How to reclaim your food sovereignty

We have become so reliant on supermarkets and so disconnected from where our food actually comes from. Most people do not look at what country their fruit or vegetables are coming from, they shop for the lowest price and biggest size. Ensuring the shelves are always stacked and an endless variety is constantly available is what’s called food security, but what is this security coming at the cost of? 

Many farmers working with supermarkets are getting paid less and less, struggling to make a living, while those buying the food are paying more and more, struggling to feed their families and are being priced out of organic and good quality produce.

The problem lies with the middleman, ensuring food security while removing food sovereignty, the definition of which is “the right of peoples to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound methods. It empowers communities to define their own agricultural and food systems, prioritising local control, small-scale producers, and sustainability over corporate profit and global market demands.”

So how do we reclaim this food sovereignty? How do we begin to fuel real change and see the benefits in our communities? That's exactly what we're diving into today. Let's get stuck in.

Buying local and supporting farmers

One of the simplest ways we can begin to restore food sovereignty is by buying local and supporting real farmers, not those made-up farms you see on supermarket packaging. By buying local we cut out the middleman and put money directly into the pockets of those who grow our food.

If we only ever buy from supermarkets who source fruit and vegetables abroad, supermarkets will prioritise those farmers and expect our home farmers to compete, which they often simply cannot do.

Doing your entire weekly shop at a farm shop can be difficult, but if you have a local farmer or co-operative selling things like fruit, vegetables, meat and honey, making these a priority in your weekly shop helps restore your food sovereignty. After all, you are voting with your money. A large corporation won't notice if you shop elsewhere, but a weekly customer at a farm shop means everything to that farmer and they'll respond to what you buy more of by growing more of it if they can.

Relying less on supermarkets

Supermarkets have become a convenience we've walked blindly into, suddenly we are so dependent on them that we run to the shops whenever we're hungry, rather than having thought through our food ahead of time. Supermarkets know this about us. They know convenience is what keeps people coming back, but as with many things that bring convenience, it also comes at the cost of our health. When we plan ahead, bulk buying meat, planning the week's meals, prioritise visiting the farmers market or farm shop or even buying from farmers direct online, we remove the need to rely on supermarkets.

More and more farm co-operatives are popping up, and switching to this model of buying food helps farmers immensely more than supermarkets do. It also reconnects us to our food, and we begin to understand that eating in tune with nature means we can't have strawberries in winter, but that's okay, because we are meant to live seasonally and eat from the soil in which we live on, or as close to it as possible.

The more of your food budget spent with real farmers, the more your food sovereignty increases. You help not just yourself and your health, but farmers and the future of farming too, which is increasingly important for our children's lives, not just our own.

Home growing and volunteering

Not everyone has a homestead or even a back garden, but even a simple herb plant can increase your food sovereignty. Nothing will humble you more than trying to grow your own food, or give you more respect for farmers who do this day in, day out.

Home growing and volunteering help us reconnect to our food and realise how much goes into feeding us. Walking into a supermarket and picking up neatly packaged food from all over the world can make food seem bountiful and endless, when in reality food production is barely meeting demands. Relying on other countries puts us in a precarious position and steadily diminishes local farmers.

Supporting local projects and voting with your money by giving it directly to farmers gives you a real sense of community. I personally feel better knowing the farmer receives the full amount and isn't being undercut by supermarkets and many others I've spoken to feel the same.

Buying organic and restoring the soil

A large part of food sovereignty is having your say in how food is produced. By buying organic we are signalling that we want more of it, supply and demand tells us the more demand there is for something, the more supply will emerge.

Buying organic isn't just about our own health, it's about the health of the soil. Conventional farming has depleted soils through spraying chemicals such as glyphosate and pumping the land with artificial fertilisers, with little rest in between. Organic practices remove much of the damage caused by these methods, and many farmers are going further still with biodynamic and regenerative practices to actively rebuild soil health and ensuring good food for generations to come. If everyone only bought organic produce, many farmers would make the switch. You hold the power to vote with your money.

Reconnecting to food and seasons

A vast number of people have little knowledge of food seasons, when something is in season and when it most certainly isn't. Supermarkets are largely to blame, being able to get any fruit all year round has led people to forget both seasons and food miles.

Eating seasonally is in our nature. We used to live off the land within our immediate vicinity, even just a six-mile radius and now we eat from either end of the planet on a weekly basis through avocados and nut selections that our ancestors would never have seen without travelling to the place in which they grew. We don't yet fully understand the effect that eating globally (while only travelling to our local supermarket) is having on our health, but the food miles and reliance on distant countries is clear. With the variety available at home and in neighbouring countries, do we really still need food from the other side of the world?

A final word

It's becoming clearer that many things which were once normal and part of everyday life have been lost or forgotten  and with them, aspects of our health we didn't notice slipping away alongside them. Knowing where your food came from, who grew it and how it was made was once something everyone simply knew. Your food was local, organic by default, and good health wasn't something actively sought out but the norm.

Food sovereignty isn't about owning lots of land and making your own food, as beneficial as that is, it's not realistic for most people. The local community aspect of food production is what really matters: having your say and supporting those around you.

So set a little more of your budget aside for farmers markets and farm shops. Buy your meat in bulk if you can. Buy local. Grow your own herbs if you have the space. It all takes a little more effort, but the way we spend our money as a population can determine the future of farming, the future of our health, and the world our children inherit.