Nirvia Ravena de Sousa, Centre of Advanced Amazonian Studies- Federal University of Pará State-Brazil

Shaozeng Zhang, Oregon State University

Food Chains and Traditional Communities in Amazon Areas

Sustainability is a polysemic concept. Colonial thought informs this meaning creation and its resultant disempowering effects on sections of society such as traditional populations, constituting itself as a strategy of several Global Companies to explore natural and human resources (Banerjee, 2003; 2008, Bartley,2014, 2019; Li,2015; Krenak, 2020). In the Amazonian context, a new stage of intensive integration between traditional territories and the Global Value Chains developing through the supply of commodities like palm oil and soy. These two commodities, included in the new capitalist expansion characterised by geographic consolidation and value chain concentration in the global supply base. These commodities have particularities concerning their cultivation and causes damage to the way of life of the producers included on that chain (Backhouse et al., 2013; Nahun and Bastos, 2014; Li,2015; Ramankutty and Graesser, 2017; Furumo and Aide, 2017). The absence of the local knowledge and the non technical world vision in certification model results in a normative standard's elaboration incompatible with traditional people's cultural, social and environmental reality(Cheyns, 2014; Ponte & Cheyns, 2013; Li,2015).

Clarisse Delaville, McGill Faculty of Law

Gendered opportunities and outcomes in the food and agriculture sector

Despite non-discriminatory legal arrangements and neoliberal market-oriented policies in OECD countries, women are less represented than men in positions of power and decision-making in the food and agriculture sector. In my doctoral research, I ask why this is still the case by looking at the role of gendered social norms in structuring women's opportunities and outcomes in this field. I examine how formal (law and policy) and informal institutions (such as family, rural values, and religion) interact, to what extent informal institutions are gendered, and how they promote and/or hinder gender equality enshrined in the law. To do so, I base my analysis on a three-faceted theoretical framework: feminist approaches, a theoretical approach to formal and informal institutions, and the freedom and capabilities approach. From production to consumption, my exploration will be conducted by gathering quantitative and qualitative data, the latter being structured around interviews in three case studies in Québec, Switzerland, and Lithuania.

Husen Ahmed Tura, University of Helsinki

Rights to Land, Land Grabbing and Food Insecurity: The case of Ethiopia

Access to land and other productive resources is a key for food production and indispensable to ensuring food security for many smallholders. Land rights play a pivotal role to strengthen tenure security and protect farmers against arbitrary expropriations. According to the Ethiopian Constitution and other subsidiary laws, the land is jointly owned by the State and the people. Peasants and pastoralists have a right to possess and use the land free of charge for agriculture. The Constitution also protects rural land users against arbitrary evictions. Nevertheless, there have been several cases where the Government of Ethiopia displaced thousands of farmers and indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands to allegedly promote large-scale commercial farming and urbanisation. Forced displacements and land grabbing take place without adequate due process. Land expropriations without just compensation have exposed millions of smallholders and pastoralists to food insecurity over the past few years.

This paper aims to critically analyse rights to land, land expropriations and their implications for agriculture and food security of smallholders and pastoralists. It will identify normative deficits in the existing legal framework and violations of norms in practice. It will present two cases. First, it will analyse land expropriations without just compensation resulting from the expansion of Addis Ababa and its impacts on the life and livelihoods of peri-urban farmers. Second, it will evaluate how large-scale land grabbing in the Gambella region exposed ingenious peoples to hunger and destitution.