No Food Security Without Food Sovereignty

Abstract

While efforts are made to forge a balance between food security and food safety, due attention should be given to food sovereignty in the fi rst place. Without attributing a central position to the values implied in food sovereignty, a balance between food security and food safety would result in policy development based on a false conceptual compromise which would not adequately address the challenges of the twenty-fi rst century. The major question explored in this paper is how a policy development framework for Asia and the Pacifi c can be conceived that would pave the way for empowerment of emerging independent small-scale farmers' networks that adhere to food sover-eignty, in order to enable these networks to match the enormous infl uence that the mainstream business sector and nation-states exert on agriculture and food distribu-tion policies. The paper argues that without this threefold 'balance of power', full food security and full food safety cannot be achieved. As the quest for such a policy development framework is undertaken in the con-text of the Asia-Pacifi c region, and the paper is written from a Thai perspective, a contemporary view on the ethical construct of 'Buddhist economics' will be elaborated, within the limitations of initial explorations undertaken by the School for Wellbeing Studies and Research. The School for Wellbeing was established as a small-scale independent think tank and action-research platform in 2009 by three organisations: Chulalongkorn University and the Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, both based in Thailand, and the Centre for Bhutan Studies, Thimphu, Bhutan.