Within the context of socioeconomic and political upheaval, as well as climate change and environmental degradation, this study proposes to analyse the agrifood systems of the Alentejo Litoral, a region in southern Portugal, through the lens of food sovereignty. This lens is applied through the novel conceptualisation of the Food Sovereignty Nexus and the resulting Peasant-proofed Decision Support Framework. The first constitutes a problem-framing discourse and an empirical data analysis framework, and the latter is a policy-design tool for peasant-based agrarian transitions. These two approaches are here applied to attain a deeper understanding of the socio-ecological components that arise from the intricate interplay among local agrifood systems, the individuals involved, the definitions of sustainability, and the conditions of vulnerability. Together, these two approaches emphasise the methodological emancipatory potential of food sovereignty for multilevel policy design.
This study demonstrates how the most politically marginalised peasants—traditional, agroecological family and subsistence farmers—tend to be the most efficient in terms of resource use and the ones that contribute most to food sovereignty. However, the southern fields of the Alentejo Litoral region have been reconfigured and restructured by latifundia-creating agricultural policies and rural development patterns that foster oligopolistic production and labour standards. Local peasants do not only increasingly encounter challenges such as isolation, a general lack of power to decide the future of the region, and participation in the governance of land and resources, but are increasingly confronted with a global, extractivist pattern of rural development dominated by the hegemonic interests of multi-sector transnational companies.
From a methodological point of view, this thesis is based on mixed methods research (MMR) and conducts a case study based on a multi-phase, three-year data collection process.
This research is framed within political ecology and is informed by environmental and climate justice concerns and a...