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Nyeleni newsletter - Now is the time for food sovereignty!
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Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. (…) Declaration of Nyeleni. 
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Editorial
 Editorial : Land Reform and Food SovereigntyA wave of financial capital is crashing down upon the resources held in rural corners of the planet in the world today. In this process we see a financialization of rural goods and assets along with a (re)capitalizing of capitalistic extractive efforts through agribusiness. This is especially apparent in terms of monocrop exports, forestry plantations, agrofuels, mining companies and in the construction of megaprojects like dams, highways and tourist complexes. This in turn translates into land grabbing, dispossession, eviction, displacement and migration. Furthermore, peoples are criminalized, social protest stifled and our movements and struggles vilified by the media. Capital is appropriating our territories. Hence, we must respond by turning the struggle for land into a struggle for territory. This will require forging unions between –on one side– peasant farmers, day laborers, indigenous peoples, nomad shepherds, artisan fishermen, forest peoples and other rural communities, and –on another– city dwellers, especially those in suburban communities and consumers. It will require producing healthy food using agroecology and know-how handed down from our ancestors and steeped in popular traditions. We must show that land in community hands is better for society and Mother Earth than land which is at the mercy of capital.
« In our world-views, we are being who come from the Earth, from the water and from corn. The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet. ( …)
Let us wake up ! Let us wake up, humankind ! We are out of time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction. » Download / view the newsletter here : Nyéléni newsletter no 26 - Land reform and food sovereigntyTo read online some of the articles of this edition check the list below. [1] Woman leader from the indigenous rights organisation COPINH in Honduras, assassinated on March 3, 2016 for her struggle in the defense of her people, their territory and water. |
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