Award Winners for Volume 14
A Socioecological Systems Approach to Assessing Family Food Sovereignty
In recent decades, food sovereignty (FS) proposals have posed a challenge to the theoretical and practical foundations of food security and globalized agri-food systems. The general statement of FS focuses on people’s right to nutritious and culturally appropriate food, as well as on strengthening sustainable production systems and short marketing chains. Although this approach has been widely adopted in discourse, significant methodological gaps have been identified in measuring FS at the rural household level. Given the complexity of the concept, it is approached as a complex variable, and a methodological proposal is put forward based on a series of indicators to measure FS in peasant agroecosystems from a socioecological perspective. Based on an extensive review of the current literature, the dimensions and categories of analysis were determined, along with proposed indicators to measure FS, including sustainability and resilience indicators previously validated in rural contexts. From 469 scientific articles, 5 analytical approaches and 6 dimensions of FS were identified. A list of 1,335 indicators was obtained, which, after undergoing a triple validation process, was narrowed down to 89, grouped into 21 categories linked to the proposed dimensions. This study confirms that FS is a complex and dynamic concept encompassing diverse spatial, temporal, and social scales. It was found that evaluating the proposed indicators requires a transdisciplinary approach, a multidisciplinary team, and collaborative work, as well as appropriate statistical weighting due to the quantitative and qualitative nature of the scales used. Additionally, the importance of fieldwork in measuring FS is highlighted.