Abstract
This article examines La Va Campesina (LVC), or The International Peasant Farmers' Movement. The LVC, founded by farm leaders in 1993, is currently made up of 148 peasant organizations in sixty-nine countries. LVC claims to represent the interests of at least 200 million farmers and has been touted as the largest and one of the most important social movements in the world. The article describes the LVC’s fight for normatively defensible values—for a food system reflecting ideals of ethics and justice-and its quest to develop defensible lifespaces for small farmers in terms of socioeconomic, ecological, and political autonomy. It also examines how their aims and tactics align with current scholarship on the issues of sustainability and autonomy.
Chapter within The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society - Edited by Ronald J. Herring
