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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 38 - Peasant seeds, the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty

Voice from the field 1

A local seed house spearheads the struggle for Food Sovereignty in Palestine

Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Palestine

In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a local seed house has been reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public goods since the early 2000s.

The local seed house is probably one of the most significant contributions in helping Palestinian farmers and consumers achieve food sovereignty. Established in Hebron, in 2003, by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the house is the first and only of its kind in Palestine. The house saves, protects, preserves, stores and reproduces 45 varieties of local vegetable and field crop seeds from 12 plant families, many of which risked extinction. Among them are corn, barley, wheat, cauliflower, turnip, cowpeas, eggplant, squash, okra, bitter gourd and snake cucumber seeds. All of these seeds come directly from Palestinian farmers and undergo a two-year verification process before being stored and made available to other farmers.

The house is equipped with four units: an entry unit, a test laboratory, a drying unit and a storage unit where seeds are stored for a maximum of five years. To protect this enormous genetic heritage from catastrophic events, samples of these seeds are also stored for the long term at sub-zero temperatures. After documenting the seeds’ performance in the field, such as germination percentage, seedling growth and flowering, UAWC provides these seeds for free to Palestinian peasants for at least two seasons annually.

This contributes to increasing the farmers’ revenues. In addition, these seeds help farmers fight against the effects of water grabbing by the Israeli occupation, as well as global warming, since they are drought-resistant and require no irrigation. As opposed to the hybrid seed varieties sold by Israeli and multinational companies like Bayer-Monsanto, the local seeds are fertilized with animal manure and require no chemical pesticides or glyphosate-based weed killers.

“We used to have to buy seeds from Israeli companies at high costs,” said Mahmoud Abu Kharatabel, a long-time farmer and member of UAWC. “But today, because of UAWC’s seed bank, many of us are able to plant with between 90 and 95 percent local seeds,” he said with pride.

The local seed house works with key farmers like Abu Kharatabel through a three-step process. Once the farmers receive the seeds, plant them and harvest, they divide the newly produced seeds into three groups. The first group is intended for their needs in the current season. The second group has to be stored and planted again in the upcoming season. And the third group is returned to the local bank in order to benefit other farmers and keep building seed sovereignty in Palestine.

“When farmers have their own seeds and can reproduce them, it means they can choose what to plant and when to plant,” explained Do’aZayed, UAWC’s seed bank coordinator. “And that’s why we established this local seed house.” She then summarized: “Seed sovereignty is the first step to achieving food sovereignty”.

Voice from the field 2

Safeguarding also means being able to experiment

Niagui Community, Senegal

Mangroves grow along several kilometres of the bank of the river Casamance. Mariama Sonko shows us the wooden structures where the Diola farmers in the Ziguinchor region raise oysters on strings[1], one of the ways in which they preserve their way of life and food sovereignty. This is the Niagui community in Senegal, on the Atlantic coast of Africa. We are in the savanna, covered with trees, bushes and swamps.

The Niagui people are very involved in their food sovereignty, and have seeds which allow them to sow their own food. Mariama Sonko is a member of the community who is carrying on the tradition of taking care of the seeds. She shows us rows of clay pots of various sizes along the adobe walls of a house in one community neighbourhood: “The clay regulates the temperature, which is essential for preserving the seeds. We make special pots, and by keeping them in those we can exchange them more easily. We women make the pots and lids and write different phrases on the sides, to help us think about the seeds and how important they are”.

Mariama Sonko clarifies that the idea is not to promote seed banks, “because the most important thing is to preserve ‘active’ seeds for the long term, that is the seeds which are in the fields all the time and are exchanged between each harvest at sowing time. The rice variety “brikissa” is the one most sown in the region, and is exchanged all the time; it takes about 50 days to sow”. She continues with great pride: “it was one of those women that in the city they call ‘illiterate’ who started to rebuild the traditional varieties. She understood that the conventional commercial ‘improved’ varieties were eroding our traditional seeds, which are much more resistant and adaptable to humidity and the vagaries of the climate. It is we women who pass on our knowledge, how to safeguard our seeds, from generation to generation. It comes from believing in ourselves.

Conventional seeds do not allow people to observe, calculate or experiment, because they come with precise instructions which leave us no options. We are talking about around twenty varieties of rice, and also sorghum, maize and millet. We don’t want to centralise the safeguarding work. We encourage autonomy, because conditions are changing, the soil is becoming less fertile, there’s a lack of rain and there’s demand for seeds. We are keeping up our practices, but conditions are changing”.

[1] In the mangroves, farmers grow oysters on strings woven on to frames.

Boxes

Newsletter no 38 - Peasant seeds, the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty

Box 1

Adopt a seed, action for life

On 16th October 2018, La Vía Campesina relaunched the Global Campaign “Peasant Seeds, a Heritage of Peoples in the Service of Humanity” and called for action to “Adopt a Seed” in this context. How to get involved?

We want every peasant or community to commit to adopting a seed variety, from any culture. Choose the one which sparks the most interest, because of its identity or territory, or its part in the affirmation of peasant life and culture. Each participant must become a guardian of that seed, guaranteeing its propagation. The idea is to create a wide network of peasant seeds, to recover seeds and extend production, towards Peoples’ Food Sovereignty.

As a result of this action we want to see thousands of communities improving biodiversity, recovering seed varieties, and thus guaranteeing Food Sovereignty and productive capacity. This is an action for life, to stop multinationals appropriating peasant seeds and reducing our autonomy and biodiversity, without peasant seeds, peasant farming becomes hostage to the multinationals!

You can start with your community and invite more people – the key is to take the first step! We would like to know about your community and the seed variety recovered. Write to us at lvcweb@viacampesina.org

Our Peasant Seeds

Peasant seeds are of immense value. They mean we have autonomy over our resources and decision making, because if we have seeds, we decide when and how to plant them. Seeds are the link which ensures the continuation of peasant farming and production of healthy food for workers and consumers. We shall only achieve Food Sovereignty if seeds are protected by peasants, communities and the peoples of the world. By extending this action we guarantee the right to quality food for the countryside and the city!

Box 2

Struggle for seed rights: Emerging threats to the Seed Treaty

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Seed Treaty) was adopted in 2001 and entered into force 15 years ago. It is the only global multilateral governance mandatory instrument that recognizes farmers’ collective rights to their seeds. The treaty facilitates and regulates the access to the seeds -the common heritage of humanity- stored in public gene banks connected to the Multilateral System and guarantees their availability for future generations.
The Treaty, though it is an unbalanced and unstable compromise, reflects power relations and worldviews of: (1) seed industry requiring facilitated access to peasant seeds while promising to share monetary and non-monetary benefits; and (2) peasant farmers demanding guarantee for their collective rights to save, use and exchange seeds and for future generations. The industry not only has failed by far to uphold the promise to share benefits, it is also strengthening plant variety protection laws that violate farmers’ rights. Thus, in 2013 Contracting Parties decided to set up a working group to improve the functioning of the Multilateral System and a mandatory Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) to access to the PGRFA (plant genetic resources for food and agriculture).

New emerging threats

Recent technological revolution in genomics made the sequence of genetic information of seeds very easy and affordable for everyone. Advanced biotechnology today is able to create new seeds just using the digital sequence information (DSI) acquired by physical seeds. This new technology disrupts the link between material (germplasm) and its derived outcomes (Dematerialization). The creation of new population or varieties using only DSI, which will be then patented, will increase the cases of biopiracy and will significantly limit farmers’ rights on their seeds. It is the easiest way to accelerate the erosion of biodiversity and threatens our future.

The Multilateral System of the Treaty is now inadequate in response to genetic technology at the disposal of the industry. Its scope is not well defined and it is not clear now if DSI have to be considered under the rules of the SMTA or if PGRFA as defined in the text of the Treaty does not include DSI. If there will be no quick decisions or at least discussions on the issue, industry will freely access to genetic sequences information as much as it can, profiting this lack of regulations.

DSI poses new challenges also to social movements, who need to devise newer strategies to counter this new form of capture. For now, it is clear that the biggest beneficiary of “common heritage of humanity” in gene banks is the seed industry. Most developed countries are complicit in this new threat as they work hand in glove with the industry to appropriate existing plant genetic resources for agriculture and food through patents. However, an efficient Multilateral System and an effective SMTA would benefit peasants that want to dynamically manage their biodiversity.

La Via Campesina and allies have rejected and denounced the industry‘s new attempts to push synthetic biology and genomics to circumvent Seed Treaty regulation and contravene article 9 of the Seed Treaty on right of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell their seeds. Not only in the Treaty, but also in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in its Protocols and in the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, we strongly denounce this strategy of the industry, which now appears clear to developing countries and other organizations.

We recall the Contracting Parties of the Treaty and other decision-making spaces to intervene and consider private intellectual property regimes’ obligations as part of economic rights, while respecting the effective implementation of farmers’ rights that belong to the sphere of human rights.

There are two broad ways to prevent the appropriation of all agricultural diversity and control of the food chain by a few transnational corporations: (1) ensure preeminence of peasants’ rights over the rights of breeders and patent holders and (2) uphold the right of peoples to define for themselves what they need to guarantee their food sovereignty.

Negotiations in the last Governing Body of the Treaty showed that the block of industrialized countries don’t want to discuss the issue, but just to postpone it, threating the multilateralism that characterize the UN System – especially USA that was chairing the session and biased the procedures for discussion. Now there will be the possibility to discuss this issue in the CBD, and La Via Campesina and its allies will put a lot of pressure to defend the rights of small scale family farmers and of future generations.

Box 3

Peasants Rights and our struggle for seeds

The Article 19 of the UNDROP [[UNDROP – UN Declaration for the Rights of Peasants and Other People working in Rural Areas was formally adopted by the UN General Assembly in December, 2018.]] recognize the right of peasants and other people working in rural areas to maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge.

In accordance to the same Article, peasants and other people working in rural areas have the rights: (1) to the protection of traditional knowledge; (2) to equitably participate in sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA); (3) to participate in the making of decisions on matters relating to the conservation and sustainable use of PGRFA; (4) to save, use, exchange and sell their farm-saved seed or propagating material.

In addition, UNDROP calls upon the States to ensure that seeds of sufficient quality and quantity are available to peasants at the most suitable time for planting and at an affordable price. Peasants need to have autonomy over their own seeds or other locally available seeds of crops and species that they wish to grow.

According to the Declaration, States are responsible to take appropriate measures to support peasant seed systems and promote the use of peasant seeds and agro-biodiversity, ensuring that agricultural research and development integrates the needs of peasants and other people working in rural areas. This means that peasants must be included in the definition of priorities and the undertaking of research and development; their experience has to be taken into account.

Finally, UNDROP recalls States to ensure that seed policies, plant variety protection and other intellectual property laws, certification schemes and seed marketing laws, respect and take into account the rights, needs and realities of peasants and other people working in rural areas.

Box 4

Outlawing our seeds in Latin America

Latin American governments are looking to standardise seeds in law. Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela have proposed and discussed seed laws. Many of these are being resisted by communities, organisations and peoples. These laws religiously follow the guidelines laid down by the big seed transnationals: Bayer-Monsanto, Corteva-Agriscience, ChemChina (Syngenta) and Vilmorin&Cie-Limograin.
United Nations agencies such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Conference on Trade and Development and the World Intellectual Property Organization are large bodies which promote these regulations, draw up model laws and teach governments how to implement them.

Marketing laws define the criteria which must be met for seeds to come on to the market. They can only be marketed if they are of a variety which meets three important requirements: they must be “distinct”, “uniform” and “stable”. Intellectual property laws are regulations which recognise that a person or entity, or a seed company, is the exclusive owner of a seed with particular characteristics, and has the legal right to stop other people or entities using, producing, exchanging or selling it. There are two main “intellectual property” systems for seeds: patents, and Plant Variety Protection, which confers rights on whoever “obtains” a variety, even if it goes back thousands of years in its present form. Trade and investment agreements are tools used by companies to force governments to adopt and promote corporate rights over seeds.

These laws seek to outlaw the way peasants’ and indigenous people’s local systems use, exchange, produce and improve local varieties. They allow companies to define national policies on seeds, research, and agriculture. This creates a certification and oversight system controlled by private corporations. It forces communities and peoples to accept standards set by the transnationals, and to be scrutinised by private bodies if they wish to continue to exchange “legal” seeds. It delays, minimises or eliminates any concern for preserving agricultural diversity. It aims to standardise seed use and exchange traditions, which date back thousands of years. It imposes industrial standards on agriculture, facilitating seed privatisation. It seeks to qualify and classify all seeds, even local and native ones, so that corporate ownership of seeds is respected. In this way, whoever produces seeds will be monitored, no matter what seed they produce or how they exchange it.

Poem

The mission of the seed

A seed of life came in the arms of the north wind,
Born of a large and fleshy fruit,
Of gigantic buds of dreams and struggle!
Burned women, murdered women,
Women resisting, women conquering their rights.
Seeds multiply, resurrecting utopia in each step,
Returning to the land of this immense world.

Today, the seeds are you and me,
Ready, waiting to fall into our mother’s lap – earth,
Listen … you’re begging for it!
Every patch of soil is a mouth crying out for justice!
Who can stand the silence of unproductive land?
A living cemetery of hope, sowing hatred and exclusion.

The seeds are you and me
And the plow – our organization – has already made grooves in the ground,
Let us sleep upon the earth,
Let her tell us the secret of the mission
We will feel the rain: another partner joining the fight
Let the dream and commitment grow within us!
And when it’s too big and we can no longer hold it in,
We will burst and be seeds no more!

We will be militants, that as plants grow and find
A great red sun shining on high – the new society!
And we will feel its kiss on our mouth.
Then we will be plants no more but become fruits!
And we will feed ourselves with our struggle, with our conquests,
We ourselves and those we love
And until the day we will die, as ripe fruits ….
And these fruits will fall like tears, touching the earth, and become seeds.
And so eternally …

Until the day when there is no more the cursed hoe or sickle of domination,
Threatening the buds of the earth.
On that day, you will hear a great sigh of relief, followed by a birth:
We will eat,
We will celebrate
We will dance with our harps and guitars!
And we will sing with the voice of the heart!
Because our eyes, full of tenderness, will finally be able to see,
The seed – our mission – transformed into harvest!

(Original poem in spanish by Daniel Salvado)

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 38 - Peasant seeds, the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty

In the spotlight 1

Global Campaign “Peasant seeds a heritage of peoples in the service of humanity”, a way to promote Food Sovereignty

Peasants’ seeds are a heritage of peoples in the service of humanity. Seed is life, the basis of global food production, essential for peasants to produce healthy and culturally appropriate food and crucial for consumers and citizens who seek to find healthy and diversified food. Seed is part of peasant culture and is our heritage, allowing us to resist, maintain our ancestral wisdom and defend our peasant identity.

However, under the pretext of “improving” seed productivity, agribusiness has created a neo-liberal seed system that has homogenized, impoverished and monopolized seeds, causing the loss of three-quarters of seed diversity and annihilating a diversity that it took people — thanks to the work of peasants — 10000 years to generate.

Three companies, Monsanto-Bayer, Syngenta-ChemChina and Dupont-Dow, control more than 50% of the world’s commercial seeds — increasingly genetically modified seeds to resist herbicides and produce insecticides. Under the impetus of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and through free trade agreements and laws protecting seed and breeders’ rights, such as UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) model laws, this seed system only allows the circulation of its own seeds, criminalizing the saving, exchange, utilization, donation and sale of local farmer seeds. The situation is such that peasants have lost control over local seeds, are criminalised for the use and exchange of their seeds heritage, and often subjected to raids and seizure of their seeds. Biodiversity is endangered by the use of chemical fertilizers, hybrid seeds and genetically modified organisms — including the consequences of the new breeding techniques — developed by multinational companies. Citizens have difficulty accessing healthy, diversified and culturally appropriate food.

La Via Campesina and its allies are fighting to change the situation. As part of its Global Campaign “Peasant Seeds a heritage of peoples in the service of humanity”, launched in Rome in 2001, La Via Campesina and its member organizations have carried out training, education, mutual support and seeds exchange. The peasant movements continue to fight for national laws and international treaties to guarantee the rights of farmers to save, use, exchange, sell and protect their seeds against biopiracy and genetic contamination, we write books on the history of seeds, carry out studies and mapping. La Via Campesina’s network of agroecology schools around the world, also organize peasants’ seed exchange fairs. Thereby, the global campaign promotes the recovery of traditional systems for the conservation, maintenance and exchange of local seeds and the inalienable collective rights of peasants over their seeds.

On October 16, 2018, on the occasion of the World Day of Action for Food Sovereignty of Peoples and Against Multinationals, La Via Campesina stepped up this campaign by calling for coordinated the action called “Adopt a Seed” (For more information check Box 1 of this edition). The movement is calling on every peasant, peasant family or community to engage in the adoption of a variety of plant, to become the guardian of this seed, ensuring its propagation, reproduction and distribution and to engage in the collective defence of their rights to use, exchange, sell and protect them. So far, in Brazil, Palestine, Paraguay, India, Thailand, Zimbabwe, South Korea, Indonesia, Canada and several other countries — through direct actions and seed fairs — peasants have engaged in conserving native varieties and teaching others about agroecology.

Without seeds, there is no agriculture; without agriculture, there is no food; and without food, there are no peoples!

In the spotlight 2

The call for action to “adopt a seed” reaches across the world

Peasants’ seeds are a heritage of peoples in the service of humanity. This is what the International Peasants’ Movement believes, as well as being the name of the campaign launched by La Via Campesina (LVC) to protect and preserve peasants’ seeds. Under the auspices of this campaign, LVC has launched the call for action to “Adopt a seed” several times and in several regions of the world, calling for peasants and their families to exchange and propagate peasants’ seeds.

On the World Day of Action for Food Sovereignty, on 16 October 2018, LVC launched an appeal to its member organisations and alliances and to all peasant families, to get involved in the “adopt a seed” action (for more read Box 1). The first event took place in Brazil with the Small Farmers Movement (MPA), one of its member organisations.

The world exchange was held between 29 August and 4 September 2018, when a delegation from LVC travelled 1,700 km across Brazil, visiting peasant families. The delegates, from Korea, Costa Rica, Palestine, Switzerland and Zimbabwe, represented organisations already involved in conserving seeds in their own countries. During this international exchange, the LVC delegates looked carefully at the MPA’s experience in the states of Sergipe and Bahia in northeast Brazil. They also visited the “seed houses” established to stock peasant communities’ seeds. These are overseen by the “seed central office” which stocks all the seeds in the area and also serves as a place for training and farming production. Information was given and discussions were held on seed laws as well as agroecological practices and representations of rural art and culture.

As well as being the International Day of Action for People’s Food Sovereignty, 16 October 2019 was also the date when an international peasants’ seeds exchange took place in Palestine. This was organised by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and La Via Campesina. Farmers from all four corners of the globe came to take part in the exchange: Honduras, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Colombia, the Netherlands, Mozambique, Germany and the United States. The UAWC has a wealth of experience in preserving peasants’ seeds, having established its first seed house 17 years ago in Hebron. The house has enabled several seed varieties to be saved from extinction, and has stood up to Israeli occupation which imposed hybrid seeds sold by Bayer-Monsanto. All the seeds from the UAWC bank come from peasants and undergo a two-year verification process in an internal laboratory before being redistributed to the peasants (for more read Voice from the Field 1).

LVC’s next international seed exchange will take place in Korea in 2020. Seed exchange fairs are organised in several regions of the world by members of the movement and alliances. The “adopt a seed” action is one of solidarity, resistance and mysticism which should be replicated throughout the world in order to preserve peasants’ seeds, which are the ground rock of our agriculture and our lives.

Newsletter no 38 – Editorial

Newsletter no 38 - Peasant seeds, the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty

Peasant seeds – the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty

In 2018 the United Nations (UN) adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, recognising at the highest level of international governance the strategic role played by the peasants of the world. The Declaration complements the measures and policies required for the UN Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028), and for the implementation of Article 9 of the ITPGRFA (International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture). It highlights the role of peasant seeds in achieving Food Sovereignty, and in developing agrarian policies which favour peasant farmers.

These policy instruments make it clear that it is vital to guarantee the right of peoples to “Maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge”. One of the specific actions launched by La Via Campesina 20 years ago was the Global Campaign for “Peasant Seeds, a Heritage of Peoples in the Service of Humanity”, which seeks to move beyond the rural environment and involve and bring together other grassroots sectors in this affirmation of their way of life.

In this edition of the newsletter we are inviting you to return to the debate on Peasant seeds – the heart of the struggle for Food Sovereignty, which guarantee full Peasant Rights. We are sharing a series of articles which seek to raise awareness and improve organisation for Peasant Seeds in all territories, and providing information about how to join the “Adopt a Seed” action. You will also find testimonies of the actions of resistance people are engaged in to keep peasant seeds in the hands of those who feed populations in a fair and healthy way.
La Vía Campesina and GRAIN

Peasant seeds - the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty, no 38

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 37 - The digitalization of the food system

Voice from the field 1

Dematerialization of seeds

Alimata Traoré, President of the Convergence of Rural Women for Food Sovereignty (COFERSA), Mali

“What if there were a power cut after putting all our seeds into a computer, what then?” This is how the women of my organization, COFERSA, reacted when I explained to them what governments discussed at the seventh session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in Kigali in October 2017.

We, the peasant communities, work with living beings in our fields. This is how we preserve biodiversity. My community has selected a variety of sorghum that is drought resistant if grown using a farming technique called zaï [Zaï is a West African traditional farming technique whereby pits are dug into micro-basins using a pick-axe with a small handle (known as daba), and then the seeds are sown. This particular type of cultivating allows for the concentration of water and manure in arid and semi-arid zones.]. And now, a company would become its owner because it masters IT? Until recently, researchers or companies had to come to our villages to ask us for seeds, in order to further develop them and then sell them. Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic sequencing have changed this: breeders in the industry no longer need access to material seeds. They now analyze the digitized representation of genetic sequences on their computer screens.

When we talk about the “dematerialization” of genetic resources, we refer to the sequencing of the genome of living organisms, the massive gathering of peasant knowledge about the characteristics of these organisms, and then the digitizing and storing of this information in huge electronic databases. Companies then file patents on these genetic sequences, which allow them to force us to pay licensing fees if the same sequence is found in our seeds. “Dematerialization” is therefore the new way of capturing the wealth that has been created by peasant communities over the centuries, bypassing international texts that recognize our rights.

We the peasants of Africa are not backward, nor against technology. We use it when it serves to strengthen our struggles, but we demand that our rights be respected and protected. Those who can use all these computer technologies and databases are large multinational companies. It’s not for us. Because of this, we oppose patents on genetic information. And we fight for the protection of our peasant seed systems, which allow us to play our role as guardians and guarantors of the biodiversity and life. No machine or software can ever replace our peasant knowledge.

Voice from the field 2

**I Campesino: Digital, rural, self-determined**

FarmHack.org community reflections on digitization in the USA alternative agriculture movement

Even in this hyper connected world, we, young and youngish farmers in the US agroecology scene, spend most of our time outside, connected more of the time to the ecosystem than to the internet. It is a straddle, between subsistence and the marketplace, between the wild, feral and domesticated ecologies, sometimes farming or caring for children or running equipment while holding the smart phone in our teeth! Many farms in the USA rely on smartphones for record keeping, for marketing, for managing orders and customers, as web-shops and market portals – to stay in daily touch with our networks of collaborators and a customer base increasingly accustomed to direct relationships with their growers.

In the US, we have some convergent social movements, which have shaped the culture and practices of our open source agricultural tools ecosystem. These include a co-incidence with a boom in open internet infrastructure, including Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Craiglist, Napster, Tor-Drupal and more. As a generation brought up since grade school with computers, we are quite adept at finding information with keywords online, from videos on Google’s YouTube to historical documents protected in the commons at www.archive.org.

We are also quite adept at building our own infrastructure where there is none, of which FarmHack.org is a prime example. FarmHack.org was born in 2008 from a community of farmers that convened at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and worked together to build a platform to host a farm tool sharing service, through a very simple website, in-person meet-ups, and a diffuse international community of practitioners working together online. FarmHack.org has sought to become the open-source platform through which farmers can share their innovative approaches to addressing existing equipment gaps[[Small and medium scale vegetable growers in particular find that there are ‘equipment gaps’ as we work to re-build diversity in cropping systems and regions which had become concentrated and simplified.]] with their fellow smallholder farmers [See article on FarmHack and Atelier Paysan in Nyéléni Newsletter no 36, Agroecology: real innovation from and for the people]. Today, the young farmers’ movement, the open source software movement, and the “right to repair” movements [Farmers who buy tractors from the big agricultural machinery companies are often not allowed to repair them. A clause in the purchasing contract requires that only accredited mechanics … are allowed to repair the machines. The “right to repair” movement challenges that, and asserts farmers’ rights to repair their own machinery.] converge in FarmHack and Gathering for Open Ag Tech (GOAT) communities. This is not only happening in the US, in Quebecois Canada there are strong collaborations going on as well.

Agribusiness’ vision of agriculture without farmers is “precision agriculture.” Both the agro-input companies and the farm machinery corporations (e.g. John Deere) have been investing massively in big data and information and communication technology in recent years. “Precision agriculture” entails a model of extreme mechanization in agricultural production, enabled by the convergence of powerful new digital technologies and algorithmic processing of big data. In this “vision,” technology and data are used to further consolidate corporate control over the food system, and monopolies. Farm machinery companies – just as agricultural input companies – are nowadays big data companies. They equip their machines with sensors and chips that collect and analyze all kinds of data, all the time – weather records, soil moisture, pests, crop history etc. These are turned into big datasets that are run through machine-learning algorithms that then inform automated farming machineries.

In reply, we propose a strong community vision for “decision agriculture,” which puts forward our autonomy and rights. In addition to building our own tools/hardware, which we can control (e.g. bike-based farm equipment, do-it-yourself tractor mounted equipment “à la Atelier” etc.), we develop our own open source software and apps (e.g. an adaptive management software called “farmOS”). We have also started to use drones, sensors (e.g. for monitoring greenhouses, fencing, etc.), big data and tech-enabled observation to improve our farming systems and adapt them to local conditions and changing climate. Many of these practices share thinking and approaches with Citizen Science communities such as Publiclab.org, and work helping communities hold their elected officials accountable to environmental justice using low cost monitoring tools. Publiclab has emphasis areas in do-it-yourself soil testing (for contamination) and carbon monitoring (using spectrometry). Our strategies focus on communicating and sharing locally relevant agricultural knowledge across cultural, geographic and language boundaries.

We are at an interesting crossroads where the cost and accessibility of digital tools is being turned on its head. The next generation of open source micro-controllers and internet connected devices and associated batteries and motors is far lower cost and more accessible and scalable for small-scale producers, and may even already have economic advantages over large-scale proprietary systems. Low cost climate control, simple automation, animal monitoring, and on-farm value added processes are but some sample use cases with interesting potential for small-scale farmers.

Low cost communications tools are also crucial for sharing and improving practical knowledge related to the complexities of regenerative agriculture, and form the foundation for valuing ecosystem functions. Even simple hardware designs and on-farm and local manufacturing of hardware are made more effective with peer to peer communications tools to exchange and adapt designs for local conditions. We are even exploring peer to peer networks that can create functional farmer communications networks external to the internet.

Boxes

Newsletter no 37 - The digitalization of the food system

Box 1

The Internet of cows

It sounds like a joke, but it is one more aspect of the invasion of digital technologies into agriculture and food, whose ultimate aim is an agriculture without farmers – industrialized from seed to plate or glass of milk, and controlled by large agribusiness companies, machinery and computing.

Companies like IBM, Microsoft and Huawei offer technology packages for what they call the “Internet of cows.” These are digital devices (collars and / or chips) that are placed in each cow to measure their pulse, temperature, peak fertility and other health conditions related to the digestive system. The data is transmitted over the internet to a cloud owned by the companies themselves, which stores them in Big Data systems, analyzes them with artificial intelligence and sends the information that the program deems pertinent to the computer or telephone of the agricultural company, farm owner. There are also interactive chips that can direct the cattle for milking when it is time, connected to an automated milking system previously installed to suit the cow in question. Each device is associated with a particular cow.

For a decade there have been satellite systems for monitoring livestock in certain areas. The difference now is that the data collection is much broader, the data is about each animal, and all the information goes into a cloud owned by those companies, or according to the contracts shared clouds with Bayer-Monsanto or agricultural machinery companies such as John Deere.

There is also the internet of pigs and sheep, which are similarly structured. The idea is not that the process ends at each farm, but that the monitoring follows each animal, including on the hoof livestock transactions, through the use of blockchain and crypto currencies, to the slaughterhouse, certification chains that include processing, sale tracking retail and even as far as the refrigerator.

Both IBM and Microsoft have advanced digital systems that cover all the agricultural production of a farm. The package offered by Microsoft, called “Farmbeats”, offers a system of permanent monitoring of the condition of soils, humidity and water, condition of the crops (if they need irrigation, if there are diseases, pests, etc.), climatic data, up to date weather data (wind direction, rains, etc.), to provide indications when and where to sow, apply irrigation, fertilizers or pesticides, when to harvest etc – all from the Microsoft cloud.

To solve the issue of rural connectivity, a key element of the system, but which is lacking in rural areas, Microsoft uses the “white spaces of TV”, which are disused television bands. This allows a router to be installed in each farm, connecting sensors, drones, chips, phones and computers to the Internet within a radius of a few kilometers and sending the information to the company’s cloud.

The largest agribusiness companies such as Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF have digital divisions with projects of this kind and since 2012 they have collaboration agreements or joint ventures with the largest machinery companies (John Deere, AGCO, CNH, Kubota) for big systems data, clouds for storage and computing, and drone companies. For example, PrecisionHawk, Raven, Sentera and Agribotix are new companies created in collaboration between multinationals manufacturers of agrotoxic seeds and machinery.

Again, as with transgenics, companies claim that this is necessary to feed a growing world population, to increase production, save water and be “sustainable.” In reality, it is about agriculture without farmers, aimed at replacing small farms with large companies, where from the seed to the plate, the control is carried out by a chain of transnationals that leave no decision to the farmers.

Each farm also provides a large amount of data that companies appropriate, building maps over entire regions, which allows them to visualize and negotiate projects far beyond each farm, passing over farmers and peasants.
They are projects that move forward, but it does not mean that they work. The true knowledge about fields and animals, which is what gives food and sustenance to most of the planet, come from the peasant way of life itself. These technology packages are new forms of attack against her.

* ETC Group’s contribution, more information on this in the ETC Group report, Blocking the Chain. Industrial food chain concentration, Big Data platforms and food sovereignty solutions, 2018.

Box 2

Digital green grabbing in Brazil

The Cerrado region in Brazil, one of the most biodiverse in the planet, has been witnessing the rampant expansion of agribusiness, especially in the region called MATOPIBA [MATOPIBA is the acronym for a land area of 73,173,485 hectares across the States of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia.], which has been called “ideal” for soy plantations by agribusiness due to its terrain comprised of plateaus and lowlands.

Since some areas of the MATOPIBA region (especially the lowlands) still have a cover of native Cerrado vegetation, industrial farmers and agribusiness companies are now staking a claim to those lands, in order to comply with Brazilian legislation. The Brazilian Forest Code (Law 12651/2012) requires landowners to keep at least 20% of their land in the Cerrado biome –the so-called “legal reserves”. Because the plateaus have been almost completely deforested for the establishment of soy plantations, agribusiness companies are expanding their farms to the lowlands, where the local villages are situated.

Land grabbers use the Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural, CAR) as an instrument to formalize their land claims. The CAR is an online system, in which anybody can register environmental and land use information; no proof of property is required. Although according to the legislation CAR does not have any value as a property title, agribusiness companies are attempting to utilize it as proof of their land occupation and use. This is the case of the “legal reserves areas'” – most of them covered with native vegetation; that are registered as part of their property, although those lands are traditionally used by the local communities.

Communities who try to register their lands in the CAR often find out that they have already been registered by plantation owners. Despite the flaws of the CAR, unfortunately several initiatives have promoted this system, such as a project coordinated by the UNDP and Conservation International with the objective of encouraging “sustainable” soy production in the Cerrado.

Box 3

Digitalization of fisheries

In the last few decades, the collection of ocean data has developed hugely and for a range of reasons. These include tracking cargo shipments, creating digital seafloor maps, and monitoring fish stocks, resulting in the development of quota allocations and the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) system. However, the concern is around what kinds of political-economic agenda the collection of big data will mobilise and what the consequences for small-scale fishing communities around the world may be. The widespread increase in the use of data and the digitalization of the ocean space needs to be considered in light of historical political-economic shifts concerning use and control of ocean-space and in particular within the narrative of the “Blue Economy”.

Data and fisheries

The use of data in fisheries emerged simultaneously with discussions around the optimal use of national fish stocks based on a discourse of environmental sustainability and economic efficiency. The production of this data resulted in the development of the TAC system which is determined by fisheries scientists through annual surveys which collect data on the population sizes of commercial fish species. The collection of these data has been increasingly digitalized through on-board GPS devices and the automatic storage of information on computers. The ability to record catches in real-time means that the TAC and remaining quotas or catches that exceed the quota can be detected immediately. Although this knowledge adds to the global understanding of species populations and distributions in the ocean, the quantitative and scientific nature of this data undermines the traditional knowledge of local fishers which allow them to protect the sustainability of ocean ecosystems.

Quota-based management systems and catch share models such as Individual Transferrable Quotas (ITQs) were made possible through the digitalization of fish stock data. These types of management systems are supported by environmental organisations that advocate for the implementation of these models for the advancement of conservation efforts in the oceans. However, they are often contentious as they are a result of privatization of public resources and are associated with inequitable allocation of fisheries resources.

Data and the Blue Economy

The increasing role of data in ocean management is being emphasised as part of the growing pressure on the ocean and ocean resources to act as a new economic frontier to solve a myriad of crises in our food, energy, and climate systems. The expansion of big data turns the ocean into a financial asset to be exploited for economic profitability rather than a point of access for variable and nutritious food and ecosystem to be respected and nurtured. The market-based agenda of the blue economy focuses on private sector involvement in ocean-based extractive developments. According to the blue economy discourse, emerging ocean-based industries have high growth, innovation, and job creation potential, and can contribute to energy security, climate change management, and food security. However, these discourses are also associated with dispossession and the appropriation of ocean resources and spaces.

A variety of developments have been facilitating the increased gathering of data for ocean management in growing the blue economy. Satellite data has been growing exponentially and is set to double by 2020. With increased spatial and spectral resolution, more data per instrument will be recorded with fewer limitations to observation. Drones and unmanned airborne vehicles are allowing for cheaper and easier data collection. In order for big data to contribute to growing a rich information ecosystem, advanced application programming interfaces are being developed to allow for quick and cheap processing of the huge amounts of data that are being collected.

Impacts

Fishers have a deep-seated knowledge of fish species populations, breeding cycles, migration patterns, and fishing techniques which they use to protect fish stocks. The quantitative and scientific nature of the calculation of the TAC overlooks this knowledge, reducing information to scientific data rather than holistically combining this with existing traditional knowledge. The vision of nutrition has become technical in nature and food is increasingly viewed as a commodity rather than part of the commons. This reductionist, fragmented and individualist view of food lacks a human rights perspective.

Digitalization widens the gap between producers and consumers; it results in an increasingly automated and delocalized process of food production, and dispossesses fishers of their knowledge and access to ocean resources. This shifts the power from physical food production systems and fishing activities in favour of often-unknown financial actors with access to and control over these technologies. It concentrates political and economic power in the hands of remote actors who engage in the immaterial realm of information and financial means, reaffirming class struggles and oppressive inequality. Additionally, all of this big data feeds into policy decisions such as determining the use of ocean space with technical tools such as Marine Spatial Planning. These data are being mobilised to support a certain type of political-economic agenda and, if this includes the increasingly dominant discourse of Blue Economy, the consequences for small-scale fishers with marginal political power across the world may be devastating.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 37 - The digitalization of the food system

The digitalization of food

Digital land registries; gene sequencing and editing; sensors in robotized agricultural machines; fruit picking robots; blockchains [For the definition of blockchains and other key terms check the GLOSSARY at page 6 and 7 of the ETC group report , Blocking the Chain, 2018] ensuring traceability in global value chains; 24-hour health control of livestock; intellectual property rights (IPR) protection through digital platforms; AI in plant breeding; satellite-supported location of fish resources and allocation of fishing rights; automated trade and distribution; e-commerce of food products; personalized nutrition and fitness with smartphone apps – the brave new world of digital technology is transforming all aspects of our food systems for better and worse. This incomplete list is a small sample of the range of application of digital technologies. Over the past decade, digitalization has become increasingly visible and influential in food production, processing, storage, packaging, retailing and trading.

Actors, initiatives and narratives

Governments, corporations and policy institutions present digitalization in food and agriculture as a solution to the main problems the world is facing. Corporations and financiers see it as an enormous opportunity to generate profits.

Over the past ten months, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) organized two international events on digitalization and technology [International Symposium on Innovation for Family Farming in November 2018, International Seminar on Digital Agriculture Transformation in May 2019.]. In 2018 “e-agriculture” was on the official agenda of the regional FAO conferences for Europe and Central Asia. The World Bank dedicated special panels on digitalization and blockchain technology for land administration in its annual Land and Poverty Conferences [Pilot experiences are being carried out in Brazil, Georgia, Ukraine, Sweden, India, Australia, Dubai, Honduras, USA and Ghana. See: Graglia,J.M., Mellon, C. “Blockchain and Property in 2018: at the end of the beginning”. Paper presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, 2018.]. Megamergers between the world’s largest seed and agrochemical companies (especially the Bayer-Monsanto merger) have raised public awareness about the high level of corporate concentration in the industrial food chain, and the massive investments by agrochemical, farm machinery and food retail companies in big data, and ICT. In several countries, e-commerce giants such as Amazon, Uber, Walmart, Alibaba and GRAB have expanded into online food retail. Corporate competition over food retailing in India [The Changing Face of Food Retail in India in When Food Becomes Immaterial: Confronting the Digital Age.] and the battle for control over 5G technology between China and the USA are indicative of the large amounts of money at stake in digital technologies and infrastructure.

The recent push for digitalization comes from the business-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) aggressively promoted by corporations in the World Economic Forum (WEF), who describe it as a “fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” While 4IR goes beyond food, it has replaced the paradigm of the ‘Green Revolution,’ which was legitimized by the need to increase agricultural production. Digital technologies and big data are key aspects of the new paradigm, and enable the consolidation of corporate control over the global food system.

Digitalization of food-agriculture ranges from relatively simple applications such as drones for land mapping and direct online marketing to more complex digital agriculture. Digital agriculture refers to the integration of advanced technologies (AI, sensors, robotics, drones, etc.), devices and communications networks into one system, and applying them to production, management, processing and marketing. The narrative of the new paradigm promises greater efficiency in food production and resource and energy use, sustainability, transparency, accuracy and the creation of new markets and economic opportunities. Developing countries, especially in Africa, are lured by promises from donors, international agencies and corporate foundations that digitalization will enable them to “leapfrog” their way to progress with climate friendly pathways. However, the technology and infrastructure for this rosy scenario will come from corporations, who are in it for profits, not public benefit.

Implications for people and the environment

Proponents of digitalization emphasize the supposed benefits for marginalized people and small-scale food producers: digitalized land administration will increase tenure security; satellite-supported allocation of fishing rights will ensure transparency and security for small-scale fishers; blockchains will link producers to consumers directly, eliminating exploitation by intermediaries; digital agriculture will reduce input costs and increase the efficiency of irrigation and production. E-commerce is widely touted as the gateway for creating new markets and ways of marketing agricultural products.

Certainly, small-scale food producers and marginalized groups can benefit tremendously from digital technologies. But we must remember that these technologies are deployed in a context of high national-global inequalities of access to essential goods and services, as well as to information and digital technologies (the digital divide). The World Bank acknowledges that there is a triple divide: rural, gender and digital.]. Unless these inequalities are effectively addressed, new technologies will reproduce and deepen existing patterns of discrimination. Also, the manufacture and use of ICT/AI hardware (e.g, micro-chips, semiconductors, liquid crystal displays, mobile phones, computers, batteries, etc.) have large environmental impacts. These include impacts from mining, emissions of volatile compounds, acid fumes, solvents and metals into the air and water, high energy consumption, waste generation/disposal and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and storage.

Local communities are also experimenting with new technologies to assert and strengthen their rights. In Brazil, indigenous women are using drones as part of their strategies to map and protect their territories. Other communities are using satellite images to monitor and draw public attention to deforestation by agribusiness companies[When Land become a global financial asset in When Food Becomes Immaterial: Confronting the Digital Age.]. In the USA, small-scale farmers see potential in using sensors, chips (which have become substantially less expensive in the last years) and open-source software to eliminate the scale advantages that industrial agriculture has had over small-scale producers. In some Southeast Asian countries, small-scale producers are selling agroecological produce to consumers through online retail.

The rapid development and application of digital technologies have significant implications for living conditions, work, production, societal interaction, commerce, the environment, public policies and governance. In order to formulate strategies to deal with digitalization, we need to increase our own understanding and engage in critical reflections and debates.

We hope the questions below will boost these processes.
1. Who are the actors developing develop digital technologies and for what purposes?
2. Who has access to and control over digital technologies and for what purposes?
3. Who owns the huge amount of data that is created everyday by all of us, and who has the right to use and draw economic benefit from it?
4. How should the applications and impacts of digital technologies be monitored and assessed? How should these technologies be governed and regulated for the public good?
5. How should the risks deriving from digital technologies be assessed, and their application be monitored?
6. How can we challenge the dominant narrative that equates innovation with technology, to underline and promote peasant and indigenous innovations, practices and knowledge[See Nyéléni Newsletter no 36, Agroecology: real innovation from and for the people]?
7. What are the relationships between peasant and indigenous innovations, practices and knowledge, and digital technologies?
8. How can we use digital technologies to advance food sovereignty and agroecology? What kinds of technologies, under what conditions and how should they be governed?

These are complex questions, and finding answers will require time, energy, critical reflection and creative thinking. However, the time has come to take up this challenge.

Newsletter no 37 – Editorial

Newsletter no 37 - The digitalization of the food system

The digitalization of the food system

Illustration: Marc Rosenthal – www.marc-rosenthal.com

Today, more than 820 million people suffer from hunger while obesity also continues to increase across the world[1]. Biodiversity in food and agriculture is being eroded at an alarming rate by the destruction of eco-systems[2]. Climate change is accelerating: temperatures this July were the highest ever recorded; glaciers are melting much faster than predicted; and millions of young people are demanding urgent action to address the climate crisis[3].

Meanwhile governments are showing little initiative to change the industrial, fossil-fuel driven food and agricultural system. Instead, a new “silver bullet” is being presented by corporations, governments and international institutions to tackle hunger, malnutrition and climate change: digitalization, which refers to the adoption of information-communication technologies (ICT) and artificial intelligence (AI) into everyday life and across societal activities.

Digital technologies have the potential to be beneficial or harmful depending on the context. Small-scale food producers have their own technologies, innovations and knowledge [See Nyéléni Newsletter no 36, Agroecology: real innovation from and for the people]. However, so do corporations, who seek monopoly controls on technology. Also, digitalization is happening in an era of increasing inequalities, authoritarianism and oppression.

This newsletter presents a synopsis of the digitalization of food, and contains examples of how digitalization affects and is used by communities in different parts of the world. We hope that these articles help social movements to engage in a collective discussion about digital technologies – and particularly how to benefit from them and prevent them doing harm.

FIAN International and Focus on the Global South

The digitalization of the food system, no 37

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Agroecology in practice

Newsletter no 36 - Agroecology: real innovation from and for the people

Agroecology in practice 1

Peasant to peasant: a model for the effective construction of counterhegemonic alternatives

The most significant examples available for scaling up Agroecology are tied to organizational processes – in particular those in which peasants play the role of the protagonist. For us, scaling up does not mean linearly reproducing preconceived models nor taking something small and making it big, but rather strengthening and multiplying many small processes. In order to integrate more people and territories into the agroecological movement it is essential to consolidate peasant organizations in the development of their own social, territorial, and political processes.

Peasant to peasant is a flexible dispositive or mechanism, a set of concepts/actions/possibilities united to assemble agroecologies, aid in the (re)construction and articulation of territories and facilitate the emergence of the peasant as a political subject. The three dimensions are interrelated and integrated permanently with each other, so much so that it is hard to determine where one ends and the other begins.

It is a process in which the subjects are co-producers of knowledge through the exchange of ideas, experiences and innovations in agroecological production and where successful innovations and experiments are collectively systematized and used as examples to motivate others and strengthen and expand agroecological production. These processes are typically linked to other areas of training or formation such as Peasant Schools, spaces of local, national and international political organization and articulation, “South-South cooperation”, and “peasant organization to peasant organization” processes.

The Campesino a Campesino movement for sustainable agriculture started in Central America in the early 1970s and is now widely recognized as one of the best ways to develop and promote Agroecology. Farmers not only share information and techniques, but they also share abstract agroecological concepts, knowledge and wisdom, using models, demonstrations, games, songs, poems, and stories.

One emblematic case is the Campesino a Campesino Agroecology movement (MACAC) adopted by the National Association of Small Farmers, ANAP, in Cuba, which played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Agroecology significantly contributed to boosting peasants’ food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. These practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change. The MACAC is based on the emulation of peasants by other peasants; it is a “pedagogy of experience” and a “pedagogy of the example”.

Agroecology in practice 2

Women and Earth in Tajikistan

Zan va Zamin (Women and Earth) is a grassroots organization founded in 1999 by a small group of women activists in Tajikistan, whose goal is to secure tenure and access to land, the conservation of biodiversity and the preservation of traditional knowledge, and the creation of farmer associations and cooperatives.

To date, it has helped more than 1,200 women obtain title to their land. It has community nurseries and encourages women and the elderly in their role as custodians and transmitters of agricultural heritage. It has helped to create more than 30 seed banks to give access to seed varieties to farmers. Its twelve field schools produce at least 1,000 tons of vegetables a year, while their gardens and community nurseries provide trees and maintain more than 10,000 fruit trees.

It has also provided local communities with solar dryers, greenhouses that work with solar energy and low-energy kilns. Through the great work it does, it contributes to creating more resilient ecosystems, less food shortages, greater Food Sovereignty and better local incomes.

Agroecology in practice 3

Mobilization for institutional innovation

“This product of many years work for Agroecology and Food Sovereignty now has a legal framework in Uruguay that will allow us to continue advancing.”
Silvana Machado, National Network of Criollo Seeds

In December 2018, the Uruguayan parliament transformed the National Agroecology Plan – an initiative of agroecological family producers and producers and social organizations that promote Food Sovereignty in Uruguay – into an Act of law.

This triumph is the result of an extensive process of discussion, which began in the 5th National Festival of the Creole Seed in April 2014 and included the organisation of various seminars and workshops within the framework of successive national and regional festivals and meetings of the National Network of Native and Criollo Seeds and the Agroecology Network.

In the parliamentary debate it was stressed that the subjects to whom this new norm points are family farmers and producers of food and their role in the defense of biodiversity, territories and watersheds. Also, the historical accumulation of more than three decades of action bringing together collectives which promote Agroecology from the land was highlighted. Obtaining approval of this norm also grants formality to a critical view of the agri-food system in Uruguay and the region, starting with the defense of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty.

Agroecology in practice 4

From Atelier Paysan to Farm Hack*

“At my place, it’s very hard to get something between a tractor and a trowel. There just isn’t much in between. It’s nice to come to places like this [Farm Hack event] and get energised and inspired. Cross-pollinate, swap-ideas, whinge about the weather. Lots of things. It’s very fruitful.”
Kate Collins. Market Gardner, UK

Atelier Paysan, in France, and Farm Hack, in the UK, are part of a community-led approach to the development, modification, and sharing of designs for farm tools, machinery, and other innovations. These initiatives emphasize a peasant to peasant / farmer-to-farmer approach to learning and create platforms for them to come together to ‘hack’ and apply their collective ingenuity in the development of technologies adapted to their agroecological practices.

These initiatives strive to develop technical and technological sovereignty for peasants thanks to open source resource platforms, promoting farmers’ autonomy and re-appropriation of knowledge and skills.

At Atelier Paysan, the peasant to peasant, farmer to farmer, and engineer-trainer to farmer is one horizontally but also through a referent person: an engineer from the cooperative. At the end of the training, each participant can go back to its farm with a tool he knows how to build, repair and potentially adapt to his own needs. More than 80 training dates are available each year. The auto building trainings last from 2 to 5 days. The participative processes for technology building can last for several months. Read more here.

Farm Hack typically involves two main complementary components: web platform and events. A web platform is used to where designs can be shared using an open source or creative commons approach. Farmer-derived innovations are made available and editable by other members of the community. Farm hack events bring together farmers, growers, fabricators, engineers and IT programmers to demonstrate and share tools, skills, and ideas through field demonstrations, practical workshops, seminars, entertainment, and cultural exchanges. These two components come together when tools that are demonstrated at events are posted on-line.
Read more here.

These initiatives while allowing peasants to acquire several skills (e.g. adequate technologies for peasant Agroecology, technological sovereignty, user innovation, socio-technical network animation, open source documents) play an important role in building networks between people and thus in strengthening social movements.

*From the European Agroecology Knowledge Exchange Network website.

Boxes

Newsletter no 36 - Agroecology: real innovation from and for the people

Box 1

The innovation we don’t want

The narrative of “innovative” solutions is being imposed in different political, social and economic spheres. In the debate over Agroecology, big farmers’ organizations, some academics, large NGOs, philanthropists and institutions intimately linked to the interests of transnational agribusinesses promote “apolitical” narratives, presented as “triple win” options to achieve economic benefits, food security and adaptation and mitigation of climate change. They seek to incorporate certain agroecological practices into the dominant agro-industrial model while maintaining the structural characteristics and dependencies that have led to the current global crisis.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Agri-Food Network, “agro-ecology is the study of the relation of agricultural crops and the environment”. Indeed, Business at OECD narrowly defines Agroecology as a scientific discipline which emerged in the 1960’s while criticising those who frame it as an agricultural production system based on specific practices, or as a political or social movement. Their argument: “this variety may cause confusion and distract from discussions on how to meet the SDGs (UN’s Sustainable Development Goals)”. Finally, they advocate for “a mix of practices, tools, and technologies tailored to each situation”, including precision agriculture and other “innovative approaches”.

Meeting the SDGs is not our definitive goal as a society. We have to aim for deeper structural changes if we really want to build a fair world for present and future generations. It has also become clear, for example, that by sticking to business as usual the world will fall far short of achieving the SDG target of eradicating hunger by 2030 [1].

We must beware of the multiple reinterpretations of the concept by different actors and interest groups. Agroecology and industrial agriculture are not interchangeable concepts or practices and cannot coexist. They represent two fundamentally different visions of development, well-being and the relationship between human beings and their environment.

Box 2

Proposals we reject

Digitalization of agriculture: Next edition of this newsletter is dedicated to this worrisome agribusiness strategy. Make sure you read it!

Climate-Smart Agriculture: reinforce business-as-usual: The FAO began talking about ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) in 2009 as a way to bring agriculture — and its role in mitigation, adaptation and food security — into the climate negotiations [See FAO news release, “Promoting Climate-Smart Agriculture”, on the launch of its report, Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries: Options for Capturing Synergies (2009). Two FAO conferences dedicated to Climate-Smart agriculture, organized with the World Bank and a small group of governments, followed in 2010 and 2012]. The Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA)[List of members here], launched in 2014, includes national governments, agribusiness lobby groups (the majority representing the fertilizer industry)[60% of the private sector members of the Alliance represent the fertilizer industry (GRAIN, 2015; CIDSE, 2015). “The Big Six (BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta) are the engines of industrial agriculture. With collective revenues of over $65 billion in agrochemicals, seeds and biotech traits, these companies already control three-quarters of the global agrochemical market and 63% of the commercial seed market” (ETC Group, 2016)], the world’s largest network of public agricultural scientists — the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) — universities and NGOs. The 2017 report Too big to feed by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-FOOD) shows that agrichemical corporations and their lobby groups are strongly represented in the major alliances and initiatives promoting CSA today. CSA is a classic technological fix that seeks to address a problem created by biotech’s failed technology (herbicide tolerant crops), and a new way of commodifying and appropriating nature. Furthermore, while claiming to use agroecological approaches (e.g. agroforestry), CSA does not exclude practices and technologies that can undermine, or are incompatible with them.
Read more here.

Sustainable intensification: While the term ‘sustainable intensification’ has been in existence for two decades, its use has only recently become mainstream and has also been incorporated into Climate-Smart Agriculture. It was originally conceived as an approach based on three fundamental assumptions about food security and agricultural production in the 21st century: 1) the world needs to produce significantly more food in the coming decades to feed a growing population; 2) the arable land base cannot be expanded significantly; and 3) agricultural production must become more sustainable and resource efficient in order to preserve the natural capital on which agriculture relies. Considered together, these three assumptions imply that agricultural production on existing arable land must intensify in order to meet higher demand, but in a manner which does not damage the environment. Nevertheless, the first assumption ignores the evidence, already stressed by the FAO and many others, of the importance of measures to redistribute food and reduce waste rather than increase production, and the latter is linked to the strongly criticized ‘Green Economy’ approach.
Read more here.

Gene drives: Gene drives are new tools that force genetically engineered traits through entire populations of insects, plants, animals and other organisms. This invasive technology represents a deliberate attempt to create a new form of genetic pollution. Gene Drives may drive species to extinction and undermine sustainable and equitable food and agriculture.
Read a letter signed by food movement leaders around the world and read the ETC Group report Forcing the farm.

CropLife International: This global network, “the voice and leading advocates for the plant science industry”, with BASF, Bayer and Syngenta among its members, identifies the six main elements of Agroecology based on a vision that mention farmers only as mere receptors of technical support and users of technology, such as biotech products, both offered by these companies.

Mega-mergers: The sudden increase of mega-mergers in the agri-food sectors and consolidation of corporate concentration throughout the entire industrial food chain (seeds, agrochemichals, fertilizers, livestock genetics, animal pharmaceuticals and farm machinery) is celebrated by some actors for creating a dynamic innovation climate. Nevertheless, while R&D spending in the sector is high ($7 billion in 2013), the scope remains narrow. Industry focuses on crops and technologies with the highest commercial returns; for instance, 40% of private breeding research goes to one crop, maize. Furthermore, a common trend is for large firms to buy emerging ‘healthy’ or ‘sustainable’ brands to fill their innovation gaps in this sector, while at the same time stifling innovation and compromising the commitment to sustainability of these smaller firms.
Read more here.

Box 3

FAO process on Agroecology

The FAO process on Agroecology, which began in September 2014 and included two international symposia (2014 and 2018), several regional seminars and meetings (2015 and 2016) and a meeting between FAO and the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and allies (2017), has allowed the organizations and social movements that promote Food Sovereignty to take our proposals and demands for Agroecology to spaces of dialogue with governments, international institutions, academia and other social organizations.

But the FAO is a monster of a thousand heads and there are attempts to permanently halt the advance of Agroecology. An example of this was the intention to mimic the Agroecology process with Agricultural biotechnologies in 2016 and 2017. The pressure of social movements and organizations, united in the IPC managed to stop this process, but the same actors within the FAO managed to open another front by promoting a discourse on necessary innovations in agriculture as a way out of the global food, environmental and climate crisis.

In this context, the issue was placed on the agenda of the meeting of the FAO Committee on Agriculture (COAG), held from 1 to 5 October 2018 and an international symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers was held in Rome in late November 2018.

There has been a very strong emphasis on fostering innovation (mostly understood as technological innovation) to achieve sustainable agriculture and food systems and to adapt to climate change. Innovation will be a very relevant framework in the coming years. In this framework, most governments stressed the central role of private sector investment completely ignoring the fact that small-scale food producers are the first and major investors in agriculture and that they are key actors who have been innovating for centuries. However, under pressure from social movements, the COAG acknowledged in 2018 that “innovation is not a goal per se [and] some forms of innovation may contribute to environmental degradation, be disruptive of livelihoods or exacerbate inequalities. It is important to understand which kinds of innovation need to be encouraged, where and for whom”.
FAO is currently developing an analytical framework for the multi-dimensional assessment of Agroecology and guidelines for its application in order to support evidence-based decision-making on Agroecology, in dialogue with Civil Society Organizations and academia.

For organizations and social movements which are part of the IPC platform, filling major gaps in scientific and evidence-based data on Agroecology, as well as scaling Agroecology outward and upward, should be done through participatory action research, in close dialogue with committed academia. It should foster the capacity of food producers and their communities to experiment, evaluate and disseminate innovations and facilitate the bridging of different knowledge systems, leading to systemic solutions toward truly healthy, sustainable agriculture and food systems.

Box 4

The Peasant School Multimedia

In November 2015, the National Association of Small Farmers of Cuba (ANAP), La Via Campesina International (LVC) and the Komanilel Collective, launched a video course called “Multimedia Peasant School; an audiovisual tool to scale up Agroecology”. The objective of the course is to help the diffusion of Agroecology around the world. It was developed together with the network of peasant agroecological schools that La Via Campesina has created in almost every country where it has members. The training is technical, political and methodological. The virtual material explains the concepts and practices of the “Campesino a Campesino” (peasant-to-peasant, or farmer-to-farmer) methodology for spreading Agroecology. It is based on the successful Cuban experience in disseminating Agroecology. Each of the short videos in this collection pictures an aspect of the processes, actors, and experiences that together configure the Peasant to Peasant Methodology, as well some specific features of the methodology in Cuba. The video series is also complemented with a bibliographical collection on Agroecology, peasant to peasant methodology, technical manuals, and political documents from La Via Campesina.
The Peasant School Multimedia is available online in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Peasant seeds - the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty, no 38

The digitalization of the food system, no 37

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