@article{LarocheDupraz:115439,
      recid = {115439},
      author = {Laroche Dupraz, Catherine and Postolle, Angele},
      title = {Food sovereignty and agricultural trade policy  commitments: How much leeway do West African nations have?},
      address = {2011},
      number = {312-2016-5843},
      series = {Working Paper},
      pages = {17},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {The 2008 food crisis has challenged the political  legitimacy and economic efficiency of the liberalization  of
international agricultural trade. An alternative vision  defended by the food sovereignty movement is that  longterm
food security cannot rely on dependency on food  imports, but must be built on the development of
domestic  production with enough barrier protection to shelter it  from world price fluctuations and unfair trading.
The  purpose of this paper is to look into whether the West  African nations can achieve food sovereignty given
their  various trade commitments and other external constraints.  The particularity of our approach is to combine  a
historical economic analysis with a political approach to  food sovereignty and trade commitments.
Our results suggest  that external brakes on the development of food sovereignty  policies are marginal, as the
countries still have unused  room for manoeuvre to protect their smallholder agriculture  under the terms of draft
World Trade Organization  agreements and Economic Partnership Agreements and under  the international
financial institutions’ recommendations.  Rather the international environment seems to be  instrumented by West
African states that do not manage to  secure a national political consensus to drive structural  reforms deemed
vital and further the food security of the  urban populations over the marginalized rural populations.  Recently,
the regional integration process has made headway  with a common agricultural support and protection  policy
project that could herald an internal political  balance more conducive to food-producing agriculture.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/115439},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.115439},
}