Translating food sovereignty: cultivating justice in an age of transnational governance

Canfield’s book demonstrates how all of these issues only scratch the surface of the challenges affecting poor and particularly Indigenous and peasant communities. In particular, the book’s focus on food sovereignty reveals how even liberal perspectives explaining the availability and affordability of food tend to obscure more urgent reasons why access to affordable nutrition is becoming elusive. It also sheds light on the environmental consequences of large-scale agricultural industries controlled by a handful of massively profitable corporations, also noted by Gunderson (2011). These challenges are too-often obscured in mainstream debates on food. Unless we are academics or reading leftist newspapers or blogs, it is unlikely we will appreciate the consequences that massive agri-business has on indigenous, peasant communities who continue to face the devastating consequences of land-grabbing, let alone the widespread, often corporate-linked executions of environmental activists who expose what is happening (Global Witness 2021).