Challenging Conventional Conceptions of Food Sovereignty: Huerto de la Familia and the Global Food Sovereignty Movement

99 pagesThis thesis explores the relationship between the organic community garden nonprofit Huerto de la Familia (HDLF) and the global food sovereignty movement. Building from participatory action research as an intern with the organization for two years, I then conducted and discuss here a series of semi structured interviews with garden members and staff as well as a survey of 22 garden members regarding seed saving programming in order to understand to what extent HDLF is constitutive of the mainstream global food sovereignty movement. Drawing from a critical perspective of the food sovereignty movement, specifically the organization La Via Campesina, and its relationship to migrant farmworker communities and urban areas, I illuminate that in many ways this small urban nonprofit garden is constitutive of the global food sovereignty movement despite not being formally affiliated. Furthermore, I find that the aspects in which HDLF appears to fall short of the image of food sovereignty can also be viewed as openings towards a conception of food sovereignty that is more accessible to populations excluded from the mainstream movement.