Agricultural Trade Liberalization and Food Sovereignty: A Case Study of the Bahamas with a View of the Caribbean

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Authors

Forbes, Kasmine

Date

2025-02-03

Type

thesis

Language

eng

Keyword

Coloniality , Social Reproduction , Food Security , Food Sovereignty , Food Affordability , Caribbean Development

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Abstract

This dissertation explores the opportunities for and the challenges of food sovereignty in the Bahamas, with a view of the Caribbean, by examining the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on the country’s food crisis. While food crises are often associated with acute food shortages, I argue that the Bahamian food crisis is one of unaffordability that results from extreme and longstanding dependence on imported foods. By making use of a case study of the Bahamas, I examine the history of this reliance from plantation economies through to the independence period of the 1960s, and the liberalization of agricultural trade in the early 1990s. In doing so, I explore the limits and possibilities of movements toward food sovereignty in the Bahamas by analyzing the relationship between food import dependence and the persistence of historical power systems. In conversation with the New World Group – the post-independence generation of radical scholars committed to an alternative vision of Caribbean development – I examine how this intersection has shaped farming policy and practice for the last 40 years. Additionally, I investigate the impact of power systems that persist through extreme food import dependence levels on small farmers, a group once considered by New World Group scholars as essential to region’s capacity for self-determination, but which has since significantly declined in number and in influence over the regional food system. Focusing on women small farmers – arguably one of the most undervalued communities of agriculturalists –, I examine how their ongoing farming motivations and strategies offer new opportunities for not only thinking about agricultural development but also creating power systems that are attentive to both the social reproductive and economic productive needs of the Bahamas. In doing so, I contribute to a broader understanding of food sovereignty in the Caribbean.

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