Kaat Van Ongeval COM-80430 August 2012
Master thesis dissertation
Qué rico es!
Bringing forth the construction of Food Sovereignty in Ecuador
Supervisors:
Dr. Stephen Sherwood, Communication and Innovation studies
Dr. Alberto Arce, Rural Development Sociology
1
Master thesis dissertation:
Qué rico es!
Bringing forth the construction of
Food Sovereignty in Ecuador
Kaat Van Ongeval
880623-621-020
COM - 80430
August, 2011
Supervisors:
Dr. Stephen Sherwood, Communication and Innovation studies
Dr. Alberto Arce, Rural Development Sociology
2
Abstract
Food Sovereignty is used more and more worldwide to offer a focus on sustainable agricultural
practices. Some use it to move beyond food security (Menezes 2001), others use it to promote agro-
ecology (Altieri and Nicholls 2008), others again as an alternative for food justice (Fairbairn 2011). In
the Ecuadorian context, food sovereignty was proposed as an alternative for food security, as a
strategic way to promote agro ecology. It got a fixed place in the constitution of Ecuador, and
COPISA, a civil society representative organism was mandated to write law proposals. The focus of
this thesis is on its Technical Committee for Consumption, Nutrition and Alimentary Health: the
actors present, the narratives and symbols they evoke around food sovereignty and the practices
they engage in. Symbols and meanings of food evoked evolve around tastiness, health and the
culturally own. They create spaces for change in the amplified Committee creating a communication
campaign “Qué rico es” and national events for sustainable consumption. Ithe rethinking of
consumption as a public, collective act, consumers as co-producers and political actors. The
Committee is a self-organized civil participation process that involves the deepening of democracy.
Their debate is constructed around he rethinking of consumption as a public, collective act,
consumers as co-producers and political actors. COPISA links up to global social movements while
presenting a singular expression of sustainable consumption for food sovereignty. People engage in
politics of food and fight for social democracy and participatory policy-making by rethinking
consumption as a collective responsibility.
KEYWORDS: Food Sovereignty, Ecuador, Consumption, Participation, Social Movements, Democracy,
Symbols
COVER PICTURE: Tzimbuto family (Picture: Maya Dérome)
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Acknowledgements First of all, I want to thank my Wageningen professors Steve Sherwood and Alberto Arce, for making
me even more passionate about everything that has to do with food and food movements. I also
want to thank them for the challenges posed, and the support and patience in my struggle to
overcome them. I want to thank Alberto for giving me this opportunity to work together with Steve
and him in Ecuador, and doing the preliminary brainstorming about the education for sustainable
consumption topic. From the beginning on, he made sure I didn’t tuck in on one idea but made me
see all the pro’s and contra’s of it, in a genuine way. In all of our conversations, I got inspired by the
great ideas discussed. I thank Steve for the amazing experience I had in Ecuador, for the
collaboration in COPISA, the whole research experience. I also thank him for sharing valuable insights
on his research experience, and the effort showed to help me develop a research proposal. For the
warm welcome at his house and the joyful moments with his lovely wife, Myriam and their precious
daughter, Nina. Then, I can’t thank enough all the people in Ecuador that helped me realize this
experience. They made my field work a pleasant, inspiring thing to do. First of all, thanks to Ross and
Pedro from EkoRural to support me establishing contacts and give me an organizational (and warm,
friendly and reflexive!) space to conduct my research. Thank you Roberto, Johanna, Eliana, Michelle,
Claudia, Daisy, Anita, Claudia, Marcelo, Luis, Ricardo, Richard, Carmen, Fabiola, Marcos, Alfredo,
Leonardo and all of the other people that offered me some of their precious time to help me
understand the debate on food sovereignty in Ecuador.
That their dreams may come true, that their struggle
will be continued. Ana María and Daniela, thank you
for making your home my home as well. Thanks for the
beautiful moments we shared. To my Ecuadorian
friends, and especially to María Gloria, for making my
experience in Ecuador a lot of fun. A warm thank you
to my MDR classmates for the inspiring conversations,
the help offered, for sharing these valuable moments
in one’s life. Last but not least, thanks to Pallieter, for
his endless patience and love and making my finally
hand in this thesis.
Tzimbuto child shows her plate with mote and potato
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 3
1. Introduction: Food sovereignty ........................................................................................................... 6
1.1 Food sovereignty as a creative response to the current agro-food system .................................. 6
1.2 Food sovereignty in Ecuador: from agro-biodiversity to consumption ........................................ 8
2. Problem Statement ........................................................................................................................... 13
2.1. Research objective ..................................................................................................................... 14
2.2. Research questions..................................................................................................................... 14
3. Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................................... 15
3.1. Multiple Modernities ............................................................................................................. 15
3.2. Food and democracy ............................................................................................................. 16
3.3. The network society: self-organization, people and practices.............................................. 16
3.4. Knowledge, actors and spaces ............................................................................................. 18
4. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 20
4.1. Research set-up and methods .................................................................................................... 20
4.2. Analysis of data .......................................................................................................................... 25
5. COPISA as a space for social change.................................................................................................. 29
5.1. The Origin of the Consumption Committee ............................................................................... 32
5.2. COPISA as a struggle for democracy and food sovereignty policy ........................................ 37
6. The embodied narratives of the Food Sovereignty movement .................................................... 41
6.1. COPISA as an umbrella of ideas .................................................................................................. 41
6.2. Embodiment of the narratives in the common Committee ....................................................... 53
7. Knowledge and symbols in networks of Food Sovereignty ........................................................... 57
7.1. Commercialization of agro-ecological produce .......................................................................... 60
7.2. Gastronomy and astronomy ....................................................................................................... 63
7.3. Human food ................................................................................................................................ 66
7.4. Health and nutrition ................................................................................................................... 70
7.5. Symbols and knowledge of food ................................................................................................ 71
8. Qué rico es: the body of the campaign ............................................................................................. 75
9. Conclusions: Actors, knowledge and spaces in the Food Sovereignty debate ................................. 81
9.1. Rethinking consumption ............................................................................................................ 81
9.2. COPISA as a social movement .................................................................................................... 84
9.3. Deepening civil Participation ...................................................................................................... 85
Literature ............................................................................................................................................... 87
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Annexes ................................................................................................................................................. 91
Annexe 1: The Food Sovereignty Law (LORSA) ................................................................................. 91
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1. Introduction: Food sovereignty
1.1 Food sovereignty as a creative response to the current agro-food system
This research unfolds in the Ecuadorian context of modernizing food production and consumption,
with special attention to resulting counter-movements. Due to the increasing commercial
globalization of food in the last decades and especially encouraged by the World Food summit in
1996, discussions on the topic of food sovereignty emerged worldwide (Menezes 2001).
Food sovereignty approaches reach beyond food security as they include the way food is produced
and procured and look at what type of food is being consumed. According to Menezes (2001),food
sovereignty is the right of nations to maintain and develop their own production of staple foods for
its peoples while respecting their productive and cultural diversity. Of course, this definition is very
different than the one generally used by food movements:
‘Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural,
labor, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally
appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food,
which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to
food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies (June 2002).’
In this and other definitions of food sovereignty by food movements, the emphasis is on ‘peoples,
families and communities’ rather than nations or countries. It elaborates the definition towards
access issues and pays attention to the cultural suitability of foods. It also stresses sustainability of
these people’s way of living. However, the emphasis is still on countries. A definition that zooms in
even more on the people and that is much more political is the following, retrieved from the Special
Conference for Food Sovereignty in Brazil, 2008:
Food sovereignty is a principle, a right and attachment of rural women, small farmers, rural
workers, Indigenous People and Fishermen, that was adopted by the social movements to
construct a world, a new kind of society, a new form of understanding political relations,
development, human rights, democracy and a form of producing and maintaining foods and
alimentary systems. This in a world that bleeds day to day for the shame of 81 millions of
people that live in extreme poverty, 52 millions of undernourished people and 854 million
over the whole world (Fronteras April 2008).1
1 Translation from Spanish
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Indeed, indigenous people often have been very strongly involved in the movements, since they are
most at risk to suffer from the negative consequences of food insecurity and warning about the poor
living conditions they are often in (Declaración de Atitlán, 2002).
La Via Campesina2 initiated a struggle for structural reforms of
food production and consumption both at the local, national
and global levels and their proposed alternative was ‘food
sovereignty’ (Rosset 2009). This movement has been
particularly strong in Mexico. In Venezuela, the Chávez
government has taken considerable measures in the direction
of food sovereignty by reducing their dependency on food imports.
Meanwhile, also other Latin-American countries such as Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina have put up
initiatives that encourage food sovereignty. Ecuador was a pioneer in the field; the debate on “food
sovereignty” in Ecuador began earnest in 2005. Actually, the concept of food sovereignty was a
reframing of earlier concepts used, such as agro- ecology.
Poster of food sovereignty initiatives in Brazil, Venezuela and Chili
Some scholars argue (Alkon and Mares 2011; Fairbairn 2011) that food movements in the North
don’t succeed in transforming social problems because they merely create alternative markets
without working with political reform. Food sovereignty activists do want this political
transformation by challenging neoliberalism and therefore the approach is considered extremely
important and groundbreaking by various scholars (Alkon and Mares 2011; Fairbairn 2011; Naranjo
2 The international alliance of peasants and family farmers, farmworkers, indigenous people, landless peasants,
and rural women and youth (Rosset 2009)
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2011). According to Alkon and Mares (2011) this expression of wanting a political reform and the
recognition of the role of capitalism in the agricultural system is necessary for structural changes in
the agro-food system so that it can be more inclusive. In fact, the food movements emphasize that
countries and in particular governments often lie at the center of the erosion of food sovereignty. In
her paper, Naranjo (2011) emphasizes that food sovereignty is a completely different agricultural and
rural development paradigm than the current one based on modernization and industrialization. The
proposed agricultural paradigm relies generally on agro-ecology. La Via Campesina argues that
people who work the land should own their land or at least have usufruct rights, that an equitable
and comprehensive land reform is imperative and that farmers should have access to land, seeds,
forests and water resources. Furthermore, policies and measures that enable these conditions and
support peasant and family farmers are necessary. La Via Campesina’s call for food sovereignty
ultimately ‘is a demand for rights, as well as the right to full and active participation in policy making
to materialize these rights (Naranjo 2011).’ This demand holds an implicit critique that full and active
participation in policy making in the past has been scarce. Naranjo (2011) concludes that by
addressing the demands posed by Via Campesina it is possible to reduce or even eliminate the
marginalization of smallholder farmers, as policies would be devised with the active participation of
farmers.
1.2 Food sovereignty in Ecuador: from agro-biodiversity to consumption
Modernization of Food in Ecuador
“¿La cuestión es de cuando y como nos volvimos tan consumidores? ¿Con la modernización? ¿Con las
políticas nacionales? ¿O mucho más antes? ¿Y cómo nacieron las iniciativas contra todo eso?” Natalia
Sotomayor, Entrevista
Studies such as Konefal et al. (2005), Berdegué (2002) and Rosset (2009) reveal the role of
transnational supermarket chains as a new form of governance in the agriculture and food sector. In
Ecuador and many other countries, national agricultural productivity is threatened by cheap or
subsidized imported foods, excluding small-scale farmers from the production system. In Ecuador,
this is the case with wheat, for example (Paredes 2011). Fast-growing supermarket chains provide
people all over the country with an easy, fast and cheap ‘solution’ for doing their groceries. Also in
Ecuador, one can observe the rise of powerful actors such as the industrial food company Pronaca
and the supermarket chain Supermaxi. I agree with Bekkerings’ (2011) observation that they are now
the basis of household food procurement for middle to upper-class households in the larger cities
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such as Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca. But, as power is never solely exerted but distributed, we also
point out the remaining importance of the wholesale market in Latin America. Still, wholesale
markets provide food for 40% in Ecuador and these outdoor markets still remain the cheapest option
(Aguilar 2010). The structural order of wholesale markets is fairly different than the big supermarket
companies. In the former, intermediation plays a central role. The power relation between
producers, intermediaries and consumers determines relationships and often limits interaction
between primary producers and primary consumers. All of these aspects result in the market’s
growing influence over various aspects of social life (Alkon and Mares 2011). Since this evolution,
food is viewed as any other modern commodity (Menezes 2001; Phillips 2006).
The ‘Modernity discourse’ also seems to be promoted by the advertising of « Western », unhealthy
fast food through television and the printed media. The « quick and easy » argument is used to
promote prepared dishes. Mostly calorie-rich products are blessed by the big wooden panels rising
up. The big supermarket retailers have their vast share in this commerce, with the few big processing
companies leading the market. The soft drink giant Coca-Cola has commercials in the tiniest village in
the highest community of the Andes. This new food consumption culture is very attractive; it is seen
as clean, convenient and upscale. Diet has evolved in the direction of what is considered as
« modern » food, even if this is not cheaper than traditional lunch or dinner places. These changes in
commercial food and lifestyle in Ecuador have thus included the introduction of processed foods, an
ever-growing sedentary lifestyle and a low consumption of fruits and vegetables (Kirwan and
Sherwood 2010). One of the serious consequences of these new eating standards, is the rise of
obesity as a disease. Some speak of a serious obesity epidemic, particularly effecting poor, urban
people (Yépez, Baldeón et al. 2008). Sherwood et al. (2011) focus on the socio-environmental
relationships that shape these obesogenic conditions, arguing that obesity is not only due to external
factors such as the governance of transnational corporations and the ‘spread’ of modern food,
neither merely individual
consumer choice. Hereby, I
already point out the importance
of understanding the context as
important while analyzing actors
when they are operating in their
sites, with their own knowledge
and cultural identity.
Coca-Cola distributor, Tzimbuto (Picture: Maya Dérome)
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To conclude, the modernization of agriculture and food in Ecuador has led to several harmful
consequences, such as environmental decline, including the degradation of the natural resource base
(agro-biodiversity, soils and pest outbreaks) as well as growing social inequities (e.g., markets that
work against producers) (Sherwood 2009) and recently, the emergence of an obesity epidemic
(Yépez, Baldeón et al. 2008). Sherwood, Bommel et al. (2012) argue that problems of modern food in
fact are second – generation problems based on the solutions of Agricultural Science.
Against this background of globalization of food and in particular the arrival of ‘modern food’ in
Ecuador, the entry point of my research is on the growing counter movements that emerged. During
the last decades of the twentieth century in Ecuador, the contradictions of modernization of food
have become increasingly apparent, leading to counter movements in the forms of consumer groups,
agro-ecology, organic agriculture and most recently food sovereignty. Different movements have set
up initiatives to reverse several of the tendencies mentioned above that come along with modern
food production.
Colectivo de Agroecologia
In Ecuador, the debate around food sovereignty started off with the Agroecological collective
(Colectivo de Agroecologico); which was formed by different actors that all belonged to different
social organizations: Probio (Carmen Gangotena), Utopia (Roberto Gortaire), CEA (Jose Rivadeneira)
and Guardianes de Semillas (Javier Carrera and Ernesto Pfafflin). Heifer (Rosa Rodriguez), VECO
(Johanna Renkens) and Vecinos Mundiales (Jose Carvajal, S. Sherwood and later Carmen Gangotena)
contributed operating funds. All actors made different contributions and mobilized different
knowledge and social, material and financial resources. In the Agroecological Collective, as the name
says, the focus lied on bringing together organizations that had come to converge around common or
complementary ideals of agroecology. Largely growing out of earlier anti-pesticide movements,
agroecology emphasized farm-level production based on principals of regenerative resource
management and social equity. The emphasis was normally rural families and their communities as
well as broader environmental concerns. Beginning in the 2000s, however, the focus shifted from
rural to urban-rural and food production to production-consumption (Norton 2005). Based on his
earlier work with Pacho Gangotena at Swiss Aid as well as at World Neighbors, Jose Carvajal inspired
the initial meetings of the Colectivo, when he proposed a shift from agroecology to food sovereignty
(Steve Sherwood, Personal Communication 2011). The emphasis on food sovereignty rather than
food security already includes the way of production and can thus easily include agroecology. He
argued that it was the right way to go, saying that it could help unite rural and urban people around a
common cause. As an early activity, the Colectivo proposed a national-level campaign “Come Sano,
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Seguro y Soberano” as a means of information for consumers. Here, the focus for the first time lies
on consumption rather than on production, as we have seen in the struggles of La Via Campesina, for
example. The campaign promotes healthy, secure and sovereign food and supports alternative
market initiatives.
Towards a law on food sovereignty
Following the election of Rafael Correa, with whom the members of the Agroecological Collective
shared political ideology, in 2006 and the proposed constitutional assembly, the Collective joined
forces with farmers movements (CNC-EA3, FENOCIN4, FENACLE5) to lobby for fundamental change in
agriculture and food. This included meetings with influential participants, such as Paco Velazco,
Freddy Ehlers, etc. as well as the setting up of the ‘Agrarian Table’, the Mesa Agraria and the sending
busloads of activists to attend information sessions and debates during the constitutional assembly
(Sherwood 2011). Thanks to this lobby, finally food sovereignty became accepted as an official right
of the Ecuadorian citizens and an obligation of the state.
The concept of food sovereignty became an explicit mandate of the 2008 constitution . The National
Assembly subsequently ratified a broad legal framework in the LORSA6 (Ley del regimen orgánica de
soberanía alimentaria) in 2009. However the 2008 constitution and LORSA framework were
approved, the indidividual laws are still being debated. The food sovereignty law gives all Ecuadorian
citizens right (article 13 of the Constitution) to secure and permanent access to healthy, sufficient
and nutritious foods that are preferably produced locally and in accordance with the country’s
diverse identities and cultural traditions. Since the people’s representatives created a provision for
food sovereignty, the Ecuadorian state is charged with the responsibility of access and self-
sufficiency. In Article 281 of the constitution it is declared that food sovereignty is a strategic goal
and obligation of the state so that persons, communities and people possess healthy and culturally
owned food in a permanent way (LORSA 2009). Carlo Pettrini from Slow Food called it the ‘most
advanced constitution in the world (Roberto Gortaire, Personal Communication 2011).
3 National Campesino Coordinating Body Eloy Alfaro
4 National Confederation of Campesino, Indigenous and Black Organizations
5 National Federation of Agribusiness Workers and Free Campesinos in Ecuador
6 The study of the Food Sovereignty Articles in the Constitution goes beyond the scope of this thesis, but the
law can be read in Annexe 1.
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COPISA
How Food Sovereignty should be assured, is discussed within The Plurinational and Intercultural
Conference for Food Sovereignty (Conferencia Plurinacional y Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria
or COPISA. It is this organism that I take as the focus of my thesis. It is a congressionally mandated
civil society organism created in 2009, in order to promote national-level discussion and debate.
COPISA represents the “fourth power” in the new constitution: Citizen Participation. (following the
other respective “powers”: Presidency, Congress and the Judiciary). COPISA is charged with drafting
the Food Sovereignty law. It includes the voices of social organizations, indigenous groups, farmers,
fishermen, small-scale producers, consumers, representatives of the private industry and students.
Currently, different laws are being discussed within the COPISA organism. They have set up eight
technical Committees, each charged with addressing different issues identified as relevant to food
sovereignty. In this thesis, I will explore the dynamics that go on in one of COPISA’s Committees.
Presentation of the Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology Law
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2. Problem Statement
Food sovereignty is the product of situated food movements. This means that the concept is used by
food movements to fight for their rights, situated in their own local context. Over time it has become
part of a global discourse against modern food (Beuchelt and Virchow 2012). Food sovereignty has
been proposed as a promising platform for addressing concerns over modern agriculture and food
provision and consumption practices in many countries in the global South, particularly in Latin
America. According to Rosset (2009), food sovereignty is the “only alternative proposal that is up to
the challenge of wresting control over national food systems from the TNCs”. It is put forward to
challenge established regimes of thought and social organization and practice; this offers rich
discussion material for ground-breaking development work that is aimed at changing power
relationships. It hails a new conceptual basis for global agriculture capable of transforming
oppressive trade relations and corporate control into democratic governance and socially-embedded
markets (Fairbairn 2011). The concept has been developed in the Global South, but since, it has
diffused and found ground among Northern academics, policy-makers and development advocates,
eager to re-frame the concept for its own purposes (Fairbairn 2011; Beuchelt and Virchow 2012). In
the same article, Fairbairn (2011) even suggests to reframe the food sovereignty concept again
towards the original, ‘southern’ definition so that it can counter certain hegemonies.
In a problematic way, food sovereignty movements in the South are presented by Beuchelt and
Virchow (2012), Fairbairn (2011), Rosset (2009) as being homogenous, uniting people sharing one
and the same discourse. But, in fact, food movements are richly heterogeneous and dynamic, with
their processes and outcomes full of contingency and surprise. Growing out of the activity of earlier
agro ecology movements, COPISA became space of rich social interaction and debate over food. It is
composed of a complex interplay of different actors struggling over discourses and power to have
their influence in the food sovereignty debate. Even within each of the eight Committees, there is a
rich complexity of discourses, narratives and symbols of food to observe. The interplay of forces
between different social actors (peasants, consumers, representatives from environmental social
movements, government officials, representatives from TNC’s) are of major importance for the
extent to which contradictions of the present food system will be addressed or not (Rosset 2009). In
the meetings several representatives from non-profit organizations and social movements are
actively involved in the construction of the meanings of the local movement and Food Sovereignty.
There is Johanna from VECO, Michelle from Heifer, Claudia from Slow Food, Daisy from Probio, Eliana
from Minga por la Pachamama, Marcelo from MESSE, ... They all explicitly lay claim to ‘food
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sovereignty’, but in practice each appears to utilize the concept/symbol for different social and
political purposes. Some emphasize health, others environmental causes, social change… Thus, to
understand the rich quilt work of appropriation and utilization of symbols and practices and its
implications for social change and development in food, it is necessary to situate activity in context
and critically unpack the goings on in real life time of actors. As Bevir and Rhodes (2010) point out,
we study organizations to identify the common and the unique at the same time.
In this thesis, I will concentrate on the COPISA-organized Consumption, Nutrition and Health
Technical Committee, which was particularly active during my field research tenure. I will place my
qualitative inquiry on the social interactions between actors and knowledge in hopes of shedding
light on the meanings and purposes of FS in practice.
2.1. Research objective
In this thesis, the objective is to get insights on food sovereignty in practice in Ecuador, through the
case study of the interactive social space of COPISA. First, I hope to discover underlying processes of
how people come to shape and reshape meanings and symbols around food through public
narratives and private discourses. Second, I look at practices and actions of people in the movement
in their interaction. This thesis explores the multiple ways in which actors concur, collide and collude
in utilizing food sovereignty as a means of creating interactive social space for advancing particular
purposes and agenda in Ecuador. This activity involves the creation of relatively self–organized and -
organizing formal and informal networks. The research will look at the ways in which policy being
created through processes of sense- and meaning-making around the concept of food sovereignty.
2.2. Research questions
1. What actors are publically involved in the food sovereignty debate in Ecuador?
What are their working sites? What positions and proposals have they put forward?
2. What knowledges are actors employing(?) around food sovereignty in Ecuador?
What discourses and narratives exist? What symbols are being used? What knowledge are
people evoking through how they describe, debate and work with the concept of
sovereignty?
3. How do the actors in COPISA create different sites/ spaces for social change? What activities,
ideas and concepts do they use for interaction and construction of consumption for food
sovereignty?
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3. Conceptual Framework
3.1. Multiple Modernities
Consumption
I aim to avoid the common dichotomy between producers and consumers in this research. Instead, I
view both sides of the modernist divide as simultaneously involved in processes of co-production and
co-consumption in food. Already in the 80’s, scholars acknowledged the mutual connection between
production and consumption: Production is consumption, consumption is production. Production
creates the material as outward object of consumption; consumption creates that want as the
inward object, the purpose of production. It is as text and context, as two sides of a paper. Neither
process ultimately precedes the other, but they both presuppose each other at any particular
moment (Weismantel 1998).
Globalization and anti- globalization
Globalization refers to the intensification of global interconnectedness that suggests a world that is
full of movement, mixture, contact and linkages. The globe is full of interconnections that are the
result of persistent cultural interaction and change (Inda and Rosaldo 2002). Worldwide, in many
forms and many localities people have grouped in social movements, with sharply contrasted
systems of values and beliefs, but very often against what is defined as global capitalism (Castells
2007). By Castells, this phenomenon is described as counter-power, the capacity of actors to
challenge existing, institutional power relations. Many social movements propose an holistic vision of
the natural environment and an alternative way of living, opposed to capitalism, productivism and
individualism. In all cases, they organize collective action with the aim of changing institutionalized
values, interests and power relations. In his article, Castells (2007) draws the attention to the forms
in which social movements undertake actions that are increasingly oriented towards mass self-
communication. This is what he understands by internet, mobile communication and digital media,
through which actors actively communicate on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter for
example, or have live blogs.
To understand social movements, one must look at what they say they are. Their (discursive)
practices are their self-definition. So, it will be necessary to follow their own words (Castells 2004).
The way in which people organize themselves is closely related to the way in which they perceive
their environment. Often, social movements are looking for a new, own identity to express
themselves. They generally create new, unconventional forms of action, are characterized by high
16
participation and unconventional policy and decision-making methods (Aarts and van Woerkum
2008). This is why we need to unpack conventional policy and democracy.
3.2. Food and democracy
The Food Sovereignty Debate: Policy Analysis
In this thesis, I seek to unpack FS as a form of policy. Today, policy is often limited to bureaucratic
understandings based on explicit, deliberative administrative processes of organizations commonly
expressed in legislation and project-based procedures. Bureaucracy has been studied a lot by Marx
Weber. It is a large-scale organization divided into offices and staffed by officials of varying ranks.
However it enables the efficient running of large-scale organizations such as government
organizations, hospitals and schools it poses serious problems for effective democratic participation,
because decisions are taken by experts without much reference to those that are affected by these
decisions (Giddens 1989).
This perspective on policy-as-bureaucracy however, neglects less formal processes involved in
determining political decisions. Bevir and Rhodes (2010) take on an interpretive and historicist
approach to political science in which policy, or political life is viewed as being meaningful activity. It
is speech and other actions that are infused with intentionality and the actors. People act against a
certain background of traditions; therefore agency is situated. Actions are constituted by the desire
and beliefs of actors, but these do not lead to fixed structures or discourses. This approach leads to
an understanding of the state as cultural practice. In this view, the state consists of meaning in
action. It consists of contingent activity that is meaningful and therefore it is a practice. It is actually a
set of cultural practices (Bevir and Rhodes 2010) The state becomes a construction of many different
actors that are inspired by various ideas and values. The entry point of my conceptual framework is
this socially critical definition of policy as expressed in peoples’ daily practice. According to this
perspective, people are viewed as active agents, operating as individuals and in groups, within and
beyond the constraints of formal bureaucracy and administration, in constituting public courses of
action (Wagenaar 2011). One such a perspective is that of interpretive policy analysis.
3.3. The network society: self-organization, people and practices
Network society
Castells states that the conflicting trends of globalization and identity shape our current lives. The
information technology revolution and restructuring of capitalism induced the network society,
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characterized by a global economy, organization by networking, flexibility and instability of work,
culture of virtuality and the transformation of the material foundations of life: space and time. Also
Aarts states that our society exists of endless entities of networks of people, connected in the most
diverse ways (2008). Processes of globalization and transformation lead to fragmentation, but also to
the formation of new identities and collectivities (Aarts and van Woerkum 2008). In the network
society, meaning for most social actors is organized around a primary identity, that frames the
others. That is why Castells focuses on the construction of identity by actors (2004).
Self-organization
In terms of the theoretical dilemma between conflict and consensus in society (Giddens 1989), I will
take a standpoint that sees society as a construction of elements of continuity and consensus and
both elements of social conflict (divisions, tensions and struggles). Societal change happens based on
this interplay between continuity and conflict. Features of tradition and modernity interact to create
new societal orders in very different ways. These orders themselves are continuously changing, since
change is continuous and at times radical (Leeuwis, Pyburn et al. 2002) and actually the only
certainty we have: that everything will change. To understand societal change in this way has
important consequences for policy-making.
Sherwood et al. (2012) draw on heterogeneity as an example of self-organization and a largely
neglected resource for social change. The multiple narratives with different symbols, images,
interests, agendas and practices within the food sovereignty movement in Ecuador reveals a great
potentiality for social change. Here, I would like to introduce the concept of self-organization (Aarts
and van Woerkum 2008). It is a process that organizes itself through different interaction towards a
certain structure. Order is created out of chaos, without central steering (from government) for
example. The Consumer Committee can be seen as a self-organized and organizing process around
the concept of sustainable consumption. Social change does not only arise from deliberative and
planned intervention. On the contrary, societal change arises from continuous social interactions
between actors in individuals and groups. These actors open up spaces for both continuity and
change in a creative way. The can act outside of formal institutional frameworks. The processes of
change they involve in, are examples of self- organization (van Dam, Eshuis et al. 2008). They imply
unintended outcomes of dynamic intentional and purposeful activity. The activities or practices the
actors in the food sovereignty movement COPISA involve in, can be looked at as processes of self-
organization. Practice, here, following Schatzki (2001), are embodied sets of activities that humans
perform, with varying degrees of commitment, competence and flair. I also follow the way in which
18
people organize and re-organize themselves and create space for change in this process of self-
organization (2006; Aarts and van Woerkum 2008; van Dam, Eshuis et al. 2008).
3.4. Knowledge, actors and spaces In this thesis, I take on an actor-oriented approach to analyze people’s meanings and practices. Long
(2001) was the first to describe this perspective. The focus in this approach is on actors rather than
structures. It allows us to follow actor’s agency, their capacity to change things. The analytical
framework I apply and adapt, is the one developed by McGee (2004) based on Arce and Long in her
effort to ‘unpack’ policy in rural Uganda. It prioritizes the need for qualitative attention to actors,
knowledge and sites in interaction. The policy process is visualized by McGee as the intersection of
this interaction. McGee rightfully rejected the linear model of policy that basically consists of a
‘formulation’ and ‘implementation’ phase. It doesn’t grasp the indistinct roles, blurred boundaries
and insecurity among policy actors in the policy process and therefore lies far from reality. That’s
why she emphasizes the range of different levels that policy consists of: from the uppermost level of
international agencies down to the most local level of a community. The agency of actors in a certain
policy debate depends on the power and knowledge they have.
The knowledge of actors is important when studying them in their interaction with other actors.
Since longtime acknowledged in the social sciences, knowledge emerges out of a complex process in
which social, situational, cultural and institutional factors are involved. It results from the
incorporation of previous ideas, beliefs and images and is therefore always selective because it
denies other possible understandings. Knowledge is never fully integrated but always partial and
provisional; people deal with a multiplicity of understandings, beliefs and commitments in their daily
lives (Long 2001). When people acquire new knowledge, they inevitably transform this knowledge.
When entering the policy process, they create their own narratives, advocate for their own interests
and repeat their own agendas. Further, Long goes on to state that the process of knowledge
construction takes place in the interaction, negotiation and accommodation of social actors to each
other’s life worlds. In other words, the existing frames of knowledge that actors bring to interface
situations are continually reshaped through the communication process itself (Long 1999). How this
happens, is influenced by the sources of power, authority and legitimacy that actors have.
Weismantel (1998) argues that knowledge, ideology and discourse arise from everyday practices, the
material life. Even Fairclough, known for his critical discourse analysis approach, situates the focus of
analysis on people’s daily practices (2000).
The interaction of knowledge and actors takes place in spaces. This means that the spaces are not
only interactional, but they are also transformed through the interaction.
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McGee distinguishes between closed, invited and autonomously created spaces. In closed spaces,
participation is not encouraged and powerful actors – generally governmental - operate on their
own. In invited spaces other, non-state participants are invited. In autonomous spaces a range of
activities is established independently of the state, where actors are working parallel or sometimes in
direct reaction to official policy spaces. These categories are not strict and boundaries blur; I would
like to consider the COPISA space as a combination of an invited and autonomous space, or as a
different kind – a space autonomously constructed – but both within the governmental sphere as in
civil society and reaching different networks of people.
Castells (2000) describes space as the expression of society; it is not its reflection, but its expression.
New spatial forms and process continuously emerge. The purpose is to identify these new processes,
and the logic that underlies them. Contradictory trends derive from conflicts and strategies between
social actors; they carry a fundamental complexity. Space, then, lies within the dynamics of matter
and cannot be defined without reference to social practice: it is the material support of time-sharing
social practices (Castells 2000). These always carry symbolic meaning. This brings me to a
methodological discussion of how to analyze these meanings within social practices.
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4. Methodology
4.1. Research set-up and methods
From September until December 2011 I conducted an internship with EkoRural, in Cumbaya, the
valley of Quito (capital of Ecuador). EkoRural is a small NGO that took over the offices, finances and
projects of the Ecuadorian World Neighbors settlement. Former staff of World Neighbors continued
the work in EkoRural focusing on rural development through farmer capacitating in areas such as
nutrition, agro biodiversity, water etc. The internship period allowed me to familiarize with Spanish,
the Ecuadorian culture and build important relationships necessary for the data collection. During
the three months of the internship, I got the chance to go on several field trips and sit in on
important meetings and events where key actors and gatekeepers for my research were present.
On the celebration of agro ecological fairs in Salcedo (Picture: Maya Dérome)
I collected information to put on the website of EkoRural and organized a workshop of facilitation
skills for field and staff members. Partly, I collaborated with the staff members of EkoRural and partly
with the team Corresponsables7. They are a ‘circuit of communicators’ organizing communicative
interventions by the means of a live radio on food fairs for example to go into discussion and debate
about issues such as food sovereignty and solidarity economy. In July 2011 they have aired a radio
program of half an hour, every Saturday morning on the public radio of Ecuador: “Minga por la
Pachamama” or Community Work for Mother Earth. Among the issues that were raised are
transgenetics, communitarian tourism, animal life in the Andes, sustainable consumption, native
seeds, etc… I helped them with the production of 2 of these programs, during their life programs on
7 Currently, they have changed their name to: En Minga por la Pachamama
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food fairs, and also collaborated on 2 workshops on communication for social change that they
organized. These activities allowed for substantial data on food fairs in different provinces and
helped me improve contacts.
Furthermore, I took part in a course on food sovereignty at the FLACSO – Latin American Faculty of
Social Sciences, taught by Myriam Paredes, another important woman in the food sovereignty
movement in Ecuador. In this course I got the chance to dive deeper into the context of food
production and consumption in Ecuador and get to know some important issues in agriculture such
as land reform and pesticide use.
Main cities were research was conducted
Then, from mid-December until March 2012 I carried out my fieldwork, mainly in the Andes, but also
in the coastal area – including the emerging food sovereignty movement in Guayaquil. I conducted
research with actors operating in different geographical regions and social spaces of Ecuador. I use
qualitative research methodologies in order to come to a case study of the research problem that is
focused on interpretive in-depth analysis. Following an ethnographic approach (Hammersley and
Atkinson 2007), I made use of three different qualitative methods in order to be able to triangulate
my data.
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Case study: the Consumption Committee of COPISA
My case study in this thesis is a somewhat peculiar one. Instead of focusing on a clear community,
organization or locality, I focus on the Technical Committee for Consumption, Nutrition and Health
within COPISA. This is one of the 8 technical Committees within the civil participation organism,
focusing on consumer issues. I place my focus of analysis on the people that interact with each other
in this Committee. The first site of analysis are the amplified meetings of the Committee, and the
meetings of the sub-committees. Second, I zoom in on 4 organizations that are involved within the
Committee, and follow the actors to their organizational sites, in interaction with people of the
projects on the field. Third, I visited several of the people in the Committee at their house, or their
offices, to have private conversations about their involvement in the Consumption Committee. All of
these sites help me present the ‘red line’ in my thesis, the evolution of the Consumption Committee
towards their communication campaign. The focus is on their organizational activities and meaning-
making processes, in which they look for a shared identity, objectives and outcome. The different
practices that are observed can reveal different social constructions. I will reveal how the networks
and groups interact with each other, how concepts are debated at the moment of their encounter.
The interface, their encounter, is what constitutes the creation of space in this context. To do this, I
try to map out the (majority of the) actors in COPISA that are involved with the promotion and
organization of sustainable food consumption.
Participant Observation
As I already pointed out, some activities during my internship period served as valuable participant
observation data. Nearly all organizations working on food sovereignty and agro-ecology organized
agro-ecological fairs. As such, I got to compare quite a few different food fairs in the provinces of
Pichincha, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Ibarra and Guayas.
Second, I participated in 10 of the COPISA meetings of the Consumer Committee. They held 3
meetings with the amplified Committee during my stay where they discussed the objectives,
strategies and concrete action plans of the Committee. 4 of the other meetings were with members
from the communication strategy group only, and 2 were with members of the event group only. The
two remaining meetings were planning meetings with only a few actors of the Committee. The
participant observation in these meetings was crucial to observe and document the content and
dynamics of ongoing debates, dialogues and the planning of the consumer Committee. I participated
in these meetings as an observer, but also as a critical analyst and at times as an engaged change
agent. Wagenaar (2011) argues it is important to think about your position as a researcher in order
to understand your role and the influence you exercise on the actions and actors involved in the
23
field. I also contributed to the planning meetings with own insights and reflections on the debate. At
the beginning, I had a small role as coordinator between the ‘event group’ and ‘campaign’ group (see
following chapters), since I was the only person attending all meetings, for purposes of my
researcher. Of course this influenced the meetings and the outcomes in a certain way. In later
meetings, I even got involved in a more passionate way and looked for possible activities for the
event and campaign. I also shared my reflections (and sometimes frustrations) on the process. It is
important to realize your opinion when engaging in dialogue with the actors; that is when you can
report about their opinion.
Third, I zoomed in on four non-governmental organizations / social movements involved within the
Committee and organized field trips with them to observe their discourses and practices during real-
life activity, either in their respective organizations or in relation to other actors with whom they
collaborate.
Localities in Ecuador where I went of field trips with Heifer, VECO and Slow Food
I travelled with Marcelo and Eliana from the Corresponsables, with Alfredo and Leonardo from
Heifer, Marcos from VECO and Claudia from Slow Food. These field trips each lasted for some days
and totaled up unto more or less a week each. I participated in all the activities carried out during
these trips, including having shared meals and travelling. All of these activities allowed me to look at
the content of discussions over food practices and thus allow for analysis on the knowledge of actors
that is being interacted in the described spaces of encounter.
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Interviews
During my field trips, I conducted many interviews on an informal, unstructured basis in the course of
my observations. I often got the chance to talk with farmers, NGO staff, and other actors individually.
However, a big chunk of my data comes from 21 semi-structured formal interviews with key actors
from the COPISA consumer Committee and other organizations involved with the food sovereignty
and agro-ecology debate. The choice for this method is motivated because this data was very
insightful for the history of the COPISA starting with the whole agro-ecology movement. Interviews
were not just carried out to see who are the stakeholders, but were used to unpack narratives of
actors in the private space of their organization and explain their interaction when they are in the
public space of the consumer Committee. Many were held at the beginning of the fieldwork, with all
of the actors involved in the consumer Committee, allowing me to grasp their historical and personal
perspectives as well as their motivation to be in the COPISA consumer Committee. Also, data allowed
me to get a great insight on how people view food sovereignty and their role in the debate. Data also
allowed for text analysis. I acknowledge that the transcribing of interviews is a translation process in
itself. Green and Thorogood (2009) say it is important to reproduce in a reliable way the precise
words that the interviewee uses, including slang words, hesitation and interruptions. I tried to do this
as much as possible. The difficulty I had was translating all of the Spanish utterances into English and
look for adequate translations that would reflect best the Spanish equivalent.
Text Analysis
Printed texts
I have done an amount of documentary analysis of policy and other documents written on food
sovereignty and texts obtained from interviews with key informants. Notes taken during the
amplified meetings of the Committee were very valuable for describing the dynamics in the
Committee. Also, documents written by the Come Sano, Seguro y Soberano campaign are used for
insight into the historical evolution of the consumer movement and the shift of narratives and
symbols involved. Also, a lot of documents generated by the actors involved within food sovereignty,
DVD’s, calendars, posters, leaflets etc. are used to get insight on the discourse evoked within this
material. The websites and Facebook pages of the campaign and organizations were also an
important data source.
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Live blogs
During the last week of my stay in Ecuador, the consumer Committee had started a Google group
‘consumoinecuador’8 through which they hoped to exchange information. After I returned to
Belgium, they launched their campaign and exchanged information (text and visual material) via this
group. The Google group allowed me to follow their activities off-field. I was able to analyze their e-
mail conversations and the material generated by the consumer group. Furthermore, they also
created a blog and a Facebook-page.
4.2. Analysis of data
I seek to triangulate my data from the three data collection methods. Qualitatively, I examine the use
of narratives and the production of discourses. This sheds light on how food sovereignty is given
meaning to by different actors and presents the diversity of understandings of policy. The
understandings of policy and the policy-making processes (understood in a social critical definition of
policy), form the focus of the activities in COPISA.
A large degree of language and discourse analysis of texts from interviews with the key food
sovereignty actors is my first data analysis method. Second, I attended the different COPISA
meetings, especially focusing on the public use of narratives regarding food sovereignty and the
study of practices during public events. During my analysis, I give special attention to the multiple
uses or appropriations of the concept of food sovereignty as used in COPISA and in particular the
contradictory utilizations of social actors for different social and political purposes. Then, I focus on
the activities actors organize and the symbols around food they evoke.
Meaning-making and interpretive policy analysis
I have been trained in linguistics before entering the Development and Rural Innovation Master in
Wageningen. As a linguist, I often had to defend myself against people who were convinced language
is just a medium, a mere medium of communication. It serves to communicate our important
scientific findings or get the butter at the other side of the table from a housemate. On the contrary,
I believe that language is so much more than communicating knowledge. Language even shapes
knowledge and without it we wouldn’t be able to build knowledge. Language also shapes how people
are, it is a part of your identity, that characterizes you. It involves organizational power and strategic
choose of words but also arbitrarily conceived meanings. To make sense of the meanings of food
sovereignty in the COPISA debate, I reviewed Wagenaar’s work on Interpretive Policy Analysis and
8 Consumption in Ecuador
26
reflect on the understandings of the book and the challenge of using the approach in my thesis.
According to Wagenaar (2011) a good definition of interpretive policy analysis contains the concepts
political actions, meaning, institutions and the reality-shaping power of meaning and social processes
involved in private and public performances, debates and ultimately meaning making. Meaning is,
according to interpretive analysts, constitutive of actions, institutions and policies. This implies that
meaning both influences policies and actions, but also brings them into being. So actors of all kind
continually create meaning, and therefore, when this is put into action – they create policy.
Therefore, the analyst needs to focus on the original language in which people express themselves.
As a result, the research is necessarily situated in context and in real-time. It does not worry about a
priori categories, such as global or local, modern or traditional, expert or lay, but rather assumes that
these interactive processes are continually on-going and thus simultaneous, hence the preoccupation
with observing practice-in-action and qualitative attention to social encounters and processes of
translation, enactment and interpretation.
Wagenaar (2011) distinguishes among three meaning-making processes in interpretative inquiry:
hermeneutic, discursive and dialogic meaning. Hermeneutic meaning refers to the way how
individuals interpret themselves in their background of shared understandings and practices.
Discursive meaning focuses on linguistic-practical frameworks that constrain and enable people to
see phenomena and certain categories. It explains why some people view certain beliefs as natural
and others as incomprehensible. It puts emphasis on the event of speech itself and poses the
question of: “how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?” (Weismantel
1998). Discursive meaning emerges from the interplay of language. I discuss discourses in so far they
elucidate interaction between actors. Recently, thought has moved beyond discourse to the dialogic.
This means the existence of competing discourses within society. Dialogic meaning focuses on how
meaning is constructed through the social interactions of people acting as agents. For the purposes
of my research, dialogic meaning is the most interesting one, understood as communicative practices
that actors have developed to deal with complexity, emergent time and pluralism (Wagenaar 2011).
Historical process according to this approach results from multiple voices, formations and
trajectories. An ‘action’ is the ongoing, negotiated character of understanding and explanation.
‘Meaning’ is the emergent outcome of the way how humans negotiate situations.
In this research, I focus on the dialogical meaning by studying how the different social actors involved
in the COPISA position and re-position themselves around certain ideals and mobilize resources in
negotiating food sovereignty and thereby bringing forth and placing into motion certain agenda over
other possibilities.
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Discourse, narrative and symbols
For the analytical needs of this thesis, I draw on Fairclough’s perspective on discourse analysis as a
means of analyzing my field notes and thus explore the multiple uses and constructions of "food
sovereignty" by different actors in Ecuador. Fairclough’s (2000) approach to discourse analysis
belongs to a form of “critical discourse analysis”, stating that language should always be part of social
research since it is an irreducible part of social life. Discourse is used as a category for designating
particular aspects of social life, as defined in articulated networks of social practices. This form of
discourse analysis is useful in describing and explaining the activity of actors in the context of social
interface around food (Long 2001). The discourses of food sovereignty people in the Committee
create, deploy and demonstrate in their personal interviews, will shed light and explain how they
interact with other social actors.
Narratives of actors will also be analyzed. Here I make the distinction between discourse and
narrative, following Wagenaar (2011). A discourse can be considered as a sub-text of what people do,
how that is expressed through different practices and utterances in the context of privacy – when
people are not necessarily performing in the public sphere. Discourse analysis looks at the
differences about what people say and what they do. This can be studied through analyzing people’s
practices. In my research, this would be the food practices of different actors involved in the
constitution of the policy process of food sovereignty. Narrative analysis looks at how people put
together stories and use them in public spaces for more strategic purposes, both implicitly and
explicitly, of influencing others; e.g., how people aim to shape the way that others think, organize
and do through the social space of Food Sovereignty. What people fundamentally do, is construct
logical or persuasive stories. They explicitly and implicitly invent stories about phenomena.
Noelle Aarts (2009) argues that In a broadened view on communication the interactions between
people in groups form the focus of analysis. It is to look at the dynamics that result from the
communication between people. This takes form in conversations between people that are part of all
kinds of networks, in which people constantly negotiate over meaning. When we take this view on
organizations, we can see them as processes of continuous inter-human communication, chains of
interaction and conversation that binds people. In their conversations, people construe stories and
narratives of the world around them. In these stories we can discover meanings that these people
adhere to. The narrator makes explicit what he thinks is important, but it is the listener that will
eventually give meaning to the story and adapt it. That is why stories are always under construction:
they are produced, reproduced and transformed.
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Besides discourse and narrative, I also focus on symbols of food that people evoke. Mead was the
first to focus on symbols. A symbol is something that stands for something else, represents
something else. Language allows us to become self-conscious beings, aware of our own individuality.
Human beings live in a richly symbolic universe. According to symbolic interactionists, all interaction
between human individuals involves an exchange of symbols. In our interaction with others, we
constantly look for ‘clues’ that will reveal what type of behavior is appropriate in what context and
interpret the intention of others (Giddens 1989). Since symbolic interactionism is mainly suited for
face-to-face interaction, I will use it to look at the symbols that emerge when some of the actors are
in direct interaction in the COPISA meetings and explicitly interact on the meanings of food. Symbols
do not merely represent or reflect political reality, but actively constitute it (Bevir and Rhodes 2010).
Weismantel, in her study on the Zumbagua foods (1998) focuses on the symbols and signs of food.
When food becomes a symbol, it stands for something, for a meaning that is derived from the roles
food play in economic life for example. Homegrown and handmade are contrasted to store-bought,
for example. Following from the social construction of the world, there are the collective
representations that filter our knowledge of objects, such as foods. Therefore, a simple potato enters
the world of semiotics; it is simultaneously both object and symbol. A potato is both itself and a
representation of itself.
Practices
Next to discourse, narrative and symbols, or better – in all of this, social practices are crucial.
Fairclough (2000) believes in the advantage of studying social practices; The strength of practice is
that it enables analyzing social structures in connection with social interaction. Social practices
involve identification, the construction of social identities and determine social relations.
In what follows, I describe the interactions between actors, knowledge and spaces in the COPISA
consumption Committee. I attended three amplified meetings, that will be part of chapter 5, 7 and 8.
Step by step, I will discover and unpack the heterogeneity of narrative, practice, meaning and symbol
in the movement.
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5. COPISA as a space for social change
As introduced earlier, the long struggles of farmer movements for a fair redistribution of water and
land such as FENOCIN (the National Federation of Rural, Indigenous and Black Farmers), CNC-EA and
the Agroecological Collective have led to the institutionalization of food sovereignty in Ecuador
(Zapatta and Chiriboga 2010). This is a huge and unique achievement worldwide, since in no other
country in the world, people have a law on food sovereignty. This seemed a fair enough reason to
study the food sovereignty debate in Ecuador in detail. For the first time in Ecuadorian history,
government seems to support agrarian reform as reclaimed by its citizens. The president allowed for
this debate to pass on a national level, in the form of COPISA. COPISA is the Plurinational and
Intercultural Conference for Food Sovereignty. It is a civil society organism comparable to a council. It
involves representatives from civil society debating issues of public importance related to food
sovereignty. Particular is that it received an official mandate from the government to generate
proposals for the law on food sovereignty in the constitution of Ecuador. Food sovereignty thus
became a strategic objective of Ecuadorian state. The Ecuadorian state employs the 8 leaders of the
movement, provides funding and a physical working space in the building of the Ministry of
Agriculture, from August 2009 on (Aguilar 2010). However, as will be clear from Roberto’s story,
these leaders are not government officials but representatives of social movements. A lot of actors
from grassroots organizations involved within the abovementioned farmer movements stay closely
related to the COPISA movement. Thus, only leadership within COPISA is employed and paid. All of
the other member voluntarily join one of the eight Committees to participate in the debate.
COPISA is a participatory space; a hybrid new democratic space that is situated literally at the
interface between the state and society, allowing negotiations and exchange of knowledge (Cornwall
and Coelho 2006). That is why it is so important to do this research: the particularity of the COPISA
movement defines the possibilities that it opens up for social change. Depending on the dynamics
between actors, knowledge and spaces in it; and the relation with the assembly of Ecuador that they
will have when presenting law proposals, will be decisive for the future of agriculture in the country.
In COPISA, the different people are proposing a very different paradigm of agriculture than the
current one, one based on modernization and industrialization of agriculture. Their proposal for
agricultural reform is mainly based on agroecology and radical land and water reform. If they
succeed in setting their agenda in national politics, that will be groundbreaking.
However, the COPISA organism does not represent one viewpoint or working plan. On the contrary,
it has eight different technical Committees with a whole different focus and – mostly – different
30
actors. Each Committee is charged with addressing different issues identified as relevant to food
sovereignty: The first, Agua, Tierra, Territorio y Comunas (Water, Land, Territory and Communities)
focuses on equal water and land rights and access, mostly for indigenous people and smallholder
farmers. The second, Consumo, Nutrición y Salud Alimentaria (Consumption, Nutrition and Health)
focuses on sustainable and healthy consumption. The third, agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology
(Agrobiodiversidad, Semillas y Agroecológica) focuses on ancestral and native seed varieties and thus
reacts to an agrarian model that promotes certified seeds, monoculture and high chemical input. A
fourth Committee is called Pesca, Ecosistemas Marinos y Manglares (Fishery and marine
ecosystems); its objective is maintaining and restoring marine ecosystems and addresses problems
with mangrove fisheries. A fifth is, Capital, Incentivos e Infraestructura Productiva (Capital and
productive infrastructure). A sixth Committee addresses the processing and transformation of food:
Procesamiento y transformación de alimentos. The seventh, Sanidad e Inocuidad Alimentaria, looks
at food quality criteria. Finally, the eightieth Committee Comercio y Abastecimiento (trade and
provision), looks for alternative market linkages that are mainly based on solidary economy
(Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (2012), Gortaire (2011)). As the
different topics of the Committees show, food sovereignty is a very broad concept that needs
unpacking to work with. That is also a reason why the Committees started off rather slowly and one
by one. However some actors return in various Committees, their roles, interests and narratives
might be very different from one another.
First, COPISA focused on the ‘Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology’ and ‘Water, Land, Territory’
Committees. They spent the first two years of their existence mainly writing – in a participatory way
– law proposals. They convoked a lot of social actors involved within the Agroecology debate in
Ecuador. By the beginning of 2011, the Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology law proposal was
drafted. By the end of 2011, also the Water, Land and Territories law proposal was ready, with both
formally handed to the National Assembly in March 2012. Within COPISA, a closing of the biodiversity
debate was noticeable with the agrobiodiversity conference in October 2011, where important
actors were invited from Cuba, Brasil, …
It seemed about the right time for a new Committee to get started. Mid 2011 – but in practice by the
end of 2011 – the Technical Committee for Consumption, Nutrition and Health was launched with
the purpose of advancing the legal framework for a subsequent law. Roberto Gortaire sent out a
letter to convoke people for this Committee and talk about the possibilities, the “political meaning,
the road and general orientations” in a letter on the 17th of March. I was about to start my data
collection when Roberto Gortaire convoked another meeting on the 7th of December with this freshly
created Committee. I decided to observe their initial organizational process, and therefore focused
on the Committee for Nutrition, Alimentary Health and Consumption (from now on Consumption
31
Committee). This is an important moment in the food sovereignty debate since for the first time,
attention is shifted towards the consumer.
In what follows, I discuss the origin of this Committee, its evolution and focus during the period of my
field work. I literally zoom in onto the different people in the Committee and how they strategically
operate to advance certain agendas and interests. First, I reflect on the creation of COPISA as a self-
organized space. Then, I look at how the Consumption Committee got launched.
Self- Organization: COPISA, a story that writes itself
When we look at COPISA as a site or space, we can ask ourselves what the impetus of the creation of
the space was; what has led to its creation? And who was involved? McGee (2004) states that many
policy spaces are created as a result of a certain impulse from the state at some level. Others are
created by non-state actors, in reaction to, or with reference to, state – led processes. In the case of
COPISA, the organism was formally created by the government, but only after approving the LORSA
framework and food sovereignty as a constitutional right. The impulse from the state to create
COPISA was thus strongly driven by the social movements that lobbied for the creation of debate
around food sovereignty. The state only enabled them to facilitate their organization. McGee
distinguishes between closed, invited and autonomously created spaces. In closed spaces,
participation is not encouraged and powerful actors – generally governmental - operate on their
own. In invited spaces other, non-state participants are invited. In autonomous spaces a range of
activities is established independently of the state, where actors are working parallel or sometimes in
direct reaction to official policy spaces. These categories are not strict and boundaries blur; I would
like to consider the COPISA space as a combination of an invited and autonomous space, or as a
different kind – a semi- autonomous space. It seems the COPISA organism is ambiguous in this sense
and has been initiated by government – to support the food sovereignty law – but is completely
created by non-state actors, in reaction to the state-led processes in the Ministry of Agriculture.
The interesting part about the COPISA organism is exactly that it lies somewhere in between the
government sphere and civil society. More than ‘in-between’, it is partially connected to government
by some actors and connected in very varying ways to all kinds of social movements, NGO’s,
organizations, projects, … Constituted by representatives of all of these different spaces, the actors
create new, continuously changing interconnections and network relations amongst themselves. This
happens in a process of self-organization (Fairclough 2000; Aarts 2009)
Adherents of complexity theory look at how order emerge in dynamic non-linear systems that
operate at the edge of chaos. These are systems that are constantly changing. COPISA can easily be
called such a system or organization, since it involves many actors operating in a participatory way,
32
with many contradictions. Order seems to emerge out of a process of self-organization in irregular
but similar forms (Burnes 2005).
These systems that are said to be self-organized have emergent properties. Within COPISA, the
creation of the Committee itself is an emergent property, in the sense that the people involved come
voluntarily, and appoint themselves to be part of the Committee. The dynamics of the interaction
between actors and their ideas, dreams, interests and agendas will be shaped by which actors enter,
and which actors will be successful in setting their agenda etc. The way the Committee looks like, is
an emergent property in itself. The outcome of their actions is unpredictable, but they are governed
by a set of simple order-generating rules (Burnes 2005). What these order-generating rules are, will
be discussed through a closer look at the negotiations between actors within COPISA.
5.1. The Origin of the Consumption Committee Roberto Gortaire explains: “from the beginning [of COPISA] on there were representatives from all of
the eight Committees in COPISA – so it was accepted that consumption was one of the key
components, right?” He points this out as a process that was going on for some years already,
supported by consumer organizations and ‘networks’. This meant a change in working with
agricultural themes where the focus has always been on farmer’s organizations and the production
side. From now on the role of the consumer in the agro-food system was clear. The Consumption
Committee is in some way the child of the Agroecological Collective with their Come Sano, Seguro y
Soberano campaign and the consumer network Red Mar, Tierra y Canasta. In several meetings,
people point to the work that has been done in this campaign to raise consumer awareness – both as
a success and as a failure. How exactly the Agro – ecology movement would be the father and the
consumer ‘network’ the mother and if there aren’t illegitimate babies and lovers involved and how
the relationship works, doesn’t matter here. What matters is that the consumer focus would now
(since 2009) get an official representation within COPISA in the Committee of Consumption, Nutrition
and Alimentary health. “Its reason of existence is basically the lack of national expression of
consumers,” says Roberto.
Roberto Gortaire presides the Consumption Committee. That makes him one of the 8 leaders of the
COPISA movement. “The idea is that you preside one commission, and sit by in two others,” Roberto
tells me. Only the leaders in the COPISA movement are being paid for their efforts; and have some
funding available for the organization of their Committee. Roberto got elected to be a representative
in a sort of contest, with only two other competitors for the Consumption Committee. The low
interest to be in this position already shows the novelty of a consumer movement in Ecuador. “I was
33
in an advantageous position since I was the only person representing officially a consumer group.”
This is the network Sea, Land and Food Baskets (‘Red Mar, Tierra y Canasta’) that unites various social
movements with the objective of launching initiatives for alternative forms of food
commercialization and consumption. Roberto thus was appointed as the ‘leader’ of the Technical
Committee for Nutrition, Alimentary Health and Consumption.
However, the Consumption Committee couldn’t hit it off right away. In 2010, COPISA prioritized the
Agro-biodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology Committee and the Land and Territories Committee. In July
2011, after the agro-biodiversity consultations were completed in each province and legislative
provisions drafted, the Agro-biodiversity leadership shifted attention to the consumption Committee.
In March 2011, Roberto convoked the interested actors for the Consumption Committee for the first
time to come together to identify their group and purposes. Present were representatives from
different social movements and NGO’s, several of the key actors of the agroecological collective were
also present: Johanna from VECO Andino, Daisy from PROBIO, the organic farmer’s movement,
Roberto from Utopía, Steve Sherwood from EkoRural, …
Roberto clarifies how the consumption Committee works: “We determined our own objective and
role in a participatory way, in meetings, well, workshops. Our reason of existence is to generate
spaces of reflection and debate. It is possible to generate educational processes, maybe a campaign.”
During these first meetings, people expressed interest in deepening the urban consumer’s
understanding on production – consumption relationships and the need for communicative
interventions. By the time I started my field work in December 2011, the Consumer Committee had
held four meetings, leading to an initial agreement on purposes, objectives and strategies as well as a
work plan. The main strategies identified were the organization of a mass communication campaign
and the organization of national events. In this view, the consumer Committee is somewhat different
from the other Committees. The other Committees worked with so far, such as the Agrobiodiversity,
Seeds and Agroecology Committee, were much more oriented at drafting a law proposal. Until now,
meetings in the Consumption Committee have not been focused on the drawing of a law proposal at
all. Interestingly, the actors agreed to create a sort of platform for sustainable consumption. They felt
this Committee should be a space where they could exchange knowledge and experience around
health and nutrition and represent civil society.
The first amplified Consumption Committee meeting I attended was on the 7th of December, with 17
participants, in the installations of COPISA itself. COPISA has a working place in the building of the
Ministry of Agriculture (MAGAP), somewhere in the back on the 8th floor. In a relatively small room,
equipped with a blackboard and projection screen; the meeting was held with representatives from 9
different organizations, including representatives of COPISA. Daisy from PROBIO introduced herself.
34
Daisy says she is interested in the theme of consumers because they are the ones to reach for their
agroecological products, so they can link up with the farmers in PROBIO. Claudia from Slow Food says
she is starting to get to know all the other organizations involved with consumption. Anita Garcia is
representing both CIUDAD and Messe, there is Luis from CPIOCIAMSE, a provincial-level organization
of Esmeraldas. Myriam and students Natalia, Angela and Paola from FLACSO (Latin American Faculty
for Social Sciences) would like to get involved within this process of the construction of food
sovereignty and see what they can contribute from an academic viewpoint. Steve might be
representing EkoRural officially, but said he was there as my professor, and farmer. Steve says he’s
interested in looking at the consumers as co-producers. He sees is at as a space promising for social
change. Deysi and Veronica from Messe introduce themselves. There is Jorge from Soy Sam and
Michelle, an ecological nutritionist, and lastly Tom, a consultant. Tom says he comes as observer, to
learn about the process. At the beginning of the meeting, Roberto Gortaire presented the content of
the 4 previous meetings and the agreed role and objectives of COPISA.
Some of the people involved in the Consumption Committee
35
The objectives of COPISA identified in the Consumption Committee
COPISA is considered as a bridge between civil society and government, with the objectives of
supporting social movements, generate proposals for public policies and generate information that
can help supporting their proposals and actions. Roberto stresses it should definitely not replace
social organizations, but represent them in terms of the food sovereignty debate. The possibility of
generating a learning environment through awareness raising campaigns and a series of activities is
their working force. The Committee is an interesting angle to talk about nutrition and health from
the perspective of food sovereignty. Participants discussed about what the consumers could reach
within the government and concluded it should generate a space of debate and deliberation.
Someone raised the question of what would happen with other organizations in the country, located
far from Quito. The challenge of COPISA is to reach them as well by means of a mapping out. They
also discussed about what the product of COPISA would be. Its role is to propose public policies and
projects and do social relevant work such as labeling genetically modified foods, work with recycling
ARTICULADOR Y PUENTE ENTRE
ESTADO Y SOCIEDAD
Generar propuestas sociales de
Normativas, regulaciones y
políticas publicas
Lograr aplicación de normativas,
regulaciones y políticas
Capitalizar información y
argumentación que potencie las
deliberaciones, propuestas y
acciones
Apoyar, dinamizar, animar, estimular a
movimientos sociales del
consumo por la soberanía
alimentaria
36
programs, etc. This practical solution proposed for the ‘threat’ of GMO’s is recurrent in a lot of other
meetings. People seem very worried about the theme.
For some in the meeting being more ambitious and political, COPISA should also ‘help consumers
take over public spaces try to unite them and to redefine them as political actors’. According to
them, each consumer should know about the power he or she has – right now, they are often very
unconscious of this power.
It is also argued that every initiative coming from COPISA should try to link up to the state so that
they can convince the government of a realistic collaboration – even alliance - between them and
social movements. Interestingly, they talk about this role of COPISA to look for alliances and related
programs from other ministries and look for governmental projects or municipal projects that they
could collaborate with. During later meetings, however, I rarely heard them talking about results of
this search and the relation with government is often ambiguous (see below).
The practical outcome of this first amplified meeting was the set-up of two sub Committees: one
working out a permanent communication strategy and the other preparing a first national event of
consumers for food sovereignty. The two work groups were formed by people’s interest to be in one
of them. During this first meeting, attention went to the agreement upon roles and objectives in the
Consumption Committee. With the formation of the two work groups, responsibilities were divided
and the next meeting would be organized nearly a month later, to report work done in the two
groups.
37
5.2. COPISA as a struggle for democracy and food sovereignty policy
However the debate is self-organized and the outcome of it is unpredictable and inevitably consists
of emergent properties, actors clearly have political beliefs, intentions and goals. Alkon and Mares
(2011) say that the global food sovereignty movement challenges neoliberalism. Next to creating
alternative market linkages, people operating from the strategy of food sovereignty want a political
reform or revolution. In the Ecuadorian context, farmers, activists, academics … indeed struggled for
a political reform, leading to the creation of LORSA – the food sovereignty law. Alkon and Mares
(2011) argue this expression of wanting a
political reform and the recognition of the role
of capitalism in the agricultural system is
necessary for structural changes in the agro-
food system so that it can be more inclusive. An
example in which, similar to several other food
sovereignty movements, COPISA refers to the
international debates on for instance Genetically
Modified Organisms and the threat posed by a
few transnational enterprises to control the
national seed sector. Contrary to this trend, they
stipulate that the traditional wisdom and
knowledge of indigenous communities in terms
of seed selection and conservation should be
preserved (Menezes 2001).
On native seeds market in Tzimbuto (Picture: Maya Dérome)
The relation of COPISA with government: opposition and trust
Often, when they talk about the relationship with government, people within COPISA assure their
campaign isn’t considered as part of it, but instead coming from COPISA as a civil society organism.
They say to know very well that when something is presented from the government, 50% of the
people are already against it just because it comes from the government. Here, actors reflect on the
general trust of people in government. Also during my research, few actors express blessings of
government, and most distrust it. I experienced this for a few times during my field work. Luis, the
38
farmer in Suscal I visited with Chuya Mikuna, talked about the law he had heard of. When asking him
about the law on food sovereignty, Luis’ reaction was strong:
“The whole food sovereignty movement was bullshit. They have everything above, on paper. During meetings, they come and talk about it for hours and promise us everything will be better, but then we never hear from them again. Do you see one hectare of organic potato around here? If they would give us water, an irrigation system, and seeds: that is what I need!”
Luis’ reaction shows huge distrust in government and reflects the different life worlds the técnicos,
the engineers and smallholder farmers often belong to. Often, their mutual expectations and beliefs
are fairly different. The relationships between them are characterized by interface situations –
confronting different life worlds. Long (2001) has done valuable research on this topic, but it goes
beyond the topic of my thesis.
Also Michelle ‘O Fried9 is aware of this distrust of the population that lives with a lot of citizens. The
comment on the new title for her cookbook speaks for itself: “My new cookbook is a food
sovereignty cookbook. But I won’t put that in the title because it might link it to the government and
that would mean a lot of people wouldn’t buy it.”
On the other side of the spectrum, there is Roberto that says COPISA is interesting because it holds a
certain institutionalism, legitimacy that it got from the national government, and also has
government funding. According to him, that is why it gives COPISA more power to execute control on
policy. After discussing the event, Roberto states it is necessary to start a third sub Committee
starting with the political dynamics. He wants COPISA to start raising its voice as organism. There are
people in the Committee who respond to this claim and also express their will to cooperate with
government programs on health and nutrition to assure they reach a larger public. However, others
never talk about linking up to the government. There is a low trust in government combined with
opposition to it, but at the same time the will to collaborate and take advantage of beneficiary
projects. This ambiguity is clear and part of the political context in which actors in COPISA operate.
In the consumption Committee, for example, a lot of actors see supermarkets and big companies as
the enemy. Together with the government they should try to keep transnational corporate power
out of Ecuadorian society. As we’ll read, Johanna from the beginning doesn’t agree with this
ideological viewpoint and on the contrary thinks they should collaborate with Supermaxi for
example.
Interestingly, enemies can shift from Committee to Committee. Within the Agrobiodiversity, Seeds
and Agroecology Committee government suddenly became the enemy again because of the bad
reaction on the law proposal submitted. So depending on different proposals and consideration,
9 Also she will be introduced in the next chapter
39
government is a friendly actor or not. In some way, actors always need enemies to define their
viewpoints. It is easier when opposing them to other proposals. In this way, they always need a
system to which they can exert counter force, as Castells (2007) described an important
characteristic of social movements today.
In an e-mail I received within the debate on agrobiodiversity, participants of the Committee were
doubting to accept or not an invitation they had received. They were invited by the Secretaría
Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo, the National secretary of Planning and Development to join
The Civil Plurinational and Intercultural Assembly for well-being (Asamblea Ciudadana Plurinacional e
Intercultural para el Buen Vivir). As representatives of the Consumption Committee, they were
requested to send a delegate to this Assembly. Roberto thought it would be a good opportunity to
check out the space and see what opportunities they have. Marco Cedillo from Swissaid (involved in
the Consumption Committee), warns for a too tight collaboration with this organism:
“Friends, I also fear that this would be a ‘greet to the flag’. We know how the internal situtation of the country is according to the so-called “real participation”, or the famous constitutional disposition to pass from the ‘representative’ to the ‘participative’. But we see that it is the State that manages spaces which are supposed to be civil spaces. The state also isolates who doesn’t speak the official discourse [...] (e-mail, 18 de julio).”
He is afraid that the space is just called participatory, but is just participatory for the label. He talks
about how the state has her strategies – putting actors in an isolated position – if they don’t speak
the official discourse, as the state would like it. Thus, in the words of Marco, the state is generalized,
personified and not to be trust. This is importance for the understanding of policy and democracy
within COPISA.
Unpack Policy and Democracy
It is necessary to unpack the concepts Policy and Democracy, with capital letters, seen as formal
deliberative, official and bureaucratic processes. Policy is generally understood as the bureaucratic
processes that take place between government officials at national or international institutions. This
understanding fails to include the less formal, daily policy processes that take place between actors
of various groups and at all levels of society. A social critical definition of policy, such as that of
Yanow (2000) and Wagenaar (2011) focuses on policy as “meaning in action”. Taking on this
definition allows for a broader scope on policy processes. Yanow (2000) emphasizes that interpretive
policy analysis includes the study of “policy artifacts”, symbolic language, objects and actions. These
also determine how the policy is understood by various actors. Therefore, I focused on the symbols
evoked, the campaign and events that the actors in the Committee engaged in. Following McGee
(2004), I argue that policy processes lie at the interaction between actors, knowledge and spaces. In
40
her analysis, « the poor » can put their rights and responsibilities in effect by self-organizing
themselves to participate in policy processes. Despite the delimitation of her categorization of the
“poor” as seemingly one single actor, I also situate the policy process in the continuous, dynamic
interaction of actors, knowledge and spaces. I try to find which type of policy, which public spheres
the actors are creating in this specific policy process; and how these spaces created look like. This
interactional process is shaped and reshaped when actors give meaning to certain concepts. In the
food sovereignty debate in COPISA, all of the actors contribute to the policy-making process. By
studying the official policy documents one would look at the constitution only and merely see the
written, fixed outcome of a longstanding, interesting debate that offers a richness that can only be
observed from within. In the debate, various actors from different societal spheres are present.
Some of the leaders of COPISA are involved within government in that they are mandated to
organize civil participation, only they are paid. But all the other actors are there on a voluntary basis.
They belong in no way to government institutions, but feel the need to create policy, raise
awareness, open debates, … around food. They are representing their own social movements or
organizations, but often have their personal interests and agendas to be in the meetings. It is a self-
organized and self- organizing process where people from totally different spheres than usual
bureaucrats organize themselves around the concept of food sovereignty. This also makes the
dynamic very different. People do not adhere to bureaucratic discourses and do not know
governmental mandates or orders to follow. Of course, there is a series of unwritten rules
considering which actors speak up en which don’t, who is listened to and who isn’t.
The second concept, Democracy, generally refers to institutional, state democracy. In this discussion,
I want to draw on the meaning of democracy as any policy-making process that is organized in a
participatory, democratic way. The COPISA organism is organized according to this form of social
democracy. Everyone can join the Committee, if they would like. However, some people will
deliberatively not join it because they link it too much with a government organism. It is true that, in
the end, law proposals will be discussed within the Assembly. So it is a space of democratic debate
that eventually will interact with a more formal democratic process in the National Assembly, when
law proposals are being approved or not. Roberto says COPISA is a space where the exercise of direct
democracy continually takes place. Furthermore, the first key element for him in the whole F.S.
debate is the civil participation process and the chance people get to participate and take decisions.
41
6. The embodied narratives of the Food Sovereignty movement
COPISA is also a story - or rather different stories - about how people try to change the plot of the
negative consequences of food modernization through their strategic choice for food sovereignty.
They construct food sovereignty trough their daily practices. The story to tell is about the Kichwa
women I met producing chawarmishky from an agave plant. It is also about passionate people
dreaming about a piece of land to grow vegetables. And it goes on about proud farmers offering their
fresh grown fruit directly to their consumers on an agro ecological market. Food sovereignty,
however, is not one single discourse that all of the actors share. Each single actor in the Consumption
Committee has its own ideas of what COPISA is and what it can reach to enhance food sovereignty. In
the previous chapter, I already introduced some of the people in the Committee.
In this chapter, I unpack the dynamics in the Committee by bringing forward 5 key persons of the
Consumption Committee. I let these actors tell their story: where they are from, what organizations
they work in and why they are part of the Committee. I will first introduce Roberto Gortaire,
chairman of the Committee, and representing Utopía and the consumer network ‘Mar, Tierra y
Canasta’. One by one, I introduce Johanna from VECO, Michelle from Heifer, Claudia from Slow Food
and Eliana from En Minga por la Pachamama. All of them are brought together in the Committee
through Roberto, however all of them knew each other before, in varying degrees of acquaintance
and friendship. Connections vary – and many partial connections with other actors (the circles
without names) will pop up in further chapters – but the idea is to unpack some of the narratives in
COPISA as I observed it during the period of my field work.
6.1. COPISA as an umbrella of ideas
Roberto’s story: the exercise of direct democracy
Next to being a (hobbyist) farmer, a husband and a father, Roberto Gortaire presides the
Consumption Committee. According to Roberto COPISA is a space where the exercise of direct
democracy continually takes place. He says it can also be considered as a mirror of the decennia’s
that social movements and civic organizations have struggled for changes in the agrarian model of
Ecuador. Further, it also mirrors the contradictions that exist in society surrounding this debate.
Some civic organizations have fought side by side with them; some have opposed themselves
because they thought COPISA was too much of a government organization. What is interesting is that
the Committee is a completely voluntary space. Roberto says there are people from the agro ecology
movement, others come from the sphere of health and nutrition, and others tend to participate out
of ecological reasons. Overall, participants enter out of their vested interest in food sovereignty, such
42
as a long-standing involvement in rural-urban relationships and consumer groups as means of social
transformation. “Of course it is a voluntary space”, says Roberto.
“You have to understand it is a process of social participation where we are exercising a sort of authority that the government allowed us to have. Obviously, people do this voluntarily. We are taking advantage of this constitutional window they opened for us. How this opportunity will matter, depends on the voluntaries and the synergies that emerge in the Committee”.
It will also depend on the actors present in the Committee. Usually, actors represent a social
movement or certain organization. Let us look at the role of Roberto himself in the Committee.
Roberto is also the representative of UTOPIA, an Ecuadorian foundation. He considers Utopia as a
collective with various components of social action in the spheres of agro ecology, food sovereignty
and solidary economy. “In these complex, broad spheres, we have a series of social actions. It is a
form of popular organization with various expressions, the most important being the Canastas
Comunitarias.” He claims that all the other initiatives that aim at enhancing food sovereignty and
solidary economy grew out of the Canastas. The Canastas Comunitarias (literally Community Food
baskets) are neighborhood purchasing groups that have gained significant political and media
attention. Originally, they were formed by low-income urban consumers in Riobamba to purchase
their food in bulk. Later, they got concerned with health for the consumers and the producers. By
now, the Canastas in Riobamba purchase around half of their products directly from agro ecological
farmers from the communities around Riobamba. Around 2000 Utopia took over the organization
and according to Roberto ‘structured’ the whole process better so that they have a very active
participation of the members.
The logo of the Canastas Comunitarias, at the office of UTOPIA in Riobamba
43
“UTOPIA looks for intimate themes and real relationships between families. We look for a way to construct a solidary society. The different expressions like agro ecology and solidary economy help us to create this. The image I see is the brother alliance between the countryside and the city”.
Roberto says there is this permanent link with Utopía and the Consumption Committee; and that the
people involved are very interested in the political process of COPISA as well.
Moreover, he argues that COPISA is not an organism that will replace social movements, but help
them support their objectives. With the support of COPISA, Roberto believes the organizations can
have a powerful tool to influence politics. He thinks it is a very powerful mechanism. “The people
that are united are very enthusiastic. In this Committee, everyone is engaged in a very interesting
way. I think 2012 can be a very important year for the consumer.”
Johanna’s plea for a national consumer platform
I met Johanna for the first time by the start of my field work: The first amplified meeting of the
Consumption Committee since five months, on the 7th of December. Johanna is originally from the
Netherlands, but lived a long time in Belgium.
She started working for VECO, a Belgian Ngo active in different continents. At the beginning of their
work in Ecuador, back in ’79 – 80, they worked with sustainable agriculture systems, mainly within
farmer organizations.
“Around that time an important change in development thinking took place – and from then on people were employed for their professional skills instead of working on a voluntary basis with the idea of ‘changing the world’. The current trend is to help build local capacity within farmers associations or cooperation’s. For some ten years now, VECO is working with market access for smallholder farmers. They aim to enhance direct export possibilities for fair trade farmers. But, apart from this chain approach in which they focus on the export of coffee and plantains, they are also planning to work with more sustainable chains on a local level – such as rice family farmers.”
Then, one of their objectives as an organization is to enhance sustainable consumption. The
consumer program is a pillar on itself in both Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Johanna says it is much
easier in Peru, because they have a strong gastronomy tradition there.
“In Ecuador, nothing is organized yet. Yes, we had the Colectivo, and the campaign Come Sano, Seguro e Soberano was very interesting. It is an important base to work further on. But it is still a way of promoting initiatives of sustainable consumption that are already there; for a public already convinced.”
44
She would like to see a clear platform, an organization that is somewhat organized at the national
level and reach a larger public. From the start, Johanna was invited into the committee by Roberto.
From the beginning on VECO had the idea of financing this project because it could be the start of a
national consumer campaign. Roberto emphasized the importance of the consumer, as a “new social
actor, actors that help constructing family agriculture, in a sustainable, conscious way.” COPISA
unites actors that want to construct this together. Every actor defines its own role and support.
Johanna sees the role of Veco to try to get people out there, out of the ideological, alternative
debate:
“Different people present in consumer Committee take the supermarkets as their enemy – they think we should create all alternative linkages and have farmer markets and smallholder farmers instead. But normal people want to go to a supermarket. If anyone is interested in changing his or her consumption, that person will look for organic products, but he or she doesn’t want to go to the supermarket 3 or 4 times a week. So I think we should negotiate with Supermaxi and think about how on television and radio promote a sort of different […].”
For her, it is clear: people that are ‘normal’, go to a supermarket. Hereby, she positions several of the
actors within the Committee as very ideological, alternative, maybe even anarchistic people. The
debate, she says herself, is way too ideological and radical. According to her, they should look for
appealing ways to promote their thinking of consumption towards the mass:
“What looks nice to me is a sort of different cooking show, nice to watch. I think it is important to look at what the normal public watches – the ones not convinced yet and look for ways how to open the debate. One of the ideas from Roberto for example was a boycot, but that doesn’t seem the right way to me.”
She liked the idea of the Canasta familiar, that was represented in a certain meeting. The idea was to
present a sort of alternative ‘family foodbasket’ that would be sovereign and sustainable. “Anyway, I
like a lot of the ideas presented. I just want action NOW. I feel like we have been talking for ages;
something concrete really needs to happen to get it out there.” During the meetings, Johanna was
often eager to move on, to talk about concrete actions. She felt like the first three or four meetings
were about the action plan and the objectives and continuously people kept changing – new actors
45
would come in and others would not come back – so that she felt nothing concrete happened. The
problem according to Johanna is that Roberto keeps on inviting other people to the debate – and this
makes everything has to be explained over and over again. “He’s very idealistic and participative.
But”, she says, “I think we need someone more realistic, someone that can reflect on the process and
put things into practice.”
However everyone is welcomed to join the consumption Committee, the invited actors all belong to
known networks and organizations amongst themselves. Johanna laughs when she tells me “Actually,
yes, we all knew each other for years. I haven’t seen a lot of new actors coming in until now.”
However, during the period of my research I have seen a bunch of new actors show up and disappear
again. The setting of the Committee thus gave a very dynamic, changing impression to me. New
actors emphasize other topics and generally all actors come with their own ideas, interests and
agendas. They have a relatively high freedom of action within the Committee – they can jump in and
out whenever they like and hold or give their opinion at any time. Of course, this shapes the general
working process in a certain way. My impression during the first meeting was exactly this: the
consumer Committee as a raw, rough ball of clay being shaped and reshaped continuously by the
actors within their trade of symbols – without reaching a firm ground. As I left the field, a certain
common shape had grown clearer. Johanna says:
“Well, COPISA is a new organism. Nobody really knows what should be the role of it. Especially the articulation between civil society and the state is considered important. But I don’t know if they will be taken seriously by the ministry. What matters is that the actors work commonly on a certain theme – in this case consumption matters within food sovereignty – and that is important. Different networks come together and establish new links”.
Michelle’s story: Healthy food and the ambigu ous relationship with the
ancestors
Michelle O’ Fried is originally from the United States, but she has been living in Ecuador for over 40
years. She has two children living in the States, with their own family. Her youngest daughter still
lives with her, in Nayon, a peaceful town in the valley of Quito with a flourishing flower-business.
“You might want to put some sunblock on you”, she advices me as we sit on top of her roof terrace
looking out on her beautiful garden with fruit trees and grown vegetables. She lays back in a
hammock with a big panama hat on her head. A little further on the terrace, some ‘ocas’, Andean
tubers, are laid to try on newspapers. “I think they are delicious in a pie. A shame you have to get
back to Quito later. Otherwise we could have made it together.”
46
Michelle works for Heifer. Heifer is an international NGO concerned with strengthening farmer’s
capacities, re-fertilization of soils and healthy alimentation of farmer communities. Heifer Ecuador
chose food sovereignty as its central working theme. They do this from the perspective of
agroecology. They have a project – agroecological routes – in which they discern areas according to
the work there. First, they have projects with water management, then pest control with biol and
organic fertilizer. Then, there are reforestation projects, soil management, diversity of crops and
cultivation, and recuperation of native seeds. They offer a lot of technical support to farmers; they
have a project of reintroduction of alpaca’s for example and the management of native seeds.
Manuals for support accompany their technical courses they give. Michelle works for them very
recently:
“I’ve been working as a consultant with Heifer for only the last year and a half. I was hired to help them write a project that linked small farmers in communities where they already have been operating and teaching them how to grow agroecological food. They are looking how to link them with consumers. And the other objective is to train them to value the ‘new’ foods that they are growing – which could be traditional or ancestral food.” (Picture: Comidas de Ecuador)
Michelle explains that people in the communities would often not be eating the ancestral products.
“[The ancestral foods] would be sold on the market and they [people in the communities] enjoy having it. They would think ‘oh that’s a pretty plant, but it wouldn’t be part of their diet. So a next step in the project is the consumption area, to make people recognize the components of a sustainable alimentation.”
Michelle explains that this actually is the main objective she has: changing people’s diet. Next to
working for Heifer, she also writes cookbooks. She wrote one in ´86 that became a best-seller:
“Comidas de Ecuador”. In this book, she says using ‘traditional recipies for people of today’. Now
she’s writing another one that is exactly on food sovereignty.
“I think I will call it something like ‘nuevos sabores con productos de siempre’. The idea there is to bring Ecuadorian food forward without thinking that this is only something of the ancestors. I want to show you can make wonderful cakes out of tubors that people think are only something from the countryside.”
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Eventually, she called the book ‘un mundo de comidas de mi tierra’ (A world of foods from my land).
She also says the focus has been too much on ancestral foods in the different organizations that work
with food sovereignty. According to her, it is not about the fact that you can grow something your
grandfather grew, but about changing your diet, right now.
Food sovereignty, for Michelle, is about control over all aspects of the food system that affects your
eating. So it has a lot to do with education and understanding of what is sustainable and what isn’t –
both for the planet and for your own health. It is a solution to the agricultural system of raising food
that is motivated by the agro- industry.
“In Ecuador we are seeing a change for huge companies such as Pronaca to promote farmers going just one product which they buy up in advance such as the corn for chickens, instead of having integrated farms”.
Here, Michelle talks about the context of food production in Ecuador and food sovereignty as an
alternative for this context. She thinks the problem for consumer choice is huge:
“No longer are farmers in charge of their diets, but the agro- industrial complex is in charge of what they grow. That is determined by a food commodity mentality; and not by women who want their family to have a healthy diet.”
For Michelle, the current agro industrial complex limits the access of local food and good quality
food. She sees a terrible deterioration in their diets.
Johanna, on the contrary, thinks Ecuador is still in a very luxurious position compared to other
countries: it is self-sufficient for 75%; the other 25% is import. But it is true, she says, that people
generally like the other 25%. And that this has nothing to do with a healthy diet. Food sovereignty for
her exists on two levels:
“There is the level of the country; as a state you should also be able to produce sufficient and good food for your population. And, you should make sure people know what good food is and what is not – that they can distinguish garbage from food.”
Here, she refers to the role she sees for VECO and the COPISA campaign, to raise awareness.
However, this should take place at the farmer level:
“But the first level is that of the farmers. Farmers should determine as much as possible for themselves what kind of food is good food for them. They should have the knowledge and possibility to choose their food. What is ridiculous is that they should all produce their own food and live on auto subsistence. I think that is a very old-fashioned style of thinking. Farmers also want their children to go to school, they want health care, save for a pension, so they need their income. When you just grow for auto subsistence; an income is very hard to achieve.”
Whereas Michelle in her definition of food sovereignty focuses a lot on the diet of people and the
nutritional value of food, Johanna takes on a pragmatic definition of food sovereignty, which stresses
the educational and critical component of consumers towards their food. Still very different from this
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one, is Roberto’s understanding of food sovereignty. For him, this is symbolized by the image of the
Pachamama, just because it is holistic, all important elements are there. For Roberto it is perfect,
because it has all the different people and the different climates of Ecuador in it.
Logo of the Come Sano, Seguro y Soberano campaign: the Pachamama
Another image he sees is that of a little post-it of one indigenous woman from Chimborazo on which
she expressed her idea on food sovereignty:
“She made a simple list of words: melloco, ocita, alverjita, mashuita, … These are all Andean products, ancestral and cultivated in her own garden. The diminutives express the relationship between nature and the human, something very Andean to do. It is an expression emotionally very important.”
Roberto’s definition of food sovereignty is exactly what Johanna would call “way too ideological” and
“unrealistic” and refers to the type of food sovereignty she doesn’t see happen anymore. The
different understandings even get clearer when they express how a sovereign plate would look like.
Michelle was very precise on the foods that she would see on the plate:
“Generally, everything would have been grown in Ecuador at least. It wouldn’t have processed foods – so nothing out of cans – and it shouldn’t have been refined. This means it wouldn’t have white rice, which has – as you know – nothing to do with plates today in Ecuador. It would have all different colors of particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. It wouldn’t be overcooked. It doesn’t necessarily need to be vegetarian but it would have small amounts of animal protein.”
It is amazing how Michelle’s plate is based on the nutritional aspect of food and the importance of
health. She describes the foods on the plate in the very detail of their form and color. Roberto’s plate
looks very different:
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“The sovereign plate would be a soup followed by a ‘seco’10 with a human face, a name and surname. In the plates I serve to my children are the potatoes of Don Jorge, the plantains of Luis Gonzales. I know their land and the production methods they have. So I see a sovereign plate as a more human plate.”
He focuses on the ‘human’ aspect of food; the value of solidary economy is very important for him.
He wants to know he supported a farmer by eating this food; and he also wants to know the
production method of the food, so that it is important where it comes from. He doesn’t talk about
the actual products on its plate; however he mentions a soup and a seco, the foods a typical
Ecuadorian lunch consists of.
Claudia’s story: Good, Clean and Fair food
I met Claudia in a rather unusual way – as a part of a group of women that call themselves
“Hermanas Luneras”. They unite themselves in a cosy place with nice food and candle light to discuss
about their, exactly, periods. I also had been invited to one of these “girls nights”– and arrived at one
of these precious meetings, full with beautiful exchange of experiences of something that is
absolutely wonderful – and shared by women worldwide. The young women unite with the objective
of awakening the female conscience. If you get to know Claudia, it is very natural that she is part of
this experience. She is part of what I would call the urban, alternative group of my generation.
Currently living in Tumbaco, in the valley of Quito, Claudia’s parents bought a piece of land in
Cotacachi, up North, to farm. She herself also grows some cereals and vegetables and says she loves
rural life.
Claudia is also enchanted by Slow Food’s philosophy. She recently returned from a five-year study at
the University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded by Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food.
In Italy, Slow Food was actually born from a communist movement that wanted to jointly celebrate
the pleasures of the table. When people opened a McDonalds in Santorrino, in ´86, they opened up a
form of public protest and debate. In the manifest of Slow Food there are three main aspects of food:
“Good, Clean and Fair Food”. Good stands for the quality and the taste of the food. Clean, because it
has to be respectful to the environment and to animals. Fair, because it respects prices for producers
and consumers. Claudia explains the role of the consumer in the vision of Slow Food:
“In the thinking of slow Food, the consumer is not just a person that consumes or takes in a product. It is also a person that actively participates; it is a co- producer. Slow Food also underwent an interesting change from consumer movement to include the production side
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Generally, a plate with a piece of red meat served with white rice, some lettuce and tomatoes
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as well. The Terra Madre event in San Torrino every year, for example, includes producers from over the whole world – the philosophy is: to have ‘clean’ consumption, you also need ‘clean’ production.”
(Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
Claudia reproduces the discourse of Slow Food of the consumer as co-producer. A consumer is a
citizen, a person with responsibilities when it comes to food choice. In Italy, she joined wonderful
experiences, eat-ins, organization of farmer’s markets, events, … However, she returned to Ecuador
to be a co-producer as well. The activity of Slow Food in Ecuador that she describes gives image to a
deeper objective: feeding ourselves well.
“I learned amazingly interesting things in Italy, but always with the idea of coming back. Now I’m here with the idea of good food, alimentation, but now in the Ecuadorian context. A lot of things are going on at the political level, within organizations. There are a lot of problems with obesity, nutrition, exclusion of producers … It is wonderful to get to know a lot of people here that are working with this and take my experience from the context of Italy here.”
Eliana’s story on communication for local change
Eliana is a lower middle class, urban-based single mother. From the first moment I met her, I thought
she expressed a great sensitivity, a sort of sixth sense for reflexive issues. She was curious to know
about me and my experiences with radio and communication, before introducing her own work.
A typical trait of her way of speaking is that she continually looks for better, adequate words to
explicit the linkages in her message.
During the radio program she and Marcelo, her colleague, aired on the public radio of Ecuador she
speaks with a sweet, clear and attractive voice. She explains me where the program, ‘Minga por la
Pachamama’ (literally, community work for Mother Earth) comes from:
“La Minga por la Pachamama is the result of process of search, yes, a search, I think. I studied communication for development – And I really liked the theme of local communication and local development. It’s about how you can develop live radio, radio theatre, local newspapers
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... Media that join people, permit people to converse about various issues. It is so different than being alone and lonely in front of your television, being isolated, where neighbors don’t talk with each other and no one wants to talk. It is like nowadays no one is interested in what happens outside, in the public spaces.”
(Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
She relates Minga por la Pachamama with a sort of conscious form of doing communication, an
active, collective form of reflecting on issues. And, what is very interesting is that she talks about the
public spaces as ‘forgotten’. She talks about a sense of detachment as characteristic for modernity.
Sherwood et al. (2012) identified this feeling within communities being increasingly fragmented
individually and collectively, in which people value currency and the market over neighborhood and
community. Interestingly, is that Eliana refers to this feelings by communication media. The
preference for individual communication media such as television (and the use of ipods, iphones, .. )
for example, shows a modern reality, opposed to ‘traditional’ communication media such as live
radio. Being lonely, or isolated in front of your television instead of taking to the streets with live
rasdio. Since their project is an alternative way of raising awareness, and less obvious than engaging
mass media, they struggled for a while to get launched:
“So I read a lot about experiences around the world with live radio and spent time writing projects, which didn’t turn out really well in the beginning. Then, we (herself and Marcelo) got the chance to be in the agroecological fair of the Carolina Park in Quito. This was in 2009. In the beginning a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be relevant, that we wouldn’t be heard, it wouldn’t be different from anything else, but they gave us the change so we started doing this radio exercise.”
I observed one of their live radio programs in the Carolina Park. They try to work around a certain
theme, invite some participants of the fare to their table to discuss a certain novelty or insight on
food production or consumption. They also try to link up with consumers and producers present on
the market to get to know why they think it is important to buy agroecological products for example.
By now, they have some other (temporary) spaces on agroecological markets in the province of
Imbabura and Carchi. They also participate in events in the province of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi.
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These spaces of the ‘ferias agroecologicas’ provide them with valuable contacts, partners in their
struggle for local change and development:
“The next step there was to recollect, to evoke and to provoke what was there. We started uniting ourselves with other people that were also doing animation of fairs, in the provinces of Pichincha, Carchi and Imbabura. We have this network, until now called “Circuit of communicators” where we talk about communication for local change. Our exercise resisted, it survived so we started thinking about a way to make it grow, a radio program. That is how we got our radio program on the public radio of Ecuador, every Saturday, for half an hour.”
For their radio program, they use the material they record at their live radio session: in this way they
promote the ferias, they take up on local knowledge and spread this throughout the country. They
use the conversations and interviews they do with producers to recollect information and work
around a certain theme, so that different voices are raised during the program. A beautiful activity I
observed during a fair in Ibarra was the ritual to thank the Pachamama for the food she has to offer.
An indigenous priest led the ritual. It was amazing to see how many people were enthusiastic to
participate in the ritual. The activity carried a lot of Andean symbolism. Different fruits, vegetables
and grains were put in the middle in a shell-shaped form; the symbolization of the endlessness of
time. During the ritual, we thanked the 4 elements, reflected on our relationship with Mother Earth
and with each other. People were bonded by giving hands and expressing their wishes towards each
other.
Inauguration ritual on agroecological fair in Ibarra (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
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In Minga por la Pachamama, Eliana and Marcelo with the following points of focus: Food sovereignty,
solidarity economy and interculturality. She explains how they work:
“We try to recover and retake what is already there. It is a sort of action research, a participant action. This is the most “rico”, wonderful. It is something that is already in the air, in the environment. You go to the communities and they are already talking about these themes. It is like something in-born that they have. And it really is there already, you just have to take it and turn it a little, give it a nice touch. This is what you do, you provoke and push a little.”
This way of working values strongly the local knowledge of people in communities. They are the ones
that get to speak; it is like Marcelo and Eliana only offer them this chance and make sure their words
are being heard. For them, this is also the most “rich” or best way to do it.
Food Sovereignty as an emergent theme
Eliana goes on about food sovereignty
“The theme of food sovereignty is something that already moves us, it is inside of us. And it easily is defined; it is just thinking about all the tastes of before and compare them with the ones we have now. This knowledge is recollected in a collective manner; this is also what the “minga” is about. You need someone to generate these spaces, to organize, to recollect.”
To work around food sovereignty is seen as something very natural and logical when you compare
the tastes and habits of consumption with those from before. They see it as their job to create this
space where they can share and recollect knowledge in a collective way.
Eliana says: “You go “weaving” with other people; you create networks. We also want to recollect
experiences from abroad, from Canada, Europe, what is happening with the Kyoto Protocol, etc.”
Claudia talks about the self-organization of the projects of Slow Food in Ecuador in a similar way:
“I coordinate the different projects of Slow Food in Ecuador. It is very interesting because the people started the initiatives themselves, I only coordinate. It is a completely autonomous, self-organized and managed process. And what is most beautiful, people always do this as an extra activity.”
In the meetings of COPISA, Marcelo often argues for the importance of the existing network, that it
should be strengthened and that existing contacts should be used. He particularly talks about his
networks within Messe and solidary economy circuits.
6.2. Embodiment of the narratives in the common Committee After listening to the stories of these key actors in the Consumption Committee, we could argue that
the Committee is a national platform for consumption, in the way Johanna wants it, but also that it is
a space for education around health and nutrition, as from Michelle’s expression: “I think it is
fantastic! COPISA is doing all the stuff I wanted to do for many years; this consumer platform is the
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ideal opportunity to teach people how to eat better.” For Roberto, it is an exercise of direct
democracy and for Eliana it is a network that leads to the emergence of themes and symbols around
food sovereignty. For Claudia, it is a space where the role of the consumer as a political actor is
debated. The Committee is all of this together, in a way. It embodies all of these narratives that
constitute the bricks of its fundaments. It carries different meanings and symbols that are negotiated
by the actors in it. To get the meaning actors give to phenomena, one should ask what the events are
that actors name, what is therefore considered important by them. Other events are not named,
because they didn’t seem relevant in this case (Meesters, Basten et al. 2010). It seems a bit
straightforward, but often scholars look at what is behind what people say, instead of trusting on
that what they say, is the focus of study.
COPISA can be seen as an umbrella, carrying along actors with different opinions, agendas and
interests. There are the revolutionaries such as Roberto, very practical people like Johanna and social
activists like Steve. It shows the fights and struggles over concepts, symbols but most of all practices.
The role and future of COPISA
Now and then, the role of COPISA is discussed by the various actors in the committee. Very often, it
is seen as a bridge between government and civil society. Claudia from Slow Food evokes this image
literally:
“I think it is a great opportunity for citizenship, this bridge between government and civil society. The plan in 2008 was a revolution; the demand for this laws in the country, when there are terms of ‘buen vivir’ (good way of living), Pachamama (Mother Earth), rights to nature, and food sovereignty.”
For her, COPISA is a revolutionary organism that enabled the law of food sovereignty to become
institutionalized in Ecuador. She links this process clearly to food sovereignty as reclaimed by the
Indigenous people, referring to the Andean terms of ‘buen vivir’ (or in Quecha: sumac kawsay) and
the Pachamama, Mother Earth. She believes in the possibility for enhancing citizenship that has
opened up with COPISA.
Johanna from Veco Andino is not sure about the role of COPISA, she thinks it stills needs clearer
definition, what it could mean in terms of articulating the relationship between the state and civil
society. She’s not quite sure if the ministries are taking their work seriously:
“It might be in the constitution, but it is not at all a priority for the government; in the beginning they didn’t even get any funding – I still remember Roberto asked me for money. So it could as well be a means of appeasement or distraction. It could be an important organism, but if the government only created it to shut down the social movements, it will not be effective.”
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Johanna seems to doubt the effectiveness of COPISA within national politics and is not sure if the
constitutional right given is one that can be used as such.
Roberto Gortaire, on the other hand, strongly believes that the interesting thing of COPISA is that it
carries certain institutional power, it has some funding; and therefore it has more weight than other
social organizations. Government has created this space for them to use, so it must be that they can
use this space.
Actors also reflect on the process of COPISA, and what future they see for the movement. Claudia
stresses that it is a very complex process of long term:
“We create spaces, we work together to reach something that is beneficiary to all of us. It is a necessity. The process is only starting – we meet with that many contradictions – in all of us – but these are problems of the system, no. I think we keep fighting that something will happen. COPISA created itself, with a lot of force, it is the proof that there ARE things going on. Sometimes there are a lot of contradictions, within the government, the ministry of agriculture and within COPISA every organizations pulls its own side.”
Here, Claudia refers to the self- making of COPISA, ‘it created itself, with a lot of force’. However
there are a lot of contradictions, heterogeneity and different agendas and interests, still it is worth
the challenge because it is the struggle for a good cause, a necessity, something that benefits all of
the people of Ecuador.
The image of utopia is a strong one to reflect the possibilities for change of COPISA. Claudia thinks:
“It is very easy to say “ I want that there is food sovereignty for all, that everyone feeds itself in a good way, that everyone produces agroecologically, and that people don’t cut trees. This is the great ‘utopia’ and we will never get there, but this image is what keeps us going, no?”
However actors might know that probably their ideal vision of the world, their utopia, will never be
reached, the vision still keeps them going to continue and fight for food sovereignty.
This is also reflected in what Eliana and Roberto say about COPISA. They stress the process-based
nature of their interactions and see COPISA as ‘a walk’. They are in a walk towards food sovereignty,
towards sustainable consumption, and it is only by walking they will get to know their possibilities
and limitations.
There are some important elements that unify the actors at a more abstract level so that they all are
part of one umbrella called sustainable consumption for food sovereignty, protecting themselves
against the rain of agro-industrial policies and consequences. I argue that these elements are
continuously shaped and re-shaped through their interaction. The image and role of COPISA are
often debated; whereas the general objective of the Committee seems clear for the participants at
the very beginning. It involves a process of self- organization that is shaped by semantic
organization. The outcome of the process then, is the umbrella. The singular image of the umbrella in
itself covers an assemblage of the pluralities that it holds under it. When turning the umbrella upside
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down, we see this relative mess and struggle for achievement within the umbrella. The interaction
between actors, knowledge and space from within shapes the form and structure of the umbrella.
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7. Knowledge and symbols in networks of Food Sovereignty
The second amplified Committee: evolution of the two sub groups
On the 12th of January, in FLACSO (University for Social Sciences in Latin America), a second
amplified Committee took place, with 19 participants. Before this amplified meeting, each sub
Committee, the event group and the communication group, had had 2 meetings to discuss their
action plan. In this amplified meeting, both proposals would be presented. It is important to note
that not all decisions within COPISA are taken ‘front stage’; ‘backstage’ the meetings are planned and
there are preliminary discussions about what will happen at the amplified Committee meeting.
Before this meeting, Johanna, Roberto and Claudia had met to plan the structure and agenda of the
meeting, so that it would be efficient and not too time-consuming. Roberto set the time for the
meeting: 3 hours should be enough. Then, he asked everyone to present himself. Some new actors
had come in, some without knowing about the content of the Committee.
An interesting arrival was Ricardo Cevallos, all the way from Guayaquil, representing the young agro-
ecological movement there. He’s the owner of a hostel, serving organic food. Patricia and Cecilia
from the Canastas Comunitarias in Riobamba also went to Quito to join the meeting. Roberto preset
the meeting and led the agenda. He explained – again – the role and objectives of COPISA as an
organism of civil power. The mission of this particular Committee was now described as to promote
‘active, conscious and sustainable consumption’.
The image of the communication campaign
The proposal for the communication campaign was presented. The theme proposed is ‘Mi Canasta’,
or ‘my food basket’, referring to the Canasta familiar, the national Canasta offered by government. It
should be a completely different Canasta, filled with food that is tasty, healthy, ecological (referring
to local and seasonal fruits and vegetables), and economically supporting family agriculture. With the
launch of the campaign, the ‘tasty’, ‘healthy’ and ‘appropriated’ will be prioritized. The term
‘caserito’ is proposed; a term to describe both customer and producer, very unique to the markets
where direct contact between customer and farmer is facilitated. The proposed public for the
campaign are urban people, aged 20 – 35, because they are starting to make their own food choices,
decide where to buy. The idea is to direct the semi-convinced people, or people that do pick food
consciously and are willing to buy organic foods, but don’t know yet where to find these foods.
Michelle made sure to explain that they chose this public because they are people open to buy these
products, concerned about their health and nutrition and have potential to realize changes in society.
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The mass media strategy entails radio and TV spots, folders, graphics, a website, etc. The idea is to
organize interviews with famous people to attract attention.
Also, an external platform should exist so that people can be reached with some main points,
because they need this to be more informed. Johanna added the importance of creating an internal
communication platform that would enhance information on the access of organic foods and how
people can get into contact with initiatives of agroecological fairs for example; this is extremely
important to sustain what already exists.
En Minga por la Pachamama on the agroecological fair in Ibarra (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
Then, the internal strategy focuses on the organizations that work with enhancing food sovereignty;
they can join the campaign. Work should be started with existing organizations and elaborating their
networks to make influence on possible spaces such as universities, restaurants, schools, etc.
Ricardo from Guayaquil discussed some concerns he had: “It is necessary to talk to the public media
managed by the state. The defined public needs the message, but we shouldn’t forget about another
very important public: housewives with rural origins that live in popular city neighborhoods”. He
described an interesting phenomenon of growing pharmacies that offer natural products in popular
neighborhoods in Guayaquil. Further, he also thought it is necessary to contract a person that can
help with public relations and generate the campaign etc. The ministry of tourism could be a very
important actor because they are interested in the revival of the gastronomy culture of Ecuador.
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Roberto added it is crucial to say what we want to reach with the campaign. It was agreed that the
objective is an awareness raising campaign in order to reach as much consumers as possible that will
change their consumptions patterns and support agro- ecological farmers. In this way, food
sovereignty can be constructed.
“Commercialization is the bottleneck. You have to go to the supermarkets, the market, and see where you can sell the agro ecological products you are producing. But, there is a gap. Because, the market is not ‘a thing’, behind the market are persons, social actors. They take decisions; with the act of buying, their action. I think we came to a next step, in which consumers are new social actors. And we as consumers can help constructing – in a conscious, sustainable way and support family agriculture. Not only for our health, children, or environment. But for all of these reasons together. And this radical decision is able to change society.”
Roberto believes a greater demand from consumers is necessary to help grow agro- ecological
production and not vice versa, although some actors think you should also focus on organization of
production.
Translation of the images into practice: the national event
In the sub Committee of the event, a lot of different activities were proposed, already showing the
different conception that people had on the event. The idea of a boring conference was quickly
blown off; actors spoke about an ‘emotional’ event, a celebration of the launch of their campaign.
What was also agreed on was that they should launch the campaign and take it to another level, so
that it wouldn’t stay there but permit other organizations to come in. Rather than a sole event, it is a
real ‘space’, bringing together different initiatives.
They see it structured in different ‘fields of action’, such as preparation of food, production, nutrition
and ancestral foods. For each category, they want to define creative proposals and see what images
can be linked to food sovereignty. Further, they will identify specific fun and interactive activities for
each proposal. It is absolutely required that it is attractive for people. Spaces of mass circulation in
Quito for example can be used.
For the organization of the event, a lot of possible actors were discussed in the preparation
meetings. Both on national level, co- organizations should be found and on the local level,
participating actors such as primary and secondary schools, delegates from national food programs
etc. can be found.
The varying activities show clearly how interpretation differs. A first idea was setting up a sort of live
cooking space with both cooks and producers of the food present, in order to connect how we eat a
product with whom it has produced. Revolutionary theater forms such as theater of the oppressed
could be used to involve more people and pass the voice. Another idea was that of the ‘Pambamesa’,
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a sort of eat- in event (people all bring food and then everyone shares what is put on the table)
where people can understand the different forms of sharing and distributing food, according to
ancestral practices. Furthermore, games, videos and concerts were possible activities. Daisy
proposed a sort of educational modules on responsible consumption. During this meeting, the
brainstorm of possible ideas were presented, making everyone present reflect on the proposal.
The final products they want to generate are a network of actors, each time growing and growing; a
package of material to share in the different spaces and inclusive participation in the agro-ecological
markets. The duration of the event should be of one day or a two-day event, with previous mini-
events to announce the big one. The first national event will take place in Quito, but during the same
time period, various, small events should take place outside of Quito and in various cities.
Anita clearly sees the necessity of letting the event grow and make sure people will join the
campaign. This could be the purpose of the mini-events, to look for more people. Steve stresses that
the event shouldn’t be centralized. It should give rise to a creative spring that impacts people in
public spaces. After this meeting, actors felt motivated to continue and start up the campaign and
event preparations.
A closer look at the symbols behind the campaign and event proposals
During the field trips I did with Slow Food, Heifer, Veco and En Minga por la Pachamama, various
images of food were evoked. Especially the economic value of food, the cultural importance of food
and rituals that accompany cooking, solidarity, and health and nutrition are brought forward. This
symbols of food give rise to certain images put forward in the proposal for the communication
campaign and event, such as “Mi Canasta”: with the emphasis on health, (economic) solidarity and
(indigenous) culture. In the rest of this chapter, I highlight the 4 main themes that carry important
symbols, how they arose from my data.
7.1. Commercialization of agro-ecological produce
In the whole food sovereignty movement, a lot of emphasis is on the organization of agro ecological
fairs. In Quito, there is already a well-established network of this fairs, organized by the farmer
association Probio. I visited various fairs, in the provinces of Pichincha, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi,
Imbabura, Cañar and Guayas. Usually, these fairs are farmer markets with agro ecological produce.
Each farmer comes with a certain quantity of its own produce at a stand on the market. In some
towns or cities, the organizing association, cooperation or NGO has gained a fixed stand on a public
square. Others have managed their own spot, either rented or have usufruct right.
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Agroecological fair in Salcedo (Picture: Maya Dérome)
In what follows, a short outlook on Chuya Mikuna, an agro ecological enterprise looking out for
market channels to trade agro ecological produce
VECO – Capacitating local farmer movements
Johanna told me it could be interesting for me to join Marcos on his field trip to Suscal, in the
province of Cañar, the Southern Sierra. The rainy winter season had prolonged my bus ride and I
hadn’t slept much when I arrived in the tiny village of destination. Two employees of Chuya Mikuna
came to pick be up and brought me to their office, where they would have their yearly planning
meeting with VECO. Later on a trip, I got to know Maria, one of the two. She was a young woman àf
25, living with her mother on a farm and producing for her family. She was married, but her husband
had left for the United States through a Coyote two years ago and she hadn’t heard from him since.
She explained about the work she does for Chuya Mikuna as a promotor in the communities. Chuya
Mikuna small agro-business in agro- ecological products, looking for markets such as agro-ecological
fairs, childcare centers and food baskets to promote these products. Literally, Chuya Mikuna means
healthy food, clean food. I learned about the structural problems Chuya Mikuna faces with
accelerating their production and finding new market channels through which to sell their
production. They want to work first for food sovereignty, what they define as the access of healthy
and clean food for family farmers.
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Luis and his sons with their potato harvest (Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
During my visit to his farm, Luis, one of the producers of Chuya Mikuna told me that generally
farmers were not happy with the price their products were sold, since this price was lower than on
the normal market. They were proud to produce in an agro ecological way, but didn’t feel rewarded
for their work. “I would like to produce more; I can easily produce more and make this effort. But
then I need a better price. I have been to an agroecological market; that is where the middle and
upper class come. They pay better.” In this statement, it is clear that farmers are looking for a better
price. And they find it, on agro ecological fairs, where consumers are said to be richer, capable of
offering a better price. Different actors spoke to me about the myth that agro ecological food is only
available for rich people. Daisy from Probio feels like the myth should be broken; that people should
know it is for everyone.
In general, farmers evaluated their products according to commercial criteria. Often, I heard
comments such as ‘But this potato doesn’t have value, because it doesn’t go to the market’. Products
are thus appreciated for the price they eventually will return.
Symbolic value of food here, is equaled to market value. But more than money, market revenues also
mean clothing, housing and education for farmers. Thanks to their production, they can gain access
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to certain spheres of life. By organizations that support the fairs, or other commercialization
initiatives, this solidarity aspect is emphasized: the chance for farmers to get a better life. But is
presented as a win-win situation, since consumers get healthy produce and get to know the origin of
their food, the face behind it.
7.2. Gastronomy and astronomy
A gastronomical Journey through Ecuador
I ran late as I called Claudia to find out the directions of the Santa Catalina museum – that’s where
the tour had started – surprisingly, early. The museum was a nun convent, where they made
consecrated wine, ‘bizcochos’ out of wheat flower, a liquor called Mistela. A rarity you can also get
on the spot is pigeon blood jam; which the nuns used as a medicine for anomia. The time of
breakfast and lunch was very important when the nuns got ready for eating and praying. She also
talked about the habit of putting a human skill on the table in order to quit the appetite of the nuns.
The history and value of foods and production for their culture is explained. The Italian students of
the Gastronomy University of Slow Food in Bra, Italy, were very amused with the guide and liked her
enthusiastic way of raising her voice and hopping through the museum. Once outside, we passed a
chawarmishky11 producer lady. Our guide let us try some and explained this was a special recipe
since it was made with barley and milk. As I tasted the warm drink, I realized this field trip with the
students from Bra and Claudia from Slow Food literally opened my eyes for the richness of the
gastronomy of Ecuador.
Our tour was pursued in the city museum, which is important to show the typical foods of Ecuador
and the gastronomy of the pre-Hispanic period. The importance of particular food is reflected by the
burying habits of ancient Ecuadorians. People were put in a tomb with their favorite and most sacred
foods: tostado (toasted corn) and choclo (cooked corn), and habas (beans). She also talks about the
medicinal power of guinea pigs; it is used traditionally as a sort of pre-modern X-ray tool with radial
power to track diseases. Healers apply it to scan the body of an ill person. Guinea pigs would also be
kept in the kitchen so they would be warm. In the indigenous culture, the kitchen was a sacred place,
where women used to spend almost their whole lives. There, they would make the locro, a soup
made of potatoes, cheese and pig intestines. Also, beetles, worms and larva’s were part of their diet.
Then, varieties of corn and the different grains such as soya (soy), fréjol (kidney bean), quinoa,
morocho, mote, canguil (varieties of corn) that are so important. She also talks about sacred food
with lama blood and the preparation of grain ‘breads’ such as quimbolitos.
11
A sort of fermented beverage made out of the agave or penko plant. See also further below.
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One of the traditional practices now re-invented and produced in an innovative way by Fernanda, is
the production of ‘chaguarmishky’, literally ‘sweet agave’. Fernanda lives with her husband on the
ancient hacienda Guachalá, right where the astronomical “Middle of the Earth” is, somewhat north
from Quito.
Fernanda’s agave syrup (Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
She produces agave syrup and sauces from the agave plant, from which indigenous women have
made chaguarmishky for generations. However, Fernanda tells us “This tradition is losing itself. We
are maintaining it. Before, they consumed a lot of it. Nowadays, children drink a lot of Coca- Cola and
it gives them gastritis.” As thus, she talks about the cultural and nutritious importance of the drink.
More than that, she says it also serves as an extra income. The women know exactly how to extract
the agave sap from the plants. ‘It lasts for only 40 days, the production of the sap. The flavor changes
a lot; the taste of the beginning, middle and end of extraction is very different. The agave here is very
sweet, because of the dry soil.’ Fernanda wants to educate her clients; and explain them about the
importance of agave syrup. It has medicinal power and helps fighting arthritis. Her father had taught
her how to use it as a medicine; and now people congratulate and thank her for the solution she has
offered them. “It is also an amazing alternative for sugar if you are diabetic.”
Together with Claudia and the Italian students, we travelled further north, to Cotacachi. The farmer
organization UNORCAC received us to talk about the ‘saberes y sabores’ (knowledges and tastes) of
the communities of Cotacachi. They told us about women of the communities trying to change their
way of eating and improving nutrition for their children. We were served 12 different, traditional
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Andean dishes. For every dish, the cultural, medicinal and nutritional importance was explained. The
importance of cooking, and cooking in a healthy way was emphasized.
The next day, our bellies still stuffed, we met Professor Juan Carlos Donoso, teacher at the Institute
for Indigenous knowledge Jatun Yachay Wasi.
Juan Carlos Donoso: building the fire (Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
Together with him, we were to make a Pachamanka, a pit to cook in. First, we started building a great
fire, with wood and stones. The idea was to heat the stones so they could be put in the pit to cook
the food. Together with the indigenous women, the students, Claudia and I helped preparing the
food – rinsing, cutting and putting it into leaves of Achira, to keep it clean. The most delicate things
were put on top; the things that need to cook longer in the middle. Apparently, the food is that
nutritious, because of this cooking style underground and the leaves it is wrapped it, that you don’t
need to eat for the rest of the day. Juan Carlos explains to us: “We make this fire and ask for
permission to do this. Our mother earth permits us to have food. We will ask permission of the 4
elements: water, earth, fire and air. We need all the four elements. And the importance of the sun;
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without the sun everything would be ice and we wouldn’t be able to live. So the Andeans are happy
every day that the sun comes up once again. Our grandfather ‘air’ then, gives us harmony in our lives.
Astronomy
In Cayambe, at ‘the Middle of the Earth’, where the solar clock is; we learn about a surprising link
between astronomy and gastronomy from our guide:
“Since astronomy has always been very important for agriculture – you need to count the days to know about the wet season, you plant seeds according to the lunar cycle. Astronomy is the mother of all sciences. Everything starts with astronomy. Since this is so important for agriculture, gastronomy cannot exist without astronomy, without all this agricultural knowledge.”
An example of the link between astronomy and gastronomy, is, the “Fanesca”, a soup with 12
different grains and dried fish served with Easter, when people celebrate the birth of all the grains. It
is the celebration of the water, the fertility. It is important to understand this link and see the
celebrations with their importance of agricultural events.
In this section, we saw how different cooking habits are related to indigenous traditions. These are
full of spirituality and beliefs in the nutritional value of food. Ancestral rituals are inevitably linked to
the showing of gratitude versus Mother Earth, that she provided food for everyone. Human values
that are highly appreciated are also linked to the production, preparation and consumption of food.
7.3. Human food The idea of the “Pambamesa” was discussed in the event group by various actors. Coming from
Fabiola, the director of CEPCU, a farmer’s association directed by women, she is an indigenous
women practicing the Pambamesa habit regularly in the food fairs she organizes. The pambamesa is
a sort of Andean eat- in, a communitarian table where everyone brings some food that is then shared
with all of the members.
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Pambamesa on the agroecological fair in Pimampiro (Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
The practice reflects a certain message people want to give that is composed by the values of
solidarity and sharing through food. It enables people to contribute to a healthy, delicious meal with
whatever they have to offer. Everyone contributes with one single item, and each person will get a
lot more in return, a whole plate, composed by various foods, shared with all of the person’s family
members and friends.
This image of solidarity in a plate shared with other people, is strong. Roberto says: “My sovereign
plate would be a soup and a ‘seco’ with a human face, a name and surname. In the plates I serve to
my children are the potatoes of Don Jorge, the plantains of Luis Gonzales. I know their land and the
production methods they have. That is what a sovereign plate is for me, a more human plate.”
Also within the different organizations, the programs are often built on strategies that improve
solidarity. Heifer for example, has a project “Passing on the gift”, a solidary system of which the
essence is sharing (animals, material for infrastructure, tools for agriculture, knowledge and seeds)
and thus caring about others. Pedro Julio, from the Association of Farm Workers of Manglaralto,
comments on his experience:
“I think that paying back to help other makes us stronger and more human. We forget our individualism and start caring about what happens to other people. Here, we are recovering the lost culture of helping others.”
He refers to ancestral practices that were based on the values of reciprocity, solidarity and trust
among families, that Heifer wants to help building. The production of food, for them, should be
centered around these practices. Another ancestral practice, trueque, or the exchange of food is
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practiced by farmers on agroecological fairs for example. In Ibarra, the ‘solidary markets’ are
organized along this principle: farmers exchange their produce for produce from other farmers in
order to obtain a full, nutritious food basket for their family consumption.
Feria solidaria Ibarra (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
Within the Canastas Comunitarias, the neigbhourhood purchasing group in Riobamba, the members
are seen as being part of one family. They expressed this during a meeting of their Consumer
Assembly that I attended. They – or at least some of them - believe in community work and an urban
‘minga’. Minga is a word for community work where people of the community do work together
(harvesting, sowing, constructing roads, buildings, …) and then share food together. It is an Andean
concept that lives on in the agro-ecology movement in the Sierra. Some of my interviewees at the
coast told me that it is not known in their culture and that in their region each of them cultivates its
own land, with its own family.
The people from Utopía also see the Canastas and Agroecological Markets as more ‘human’ type of
markets, where you can greet people and be connected with them.
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Trueque, the exchange of food (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
Utopía also financed a music project. They produced a CD: Mi Canasta canta, literally ‘my foodbasket
sings’. Songs are inspired by Andean and general Ecuadorian foods, cultural knowledge and
nationalism. The songs are dedicated to foods of Ecuador that they value, for example this lyrics on
the song ‘El Maizote’ (The Great Corn):
Dicen que el hambre ha empezado, A mi casa no ha llegado, Porque tengo mi maíz Al largo y ancho de este país, Para engañar el hambre sin más cochambre. Para vos no hay regiones Por eso vas en mis canciones, En la altura y en la llanura, De los Andes sabrosura Cebiche costeño con tostado
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Y mote serrano con pescado Maíz grandote, maíz elote, Maíz gigante, maíz maizote. CORO: Maíz diario, maíz solidario Maíz te quiero, flor y raíz de este país. Maíz sano, maíz soberano Maíz te quiero, flor y raíz de este país. …
In this song, the ‘corn’ is directly addressed as if it was personified. Corn is presented as the national
food of Ecuador, found in all of its regions, in different dishes from both the Andes and the Coast,
ensuring food security for all of the people. It is both “a flower and a root of this country”.
Children of Tzimbuto eating mote (corn variety) (Picture: Kaat Van Ongeval)
7.4. Health and nutrition
Health, as we have read several times already, also in the story of Slow Food, for example, is a
recurrent aspect in the stories. Michelle for example says she feels very blessed “well, or in an
advantageous position to be able to link health with agriculture, what rarely ever happens.”
When people talk about ecological nutrition, or sustainable food, they talk about the necessity of
eating healthy. The pyramid of nutrition was something very useful for them. The very basic nutrition
information people are learning about, was often stunning for me. The pyramid of nutrition was
something very ‘new’ and interesting, according to members of the Canastas Comunitarias, for
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example. Also on the agroecological fairs in Salcedo, attention was drawn on healthy food, how to
combine meat with carbohydrates and vegetables for example. How could thinking of sustainable
consumption in ecological, economic, etc. terms be possible then? Well, in a lot of the organizations,
I experienced a strong tendency within the movements to revalue and safe Andean knowledge on
nutrition and health. Farmers on my field trip with Heifer repeated several times that eating herbs
and drinking herb tea prevented them from being sick. These traditional food practices – and
agroecolgy – that they are promoting imply a healthy, harmonious lifestyle according to the provision
of nature – and in relation with Mother Earth – la Pachamama. So, in a way, adherents of the food
sovereignty movements emphasize the amount of local, traditional knowledge that is already there,
within the communities. The nutritional information that is referred to and promoted within the
campaign is based on traditional food practices, in harmony with Mother Earth and healthy, both for
humans as for the whole production system.
For the participants in the Committee, unhealthy practices, such as the use of pesticides and
chemical fertilizers, are absolutely not done. There is also a strong movement against the
introduction of GMO’s. In the constitution, it is said that Ecuador prohibits the introduction of GMO
crops and seeds. People in COPISA are thinking of strategies to fight against GMO lobbying. Within
the Consumer Assembly of the Canastas Comunitarias, people expressed a strong fear for
transgenetics and convinced the public with a strong symbol of GMO’s as a ‘poison’. According to
them, the health of families was being poisoned by eating this food. They claim people became very
sick and that it is something that doesn’t serve anyone and that isn’t good.
7.5. Symbols and knowledge of food
The symbols that are analyzed form part of the ordinary rituals of everyday life: the production,
preparation and consumption of food. Food plays such as important symbolic role in people’s life
because it has a fundamental part to play; simply the need of alimentation for society and people so
they can reproduce (Weismantel 1998). Regarding to the production of food, symbols are strong
when it comes to the ‘healthy’ production. This means health for both humans as nature, and
production should be oriented towards agro ecology, without pesticides, nor chemical fertilizers or
GMO seeds. Commercialization should be through fair channels, obtaining fair prices for producers.
But also for the consumers, there should be a guarantee of the quality of the food. People involved
within the food sovereignty movement, generally promote agro ecological fairs as a great market
channel to obtain this sort food purchasing. Regarding to the preparation of food, a lot of strong
symbols are put forward by the different people on the Slow Food trip. As remarked by the Slow
Food guide on indigenous culture, the kitchen is the most sacred place of the house. Also
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Weismantel (1998) affirmed this on her study of the Zumbagua community, the kitchen being the
warmest, most central place in the household, even the heart of daily life. The study of Weismantel
(1998) further is valuable for the insights on changing cooking habits in an alienated, indigenous
community in the High Andes at the end of the 80’s. She describes processes of acculturation and
change in which children in indigenous families are starting to demand store-bought bread over
homemade porridge. Eating cuy (guinea pig) and potatoes is seen as a traditional, indigenous, Indian
habit. The eating of white rice and chicken is seen as a ‘white’, Latin practice. Currently, eating white
rice might still be seen as a Latin practice, but what is certain is that it is common practice to eat
white rice. There is however, a lot of attention to the changing food practices, and the whole trip of
Slow Food was organized around the ‘traditional’ food of Ecuador (or what is believed to be
traditional), and a certain will to rescue these practices is always felt in the meetings. The example of
chawarmishky is a particular one, a beverage that is said to be replaced by Coca-Cola. It is intriguing
how ancestral practices are almost automatically linked to health and health care. Eating traditional
foods, according to the members of UNORCAC, is preventing people to have to go to a doctor.
Other traditional practices focus on symbols of solidarity, and community feeling. The pambamesa,
trueque and minga practices reflect these solidary practices. Gilchrist (2000) states: “People’s sense
of community derives from their perception of being linked into the dynamics of a complex system of
relationships and interaction.” Networks of social interaction are constructed and reinforced through
people’s daily activities. These are creating inter-personal ties and affirm community boundaries. By
engaging in these practices, people certainly reinforce their networks of social interaction. Sharing
food together is a strong symbol. The shared meal is symbolic for the social bond between people,
the ties between them. Within the Canastas, people affirm they are part of a community, that they
feel like a family. For some members, this will be true, but for others it is just about purchasing their
food for their families. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that within COPISA, people feel like a family.
They do engage in activities that are community- building, in the proposals of the event.
Cooking habits
Cooking is a practice of a transformational kind: the social formation is produced and transformed,
because it is the production and reproduction of the material means of subsistence (Weismantel
1998). Food preferences are also identity building, they are close to the center of self-definition,
according to Mintz, cited in Weismantel (1998). Lévi-Strauss cited in Weismantel (1998) considered
cooking as one of the core symbols of culture because it is thé activity by which the natural world is
made social. The day-to-day survival of families depends on the conversion of products grown or
brought from outside into cooked foods. In this way, the household members internalize the external
world.
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In Indigenous culture, the image of the hearth is a very real one, often with wood fire, where this is
intrinsically associated with that of the woman. She is mother, wife, daughter and daughter-in-law
and possesses “cuisine” exclusively (Weismantel 1998). In sharp contrast, today, especially in urban
society, there are mothers and wifes that can’t cook at all. My host mom, for herself explained that
she had never been cooking because she always had ‘empleadas’, maids, in the house cooking for
her children. Now that she didn’t anymore, she made simple salads, or even invited her male friends
– two of whom I met where cooks – over to prepare dinner at her place. Symbols of hearth and
cooking are thus rapidly changing, and different symbolic worlds exist next to each other.
Cooking is one of the domains in which conflicting processes are taking place, because it combines
with economic, political and ideological practices. They are spaces of contradiction and
transformation. Eliana may be talking about food sovereignty in her radio program, but after
spending half a day with the Canastas Comunitarias in which she talks about healthy and nutritious
foods, she was dying for hornado, grilled pork meat with potato tortillas.
Hornado, Pork meat
Clearly, these are contradictions that characterize daily life. Her daughter joined us on the trip to
Riobamba, so it is likely she wanted to make this visit partly for her daughter to see the traditional
hornado places in Riobamba.
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Standard of living – Comfort and convenience
Over the concept of standard of living, there was a century-long debate. It long meant the disposable
income that average or poor households spent on the consumption of material goods (food, clothing,
shelter, fuel). It has come to include longevity, health, education, etc (Shammas 2012). Prior to the
19th century, policies intended to limit consumption of food and clothing.
Discourses of comfort establish the need for a range of material arrangements, characterizing these
as appropriate for all sectors of society (Shove 2012). The emergence of sustainable ways of life
involve detaching comfort from discourses of natural entitlement and on situating self conscious
satisfactions with the relationship between one’s body and its physical environment. By a sort of
convenience discourse, it is almost logical that it is a priority that there is food on the table at the
right time, rather than looking at what the meal consists of. The idea of eating together as a family
can still be highly valued, but ideas of convenience don’t need to oppose this. Convenience these
days is associated with a reduction in time to complete a specific activity with the capacity to
rearrange temporal sequences (Shove 2012).
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8. Qué rico es: the body of the campaign
The beginning of Qué rico es!
The host organization for the third amplified meeting of the Consumption Committee, on the 31th of
January, was CIUDAD. There were 12 participants present; of which 4 were new actors: Interestingly,
there was someone from the association of restaurants in Ibarra.
Eliana introduces the meeting by showing the agenda and planning. She explains that the purpose of
the campaign is to interconnect everyone, through the website etc. Everyone should form part of
everyone’s network so that people get to know each other and are able to unite forces. The possible
images for the campaign and the slogan are discussed. The process of COPISA is seen as some sort of
walk, toward something. This image carries a strong symbolic meaning, that of the process.
They discuss the invitation letter written for the campaign and the concepts that should or shouldn’t
be in it. The purpose of the invitation letter is to formalize a contact or interview to be made, but the
idea is that they approach persons or institutions interested to invite them to participate. The
usefulness of terms is discussed. The argument for “Rico” here goes that is doesn’t only means tasty,
but it also means “rich” in terms of the richness of culture or in nutritional value. The
Corresponsables team like the power of the word “caserito”12, but this is rejected by Michelle
because it isn’t used in whole Ecuador and is a concept typically from the Andes. At the end of the
letter should be included a specific way of how to contribute to or participate in the campaign. They
express the constant need to organize themselves and find ways to collaborate with more ‘base
organizations’. Roberto argues that “All of the energy and effort we have put in national politics, all
of the energy there, should also be canalized towards the different regions, provinces and
territories.” Steve, in a later meeting, also explains he is worried about getting all of the different
territories appropriate the campaign and make it spread further than only Quito.
Then, a proposal for ‘working Committees’ was discussed, a new form of dividing the responsibilities
between the different people in the Committee to start working on the campaign and the event. The
event had been planned during the last weekend of April. Little responsibilities were taken up, a lot
of vacant ‘positions’ were left Interestingly, they proposed to employ a person half-time on behalf of
COPISA to take care of the communication of the campaign. In one of the planning meetings,
Johanna and Roberto had already discussed the possibility of Eliana being this person, so that in this
third amplified meeting, Eliana stood up as responsible for the whole communication campaign.
12
A term that signifies both buyer and seller, producer and consumer, used on (informal) market settings
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Claudia from Slow Food was appointed as coordinator for the event in Quito for the end of April. She
would take on the task of appointing other people for the event and work out some activities.
Here is where my field work stopped, with the planning of the event for April in a very preliminary
stage, the image and slogan of the communication campaign still very obscure. Varying emotions
were felt at the end of this meeting. There were people very motivated and happy something was
happening; others were frustrated because they would have liked to see things happen a long time
ago, and some felt the urge to continue and hurry, since April suddenly seemed so close.
After returning to Belgium and starting my data analysis, suddenly an e-mail from the consumer
group popped up in my mail box. They had made a google group to facilitate communication
amongst themselves and had held three other amplified meetings. And now, in this e-mail, Eliana
proudly presented the image of the new campaign, Qué rico es!:
Poster of the “Qué rico es!” campaign
The slogan they had been searching for, eventually became: “Qué rico es!”, or something like: “How
delicious, how fun is it!”. The following phrase: “Qué rico es comer sano y de mi tierra”, or “How
delicious is it to eat healthy and food of my land” consists of various images, symbols that have been
chosen and prioritized over others. First of all, participants have chosen to highlight the “taste”, the
wonder, of Ecuadorian food. This aspect emphasizes the taste, quality and culture of food in Ecuador.
The image that goes with the campaign is a heart-shaped assemblage of foods on a plate. These
foods belong to the Andes, Coast and Amazon, representing all climates and cultures of Ecuador. We
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see corn, cacao, avocado, banana, papaya, beans, fish, potato, quinoa, cherimoya, cassava, … All of
the fruits and vegetables are chosen well to represent the image of food sovereignty that lives in the
Consumption Committee. These are all foods traditionally eaten in Ecuador, with strong symbolic and
cultural value, and nutritious. No one would have thought to show French fries or sausage on the
plate. Interestingly, there is no meat on the plate. Actually the whole image of the plate has little to
do with what Ecuadorians these days eat. Usually, plates consist of a lot of rice, which is now reduced
to a little heap in the back of the plate (which could also be quinoa), a piece of pig/beef/chicken meat
and a little lettuce and tomatoes. The campaign clearly wants to show nutritious foods: fruits,
vegetables, beans, roots, etc. It makes a clear statement in terms of what ‘food of my land’ means for
the people in the Committee.
The choices made for the purpose of the campaign are the symbols of ‘rico’, ‘sano’ and ‘de mi tierra’:
‘tasty’, ‘healthy’ and ‘from my land’. In both the common space of the amplified meetings as the
space of the organizations, as the private spheres of the actors; these are being discussed, eventually
leading to this very practical outcome of the “Qúe rico es!”campaign. To construct the one symbol
and image of the campaign, “qúe rico es”, all of the different narratives presented above are
necessary. The campaign is the collective and material outcome of the debate. It now has a physical
and practical representation. From the holistic image of the Pachamama, they came down to this
tangible, practical outcome of the plate with foods. This is the materiality of the campaign.
Behind the materiality, and the practices, there are the discourses and symbols. First of all,
consumption is redefined as a political, conscious act. A consumer is a co-producer. To consume, is a
choice, to choose which system you want to produce and re-produce as a consumer. To consume
healthy products, that come from Ecuador, and preferably from farmers you know, is presented as
being the richest act of eating. Moreover, you have to eat together, with other people, and share
food. This is the image that is presented by the people in the Committee. They all have their own
narratives, and interests, of democracy, a platform, local communication, solidarity and health, and
all of them can find themselves in the overarching image. They link up with other actors on the
theme, and stretch the networks they build. They constantly re-arrange around the concept of
responsible consumption for food sovereignty. The concept of food sovereignty has been used for
many purposes, and has been symbolized by many things. Right before finishing this thesis I even
saw people on the COPISA site tweeting about the International Breastfeeding day and how ‘mother
milk’ is food sovereignty: how it is costless, full of nutrients and … full of love.
Food sovereignty got appropriated by the Consumption Committee and the Qué rico es campaign.
The other way around, the “Qué rico es” campaign is being used by different organizations in their
different territories of the country to promote their initiatives for the sake of food sovereignty, and
thus appropriating the campaign to reach their objectives.
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The future of the Committee
By the end of 2012, the movement will probably lose its official support. Its governmental mandate
will end. This will mean in practice that COPISA will no longer have access to funding nor a physical
working space. For Michelle, this is not so much of a problem: “Our objectives are all the same, it
doesn’t matter which institution is there, and which isn’t. They are gonna continue either way, even
if COPISA fails.”
I also believe the movement will not end suddenly. Actors will keep on linking up with each other,
and look for possibilities in various ways to propose their agenda on responsible consumption.
The discourse of food sovereignty will exist, but take on different forms. It is the materiality of the
campaign that is flexible. Actors organize themselves constantly around different symbols of
solidarity, health, economy, spirituality and authenticity, … of food. The work that is done, is
continuous; Actors come from far in the debate, some involved with the Agroecological collective
from years already. Since the Committee started meeting in December again, from the vague idea of
doing something with the campaign Come Sano, Seguro y Soberano, they have created this
communication campaign “Qué rico es” in only three months time. The “Qué rico es” campaign
provides actors with a tangible, material outcome that is out there, that can be used for different
purposes. They all can find themselves in this image, and pursue struggles within and outside their
own organizations to change diet, exercise democracy, implement food sovereignty, etc. Actors
creatively use their agency within the framework of the Qué rico campaign in a strategic way to
accomplish personal or organizational goals. Examples are the various events that followed the
national event in Quito in very distinct geographical spaces. Some organize activities around
nutrition, others around traditional food, others focus on seeds, but all within the national consumer
campaign. The campaign gives them an umbrella to hold on to.
In April, a first launch of the campaign was celebrated with an event in Quito, in the Carolina park.
79
Band playing on the “Qué rico es” event in Quito, La Carolina (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
The agroecological market on the Qué rico es event in Quito, La Carolina (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
After this, they’ve organized one amplified meeting at least every month. Before the launch of the
event, they had some extra meetings, and now, in summer, they organized workshops of “comercio y
consumo”, which means the launch of a next Committee, in close collaboration with the
Consumption Committee. The last amplified meeting I know of, was on the 15th of August, the day
before submitting my thesis. I wish all of the people in the Committee a wonderful experience and
lots of luck in their work to be continued.
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From Symbols of Food to Practical Organization
Literally, the actors in the Technical Committee for Nutrition, Health and Consumption have come
together in a meeting room for a couple of times and created something very practical: the
consumer Committee itself, as a space of debate, formed by actors motivated to organize themselves
within a national movement for sustainable consumption. It is a sort of platform through which
actors express their concerns on the consumption patterns of the Ecuadorian population and
promote ‘good consumption’ through the organization of national events and a national
communication campaign, promoting their ideals on what they consider good food. It is not
something individual, but it is not (yet) a collective either – it could be considered as a sort of
opportunistic, semantic community. Spaces are created through their organization, through the
language they use. Therefore, it is fundamentally a semantic organization. This is made up of
different semantic features being traded and negotiated, slowly shaping the symbols put forward by
the campaign. Actors take on the nutritionist approach of Michelle, for example, but do not really
grasp Marcelo’s idea of networking. I argue that the debate is not about a central discourse, but
rather a de-centered (and therefore multiple?) discourse of food sovereignty. In this process, actors
trade symbols of - amongst others – food with each other. These ‘trade’ interactions put different
meanings into action. Some of these will merge with others and form narratives. In the end, these
narratives can be so accepted that they lead to a general discourse. And with the establishment of
this discourse or the distribution of these narratives, actors in the food sovereignty movement are
perhaps creating a new proposal of social organization – a window for opportunity within Ecuadorian
society. And this is a very practical outcome; the launch of their consumer campaign “Qué rico es”
and the national events started in April and continuing along the year. The next big event is planned
in October, in Guayaquil. It is clear that the campaign is ‘corporial’, has a body.
This outcome couldn’t have been predicted. As Noelle Aarts (2009) puts it, strategic communication
can be compared to a game of football: There
are rules and regularities, there are individual
talents, but how the game enrolls and the
outcome of the game depends on the
interaction between the football players
during the game; and is thus per definition
unpredictable. This is also true in COPISA.
On the Qué rico es event in Ibarra (Picture: Steve Sherwood)
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9. Conclusions: Actors, knowledge and spaces in the Food Sovereignty
debate
Food sovereignty is a broad concept that needs unpacking to work with. Within COPISA, the eight
technical working Committees write proposals on different themes for the law. I observed the initial
organizational process of the Committee for Consumption, Nutrition and Alimentary Health,
launched mid 2011. I zoomed in on the actors that are part of the Committee, the knowledge around
food they evoke (in the form of narrative and symbols) and the spaces that they construct together
(the campaign Qué rico es and the events around sustainable consumption). Based on my analysis, I
draw three conclusions around rethinking consumption, COPISA as a social movement and the
deepening of participation, policy and democracy.
9.1. Rethinking consumption
‘Mi Canasta’: My food basket
The purpose of the Committee is to sustain and promote consumption for food sovereignty. This is
translated in the image of “Mi Canasta”, and it has been decided the tastiness should go up front,
then the health and then the own, the cultural. Surprisingly, the more ideological symbols of the
solidary economy and ecological sustainability are not seen as a priority here. First, actors agree they
want to prioritize “tasty”. But, the Spanish ‘rico’ says more than only tasty. For them, it is also the
richness of the food itself that is important; this can lay in its nutritional value but also can be cultural
richness. We’ve seen that actors don’t agree on what ‘good’ food is: is it nutritionally healthy, locally
produced, and produced without pesticides or bought at a fair price? However, some elements
return clearly more than others in the stories they tell. The ‘person’ behind the product is very
important; the food needs a face, as to say so. Second, the nutritional and medicinal value of the
food is also considered important, as well as healthy production methods. Third, also the cultural
identity of food is given life by the actors; they use very strong symbols that express authenticity of
the foods in terms of traditional recipes and ancestral traditions, such as inauguration. Food, in this
process, gets a social life (Appadurai 1986). It goes beyond its materiality as soon as it enters the
cultural world.
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Consumerism
A second, and deeper discourse they evoke, is the act of consuming itself. In the Committee, they
seem to redefine the concept ‘consumerism’ and reflect on what consumption is. Even though they
never openly unpack sustainable consumption in a collective manner and not openly argue about it –
They seem to pull on one side when they consider consuming not solely and merely as a private act.
On the contrary, sharing food is discussed as one of the most important symbols, in different forms
(trueque, pambamesa). For the Committee members consumption is something that is inevitably
connected to the public sphere. It is part of a collectivity: to consume in a responsible way, is being
part of the public sphere of food. They cannot really explain what sustainable consumption is – or are
not even bothered with defining it, but it is certainly part of how people grow, buy and eat food.
Defining consumption as a public act, they do something that European food movements usually fail
to do. In these movements, sustainable consumption is still seen as a private choice. This freedom of
choice is highly valued in Western European countries. However, the Ecuadorian « consumer group »
tries to redefine consumerism, takes it out from the private sphere and puts it into the public sphere.
People reflect on being a consumer IN a society, a consumer that lives within and surrounded by
society, and whose food choices must be in accordance to the type of society which is for the best
social good, for the “sumak kawsay” – or the best way of living, in Quechua. So it is reproduced to
being part of the social commons (Hess July 14 - 18, 2008); food is no longer an individual issue. The
issue at stake – food consumption – is a communal issue.
Consumer as political actor
After discussion of the meanings of food the members of the Committee evoke and the power that
they intrinsically have as consumers, the question remains in what way the actors involved can
regain control of public spheres to redefine consumption as a responsibility taken up by (urban)
citizens. This is what Claudia expresses:
“I would not know what political incidence we have. But what we can reach with COPISA is be alert as citizens, and that there is help, funding from government; we can create spaces that feed this changes at real citizen level. The tangible part is the application, the practical. A person that fully benefits its rights as citizens, as consumer. Education is the base of all of this, no.”
A conscious consumer, one that benefits its right fully as a citizen, is the outcome the Committee
members wish for. The consumer should, in all cases, know about the power he or she has. This was
beautifully expressed by Michelle, with the words ‘el poder de la cuchara’, literally ‘power of the
spoon’, during one of the meetings.
83
In a way, it is about political control of the food system. The consumer is a political actor, with rights
and responsibilities. Responsible citizenship involves the image of the consumer as a co- producer.
What you eat produces effects, not only on your body, but on both nature and civil society. Your
consumption choices will influence society, the economic and social system. The act of eating is as
important as voting. You literally vote the kind of food system you want. Clearly, some actors within
the Committee are more extreme within this way of thinking and call for activism. They even want a
boycott of supermarkets. These actors stress the responsibilities of the consumers. Others only see
the rights, and the freedom of choice consumers should have, and will go as far as supporting a law
for consumer rights, particularly focused on food.
I argue that this process of self-organization around food is an assembling of a sort of new politics of
life, the creation of a new political space – within the reign of food. Although the actors trade
differing images of what COPISA, Food sovereignty, … is; in the site of the consumer Committee they
all seem to find themselves in one, overarching image – that of the « Qué rico es », which can be
unpacked in multiple ways. The process depicted is that of a new discourse in construction:
responsible consumption. At the same time, the process can also be considered as one of a discourse
in deconstruction – the way too general discourse of food sovereignty. Indeed, during the interviews
actors didn’t really pick in on the concept or used it in such a way that I felt it needed unpacking until
it is a tangible concept and can be visualized. They expressed food sovereignty in an image or
preferred to talk about the materiality of the food (different tubors) and the concrete actions
(growing foods without chemicals, eating agro ecological produce) they are engaging in.
Decentralization of the general food sovereignty discourse
We have clearly seen a practical and semantic struggle over concepts such as food, food sovereignty
and consumption. The particular Ecuadorian context of food policy and food movements has shaped
the interaction of the debate. The strong agro ecology movement has influenced the further
processes a lot, with actors as Roberto, Johanna, Steve returning in the food sovereignty movement.
The use of food sovereignty was strategic, to adhere a certain way of thinking; but it is also clear that
there is the need to narrow down the concept when trying to organize concrete activities, such as
the mass communication campaign and the national events planned to be organized within the
consumer Committee. Therefore, it is impossible for one to say that food sovereignty can be used in
‘the’, Southern definition or that it can challenge established regimes in se. I argue that the
understanding and the social implications depend on the social processes that are evolving around
the concept. Research on food sovereignty should therefore not focus on how to reframe the general
discourse towards an ‘authentic, Southern definition’, because I argue that there is no such thing. On
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the contrary, literature on proponing a different frame for food studies – or even a different food
system, should look at the processes of social interaction, symbols and emergent properties that are
present in food movements. The shaping of meaning by social actors in these processes defines how
the food movement will evolve. People need a dynamic process, they need this change. If COPISA
would become an institutionalized organism, it would be opposed against.
9.2. COPISA as a social movement
About (public) spaces and spheres
With their agreed symbol in their communication campaign and the concurring actions, the
Committee members try to regain public spheres of food production and consumption. This space is
characterized by a high amount of reflection on the negative consequences of the current agro –
food system and the search for an alternative, better future. This reflexive space they are creating is
very context – and time – related. They link up to debates that are perceived as relevant, such as the
debate on GMO’s. But at the same time they are also a collective trying to reach consensus through
their organizing process. The space they create is ‘semi- autonomous’. It evolves through a self-
organizing process, but deliberately created to manage the food sovereignty law. Every outcome will
be a negotiated one, of the trade of symbols. The ‘Qué rico es!’ campaign provides them with a
concrete symbol and image they can work with in their struggle for enhancing food sovereignty. They
come from this campaign with the ‘Pachamama’, the very holistic image of relation with nature and
Mother Earth and end up with the image of a plate filled with colorful foods. This plate now
represents food sovereignty; the foods on it carry different images and still represent the ideologies
of harmony, solidarity, health and culture that lay behind it, but it has been brought to a different
level. In a few months, the members of the Committee have created the space of the Committee
itself, as a platform for reflection and debate. They have shaped a certain identity and have
developed campaign material to identify themselves. Identity is people’s source of meaning and
experience (Castells 2004); in this case we have followed their process of meaning construction. It is
incredible to observe the concrete outcomes of this process of just a few months. The outcome was
not at all planned on forehand; this process of change is the outcome of self-organization and people
telling their stories on food (Aarts 2009).
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Social movement
What does this mean for the movement? It got a single, very concrete expression, and explains its
goals. A lot of different actors jumped on board of the campaign and all of these people come
together in this one platform between civil society and the government.
One can ask if the space they are creating is local, regional, national or global. I would say the
circulation of ideas around food sovereignty and alternative food consumption is part of the global
sphere. But how these ideas become tangible, is part of the local space. How do they start building
this space, is singular. The Ecuadorian debate is unique: there are unique actors, coming from
unique organizations, even talking about unique foods (such as guinea pig, chawarmishky). The “Qué
rico es” campaign is a unique, singular expression, nowhere to be found in the exact same form. But,
the experience of Ecuador is also shared around the world through different actors, such as Steve
Sherwood, professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and through Claudia García,
closely linked to the Slow Food movement in Italy. In their own singularity they can still be part of a
global movement, be part of a plurality of movements. It is thus more complex than the individual
consumer versus the collective of consumers around the world. The movement itself is ambiguous,
since it is corporeal; it has a body, is “dressed” with the Qué rico es trousers, but belongs to a global
movement somewhere out there. The discourse of the movements and the networks always extend
but in practice they are still grounded in a locality on earth, in this case the rich tropical soil of
Ecuador.
This makes us develop the idea of the committee as a global assemblage of symbols and knowledge
in different networks. It is not about a collective, or a fixed institution. But it is not a fugitive,
temporary social movement either. I argue that the Committee, if not under the same form, will still
live on, will even have to prove to be dynamic, to continually pick up on local debates and still adhere
to global images of rethinking consumption.
9.3. Deepening civil Participation
We have seen that the food sovereignty debate in the Committee is a self-organized and a self-
organizing process where people from totally different spheres than usual bureaucrats organize
themselves around the concept of food sovereignty. A space as this, with representatives from
NGO’s, social movements and farmers associations, is usually not linked to policy or politics.
However, when we follow Bevir and Rhodes’ (2010) concept of the stateless state, this is as good a
policy process as any other. A social critical definition of policy, such as that of Yanow (2000) and
Wagenaar (2011) focuses on policy as “meaning in action”. I want to draw on the meaning of
86
democracy as any policy-making process that is organized in a participatory, democratic way. The
COPISA organism is organized according to this form of social democracy. Everyone can join the
Committee, to actively think about responsible consumption and take up as much responsibility as he
or she wants.
Why do we need social democracy and policy with a small p?
By now, it should be clear why we need to focus on the interaction of actors when they make sense
out of food sovereignty, when they give meaning to daily practices such as food consumption.
Looking at the discourse of the food sovereignty law would give us a completely different image than
the one we can see now. The law presents food sovereignty as a right (for citizens) and an obligation
(for the state). Within COPISA, some hundred people are continuously shaping and reshaping the
concept of food sovereignty. It is important to know where the actors come from and zoom in to
their life worlds, with whom they connect and whose words they speak.
The outcome that the actors are convinced of creating is a better deal for both consumers and
producers. They combine different symbols and images around food and link these in a new way. It is
interesting for instance that they link the market with solidarity. They redraw the boundaries of
looking at the food system. This has strong conclusions for contemporary development. It is
necessary to recognize the existing boundaries; look at way of doing development that can be much
more inclusive. They stress continuously that they don’t want to replace social movements, that they
are still very important. They want to sustain and help them, but also need them to shape their
structure. As an organism representing civil society, they create important views for change, openly
challenging established regimes of thought and national politics.
They openly want to deepen democracy. The debates in COPISA are a direct form of democracy and
are organized in a very participatory way. Eventually, law proposals will be discussed within the
Assembly. So it is a space of democratic debate that eventually will interact with a more formal
democratic process in the National Assembly, when law proposals are being approved or not. I think
the recent developments in agricultural policy within government don’t allow for a sustainable
cooperation with COPISA. Different people in the Committee are of this opinion too, but it might not
matter when people realize ‘real democracy’ is possible and the power they have.
“So it doesn’t matter what the ministry thinks, when consumers realize how much power they have. But I think they will not have power or political incidence within the ministry of Agriculture, whereas they are supposed to have power there (Michelle).”
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Annexes
Annexe 1: The Food Sovereignty Law (LORSA)
