suring poverty in the United States (Townsend, 1993; FAO, 2006). Because expenditure on food is the most important component of subsistence incomes, policies designed from this approach sought mechanisms to provide food at low cost, either by purchasing it on the world market or by increasing agricultural productivity (Torres, 2003).

The first strategy resulted in welfare programs for the poor, such as food stamps, school lunches, and subsidies targeted at specific products. These measures may succeed in reducing hunger and poverty in the short term, but they tend to be temporary because making them permanent implies a high cost, or else the lack of funds makes them reversible (Kay, 2006). In fact, social spending in the region has been repeatedly cut, and in addition, bolstering the food supply with purchases from abroad can undermine financing capacity if there is instability in the prices of agricultural products (Hall, 1998). Another drawback is that it favors patronage and corruption (Huber, 1996).

The second strategy for enhancing agricultural productivity focused on sectors with productive potential, through the intensive use of inputs, which compromised sustainable development, and because it depended on returns from investment it did not guarantee attention to the needs of the poor. This output-maximizing focus is related to the notion that raising incomes is the way to resolve the problem of hunger and poverty, i.e., to focus on increasing the national wealth as the way to resolve the problem (Townsend, 1993).

One extension of the concept of subsistence is that of basic needs, which addresses the minimum requirements of private consumption, but also includes essential services provided by the community (drinking water, transportation, education, etc.). The problem with this approach lies in establishing the criteria for determining the elements that should be included. Through differences of constitution and location, people require different quantities of basic goods in order to satisfy the same needs, and so there is debate over the possibility of determining the basic human needs common to members of different cultures, and even to individuals within the same society.

The problem with this approach is that it does not make explicit the fundamental difference between needs and satisfiers. What changes, across time and across cultures, is the way or means by which the needs are satisfied (Max-Neef, 1993).

As noted in Chapter 1, the FAO, the World Bank, USDA, USAID and IFPRI have defined food security and formulated policies according to a basic food basket (Townsend 1993; Hall, 1998).

The social policy of food security relies on the notion of subsistence and/or basic needs. For Sen and Foster (1997), however, the key components of living standards and poverty are not goods, nor their characteristics, but rather the ability to do various things using those goods or their characteristics. Consequently, food security policy should start by considering the capacity of individuals and communities to function (Sen and Foster, 1997). For example, the supply of food does not reflect the individual’s condition, i.e., his level of nutrition, or his level of utility, or the pleasure or the desire satisfied from consuming food. We must distinguish what the good does for the person from what the person does with the good (Cohen, 1993).

    The relationship between income and capacities will be affected by people’s age, by their gender, and by their social functions; by their location; by the epidemiological setting and other kinds of variations over which a person has limited or no control (Sen and Foster, 1997). In rural areas of LAC a high proportion of people are elderly or women and the men capable of working have left.

Policies focused on increasing productivity to raise incomes among the poor will not necessarily achieve the goal of food security, if they are not accompanied by pricing policy and adequate marketing channels for the output of family farms.

The concept of poverty as subsistence has been sharply criticized, because people are not only organisms that need to renew their energy sources, but social beings who must play various roles in society. Moreover, it is not easy to determine basic food needs, since food is socialized in all societies (Townsend, 1993). Consequently, policy in this area must consider the risk of opting for one food basket alone—which is that the impact on reducing hunger and poverty will be short-term or fleeting—in addition to the need to have the necessary resources to sustain programs of this kind.

5.2.2 Food sovereignty
To combat poverty we must enhance the capacities of individuals and not merely distribute goods (Sen and Foster, 1997). Beyond competition between people with different capacities there are many other factors that govern the circulation and appropriation of social wealth, such as power relationships and cultural traditions (Reygadas, 2002). The concept of food sovereignty points in this direction.

Food sovereignty combines a series of policies that go well beyond food production, as discussed in Chapter 1. Food sovereignty policy gives priority to local agricultural production for feeding the population, and access for farmers to natural resources, stressing autonomy for them in defining food and agriculture policy (Vía Campesina, 2003).

Policy measures take account not only of productive aspects but also those relating to the standard of living. There are experiences with poor indigenous and small-scale farming communities that have exploited market niches through certification schemes whereby they can offer specialized products and do not have to sell at spot prices (certification, internationally recognized specific protocols, etc.).28

As an instrument of food sovereignty policy, in the productive aspect, the creation of networks can correct market failures, as explained below. Oxfam, an NGO that fights hunger around the world, has drawn from its experience a list of measures for moving toward food sovereignty: (1) seek ways of enhancing agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner; (2) foster associations of NGOs and government; (3) promote capacity building; (4) include the participation of women; (5) have participatory extension systems; (6) have alternative sources of income; (7) respect rights to the land; (8) promote good nutrition practices; (9) understand regional food markets (Hall, 1998).

28 For example in Mexico with organic coffee (Vanderhoff, 2005) or in Peru with organic bananas (Soldeville, 2005).