Newsletters Nyéléni in English

The international Nyéléni newsletter is the voice of the international movement for Food Sovereignty. Its main goal is to strengthen the grassroots of the movement, by providing accessible material on key issues and creating a space – for individuals and organisations involved in the struggle – to exchange their experiences and share information.

Voices from the field

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Voices from the field 1

Global debt architecture violates human rights

La Via Campesina Ecuador

Currently, Ecuador holds a loan of 8.705 billion dollars with the International Monetary Fund, making it the fourth most indebted country globally. In the 23rd agreement between Ecuador and the IMF, the loan is described as supporting Ecuador’s policies to stabilize the economy and safeguard dollarization. It also aims to advance a structural reform agenda.

However, peasant, Indigenous, and civil society organizations have questioned the loan and warned of the impacts of the measures and conditions imposed by the IMF. Among the main agreements are the elimination of fuel subsidies, hourly labour, a new tax reform, and other conditions.

We affirm that this global debt architecture violates human rights, plunging peasants, Indigenous peoples, and the entire working class into poverty and indebtedness. We also denounce that we are facing a wave of criminalization, stigmatization, and persecution, intensified by our struggle and resistance in defence of a dignified life. Many leaders and social movement representatives are being prosecuted and are at risk, while complex measures loom that will carry an extremely high social cost.

Voices from the field 2

IMF and World Bank have intensified the push to privatize land in Sri Lanka

Anuka Vimukthi MONLAR, Sri Lanka

Two days before the September 2024 presidential election, Sri Lanka was forced to sign a debt restructuring agreement with international creditors—without public discussion or parliamentary debate. This secretive deal prioritized debt payments over the rights and well-being of our people.

For years, international financial institutions have pushed Sri Lanka toward export-oriented agriculture through structural adjustment programs. These reforms have favoured agribusinesses and capital-intensive farming, leaving us—peasants and small fishers—dependent on markets for seeds, fertilizers, nets, and boats, eroding our autonomy and food systems. 

Now, under the 17th IMF program, the burden of economic stabilization has fallen on the poorest. Austerity measures, including cost-recovery energy pricing, have nearly tripled fuel and electricity costs, devastating livelihoods. Increased taxes on equipment and inputs have driven many peasant farmers into poverty and debt.

The IMF and World Bank have long pushed for privatized land markets. With this latest program, their demand has returned, raising fears of mass land dispossession. 

As a member of MONLAR, I am part of a growing movement resisting these unjust measures. We are intensifying our campaign and urging the government to recognize food sovereignty and the rights of peasants and rural workers as central to Sri Lanka’s agricultural and economic policy.

Voices from the field 3

Kenya’s default on its debt obligations led to free trade agreements that criminalize peasants

Susan Owiti, Kenyan Peasants League 

Kenya has a massive public debt; the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio was around 68% in 2024.

Currently, the Kenyan government’s debt servicing obligations consume about 48% of the national budget and around 55% of the country’s income. This directly impacts peasants, as funds that were meant to support Peasant Rights in Kenya are being redirected to service debts. 

It also means that households are forced to borrow to survive and even pay for services that have been privatized. Rising costs, mounting debt, and severe pressure from lenders are pushing households into a deepening crisis. Farmers, who are trapped in the conventional agricultural system that relies on pesticides and fertilizers, are falling further into debt as the state removes or cuts all subsidies and incentives. In the absence of state planning or support for a meaningful agroecological transition, many peasants are left at the mercy of the market which consistently fails them. 

Kenya’s default on its debt obligations led to the negotiation of free trade agreements that promote laws criminalizing the peasant way of life, such as the Mung Bean Bill, (criminalizing unlicensed cultivation of green gram), or the Seeds and Plant Varieties Act. Another example is the ongoing US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership, which included conditions such as the lifting of the ban on GMOs.

Voices from the field 4

Argentina: food sovereignty is being pushed aside

Diego Montón, Argentine Indigenous Peasant Movement, MNCI Somos Tierra

 In March 2025, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a restructuring of Argentina’s debt, illegally granting it 20 billion dollars. This adds to the 41.052 billion USD it lent in 2018. 

Argentina’s debt represents 30% of the IMF’s total loans, making it the main debtor. The debt accounts for nearly 10% of the gross domestic product: it is unpayable. We ask ourselves, why does the IMF keep lending to Argentina? Laura Richardson, head of the U.S. Southern Command, stated at an Atlantic Council event, “Latin America is key because it has water, food, oil, and 60% of the world’s lithium.” Javier Milei enacted an investment regime (RIGI) that grants broad benefits to financial capital, without taxes or regulations. The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, urged Argentinians to vote to continue in that direction. 

Beyond the restructuring brought by each agreement with the IMF, the debt forces states to enable extractivism. The only path Argentina has today is to organize and struggle to repudiate the IMF debt and move together toward food sovereignty, economic independence, and social justice.

Boxes

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Box 1

Global finance dictates trade liberalization: A call to re-imagine trade between countries

The Washington Consensus—imposed by the IMF and World Bank through conditional lending—institutionalized neoliberalism. Its core policies included trade liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises, public spending cuts, deregulation and reregulation biased towards corporations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) further reinforces these principles through global trade agreements that favour transnational capital. 

La Via Campesina (LVC) emerged as a global peasant resistance force to neoliberal reforms and the WTO. While peasant mobilizations have helped stall WTO progress since 2001, its 1995 Agreement on Agriculture still permits powerful nations like the U.S. and EU to push aggressive trade agendas that penalize support to small-scale food producers. Bilateral and regional trade deals have further deepened rural poverty. These trade regimes limit governments—North and South—from implementing food sovereignty policies. They classify domestic market regulation, price supports for small-scale food producers, and public procurement as “trade-distorting”, prioritizing corporate access over public interest. 

In the past two years, peasant protests have erupted in over 65 countries, signalling the need for a new trading system. LVC is initiating a campaign to build a new, global framework for agricultural trade between countries that is rooted in principles of cooperation and transnational solidarity and defends each country’s food sovereignty. It is important that small-scale food producers’ and workers’ movements, and all those committed to food sovereignty join this collective effort to build a real economic alternative. For more: www.viacampesina.org  

Box 2

The role of financialization in driving land grabs

Financialization plays a central role in the global surge of land and natural resource grabs, driving land concentration and undermining communities’ ability to feed themselves and others. Since the 2008–09 financial crisis, land has increasingly been treated as a financial asset. Around 65 million hectares have been acquired globally, with pension, insurance, and endowment funds investing approximately US$45 billion in farmland between 2005 and 2017. By 2018, these entities accounted for 45% of all farmland investments.

The current ecological crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation—stem from capitalistic extraction. Yet financial and corporate actors now frame these crises as investment opportunities. Natural functions like carbon storage are rebranded as “ecosystem services,” assigned economic value, and traded. The estimated value of these so-called “natural assets” is US$4,000 trillion. Carbon and biodiversity markets, in particular, have fuelled a new wave of “green grabs,” with about 20% of large-scale land deals now linked to the bioeconomy. Carbon markets alone are projected to quadruple in value over the next ten years, intensifying pressure on land and dispossessing communities in the name of sustainability and “net zero emissions” claims.

Box 3 

Deregulation and the neoliberal shift in global agriculture

The IMF and WB—through conditionalities attached to loans and other financing, and policy advice—have played central roles in increased financialisation, market deregulation and corporate friendly regulation in the food, agriculture and related sectors. These have resulted in land grabs, greater exposure of smallholder farmers to high price volatility, the concentration of markets and financial power by agribusinesses, and the expansion of polluting industrial agriculture.

Most recently, Pakistan’s deregulation of its wheat sector, in line with IMF conditionalities, has eliminated the Minimum Support Price and is winding down the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO)[1]. In Argentina, the IMF-endorsed austerity measures have led to mass layoffs and cuts in social services, food market deregulation and deregulation of the Law of the Rural Lands. In Ecuador WB-backed shrimp farming destroyed mangrove forests and displaced local communities, underscoring the environmental and social costs of such policies.

Such changes in regulatory environments are not limited to developing countries, nor are they enforced through lending institutions alone.

A case in point is the 1992 Blair House Agreement—a key bilateral deal between the United States and the European Union on agricultural subsidies.  It led to the EU ending milk production quotas. Many small farmers in Europe faced increased competition and price instability. It is therefore no surprise that between 2007 and 2022 the number of small farms in the EU decreased by 44%, while the number of mega-farms increased by 56%.

The Blair House agreement later paved the way for the Agreement on Agriculture[2]—the first multilateral framework on agricultural trade, which dictated the contours of many subsequent FTA negotiations of the WTO—and enabled the globalization of agribusinesses, while marginalizing the peasantry. 

In the United States too, deregulation policies have significantly impacted the agricultural sector, particularly the dismantling of the parity pricing model[3] and the supply management system based on quotas that once provided stability to small farmers.

Autonomous deregulation in wealthy countries has also contributed to the expanding power of financial markets and actors within food systems. This has led to speculative trading, record-high food prices, increased price volatility worldwide, and the opening of new markets for genetically modified seeds.

It is therefore quite clear that the neoliberal economic ideology that prioritizes financial markets over people is deepening inequality, imposing austerity measures that are weakening rural economies, and eroding public accountability. The ongoing protests in various countries reflect a growing resistance to the withdrawal of the state from its obligation to serve the people, not the markets.

If anything, we need more market regulation to protect people’s interest, not deregulation.

[1] Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO), a government-owned entity which procures wheat and other staple crops at support prices to ensure fair returns to food producers, maintain strategic reserves, and stabilize market prices.

[2] The AoA is a WTO agreement aimed at reforming trade in agricultural products. It was established during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and came into effect with the WTO’s establishment in 1995.

[3] Under Parity pricing the government set support prices—such as through price floors or subsidies—based on the cost of inputs and living standards from the base era, adjusted for inflation.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

In the spotlight 1

Implications of global finance on food sovereignty

One of the biggest threats to food sovereignty is the power of global finance over the real economy, food systems, and food and economic governance.  Since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s, financial markets have expanded globally, with finance capital extending its reach into national and sub-national economies through banking, micro-finance, and extractive and speculative investment in critical sectors such as food, land, agriculture, water, mining, energy, property development and physical infrastructure. This has been made possible through changes in financial regulation and digital financial technologies (fintech) that enable capital to move freely across national borders and globally and reach communities through digital (via mobile phones) banking/payment applications. A wide array of financial instruments, from pensions, mutual and index funds to securities and derivatives have enabled corporations and individuals to profit disproportionately from such investments at huge costs to the real economy, biodiversity, the environment, stable jobs, access to food, and the climate. Financial globalization has enabled speculation in food and agricultural commodities where traders buy and sell futures contracts on food commodities and/or bet on futures prices to make profits, thus increasing the world’s vulnerability to recurring financial and food crises. 

Financial crises have severe negative impacts on the livelihoods, employment, incomes, food sovereignty and health of small-scale food providers, workers, and rural and urban poor communities, especially in the Global South. Impacts are compounded by weak (or non-existent) domestic measures for social protection, alleviating hunger and malnutrition, healthcare and debt relief, that are important buffers against economic shocks. For decades, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and austerity measures crafted by the WB and IMF have snared many countries of the South into vicious debt traps, the core components of which are trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation. In exchange for loans to keep national economies functioning and access to global capital markets, the WB-IMF continue to demand drastic cuts in state support for essential goods and services, removal of protections for workers, small-scale agricultural producers and the environment, and radical reforms of domestic policies and regulations to serve the corporate sector and free markets. 

SAPs and neoliberalism paved the way for the financialisation of food, which entails significant increases in the involvement of financial entities (commercial banks, sovereign wealth funds, private investment funds, asset management companies, etc.) in food systems, and in global transactions of financial products linked with food and land as well as other essentials for producing food. The 2008 food crisis accelerated food financialization, as states scrambled to secure food supplies, creating new profit opportunities for financial investors. 

Financialisation and weak anti-trust regulations have enabled corporations to consolidate market size and power in food systems through mergers and acquisitions. Bigger firms attract more financial investment from banks and asset managers, which in turn enable firms to consolidate further, resulting in corporate concentration in food systems.  Increased market and financial power allow corporations to shape food systems governance by influencing national and international policies, regulations, laws and research in their favour, at the cost of millions of small-scale food providers, workers, Indigenous Peoples, and rural, peri-urban and urban populations. An urgent task for food sovereignty movements everywhere is to develop strategic, legal, enforceable measures to roll back and prevent the infiltration of global finance into the world’s food systems.

In the spotlight 2

A global push for debt cancellation is necessary!

At the core of today’s global food crisis is a trade system shaped by neoliberal policies that prioritize profits over people and favour the interests of big and rich exporting countries. These policies promote market-driven approaches, allowing large agribusinesses to dominate at the expense of small-scale food providers who have nourished communities for generations. Market concentration pushes small scale food providers and workers to societal and economic margins, and access to food becomes a privilege rather than a right.

Neoliberal and market dominated policies are deeply intertwined with the politics of debt. Developing countries face significant economic challenges due to concentrated agricultural markets, decreasing revenues and crippling external debts to public and private creditors.  To retain access to international capital, governments of highly indebted governments are compelled to prioritize debt repayments over the well-being of their citizens and enact corporate and market friendly policies instead of programmes that support food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture.  This creates a vicious cycle where the needs of people continue to be marginalized in favour of financial obligations to international creditors.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), developing countries’ external debt reached a record $11.4 trillion in 2023, and 54 developing nations–nearly half of which are in Africa–dedicated at least 10% of government funds to debt interest payments. Today, 3.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt payments than on health or education.

The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, scheduled for September, will be held in Sri Lanka, a country that has faced severe economic challenges due to external debt. Sri Lanka defaulted on foreign debt payments in 2022, leading to an IMF-led restructuring program. The government was forced to prioritize debt payments over citizens’ rights, severely impacting the country’s ability to invest in food production, rural livelihoods, and social security for its people.

Current data shows that 60% of low-income countries and 30% of middle-income countries face debt distress, limiting their capacities to invest in food sovereignty and social services, thus worsening hunger and inequality. The 3rd Nyéléni Forum must become a space for building resistance and campaigning against such policies. Debt is not just a financial burden—it’s a shackle that limits governments’ abilities to prioritize the well-being of their people, and a weapon that enables continuing extraction of wealth from societies in crisis created by debt in the first place.

Debt cancellation is essential to breaking this cycle. It would allow countries to prioritize their people and communities, focusing on agroecological food systems where small-scale food producers can feed their communities in harmony with the territories.

In the spotlight 3

How to raise finances to build food sovereignty?   

Building food sovereignty and expanding agroecology require dedicated and continuing public social, physical, economic and financial infrastructure. Appropriate and sufficient kinds and amounts of financing are needed at multiple levels, to ensure that small-scale food providers have the funds and other resources (such as land, energy and water) needed to invest in production, processing, storage and distribution/marketing. At the same time, enabling policy environments are necessary to deliver the required financing, as well as strengthen the social, economic and environmental foundations of food sovereignty and agroecology; financing should not trap small-scale food providers into debt cycles, and policies must protect them from competition from agrifood corporations.

A crucial measure is redirecting national and global multilateral food, agriculture and climate budgets away from industrial, corporate food systems and value chains towards food sovereignty and agroecology. Eliminating the huge direct and indirect subsidies that agribusinesses get for production, exports, transportation, marketing and protection against social-environmental liabilities will free up vast amounts of money at various levels, which can be used to finance the infrastructure needed for food sovereignty.

Simultaneously, public revenue streams can be mobilized through various kinds of taxes:  general progressive taxation; taxing corporations appropriately, including for profits from hyper-markets and digital transactions; windfall taxes on profits from food/commodity/land speculation; taxes on junk and highly processed foods, etc. Offshore tax havens must be closed, and laws against fiscal evasion and corruption be instituted and enforced, including seizing assets of wealthy tax avoiders. Money from such measures can be used to cross-subsidize small-scale food provision, producer-consumer cooperatives, territorial markets, community food banks, community health and insurance programmes, and other collective services important for food sovereignty. Importantly, they can free up money for debt relief for rural-urban poor communities and access to adequate credit, enabling them to rebuild their economic capacities.

Food sovereignty is premised on the rights of people and communities to food and to living full, healthy, productive lives with dignity, justice and equality in present and future generations.  This demands ample, continuing investment by governments and society in transforming societal, political and economic systems, so that small-scale food provision gets the financial resources it urgently needs. These include measures such as public procurement of agroecologically produced food for school meals and other community food needs, public investment in territorial markets and environmental protection, ending food speculation, and policies that ensure living wages and safe working conditions for food system workers, especially women. Food crises are created and exacerbated by deregulated international finance, which undermine food sovereignty.  Actions as described above by governments and multilateral agencies are important in protecting our food systems and also give positive signals to all society to support food sovereignty.

Newsletter no 60 – Editorial

Newsletter no 60 - Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty

Illustration: This illustration was created by members of Tricontinental’s art department, for the dossier no.88: Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund. The artwork illustrates the Faustian bargain that all African countries have to make, which comes at a cost to their financial, industrial, agricultural, and political sovereignty.

The 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum is set to take place in Sri Lanka this September. Sri Lanka is a deliberate choice: in 2022, a people’s uprising—known as Aragalaya—ousted a corrupt neoliberal regime that had plunged the country into a severe debt crisis and societal distress.

Of Sri Lanka’s staggering US $57 billion external debt, about 32% is owed to multilateral financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, World Bank (WB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and another 28% is owed to the Paris Club. Nearly a quarter of the government’s revenue is spent on repaying foreign creditors, and much of this debt comes with conditions that promote the privatization of public services and the commodification of land and natural resources.

Sri Lanka is not alone. Twenty African countries are facing debt distress and nearly half of the world’s population lives in countries that spend more on debt repayments than on public services. International financial institutions (IFIs) have reconfigured national budgets and financial architecture such that the interests of finance capital take precedence over the well-being and health of people and the planet. A global pushback is necessary to build food sovereignty and resilient agroecological food systems.

 At a recent dialogue hosted by the Committee on World Food Security, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism emphatically noted that there can be no food sovereignty without financial sovereignty! This edition of the newsletter delves into some of the salient issues related to this and proposals for a push-back.

Focus on the Global South and La Via Campesina

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Voices from the field 1

Indigenous Peoples and the Treaty Right to fish

Rochelle Diver and Chief Gary Harrison, Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and IPC Working Group on Fisheries, Great Lakes Region and Alaska respectively

In the US and Canada, the rights for Indigenous Peoples to fish are affirmed by Nation to Nation treaties signed between colonial governments and Indigenous Peoples. However, in Alaska, the trawl industry has annihilated salmon populations, collapsing ecosystems that Indigenous Peoples protected for over 25,000 years. Colonization replaced sustainable stewardship with greed– trampling fishing rights and destroying nature. Trawlers decimate habitats, kill salmon indiscriminately, and drive entire rivers to extinction—all for profit. This is ecological genocide.

Additionally, mining, as well as coal-fired power plants are contaminating fish with mercury and other chemicals and in-turn are contaminating our people. Ten percent of babies born in the Great Lakes region are pre-polluted with mercury. What use is the right to fish if the fish are harmful for our people and future generations? The intergenerational impacts of mercury and forever chemicals in our lakes are both physical and cultural. Developmental impacts from mercury hinder our children’s ability to retain our languages, stories and traditions.

Supporting Indigenous rights is supporting human rights and small-scale fisheries. Please join us in our fight for a toxic-free food system.

Voice from the field 2

Gaza’s fishers: a beacon in the struggle for food sovereignty and liberation

Saad Ziada, Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Palestine    

The fisheries sector in Gaza has been totally destroyed – we speak about equipment, boats, storage facilities, everything. Fisherfolk already lived in extremely precarious conditions before October 7 as a result of the blockade which affected access to the sea, incoming materials and export opportunities. Now their livelihoods have been destroyed, and their lives and lifestyles are under serious threat of erasure. Fishermen have been killed trying to fish near the shore on improvised floating devices to avoid starvation.

Since the ceasefire many families have returned to their neighborhoods but have not found anything left. We were able to find one motorized boat that survived all destruction. The fisherfolk remain steadfast though and are eager to rebuild their livelihoods, but the ceasefire has not fulfilled its promises in terms of incoming fuel, equipment and other basic materials to restart life. Even nets are hard to come by leaving us few options to restart the fisheries sector. But we are fighting a struggle for existence, a struggle for food sovereignty and against cultural erasure. We cannot do that alone and call on WFFP, IPC and its members, to demand accountability for the crimes committed and support us in rebuilding a fisheries sector of cultural importance which will serve as a beacon in the struggle for food sovereignty and liberation.

Voices from the field 3

From abundant fish to struggling for sustenance: Resilience in Uganda’s fisher communities

Namaganda Rehema, FIAN Uganda and Margaret Nakato, Katosi Women Development Trust

Uganda’s once thriving lakes have become sites of militarized control. Soldiers now dominate the waters where small-scale fishers once freely worked to sustain their livelihoods. Fishers are struggling to comply with harsh new fisheries regulations from 2017, brutally enforced by the military’s Fisheries Protection Unit.

The military routinely arrests fishers, destroys their boats, and confiscates their gear– acts that disrupt families, markets, and the delicate web of local food systems. Women, who process and trade the fish, bear the brunt. Once a unifying force, fish has become a symbol of disintegration. Once an abundant and vital source of protein, it is now scarce.

Amidst the hardship, the fisher communities are responding with collective action. They have initiated petition letters, held numerous meetings with policy makers, and engaged the media to bring their struggles to light, leading to significant progress, including changes to fisheries law.

Their struggle is more than a fight for resources; it is a fight to sustain their families, their communities, and their culture.

In the face of continuing militarization, they remain steadfast in their focus on food sovereignty, refusing to let their rights be overshadowed. For in their hands lies the power not just to fish but to shape the future of the lake they have long called home. Theirs is a fight for dignity,  justice, and the right of every community to feed itself.

Voices from the field 4

Community-based transformation

Claudia Pineda, FIAN Honduras

Honduras is a biologically diverse Central American country whose communities were forged in the struggle for survival, particularly in the coastal areas of the Gulf of Fonseca. There, thousands of families that depend on marine species for small-scale fishing and shrimp farming suffer from the destruction of their ecosystem. They are victims of the rapid and detrimental transformation of their territory as a result of environmental pollution and the deforestation of their mangrove forests due to agribusinesses and shrimp farming practices.

They are witnesses of how these practices based on an instrumental vision of nature have socio-environmental effects, with the reduction and loss of livelihoods, and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events. Both situations trigger migration and extreme poverty. Access to food is one of the main drivers of internal displacement and migration to countries such as Spain and the United States. This phenomenon leaves families with social problems in terms of changes in population structure, family disintegration and loss of labour force, to name a few.

However, resistance to this model is mounting, and fishing communities are increasingly demanding the right to participate in the definition and control of food systems. This is how, since 2024, began the construction of a community management’s model of their natural goods, based on local knowledge and practices.

Voices from the field 5

The Blackchin tilapia outbreak: A major ecological disaster in Thailand

Network of Thai Citizens Affected by the Blackchin Tilapia Outbreak (19 Provinces)

A blackchin tilapia outbreak began in Thailand in 2010 when Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) imported the species from Ghana to breed at its farm in Samut Songkhram. Within a year, the fish had spread to public canals and aquaculture ponds, and to nearby provinces. The species aggressively outcompeted native aquatic life, destroying shrimp, fish, crabs, and mollusks, leading to massive losses for small-scale fish farmers and coastal fishers. Many faced debt, land loss, and even suicide.

In 2017, affected communities filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission, revealing CPF’s failure to comply with biodiversity protection measures. By 2024, the outbreak had spread to 19 provinces, threatening Songkhla Lake’s biodiversity and neighboring countries. Environmentalists called it “one of Thailand’s worst ecological disasters.”

On January 13, 2025, affected communities protested at CPF’s headquarters, demanding compensation and ecosystem restoration. “This serious problem originated from large corporations. We demand that environmental criminals be held accountable and that the state enforce strict biosafety laws to safeguard food sovereignty”, said Mr. Walop Khunjeng, a fisherman from Samut Songkhram.

CPF has yet to take responsibility and instead sued Biothai, an organization exposing the crisis. Experts warn that open-system fish farming may become unviable, forcing small farmers into CPF’s corporate-controlled closed systems.

Boxes

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Box 1

Mobilize at the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture

April marks a crucial moment for the Working Group on Fisheries of the International Planning committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC FWG) as we mobilize in Antalya, Turkey, to participate as observers in the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture , a subsidiary body of the FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI). This political arena serves as a platform for shaping aquaculture policies and development strategies. With its Bureau led by Turkey and including representatives from Indonesia, Mexico, Senegal, and the United States, this space demands our attention and advocacy to counter the push for aquaculture expansion aligned with FAO’s Blue Transformation roadmap—a menace to small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples’ food sovereignty.

Industrial aquaculture fuels land and resource grabbing, displaces fishing communities, and strips them of their customary rights and livelihoods, all while accelerating environmental destruction. This corporate-led model benefits the few at the expense of the many, deepening inequalities and undermining our survival.

The IPC FWG demands a shift toward a human-rights-based approach that uplifts small-scale fishers as essential stewards of food security and biodiversity. We call on governments to implement the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) and reject market-driven agendas. The fight for food sovereignty and the centrality of small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples must be the priority in these global discussions.

Box 2

In memory of Budi Laksana

Budi Laksana, Secretary General of Serikat Nelayan Indonesia (SNI) and a leading member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), passed away on 28 November 2024 in Brasilia. He had traveled to Brazil to join comrades at WFFP’s 8th General Assembly, where he embodied the next generation’s fight for food sovereignty before succumbing to a sudden thrombosis attack.

Budi Laksana played a leading role in formulating the UN Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines, endorsed by the FAO in 2014, and worked tirelessly for their implementation in Indonesia and beyond. Under his leadership, SNI fought to protect traditional fishers’ territories and way of life from oligarchic interests. He was always at the forefront of marches and protest campaigns, denouncing the oligarchic policies of the Indonesian government from the speakers truck in front of the masses.

Coming from a traditional crab fishing family, he strongly opposed corporate aquaculture and industrial fishing, which he saw destroying not just livelihoods but entire food cultures and local economies. His vision for fisher peoples was grounded in principles of sovereign rights over food systems, inter-generational knowledge, and environmental stewardship. In his final days at the WFFP assembly in Brasilia, his positive spirit, comradery and passionate speeches on food sovereignty infused energy and solidarity amongst the over one hundred fisher delegates from fifty countries.

Budi Laksana championed women’s leadership, helping initiate the woman-led Nyimas Kumambang Fisherwomen’s Cooperative. As a stalwart supporter of food sovereignty, he placed women and their role in the entire value chain of fisheries at the forefront. As a woman fisher leader who accompanied him in his final days noted, he was “fighting and refusing to submit to a system that is greedy and impoverishing fisherwomen.”

Budi Laksana was a family man, leaving behind his beloved wife and three sons of five, ten and twelve  years of age behind.

Our thoughts go to his family and close comrades. Budi Laksana’s spirit will forever bring inspiration and power to fisher peoples’ struggle for food sovereignty.

Comrade Budi Laksana, rest in power.

Box 3

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In the spotlight

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

In the spotlight 1

Resisting industrial aquaculture!

Global aquaculture production has tripled since the start of this century and people are now consuming more seafood from farms than from fisheries. But within the impressive numbers are two distinct types of aquaculture, with very different outcomes for food security.

One is small-scale, typically involving either the inland farming of freshwater carps or the semi-wild farming of molluscs along the coasts. These hardy species require little, if any, feed or other inputs, and are often integrated with other crops and animals. The rapid growth of this type of aquaculture has been hugely important for global food security, with few negative impacts.

The other type is industrial aquaculture. It focuses on breeds of shrimp, salmon and other “high-value” species that require large volumes of commercial feeds and vast amounts of antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals to stop disease outbreaks. It produces for export and supermarkets, not local markets, and relies on highly exploited labour. It is also controlled by powerful local elites and corporations with farms across different geographies and their own feed mills and processing factories.

These corporations destroy more food than they produce. Every year, 15% of the entire wild catch of fish is ground up and fed to fish and shrimp in industrial farms. Industrial aquaculture farms use up to 6 kilograms of wild fish to produce a kilogram of salmon and 1.5 kilograms of wild fish to produce a kilogram of shrimp. The wild fish are mostly taken from traditional fishing areas in the global South, where they would otherwise provide local people with cheap and nutritious food, while farmed salmon and shrimp go to mostly wealthy consumers in the North. Worse still, corporations build their fish farms in areas traditionally used by local fishers and farmers, taking away the waters and lands they use for fishing and farming and then rapidly destroying them with pollution and disease.

Industrial aquaculture farms are multiplying and getting bigger, but so too are movements to stop them. Fishers and fish workers are leading actions around the world to stop companies from destroying their fishing grounds. This past year a number of communities came together in Poros, Greece, to launch an international #FishFarmsOut campaign, while, a few months later, the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) launched a global campaign against industrial aquaculture at their 8th general assembly, declaring: “Industrial aquaculture is NOT fishing; it is privatizing, fencing and destroying our territories; dispossessing fisher peoples from the lands and waters; polluting water and coastal ecosystems with dangerous chemicals; driving ocean grabbing and climate change; and contributing to the criminalisation of and violence against fisher peoples.”

The struggle to end industrial aquaculture and build back local fisheries and small-scale aquaculture is critical to the larger movement for food sovereignty, dignified working conditions and climate justice.

For more info: GRAIN’s report – The pushback against Aquaculture Inc

In the spotlight 2

Ocean, Water and Fisher People’s Tribunals

People’s Tribunals emerged after World War II, with the Vietnam War crimes tribunals serving as a landmark case. Since then, these tribunals have become important tools for civil society to expose injustices and build moral pressure outside official legal systems. They are typically initiated when formal courts fail to protect human rights or refuse to act.

When Society for Nutrition, Education & Health Action (SNEHA) and Delhi Forum decided to plan a series of Peoples’ Tribunals for fisher peoples in India in 2018, they did not envision other countries would pursue the same paths. Recognizing the inadequacy of traditional methods, they planned a series of Ocean, Water, and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals with the first being rolled out in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Bangladesh in 2020. Since then, Movimento de Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil (MPP) in Brazil (2022) and Masifundise in South Africa (2024) have held tribunals in their countries, and other organisations are planning for similar processes.

As non-governmental judicial courts, the Ocean, Water, and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals address critical issues like human rights violations, environmental crimes, and social injustices. They amplify the voices of oppressed communities and recognize their knowledge and experiences. While the verdicts are not legally binding, they serve as powerful forums of justice and solidarity building and allow affected groups to speak truth to power where judicial systems fail.

The importance of the tribunals was recognised by Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He writes:

There are two different ways to imagine our oceans, rivers and lakes. There are those that treat bodies of water as economic opportunities, as a ‘blue economy’, something that can be exploited yet somehow balanced with sustainability policies. They envision governing bodies of water through markets and financial instruments. Thinking in these market-driven terms will ensure a world rife with inequality and violence.

Whereas, there are those whose lives are intertwined with bodies of water. Ocean, water and fisher peoples are essential to aquatic ecosystems and life. They understand oceans, rivers, and lakes as central to who they are and their way of life. The full realisation of ocean, water and fisher peoples’ human rights is the most powerful way to ensure the world’s bodies of water thrive.

The process and verdict of the Ocean, Water and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals provide one of the most important expressions of international solidarity in relation to aquatic life. They provide a crucial understanding of what is at stake and what is to be done to ensure our bodies of water continue to be the source of life.

While the tribunals have produced profound empirical evidence of state failures to protect the human rights of fisher peoples and have weaved nets of solidarity, fishing communities are still waiting for material improvements to their lives. The jury verdicts hold potential to bring governments to the table at a time when other political strategies on their own appear insufficient.

For more info: TNI’s report – Ocean, Water and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals Cutting the nets of capital and weaving nets of solidarity and the Website about Blue Economy Tribunals in Asia

Newsletter no 59 – Editorial

Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

Illustration : Rosine Nsimire (Alliance pour la vie), Alessandro Musetta – Agathe, the matriarch above the water is a mixed-media digital publication documenting the experiences of artisanal fisherwomen from Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

In a rapidly changing world, beset by war and billionaire oligarchs, fishing livelihoods remain ignored in policy discussions. US President Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ agenda, worldwide extractivism, neo-protectionist nature enclosure through 30by30 (Global Biodiversity Framework), government-backed aquaculture expansion, and profit-driven mega projects continue eroding fisher peoples’ territories and livelihoods.

The rise of the radical right has led some governments to reduce or eliminate development aid,  and philanthropy holds greater sway in determining what and who gets support, further deteriorating the funding landscape. As NGOs and fisher movements increasingly rely on funding from philanthropy, this can lead to co-optation of some organizations’ political agendas and create division between those maintaining food sovereignty principles and those following funder-directed focuses like 30by30, ‘blue foods’ and ‘blue transformations’[1].

Fisher movements must unite to discuss political positions and tactics. Following the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty’s (IPC) decision to avoid endorsing the UN Food Systems Summit, similar positions may be needed on other imposed agendas. Fisher movements need to set their own agenda, and actively shape the direction of the larger food sovereignty movement. The Nyéléni Global Forum in September 2025 in Sri Lanka offers such an opportunity: to put fisheries on the agenda, build solidarity with other small food producers, food workers and climate movements, and advance the food sovereignty struggle.

FIAN International, GRAIN, IPC working group on fisheries, TNI, WFF, WFFP

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[1] For more info, refer to the list of material on page 6.

Voices from the field

Newsletter no 58 - Nyéléni process: creating a joint political agenda for systemic transformation

Nyéléni 2025 process

Indigenous Peoples heading to the third Nyéléni Global Forum

Saúl Vicente Vázquez, Unidad de la Fuerza Indígena y Campesina (UFIC), IPC facilitating committee

Indigenous Peoples have struggled alongside other social movements of small-scale food producers since 1996, when the vision of Food Sovereignty was launched at the World Food Summit in Rome and became a reference in the global debate on trade, food and agriculture; a people-centred vision. The need for stable, healthy and affordable, culturally appropriate food, primarily produced locally and removed from neoliberal policies, privatisation and free trade and dependence on global markets, became the central reference at the global level for all key movements and organisations working on these issues.

Since then, we have managed to build a widespread movement within the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), influencing the policies of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), through autonomous organisation, mobilisation and the holding of two Nyéléni Global Forums for Food Sovereignty, with important achievements such as the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure, the Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a reform of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), along with the adoption of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism for its relationship with the CFS, the adoption of the principles and elements of agroecology within the FAO and the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, among others. All these international agreements and policies have led the way and have already begun to influence national and regional public policies and initiatives.

Despite these achievements, over the past decades we have approached a fundamental crossroads. People are increasingly worried and feel increasingly threatened. Governments have so far been unable to find sufficiently robust responses to people’s concerns and to the risks of multiple crises related to climate, biodiversity and extractive practices that continue to destroy the planet. There is a crisis of governance at the UN and at the national level.

We are convinced that we can take a different course, but we urgently need to join forces to push for the necessary changes. We need to fight for economic solidarity, climate justice and against the dominant influence of transnational corporations (TNCs) and big tech companies.

It is in this context that the third Nyéléni Global Forum is taking place, from where we propose to build a broader and stronger movement with a common platform and actions that can make a difference, promoting a profound transformation, a systemic change that allows the participation of the people, of the social movements that advocate for food sovereignty, participatory democracy, community empowerment, human rights, solidarity, cooperation between peoples and peace, and to promote real solutions to these multi-faceted crises.

Nyéléni 2025 process

Near East and North Africa (NENA) region

Jana Nakhal, World March of Women

We prepare for the 2025 Nyéléni Global Forum as our region goes through an Israeli terrorist war, including a genocide on Gaza, a destructive war on Lebanon, and continuous attacks on Syria and Yemen, in addition to a plunderous war by the Gulf princes on Sudan.

The amount and extent of wars that the NENA region has experienced in the last 100 years and is still experiencing, has affected its food sovereignty, amongst other people’s rights in the region.

This, in addition to indirect and political intervention from the global north, has meant that the region’s food sovereignty has also been absent from the agendas of the civil society and states’ policies. Additionally, it is approached through the food security lens, while dismissing a very much needed intersectional approach to the issue. 

Consequently, and while developing the Nyéléni process, we are also producing a list of expectations from and hopes for the Nyéléni Global Forum. We think that this forum is an opportunity for our region to globalize its causes and find solidarity, but also to learn from other contexts and experiences, and to pitch in with our local culture and the heritage of our decolonial movements.

In this sense, the Global Forum seems like an opportunity for our region as well as other regions, to process the rooted intersectional character of food sovereignty, and create a space of sharing knowledge, learning and radicalizing our conceptions and movements.

There is no doubt that patriarchal, capitalist, colonizing powers are launching renewed terrorist offensives on peoples of the global south. And we can only resist them through a collective grassroots and intersectional world view, which posits food sovereignty, access to basic human rights—such as access to housing, land and resources, education, health, etc.—the liberation of peoples and women, as well as personal liberties, as inalienable rights.

Nyéléni 2025 process

Africa region

Ali Aii Shatou, IPACC

The African regional consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 2024, played a central role in framing Africa’s position. Participants reflected on their food systems, identified key issues, and developed a declaration that emphasizes the following outcomes:

Small scale food producers are recognized as the backbone of Africa’s food security. Support for these producers through access to natural resources and recognition of the value of peoples’ knowledge is critical to ensuring sustainable food systems.

Agroecology emerged as a key solution to the interconnected challenges of climate change, land degradation, and food insecurity. The consultations emphasized the need for policy support to scale up agroecological practices, including resilient seed systems and climate adapted farming methods.

A strong call was made for policies that empower women and youth in agriculture. This includes access to resources, promoting youth engagement in agriculture, and ensuring that women’s leadership is central to food sovereignty efforts.

Protecting land and water rights for small scale producers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and Indigenous communities was highlighted as essential to preventing land and water grabbing and ensuring that these resources remain a basis for food production and cultural survival.

Despite numerous positive outcomes, food sovereignty movements in Africa face significant challenges:

Many African governments remain aligned with industrial agriculture models, which prioritize export-oriented farming and undermine local food systems.

Multinational agribusinesses dominate food systems, pushing profit-driven agendas that prioritize genetically modified crops over local, traditional varieties.

Climate shocks are threatening agricultural productivity, while migration from rural areas undermines the sustainability of smallholder farming.

The African movement expects Nyéléni 2025 to be a platform for bold policy advocacy which challenges existing power structures and prioritize people-centred, sustainable food systems. Key demands include policies that prioritize small scale producers, agroecology, and land and water rights, as well as a call for an end to land and water grabbing and corporate control of food systems. There is also a desire to amplify the voices of marginalized groups, such as women, youth, and Indigenous communities, and to foster cross-border solidarity to address shared challenges like climate change and food insecurity.

Nyéléni 2025 process

Asia and Pacific region

Tammi Jonas, Australian Food Sovereignty Network

Sixty representatives from 12 countries and more than 20 global and regional social movements and civil society organisations across Asia and the Pacific came together in Negombo, Sri Lanka, to reflect on the current polycrises caused by patriarchal colonial capitalism, and to collectively build our strategies towards the third Nyéléni Global Forum. From the fields and local halls to the plenary, we shared stories of struggle and resistance specific to Asia and the Pacific, yet generalisable to all regions of the world. Whether at the level of micro-finance peddled to smallholders or World Bank loans to sovereign states, debt is crushing families, communities and countries, propped up by neoliberal policy reforms introduced by the IMF across the region. Disaster capitalism is rife across a region suffering greatly under climate change, from corporate tourism that robs fisherfolk of access to their customary waters while destroying natural barriers against tsunami, to mega-infrastructure projects purported to stem salinity from rising sea levels thereby inundating peasants’ rice paddies.

From land and water grabbing to the new frontier of carbon and data grabbing, colonial capitalism is moving to the cellular and even digital level. The struggle for food sovereignty is founded on knowledge, territory and sovereignty, asserting rights as enshrined in the UNDROP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas) and UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), which require a profound restructuring of who holds, uses, and shares power and knowledge in agri-food systems, and puts control of the means of production back in the hands of Indigenous Peoples, dalit, landless, peasants and local communities, starting with land, our mother.

Working with invited allies from other key global movements for health, debt justice, climate justice, social and solidarity economy, labour, and gender diversities, we look towards Nyéléni 2025, active in our optimism to work collectively for everyone’s right to nutritious and culturally-determined food grown in harmony with nature, processed and distributed by and within our communities, and democratically governed by us, for us.

Nyéléni 2025 process

North America region

Cicely Garrett, National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA)

The food sovereignty movement in North America (N.A.) is active, even if decentralized and lacking a core coordination support structure. For the purposes of the Global Nyéléni process, North America region is made up of more than the two nations of Canada and the United States (U.S.). There are over 1,200 sovereign Indigenous, Native, Metís, and Inuit nations that call the land home. Many of these are active in the regional food sovereignty movement.

The food sovereignty and food justice movements have faced a growing set of challenges in both Canada and the U.S., as a systems approach to food is still mostly missing from most levels of government, public sectors (i.e. health, education), and public awareness. In the U.S. in particular, the government has cut thousands of families from food assistance and other social programs and institutions use violence and incarceration against social movement communities.

At the same time, signs of a new wave of popular, mass movements for #BlackLivesMatter, Climate Justice, and actions against Monsanto and other corporations have emerged. New and existing national alliances are strengthening the leadership of working-class families and communities of colour to reclaim their lives and their bodies from structural racism and defend justice and food sovereignty.

The North American consultations happened virtually on May 8th and 9th, 2024. There were 125 participants, including coordination members, support staff and translators, representing over 70 organizations, coalitions, networks, farms and community food centres, based in the many nations that make up Turtle Island. While a lot of conversation focused on the challenges to achieving land justice and food sovereignty, there was a great focus on amplifying successful strategic interventions and root causes systemic changes. There was a renewed call and commitment to solidarity and transformative actions to build collective power. All in all the consultation was a beginning, a catalyst if you will, to continued coordination in route to the 2025 in-person Global Nyéléni convening and beyond. 

Nyéléni 2025 process

Latin America and Caribbean region

Perla Álvarez Britez, CONAMURI/CLOC

In our region, we are determined that this third Nyéléni Global process will help us to strengthen the movement for food sovereignty: to convene a widespread popular movement, to build new relationships between humans and nature and among each other, so that we can leave this beautiful land to the next generations.

In our Popular Consultation in February 2024, we called for new waves of popular agrarian reforms and for the expansion of agroecological food systems to achieve food sovereignty: we are aware that this implies a systemic change.

In our consultation we involved some twenty organisations from the continental, regional and national levels, including peasants, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, fisherwomen, women, youth, the movement for human rights, climate justice and health, among others. Our children deserve a better world, the possibility of a total meltdown is more certain than ever and ever closer if we do not act. Therefore, we call on all emerging movements, the climate justice movement, the feminist movement, the workers’ movement, youth and academia committed to the struggles of the people to join this call to the Global Forum in India in 2025.

We call for joint action with our allies to demand that governments take responsibility for ensuring public policies based on human rights and the rights of nature, to fight against corporations that devastate our territories, to build new subjectivities based on feminist contributions, and to take on diversity as a challenge for the future. We are therefore organising a series of open webinars to build a common agenda.

We hope that the Global Forum will conclude with a powerful call to humanity, to governments and intergovernmental bodies to act with real solutions, not false solutions; a call for peace, with social and environmental justice, with respect for the diversity of life and people. Therefore, from Latin America and the Caribbean we propose a new ICARRD+20 (International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development), where we will have active and leading participation of the people.

Nyéléni 2025 process

Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region

Ia Ebralidze, ELKANA

In recent years the Nyéléni ECA movement has made significant strides across Eastern Europe and Central Asia in fostering solidarity among individuals and organizations committed to food sovereignty and working on connecting local agroecology initiatives. Collaboration with the FAO regional office has amplified civil society voices, enabling meaningful contributions to regional policy debates. The National-level mobilization efforts despite pandemic challenges, have continued their efforts. However, as the region is characterized by diverse political and social cultures, country development levels, and agricultural systems, the Nyéléni working strategy of the region is still under formation. A new strategy aims to achieve clear processes and transparency within the network to build trust and boost strategic action.

Politically the region faces intersecting crises – the Russian invasion in Ukraine, frozen and/or ongoing armed conflicts in Caucasus and Central Asia, as well impacts of war in Palestine,  preceded by the effects of climate change, especially water shortage, and natural disasters resulted not only in loss of thousands of lives, displacements of millions, destruction of civil infrastructure and cutting supply chains but also highly destabilized the whole region. The rise of authoritarianism and populism all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia, using the traumatic and fragile conditions of the populations, the introduction of so-called “Agent laws” backed up by the Russian Federation, results in stigmatization and marginalization of civil society organizations including individuals and organizations working on peasants’ and indigenous’ rights or food sovereignty.

Meanwhile, skyrocketing food prices, disrupted supply chains, and limited access to essential resources—land, water, and labour—are devastating local food producers. These pressures have intensified working migration, marginalized small-scale farmers, and deepened regional food insecurity.

Yet, amidst these crises, agroecology has proven its critical importance. As a low-input, family-based farming system, agroecology offers a foundation for food security and resilience during extreme events. The small-scale food producers, despite immense challenges, remain the backbone of sustainable food systems. To support them, public policies must strengthen civil society and Indigenous organizations, prioritize human rights, include vulnerable constituencies, and bolster local economies.

Boxes

Newsletter no 58 - Nyéléni process: creating a joint political agenda for systemic transformation

Box 1

Political debates in the FAO and CFS get heated as governments stall

The long wave of the Covid pandemic, the food crisis, and multiple conflicts affected political discussion in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) spaces. Trade shocks and their impact on food systems have been extensively discussed in the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP). Most countries continued to support neoliberal policies, while some isolated voices mentioned local markets as a response to the global market volatility and fragility. The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) joined the new Committee on World Food Security (CFS)’s workstream to develop an Action Plan that could serve as a roadmap to strengthen the dissemination and implementation of the policy documents agreed by CFS at local, national, regional and global levels.

The same need for implementation was raised by the fisheries movements at the Committee on Fisheries (COFI), where they advocated for the implementation of the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines at the national level. Another space to promote the food sovereignty agenda was the Global Forum on Family Farming within the United Nations’ Decade on Family Farming (UNDFF).  The IPC Working Group on Youth participated to bring the voices of young farmers and Indigenous Peoples and create a toolkit to facilitate generational turnover in agriculture. In the meantime, negotiations in the Plant Treaty (ITPGRFA) are at a critical stage. By refusing to regulate digitised version of seeds (DSI), governments are allowing corporations to bypass the Treaty rules, creating space for a huge new wave of biopiracy on peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ biodiversity. The coming years will be pivotal for peasants and Indigenous Peoples movements, as efforts will soon converge towards organizing a new International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20).

Box 2

Let’s counter the corporate offensive on global governance!

Many fronts important for the food sovereignty movement

The right of communities to grow their food and to feed themselves is increasingly under threat, including in global policy spaces such as the United Nations. Large corporations and their political allies are taking advantage of current wars, climate, biodiversity and social crises to prioritise the industrial food system, serving profits instead of people.

The UN bodies negotiating climate (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC) and biodiversity (Convention on Biological Diversity – CBD) policies are in the cyclone’s eye. Over time, the UNFCCC has fostered a surge of false solutions such as carbon markets that are turning nature into profit, without bringing any benefit to the climate. Risky geoengineering technologies that are supposed to ‘fix the climate’ by manipulating solar radiation or industrially capturing carbon are also on the rise. All these ‘technofixes’ threaten to increase land-grabbing and could destroy ecosystems that food producers rely on. Even though the CBD has shown a lack of ambition and financial power at the last COP16 in Cali, it has maintained a de facto moratorium on geoengineering, thanks to a strong civil society mobilisation.

The digitalisation of agriculture and AI technologies are also entering policy spaces, threatening farmers rights, as seen in the recent UN Summit of the Future. Now or never, solidarity and strong resistance at all levels of power are needed and will allow us to transform the food system.

For more info: listen to the podcast mini-series “Who will control the food system?” , read Trojan Horses on the Farm: Challenging the digitalization of agriculture – and watch the animated video: Big Brother is Coming to the Farm (in 12 languages).