Abstract:
Concerns over the future of agriculture are rapidly escalating. Short-term price spikes between 2005-08 and long-term price rises over the previous decade have highlighted the susceptibility of an expanding global population to a possible, indeed plausible, world food crisis.2 Nor does this apprehension solely afflict impoverished Third World nations. While the dependence and vulnerability of less affluent states is acute, other factors – inter alia speculation in commodities markets, high oil prices, and dwindling stockpiles of grain – underscore the transnational nature of the concerns and contribute to deepening feelings of global collective insecurity.3 A variety of targeted institutional strategies have been proposed in response.4 Without negating the value of these initiatives, this article considers the mobilisation of the transnational peasant movement, specifically in the context of transnational law. I privilege the latter over the former for the ontology of institutions is such that solutions emerge within a technical episteme, inferring amenability to scientific correction. In contrast, many peasant activists perceive the problem as ideological, describing a clash between logics and subjectivities and advocating an altogether different reformative thrust.5 In this article, La Via Campesina (LVC) is the movement of interest.