SECURITY IS NOT SOVEREIGNTY: LOCAL PRODUCTION, PUBLIC POLICY AND INDIGENOUS FOOD IN SÃO GABRIEL DA CACHOEIRA

Abstract

This article discusses the extent to which public policies aimed at food access and food procurement can contribute at the same time to food security and to the autonomy of Indigenous food systems in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil. It distinguishes food and nutrition security, as defined in Brazilian Law 11,346/2006, from food sovereignty, understood as the capacity of peoples and communities to decide on their own food systems, treating the two concepts neither as synonyms nor as opposites. The bibliographic and documentary study examines federal legislation, documents of the Food Acquisition Programme (PAA) and the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE), the reassessment report on the Traditional Agricultural System of the Rio Negro, and the scientific literature on Indigenous food and nutrition, including a survey of Baniwa children and women conducted between 2011 and 2013. Available nutritional indicators record significant vulnerabilities in specific populations but say nothing about who decides what is produced and eaten. Public procurement designed to buy food produced within the territory, with suitable sanitary and documentation rules, can bring access and autonomy closer together, whereas bureaucratic requirements, logistical costs, uniform technical guidance and commercial pressure on crop diversity tend to pull them apart. A policy's contribution to food sovereignty depends less on its stated aims than on its operational design and on the degree to which Indigenous peoples take part in setting its rules.