-OpEd-
BUENOS AIRES — Argentine President Alberto Fernández, defending his recent decision to confiscate the soy firm Vicentín, repeatedly cited “food sovereignty.” It’s a term self-styled progressives coined some years back that, as of yet, has no clear definition. Now might be the time to try to find one.
Firstly, the personality most fond of using “food sovereignty” rhetoric was the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who invoked it to nationalize dozens of corn flour and coffee producers, sugar factories and dairy firms. A sharp drop in production led to greater dependence on imported foods, empty shopping baskets and an increased need to provide food to the poor. The reasonably well-to-do came to know what shortages meant, and nutrition soon declined to the precarious level of previous generations.
In terms of definition, “sovereignty” is generally accepted to be a people’s self-government as opposed to a government imposed by another people or nation. The Spanish colonies, for example, fought to win their sovereignty.
The word comes from the Latin word for predominant (superans or superanus), giving rise to the sovereign characteristic of exercising power over others. In international law, sovereignty is a state’s right to exercise its powers. Violating a state’s sovereignty may have tragic consequences like war, as in: “Argentina once more reclaimed its sovereignty over the Malvinas and/or the Falkland Islands.”
