Food Sovereignty and the Solidarity Economy Alternative

This paper explores the relationship between food sovereignty and the solidarity economy. It brings out the extent to which food sovereignty as an attempt to address corporate control of food systems, engender adaptation to and mitigation of  climate change and ensure popular control of food systems embraces and articulates with the solidarity economy.  The solidarity economy in this paper is not understood as a codified definition but rather a transformative practice emerging from below with an emancipatory utopian dimension, a new conception of constitutive popular power and a commitment to deepening democracy. This exploration is carried out through the prism of two case studies. The CECOSESOLA worker cooperative movement in Venezuela and its attempts at popular control of a food economy and the emergent food sovereignty movement in South Africa.