Introduction

This book has traced how the trade-based theory of food security is the dominant narrative and policy emphasis regarding food, agriculture and hunger in Egypt and Tunisia. We have documented some of the more insidious impacts of how the storyline of food security has panned out historically with reference to broader regional dynamics that include economic reform, war and environmental crisis. This concluding chapter examines whether an alternative food sovereignty (FS) framework is emerging in Egypt and Tunisia and if it is not, why does the food security paradigm continue to be hegemonic? We also ask even if FS is not a regular feature of food-related discourse in Egypt and Tunisia, have there been any recent dents in the emphasis on food security, and if so, with what kind of relative success for promoting a meaningful and sustainable alternative? We indicate that although farmer unrest and protest, over issues as broad as land boundaries, irrigation access, farming input provision, marketing and distribution of produce, may not use the language of FS, the struggles do in fact centre around many of the claims and agenda articulated by global food social movements and especially those championed by FS broadly defined and La Via Campesina (LVC).

Food Sovereignty

There is no single variant or definition of FS. Like democracy, FS is a process without an end but one that nevertheless as we will see, contains several important key themes that promote peasant and small farmer demands for autonomy and control over food production and consumption. In short, FS offers a comprehensive peasant path to social control and decision-making over food-related issues. Food sovereignty also begs the question of the relationship between the town and countryside, of the importance of maintaining delivery of food to urban areas at prices that are affordable and sustainable. Ultimately, FS offers an agenda for promoting a national sovereign project (Amin S. 2017a). We discussed this idea in Chapter 1 and return to it in this chapter. For the moment we need to understand that there is an agrarian question in the twenty-first century and it is one that contests the genocide of the imperialist triad and which promotes the dominant global food regime.