Organisers:
Joanna Bourke Martignoni, Gender Centre, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Nozomi Kawarazuka, International Potato Center (CIP), CGIAR, Hanoi
Stefanie Lemke, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) Coventry University
Speakers:
Martha Awo, Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana, DEMETER
Saba Joshi, Post-doctoral researcher, Oxford University, DEMETER
Adriana Bessa, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Food SAF
Feminist perspectives on food security allow us to identify and understand the multiple power relations that lie at the heart of food governance at various geographical and institutional scales. This conversation will explore the ways in which gendered systems of power are produced, reproduced and contested within and by institutions and actors involved in food governance, including; families and local communities, national agricultural institutions, regional trade agreements, agri-business companies, transnational social movements, development agencies and international human rights and food security policy organisations.
The conversation seeks to provide a feminist and intersectional context for the discussions that will be held during the Global Food Security conference as they relate to food security policies, governance and institutions.
Questions that will be explored by the discussants include:
1. Which methodologies, approaches and analytical frameworks can we use to bring a feminist perspective to the study of food and agriculture? What are the opportunities and challenges that researchers face in this space?
2. How do feminist approaches to food and agriculture articulate the relationships between local agrarian change and global patterns of trade and agricultural liberalisation? What are the material consequences of these spatial linkages for food and nutrition in rural communities? How do we render visible inequalities in food security at different geographical and institutional scales and map changes over time?
3. How does a focus on gendered power relations shed light on rights to land and natural resources? What does our research tell us about agency and vulnerabilities in connection with land dispossession and conflicts over the use of natural resources in rural communities?
4. How can feminist analytical frames inform us about 'reproductive' and 'productive' labour relations in contexts of neo-liberal agrarian development?
5. What does the future of feminist approaches to food and agriculture look like? How can we use these tools to observe inequalities in food and nutrition linked to the covid-19 pandemic and other pressing issues including the climate crisis?