Among the proponents of food security, there are also groups that use the rule of “the right to food” (Glipo, 2003). To the extent that food sovereignty incorporates fundamental aspects of economic sovereignty, agrarian reform,
women’s rights and those of small farmers, it has become a broader platform for those seeking fundamental changes in the national and world order.

Following is a detailed discussion of policy measures that could lead toward the goal of food sovereignty.

5.2.3 Participation by women: The feminization of agriculture
According to official statistics, women produce 30% of the earnings from agriculture in South America, and account for 26% of the agricultural labor force, a proportion that is rising (Deere, 2005).

Consequently, efforts to alleviate rural poverty and improve food security will not have the hoped-for success unless they take into consideration the need to ensure women’s access to productive resources. In this sense, as an alternative for local development, women must be given more flexible access to rural property, recognizing that most farms are still registered in the name of the man, regardless of the degree to which the woman participates in the management and work. The lack of land ownership limits women farmers’ access to

credit, since the land is generally taken as collateral. Credit institutions should also be encouraged to change the ways they do business, by demonstrating to them that women can be fully creditworthy because they take seriously their obligation to repay, and because they are able to pursue productive undertakings with a mindset that is more open to change and to technological innovation adapted to the fluctuations in economic rules and markets. Another aspect to address in relation to this issue is the need to give women the chance to educate themselves, recognizing that an important sector of the adult rural female population remains functionally illiterate, meaning that they cannot incorporate themselves into the market. This is moreover a cultural factor, since males with little education achieve such incorporation. In this respect, guaranteeing equal education opportunities for males and females would help increase the productive potential of countries in LAC and would contribute positively to addressing the problem of poverty.

The inclusion of gender equity as a variable in development planning would be an important step toward giving women their proper place, and for overcoming what some experts have called the “feminization of poverty”. Full and equitable participation for women and men in rural and agricultural development is an absolutely essential condition for eradicating food insecurity and rural poverty.

Improving household food security can only be achieved if female as well as male farmers have access to agricultural training and extension services (which have so far been geared primarily to men), and specifically to a good level of technological innovation in postharvest management, storage, quality, classification of products and standardization of packaging, optimization of processing and marketing. This would not only improve women’s social status but would also allow them to enhance agricultural competitiveness, and facilitate access to food for all people, thereby reducing rural poverty (see Box 5-1).

 5.2.4 Development and culture29
The LAC region is rich in ethnic and cultural diversity and in “agri-cultures” (see Chapter 1). Culture and development are closely related to agriculture (Sen, 2004). Yet development policies in the LAC region have tried to make smallscale peasant/indigenous farmers adapt their “agri-cultures” to models that are foreign to their reality and culture. Culture is indeed a central component that has been overlooked in the drive for development (Warren, 1992; PRATEC, 1993a,b; Warren et al., 1993; Hoage y Moran, 1998).

Informed by a Eurocentric30 vision, development policies and the dominant AKST system have tended to favor conventional agriculture (Grillo, 1998). These policies, by promoting the mechanistic Western worldview, predominantly anthropocentric and unsustainable (see Table 1, Chapter 1), ignore the worldviews or cosmovisions (Gonzales, 1996, 1999; Valladolid, 1998, 2001; Toledo, 2001), knowledge, know-how and technologies of peasant and indigenous peoples31 (more than 400 ethnic groups) and their respective agri-cultures. They thereby induce a process of marginalization, devaluation and erosion of peasant and indigenous knowledge and AKST systems and their respective resource management systems.32

The region’s rural and agricultural development, and in particular its AKST system, has been closely associated from the outset with the financing and the models proposed by Western Europe and North America (Trigo et al., 1983a,b; Heissler, 1996), financed and supported by a transnational network of development agencies (USAID, CIDA, European cooperation), financial agencies (World Bank, IDB) multilateral organizations (FAO), international research systems and services (CGIAR) and regional cooperation (IICA). The system works with national and local research, education and agricultural extension systems (agricultural research in-

29 For a definition of the concepts of development and cultures see Chapter 1. Development and culture as concepts and social practices are given particular definitions depending on the worldview (see Table 1, Chapter 1) and the theoretical paradigms of which they are components. In other words,
there is no single definition of these concepts: indeed, there are as many definitions as there are cultures in the world and in LAC (more than 400 indigenous ethnic groups totaling more than 40 million people).
30 See Chapter 1, footnote 7, p. 47.
31 For further details, see World Forum on Agrarian Reform (2004).
32 At the root of the conflict between conventional, outputoriented agriculture and indigenous-peasant agriculture we see that the cultures and societies that embrace them have two fundamentally different ways of knowing (epistemology), of being (ontology) and of relating to the world (cosmovision). The dominant liberal approach, which takes a mechanistic and positivistic view of the world, is to develop and modernize rural society through infrastructure (paved highways, improved roads), conventional agriculture, modern AKST, and the transfer of farming, forestry and fishing technology generated in first-world countries and adapted by local agricultural research institutes. This dominant process has not been balanced by any similar openness on the part of states in the region toward peasant-indigenous knowledge and AKST.