renting (arriendo) or sharecropping (aparcería) increasingly appear as a seasonal solution to the problems of inequity.

          Most authors coincide in noting that the new land policy model being applied in Latin America uses market mechanisms instead of policy reforms. Nonetheless, several analysts consider that allowing the market to be the main land policy instrument has not resolved the problem of land redistribution, nor allowed peasants access to land; rather, it has deepened the existing inequality (Thiesenhusen, 1996; Rosset et al., 2006). Indeed, the number of smallscale producers in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico has continued to decline, while inequality in land distribution has increased (David et al., 2001).

          Another indicator of inequity is access to landed property for rural women, resulting from the specific and disadvantageous conditions in which they must face poverty (CEPAL, 1999). The liberalization of the market in land
is marked by a paradox, as it favors land ownership by women, yet their ability to purchase is limited by lack of income. As a result, LAC is the region with the most unequal land distribution in the world. More than 30% of the rural poor in Latin America and the Caribbean are landless. According to studies, more than half of the households with little or no land live in extreme poverty. By way of contrast, only 10% of farmers with more than three ha of land are in a similar situation of poverty. Many other studies have confirmed that the reduction in or loss of access to the land leads directly to a loss of income and access to food (CLADEHL, 2002).

          Another indicator of inequity is access to landed property for rural women, resulting from the specific and disadvantageous conditions in which they must face poverty (CEPAL, 1999). The liberalization of the market in land
is marked by a paradox, as it favors land ownership by women, yet their ability to purchase is limited by lack of income. As a result, LAC is the region with the most unequal land distribution in the world. More than 30% of the rural poor in Latin America and the Caribbean are landless. According
to studies, more than half of the households with little or no land live in extreme poverty. By way of contrast, only 10% of farmers with more than three ha of land are in a similar situation of poverty. Many other studies have confirmed that the reduction in or loss of access to the land leads directly to a loss of income and access to food (CLADEHL, 2002).

          As a result of the great inequity in the distribution of land, the region is the home to many social movements that advocate the rights of the landless. These include the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil,
which is considered the largest social movement in the region, bringing together approximately 1.5 million landless persons in 23 of Brazil’s 27 states (Wolford, 2003) (see Box 1-1).

1.5.2.3 Food security and food sovereignty

Food insecurity is associated with social vulnerability and difficulty in accessing food, the origin of which is to be found in the asymmetries of development. A situation of food insecurity is reached when one does not have the means to obtain sufficient food, and is associated with poverty (Torres, 2003).

          There are many different definitions of food security. In 1996 Maxwell drew up a list of 32 possible definitions (Runge et al., 2003). Nonetheless, two main considerations should be taken into account: (1) the internal capacity to increase production in the different categories of demand and (2) the country’s financial possibilities for completing its food supplies (Torres, 2003). In effect, in the first, emphasis is placed on what could be called food self-sufficiency and in the second, priority is accorded to food purchases     

based on comparative advantages. The following present various perspectives of the debate. 

           The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) mentions that four criteria should be adopted: (1) coping with stress and shock; (2) economic efficiency; (3) social equity; and (4) ecological integrity. It emphasizes that the policy changes are not always those needed and that capacity- building is essential at the local level (Hall, 1998). Based on this concept of food security, the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil developed a food security program that has been recognized internationally (see Box 1-2).

          For the FAO food security exists when all people have material and economic access at all times to sufficient safe and nutritious foods to satisfy their food needs and food preferences so as to lead an active and healthy life. In 1994, the Special Program for Food Security (SPFS)3 was begun (FAO, 2006b). In 1996, more than 180 nations participated in World Food Summit and undertook to reduce by half the number of undernourished people by the year 2015.

          The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) argues that food security for a family means access for all its members to sufficient food to be able to lead an active and healthy life. Food security includes, at a minimum: (1) the availability of adequate and safe foods and (2) the assured capacity to acquire goods by socially acceptable means.

          Within the free-market paradigm of the WTO, food security has been given a different definition; it went from meaning the capacity of developing countries to produce food for their own consumption, to meaning merely access to cheap food, supplied by the developed countries or by the agroindustrial sector (Glipo, 2003). By way of contrast, the concept of food sovereignty was developed by Vía Campesina4 as an alternative to neoliberal policies and was brought into the public debate at the World Food Summit in 1996. Since then, that concept has become a major topic of the international agrarian debate, including in the United Nations bodies. Food sovereignty was the main topic of the NGO forum held parallel to the FAO’s World Food Summit in June 2002 (Vía Campesina, 1996; Desmarais, 2002).

          Vía Campesina defines food sovereignty as the right of the peoples, their countries, or unions of states to define their own agrarian and food policy, without dumping with respect to third countries.

          The concept includes prioritizing local agricultural production to feed the population and access for peasants and the landless to land, water, seed and credit. Hence, the need for agrarian reform and the struggle against GMOs (genetically modified organisms), for free access to seeds
and to preserve water as a public good that is distributed

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³ In 1994, two years before the 1996 World Food Summit, FAO implemented the SPFS as the main program for helping its developing member states reduce hunger and malnutrition. The premise on which the design of the SPFS is based is that the productivity of small farmers in developing countries could increase considerably by introducing relatively simple, economic and sustainable technological changes (FAO, http:// www.fao.org/SPFS/index_es.asp). As a result of the 1996 summit, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security was issued, with seven commitments that the participating governments would implement to enhance food security.

⁴ Vía Campesina is a global movement that brings together organizations of peasants, small and medium producers, rural women, agricultural workers and indigenous communities in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe.