The EcoFair Trade Dialogue takes two concepts as ist reference point, which are currently marginal to WTO negotiations, yet of major importance to more than one billion rural-living people and to the environmental condition of the planet: sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty.

 
The concept of food sovereignty, advanced mainly by small farmers' organizations in the South, accentuates social and political dimensions: Food sovereignty is the right of nations to retain “policy space” in order to determine their own agricultural, fishing and food policy in accordance with their environmental, social, economic, and cultural circumstances. The concept is, above all, a reaction to the experience of impoverishment and massive social disruption that has been triggered  by liberalization of agricultural markets in large parts of the South, but also to the growth in claims to patents on genetic resources that have previously been shared by farmers as common goods. Within the realm of differing concepts for food security, food sovereignty clearly prioritizes self-reliance, based on agricultural production for the local or national market, over an export-oriented production and the dependency on food imports. However, the concept does not neglect trade in principle, since trade is necessary to exchange surplus production for non-local goods or services.

 
The term “sustainable agriculture” is being used against the backdrop of the worldwide trend towards industrial farming, which produces cheap foodstuffs of questionable quality by means of the massive use of industrial inputs (e.g. chemical inputs, GMOs, expensive and heavy machinery), with high energy consumption. This trend is one of the main causes of soil degradation, water contamination, extinction of flora and fauna as well as the erosion of the variety of food crops. It drives out small farmers in the North and in the South, while benefiting primarily the agricultural industry of globalized agricultural markets, producing for the worldwide market where wages are lowest, environmental regulations are weakest, and where the best natural conditions for monoculture and large-scale animal husbandry exist. The concept of sustainable agriculture emphasizes the social and environmental dimension of necessary reforms in the agricultural sector as well as consumer protection.

 
There is potential strategic synergy, if not an overlap in convictions and intends between the concept of food sovereignty and efforts towards sustainable agriculture: Both concepts place a priority on labor-intensive, environmentally sound production by small farmers, primarily for regional and national markets and only secondarily for export.