (6) agro-industrial development and the agricultural workforce, (7) credits, subsidies, and insurance, (8) nutritional and consumer health, and (9) food trade and supply

Opening the Door to Food Sovereignty

The political process model for the study of social movements stresses the expansion of political opportunities as the ultimate spur to collective action (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, 1996: 7). The process of drafting the 2008 Constitution was the critical political opening for food sovereignty in Ecuador. The process was decentralized and participatory; social movement organizations had access to influential legislative allies and political alignments, allowing them to directly negotiate the principles of the food sovereignty regime of the constitution. The members of the constituent assembly were elected officials, primarily members of the left-leaning Alianza PAIS of President Rafael Correa. This political realignment provided the opportunity for political parties or movements of the left (the FENOCIN, the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Agroindustriales, Campesinos e Indígenas Libres del Ecuador [National Federation of Agro-industrial Workers, Peasants, and Free Indigenes of Ecuador—FENACLE], Alternativa Democrática, and Ruptura de los 25, among others) to have representation in the constituent assembly (Muñoz, 2010). In addition, the constituent committee responsible for drafting the food sovereignty provisions was the committee on social equity and inclusion, whose president, Pedro de la Cruz, had led the FENOCIN for 13 years and had been a delegate of Alianza PAIS (Becker, 2011; Rosero, Carbonell, and Regalado, 2011).

Seizing this political opening, social organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) strategically formed their own committees to work alongside legislators and the constituent committees. The FENOCIN and the Confederación Unitaria de Asociaciones del Seguro Social Campesino del Ecuador (Unitary Confederation of Ecuadorian Peasant Social Security Associations—CONFESUNASSC-CNC) participated in the public policy committee, whereas the Coordinadora Nacional Campesina–Eloy Alfaro (Eloy Alfaro National Peasant Confederation—CNC–Eloy Alfaro) participated in the food sovereignty committee and the FENOCIN and the FENACLE in the agrarian committee. These committees were influential in shaping the final language of the food sovereignty provisions. For instance, the agrarian committee drafted a 64-page report with five key recommendations for the new constitution. These recommendations urged the state to (1) guarantee food sovereignty, (2) promote an agrarian revolution/reform, (3) develop a model for territorial development in a sustainable and equitable manner, (4) guarantee rights to farmers, and (5) continue to develop a sovereign and intercultural nation. The recommendations were incorporated into the constitution with the facilitation of Pedro de la Cruz. CONAIE provided policy recommendations for the constitution based on plurinationalism, territory, communities, water, and mining. Although CONAIE’s recommendations were not on food sovereignty per se, they were incorporated into the food sovereignty article of the constitution (Rosero, Carbonell, and Regalado, 2011).

Notwithstanding, several provisions of the 2008 Constitution were controversial, particularly the highly contested issue of introducing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). While state actors supported GMOs as a means of increasing productivity and alleviating hunger, the social organizations, environmental NGOs, and political movements of the left lobbied strongly against them (Rosero, Carbonell, and Regalado, 2011). The outcome of the negotiations was a compromise: Article 401 declares Ecuador GMO-free with the provision that the president can introduce GMOs with the approval of the National Assembly. Despite the diversity of actors, the participation of food retailers such as PRONACA and Supermaxi and the large agro-export industries of Ecuador had minimal influence on the outcome of the food sovereignty article of the constitution, a direct result of the new political alignments (toward the left) within the Constituent Assembly (Rosero, Carbonell, and Regalado, 2011). Overall, the political parties of the right had lost significant electoral power with the election of Rafael Correa and were unable to influence the outcome (Muñoz, 2010: 158).

Why Food Sovereignty?

Benford and Snow (2000: 614) define framing as a process that social movements use to help “render events or occurrences meaningful,” an organizational tool that guides action and social movement mobilization. Collective action frames are “action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization.” A “rights master frame” is a type of collective action frame that is inclusive and flexible, broadening the scope of an issue (Benford and Snow, 2000). Claeys (2012) argues that food sovereignty as a rights master frame encompasses other master frames used in agrarian mobilizations, including the cultural pluralist, the environmental, the producer, and the agrarian. Food sovereignty as a rights master frame aims to democratize food politics and target the various levels at which food and agricultural governance issues should be deliberated, thus providing the tools to fight neoliberalism and capitalism in agriculture. This framing of food sovereignty provides La Via Campesina with leverage to gain support from diverse social-cultural and political ideologies. In the case of Ecuador, social movements utilize food sovereignty as a rights master frame by associating food sovereignty with the attainment of sumak kawsay.

Food sovereignty rejects global control of the food system and the liberalization of agricultural markets that have impoverished and displaced small producer populations by allowing “dumping” from the North to the South (McMichael, 2010: 168). As Fairbairn (2010) argues, the concept rejects the individualism of the food security frame in favor of collective rights, peasant solidarity, and ownership of resources. Moreover, it recognizes the value of what is not quantifiable in the food security paradigm—culture, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge. Food sovereignty addresses the ecological stresses that have resulted from the intensification of agricultural production, chemical inputs, soil and water degradation, deforestation, the patenting of seeds, and the genetic engineering of seeds (Wittman, 2011).

Food sovereignty is contentious for a variety of reasons. As a theory and a practice, it represents an alternative to a “high modernist” corporate agriculture (McMichael, 2010). As Boyer (2010: 333) further suggests, “sovereignty is not a term that expresses the concerns of everyday rural life in the same manner that security does.” In invoking “sovereignty,” it alludes to the ability of “nations, peoples, regions and states to craft their own agrarian policy” and to create “arrangements to govern territory and space” (Patel, 2010: 191). This points to questions about the “politics of scale”—who gets to conceptualize food sovereignty and who gets to implement food sovereignty policy (Patel, 2005, cited in Wittman, 2011).

Food sovereignty as a rights master frame in Ecuador resonates and has saliency because it “links how essential the beliefs, values, and ideas associated with movement frames are to the lives of the targets of mobilization” (Benford and Snow, 2000: 621). Framing food sovereignty as an entitlement to sumak kawsay (or as a means to attaining sumak kawsay), broadened the narrow issues of land and territory to an all-encompassing frame the peasant and indigenous movements of Ecuador have used to garner movement support from diverse social groups (Afro-Ecuadorean, Montubios, women) and sectors (artisanal fishing communities, environmentalists). Food sovereignty in Ecuador captures the demands for land and territory but also gender equality, agroecology, the conservation of mangrove fisheries and of artisanal fishing practices, the respect for indigenous and traditional knowledge, and the recognition of cultural and ethnic diversity. Expanding the scope of these issues under the framing of food sovereignty has forged multiscalar alliances and coalitions that have strengthened the capacity for social mobilization in Ecuador. As a result, the social movements in Ecuador are mobilizing and moving food sovereignty from its use as a rights master frame to a food sovereignty legal framework.

The Food Sovereignty Movement and the State

Hence, under the framing of food sovereignty, the FENOCIN, the FEI, the FENACLE, the FEINE, Ecuarunari, the CNC–Eloy Alfaro, and the Corporación Regional de Montubios del Litoral (Regional Corporation of Coastal Montubios—CORMONLIT) formed the coalition of organizations called the Red Agraria to pressure the state to move forward on passing the food sovereignty supplementary laws drafted by COPISA. These organizations, which form “the food sovereignty movement,” are engaging with the state to influence and shape policy in ways that differ from before. Until recently, Ecuadorean social movements engaged with the state at the national level by forming alliances with political parties (as with the case of the FENOCIN and the CNC–Eloy Alfaro and their support of Alianza PAIS and the Partido Socialista, or Socialist Party) and by creating their own political party (as with CONAIE and Pachakutik). In contrast, the food sovereignty movement is working with the national government in a different manner. On the one hand, the Red Agraria collaborates with COPISA in the workshops for the drafting of the supplementary laws at local and regional levels. On the other hand, it works within the National Assembly to negotiate the provisions of these laws. It has been integrated into the National Assembly’s Committee for Food Sovereignty and the Development of Agriculture and Fisheries and therefore can directly negotiate the food sovereignty supplementary laws and the food sovereignty legal framework.

In 2012, the Red Agraria mobilized its multiscalar networks of social organizations to collect over 44,000 signatures for a petition in support of the Law on Land and Territories, the first law drafted by COPISA. The Red Agraria strategically used the initiative (Article 103), which enables individuals, community-based organizations, and local governments to propose, create, amend, or repeal laws by collecting the signatures of 0.25 percent of the population registered to vote. The initiative allowed the petitioners to work in a committee in the National Assembly to negotiate the provisions of the law. “Tenemos voz, no tenemos voto” (We have a voice but no vote) is the way Romelio Gualán, president of the CNC–Eloy Alfaro, summarizes its role in the committee. The voice social movements have in the committee allows them to deliberate the food sovereignty laws drafted by COPISA with legislators before they are passed to the floor of the National Assembly for approval. Despite the fact that they have no voting power, Romelio acknowledges that it is a significant advance for social movements to work in this capacity. As he recalls, “We finished [drafting] the law [on land and territories]. Now what was our new strategy as social organizations?” The new strategy was the formation of the Red Agraria and the use of the initiative to gain insider access to the National Assembly.

Resource mobilization theory focuses on the critical role of sufficient resources in maintaining and expanding the movement (Foweraker, 1995). For instance, material resources, organizational capacities, and tactics enable organizations to mobilize support (Smith and Fetner, 2010). Dense social networks make mobilization more likely, while the level of prior social organization influences the degree and type of social mobilization (Foweraker, 1995). The ability for the indigenous and peasant movements of Ecuador to shape policy has its foundation in the nested structure of the organizations and their transcommunity networks.² As Perreault (2003: 115) asserts, “spatial practice and the politics of scale have been central to the gains made by Ecuadorian indigenous organizations during the past 30 years.” The base of the hierarchical structure is formed by community-based organizations (organizaciones de base), followed by their affiliation to provincial-level federations (organizaciones de segunda base), which are then affiliated to national and regional confederations.³ These preexisting dense and multiscalar networks played an important role in institutionalizing food sovereignty in Ecuador.

Indeed, the developing relationship between the Red Agraria and the National Assembly suggests that the food sovereignty movement has been institutionalized, that is, integrated into government structures and procedures (Giugni and Passy, 1998). However, as Suh (2011: 445) argues, participating in political institutions “should not be associated with co-optation or be considered the end of movement vitality.” Rather, institutionalization can enable social movements to channel underrepresented claims in a policy-making domain. The relationship between social movements and the state is interactive; “social movements can both disagree and cooperate with the state mean[ing] that the State can be an important ‘ally’ as much as a ‘target’” (Suh, 2011: 445). Moreover, as Foweraker (1995: 64) argues, in Latin America “there is no compelling case for making political change and political integration (or co-optation) mutually exclusive. The process of integrating excluded groups into the political system is surely a process of political change and occasional reform.” Therefore, the food sovereignty movement’s integration into the National Assembly is more a process than an outcome that is enabling social movement organizations to work from the inside to influence the food sovereignty legal framework of Ecuador.

Copisa and the Development of a Food Sovereignty Legal Framework

The concept of food sovereignty has developed into a legal framework in Ecuador that is pushing the state to restructure the politics that govern food. From 2010 to 2012, COPISA sponsored food sovereignty policy-making workshops that covered an array of new areas of public policy ranging from subsidizing farmers who want to transition to agroecological practices to providing women preferential access to land. Its mandate was to facilitate workshops at various political scales to involve a diversity of social groups and sectors in the creation of a food sovereignty legal framework. The social organizations that participated in these workshops represented artisans, irrigation districts, labor unions, and national-level organizations of farmers, Afro-Ecuadorean, indigenous communities, women, and the artisanal fishing sector. Representatives of local governments and state agencies, national and international NGOs, and social organizations collaborated on several of the workshops by providing material and human resources such as venues, funding for print materials, and community participants. As a participatory organization, COPISA was able to cultivate a synergistic relationship between civil society and the state. The outcomes of COPISA were multifold; the policy-making workshops sponsored instances of participatory and deliberative democracy that strengthened the social capital of social organizations while lending legitimacy to the state.

Wittman (2011) contends that the “politics of scale” in conceptualizing food sovereignty is one of the framework’s theoretical conundrums. COPISA and the policy-making workshops shed light on how to involve the “who” in the process of conceptualizing food sovereignty. The workshops were open to the public, allowing different sectors of society to discuss and debate policy issues and build consensus. The workshops also allowed disadvantaged and marginalized groups to participate in policy making for the first time. For example, in the Amazonian province of Sucumbíos two representatives of the Organización Indígena Secoya del Ecuador, a member organization of CONAIE, walked for several hours to attend the workshop on credits, subsidies, and insurance in Lago Agrio. It was the first time they had heard of food sovereignty and the first time they had participated in policy making—a story that resonated throughout the workshops. Deliberation also took place after the laws were drafted.

An important attribute of COPISA are the conferencistas, the eight facilitators responsible for drafting the food sovereignty supplementary laws.⁴ Several of them are members of the national peasant and indigenous social movement organizations of Ecuador. By leveraging their social capital and affiliation to these organizations (the FENOCIN, the FEINE, CONAIE, and the CNC–Eloy Alfaro, to name a few), they secured participants and often locations for the workshop. Valentin Vargas, for example, a delegate of the Frente de Organizaciones Comunales Populares Peninsulares (a provincial-level organization of the FENOCIN), coordinated and invited participants to the COPISA workshop on credits, subsidies, and insurance in the city of Santa Elena, province of Manabí. The Red Agraria was similarly supportive in providing resources for the workshops. Participants were of course skeptical of the workshops and whether the policy proposals they helped draft would pass into law. However, despite these uncertainties, many believed it was a shift in the way of doing politics in Ecuador—a shift that aimed to be inclusionary and participatory and one that may have also legitimized the state.

The Committee for Food Sovereignty and the Development of Agriculture and Fisheries of the National Assembly is responsible for reviewing the laws drafted by COPISA and preparing reports before the assembly can approve them. Between 2010 and 2012, COPISA drafted the nine laws with the consensus and deliberation of at least 15,000 individual participants and 5,000 organizations and state institutions. However, to date, neither the National Assembly nor the president has approved any of the laws. The food sovereignty legal framework of Ecuador is an ongoing process, and therefore one can only speculate as to why the supplementary laws have yet to be approved. One possible reason is the Ecuadorean legislative process allows a law to remain in a committee for at least a year without moving to the floor of the National Assembly for review or approval. Moreover, during the time COPISA’s Law on Land and Territories and the Law on Agrobiodiversity, Seeds, and Agroecology were introduced into the National Assembly in 2012, legislators were getting ready for (re)elections in 2013. This means that the Committee for Food Sovereignty and the Development of Agriculture and Fisheries currently reviewing the laws is not the same committee as in 2012, and this poses both a challenge and an opportunity for social movements and for the laws themselves. Certainly, there are political forces that may undermine the laws from being passed, but analysis of such forces is beyond the scope of this research.

The Food Sovereignty Policy-Making Workshops

The workshops were sponsored in comunas, parroquias, municipalities, and cities in all 24 provinces of Ecuador, including the Galapagos Islands. There were at least 188 workshops and events sponsored by COPISA for the making of the policies (Table 1). Participation varied by workshop and location. For example, the workshop on credits, subsidies, and insurance in Puerto Viejo had 16 participants, the majority of whom were small-scale farmers. There were no state representatives at this workshop. In contrast, the workshop on the same topic in Guayaquil had 35 participants, including representatives of social organizations, the Banco de Fomento (National Bank for Development), the Consejo de Participación Ciudadana y Control Social (Council for Public Participation), and the Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería, Acuacultura y Pesca (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture, and Fisheries).

Table 1

Participation in Workshops for Drafting Food Sovereignty Supplementary Laws

Policy Proposal	Workshops	Individuals	Organizations/State Institutions
Land and Territories	24	3,319	1,363
Artisanal Fishing, Aquaculture, and the Conservation of Mangrove Fisheries	22	3,787	351
Agrobiodiversity, Seeds, and Agroecology	21	2,296	518
Ancestral Territory and Communal Property	12	858	324
Food Safety and Quality Control Regulation	31	1,898	1,232
Agricultural Development and Employment	28	1,246	450
Credits, Subsidies, and Insurance	24	968	467
Consumer and Nutritional Health	26	1,500	350
Total	188	15,872	5,055

Source: COPISA (2011a; 2011b; 2011c; 2012).

Note: Numbers are underestimates because they depend on the technical reports available at the time. The workshops on trade and food supply are omitted because the data were not available.

Certainly, there are limits on the number of people and social groups that can or do participate in the food sovereignty workshops. The workshops are held during the week and are all-day events. Participants would often say that their compañeros were unable to attend because they had to work in the fields or were too tired to attend because they had been out fishing since four in the morning. State representatives were obligated to attend the workshops and often were unsure of what they were about. Another issue limiting participation was the location of the workshops. In the province of El Coca in the Amazon, one participant walked about four hours to access public transportation into town, while another had to commute the day before to arrive at the workshop on time. People who participated were more likely to belong to social organizations affiliated to regional organizations like the FENOCIN, the FEINE, or CONAIE that were personally invited to the workshop, limiting the participation of people who were not members of any social organization. Lastly, there were always more men than women in the workshops. However, the women who did participate in the workshops were active in voicing their opinions during the roundtables and larger discussion groups.

The Supplementary Laws

The issues addressed in the supplementary laws are new concepts that signify a change in the legal framework that governs the politics of food in Ecuador (see Table 2). These laws were created to strengthen the capacity (and the sovereignty) of the small and medium-scale producers, farmers, fishers, and women. For instance, one of the supplementary laws aims to strengthen agricultural development by providing small-scale farmers with subsidies, credits, and technical assistance to help them transition to agroecological practices. The law on mangroves and artisanal fisheries aims to protect the livelihoods of communities living in and from the mangrove fisheries, establish a system of labor rights, and promote gender equality in small-scale fishing while the law on land and territories aims to redistribute land, expropriate land not serving its environmental or social function, and set limits on the amount a single person can own. Moreover, explicitly including gender equity in these laws represents a shift from existing agricultural policy, which Deere and León de Leal (2001: 159) argue is gender-neutral.

Table 2

Supplementary Laws and Select Policy Issues

Law	Select Policy Issues
Credits, Subsidies, and Insurance	Financial support for the conservation of ecosystems, financial credits at low interest rates, credits for reforestation, subsidies to support agroecological practices
Consumer and Nutritional Health	Consumer right-to-know labeling (GMO Labeling), consumer rights to food security and food sovereignty, promotion of local markets and community-supported agriculture, agroecological products and state- funded programs, nutritional health
Food Safety and Quality Control Regulation	Animal health and welfare, pest and disease control using organic/ecological practices, certification of food safety and quality, incentives and sanctions for a new regulatory framework, quality control for livestock and poultry, protection of consumers from contaminated food products, regulation of biotechnology
Artisanal Fishing, Aquaculture, and the Conservation of Mangrove Fisheries	Gender equality in the sector, safety regulations and health insurance, permits for mangrove fisheries, conservation of artisanal practices, extension of marine zone for artisanal fishing
Land and Territories	Land property rights, prohibition of (re)concentration of land ownership, environmental and social functionality of land, redistribution, expropriation, creation of a Ministry of Food Sovereignty, preferential access to land for women
Agrobiodiversity, Seeds, and Agroecology	Regulatory framework for conventional seeds (certification, export/import), prohibition of GMO seeds, promotion of agroecology, preservation of seeds in situ, conservation of agrobiodiversity, free exchange of seeds
Ancestral Territory and Communal Property	Collective rights and property rights, financial support for communities, cultural identity and preservation of traditional practices, informed consent before projects are implemented in a community, recognition of women’s rights, traditional justice, state support for agricultural development, autonomous governance
Agricultural Development and Employment	Sustainable development of agroindustrial production, technical assistance for the development of value-added production, farmer training programs, infrastructure for value-added production, product exchange systems at regional scales
Trade and Food Supply	Fair prices for both producers and consumers, consumer rights, local regulation of local and regional trade, markets for agroecological products, regulation of prices for food imports, protection of national production, food quality certification, Institute for Trade in Food Products

Source: COPISA (2011a; 2011b; 2011c; 2012).

COPISA as a participatory organization cultivated a synergistic relationship between civil society and the state through the food sovereignty policy-making workshops. Part of this success is due to the design of COPISA and its relationship with the social movement organizations. Given this sociopolitical context, the institutional design of COPISA warrants further inquiry, especially the role COPISA will play in whether and how the food sovereignty supplementary laws are passed and implemented.

Concluding Remarks

This research has examined the relationship between social movements and the state for the making of a food sovereignty legal framework in Ecuador. It posits three main arguments. First, the political opening for food sovereignty in Ecuador was the participatory and decentralized process of drafting the 2008 Constitution. Second, the indigenous and peasant movements have framed food sovereignty as an entitlement to the Kichwa indigenous worldview of sumak kawsay, a concept that integrates the natural realm with the human-social world, providing Ecuador with an alternative to capitalism, neoliberal policies, and classical Western thought. Third, these social movements under the framing of food sovereignty have built multiscalar coalitions to shape and negotiate policy in new ways. The Red Agraria works with COPISA to formulate policies at local and regional levels and then works within the National Assembly to negotiate these policies. Social movements have a voice but no vote within the National Assembly. Through this process, COPISA has helped create a synergistic relationship between civil society and the state.

Although this evolving relationship suggests that the food sovereignty movement has been institutionalized, this does not necessarily mean the end of movement vitality. To the contrary, the food sovereignty movement is working from the inside to influence the food sovereignty legal framework. Ecuador’s food sovereignty movement has opened the door to an alternative way of thinking about food politics. The test will be how this relationship evolves beyond policy design to implementation. Part of this challenge is unfolding right now as the Red Agraria negotiates the supplementary laws in the National Assembly.

Footnotes

Notes

Karla Peña earned her Master of Science degree in natural resources and environment from the University of Michigan. She is continuing her research on the politics of food sovereignty as a doctoral student at Cornell University. This research would not have been possible without the social movements of Ecuador, the conferencistas of the Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria and their assistants, and the many other compas she met in Ecuador. She thanks her advisers, Maria Carmen Lemos, Ivette Perfecto, and Gabriela Valdivia, for their support and mentorship and the reviewers of Latin American Perspectives for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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