In the spotlight

In the spotlight 1

Solidarity and unity to confront the global crises: Towards the third global forum for food sovereignty

The Third Global Forum for Food Sovereignty is being organized by the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty (IPC) in India in 2025.

The IPC is now building a ‘Nyéléni Process’ urging mobilization within and beyond the Food Sovereignty movement to create a response and form alliances with climate justice movements, labor unions, feminist groups, and environmental organizations to foster shared proposals for systemic change. The food sovereignty movement faces systemic threats and needs to collaborate with other groups fighting various forms of oppression for social, racial, gender, economic, intergenerational, and environmental justice.

Through the Nyéléni process, we are implementing a ‘Dialogue of Knowledge’ to build unity and reinforce territorial organizational processes, that resist neoliberalism and establish equitable and sustainable food and economic systems. This multi-year process involves democratic consultations in regions worldwide, and results and proposals from this process will be presented at the Global Forum in India in 2025, where representatives will discuss strategies for creating just and ecological food systems and renew a global alliance against multidimensional crises caused by forces like free-market capitalism and destructive trade.

India: The site of a remarkable struggle for Food Sovereignty

In 2020-21, India experienced a historic period of unrest led by farmers’ for food sovereignty. Right in the middle of a pandemic, the Indian government brought in three controversial laws that pushed for a massive privatization of the Indian agricultural system without any legal safeguards for price protection in place. Although the Minimum Support Policy offered some protection, it was not yet a legal guarantee, and farmers alleged that the new legislations threatened to remove even such protections.

In this context, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella organization of various farmer unions, led a 15-month-long protest against the three controversial legislations. The protest transformed into a public movement, witnessing millions of farmers protesting in Delhi and elsewhere, despite repressive measures and hard COVID-19 protocols from the government. The movement gained amazing solidarity and support from various sectors, leading to a national-level public strike. Eventually, in 2021, bowing to public pressure, the Indian Parliament repealed the three contentious agriculture laws. This successful farmers’ struggle is an inspiration for similar movements for food sovereignty worldwide. It is a demonstration of what cross-sectoral alliances can achieve in united struggles.

The upcoming Nyéléni Forum in India aims to draw inspiration from the remarkable struggle of Indian farmers to invigorate and reinforce the food sovereignty movement. It seeks to promote solidarity, generate momentum, amplify the voices of grassroots organizations, and provide a shared direction for social movements in the years ahead.

It is crucial to acknowledge that the forum itself is not the ultimate objective of this process. Instead, the primary goal is to put into practice the decisions and guidelines formulated during the process.   Let’s globalize our hope and struggle for food sovereignty!

In the spotlight 2

Nyéléni calls on us to strengthen social and popular coordination

We live in a time where it is increasingly clear that the crises of social and economic inequality, environmental, food, health, housing, and national and global democracy are deeply connected. Meanwhile, corporations and transnational big business are promoting and implementing drastic and rapid changes in order to accumulate greater power from these crises. These changes come at the cost of setbacks in the rights won by the peoples and are often an attempt to co-opt our proposals and narratives, to disguise their false solutions, to continue advancing in the privatization, commodification and financialization of public services, land, nature and data, and to increase the exploitation of working people.

To these ends, a growing fascist wave is highly useful. An extreme right-wing and deeply conservative project in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres, with a long-term vision and the endorsement (by support or omission) of the dominant media, works to dominate society with an extremely conservative common direction that is elitist and aporophobic, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, sexist, queerphobic, anti-pacifist and anti-democratic. It is a project that ignores and attacks any form of organization that defends popular interests.

But this interconnection of crises is also pushing social and popular movements to look beyond their specific agendas and revive paths of popular convergence to halt the conservative advance and transform our realities. Paths of convergence that, on the basis of agreements, and working through nuances and divergences, allow us to build systemic responses.

We must be many more walking together towards unity, without forgetting the urgent threat we face. This requires the political will of the organizations, as well as the resources and dedication of comrades to coordinate strategies, proposals and common demands from the diverse thematic agendas of the social and popular movements.

As stated in the newsletter no 48[1], Nyéléni is a space and a process to coordinate “analyses and positions, make struggles visible and resist their criminalization, strengthen solidarity links, build programmatic agreements and agree on actions to transform food systems and our societies”.

The Nyéléni process calls on us to join forces to strengthen the popular mobilization of resistance, and also to defend the rights and sovereignty of the peoples and the common goods, and to build social, racial, gender, economic, intergenerational and environmental justice.


[1] Newsletter no 48 – Nyéléni process: towards a global forum of food sovereignty

Newsletter no 52 – Editorial

Nyéléni process: Recognizing the power of people’s movements

Illustration: Andrés Mateo Ayala Luna @calma_88

In 2007 the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) played a vital role in uniting small-scale food producers and their allies to establish a shared vision of food sovereignty and implement strategies to make it a reality. Over time, a robust global movement for food sovereignty emerged, gaining significant political recognition. Together, we have achieved the democratization of global food and agricultural arenas, including the reform of the Committee on World Food Security. Our struggles also influenced food sovereignty policies in various national contexts and successfully secured political acknowledgment of peasants as rights holders through the ratification of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

However, our achievements are now under threat due to an extended period of systemic crises. Right-wing forces, authoritarian regimes, and the corporate capture of democratic governance spaces are on the rise globally, accompanied by the dismantling of the United Nations multilateral system. Human rights violations against peasant and Indigenous communities, along with climate change, biodiversity loss, armed conflicts, and hunger, are escalating rapidly. Furthermore, renewed threats to food sovereignty come from new business configurations, in which hedge fund speculation firms and digital technology titans join forces to oil the wheels of the failing agro-industrial production system.

In this context, the IPC advocates for a new global Nyéléni process, leading up to the next Nyéléni Global Forum in India in 2025. Recognizing the power of people’s movements, we aim to strengthen solidarity and unity by bridging local and global struggles. We are striving to adopt an intersectional perspective to address the multi-dimensional global crisis effectively.

By collaborating with climate justice, workers’ rights, feminist, solidarity economy, anti-war, youth, and other movements, we seek to resist the corporate takeover of governance spaces, safeguard human and collective rights worldwide, protect ecosystems, and secure a dignified life on Earth for present and future generations.

IPC for food sovereignty, Friends of the Earth International, La Via Campesina, Transnational Institute

Voices from the field

Voice from the field 1

From crisis to Agroecology

Ferdinand Wafula, Bio Gardening Innovations (BIOGI), Kenya.

Western Kenyan smallholder farmers must change due to global upheavals. George and Violet are among thousands of families in Khwisero, Kakamega County, changing their farming methods.

Due to COVID-19, George lost his job as many businesses closed. George moved his family from Nairobi two years ago. He was a painter promoting a company’s products during the pandemic. Violet, his wife, thought it was good riddance because she would have more muscle to till the land.

Working on the land with his wife had its own challenges and thrills to George. Failed rains, late planting, and sharp price increases in basic commodities, especially farm inputs, hit George like thunder.

Maize was no longer a staple crop. Crop yields had been falling. A young family with school-aged children couldn’t survive with three bags instead of six.

Violet was quick to learn about a nature-friendly farming training from her peers. In 2021, BIOGI trained her as a trainer. Vihiga-based NGO BIOGI works in Kakamega’s Khwisero Subcounty.

Crop diversity, livestock integration, and soil fertility through bio inputs sank like water on fertile ground, and new seeds of hope sprouted. Her farm has several local crops. Sweet potatoes, cassava, local green vegetables, groundnuts, and bananas are some of them.

“I no longer stress about inputs,” she says. I make biostimulants and use sweet potatoes and ground nuts to supplement, if not replace, maize.”

BIOGI and AFSA’s training was adopted by the family early on. The Healthy Soils Healthy Food Project is being implemented across the farm. The family thanks the initiative’s supporters and hopes to learn more through future interactions and training.

Voice from the field 2

Cuban agroecology and resilience to hurricanes

The Farmer to Farmer Agroecology Movement (MACAC) is a grassroots movement inside of the Cuban National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), which is a member of the international peasant movement, La Via Campesina. In it, campesino (peasant farmer) members of ANAP have been transforming their productive systems by applying the principals of agroecology since 1997.

Revolutionary resilience

“On an agroecological farm, if one thing doesn’t make it, another one will. There’s always something to eat. It doesn’t matter what happens.” — Nini, agroecological farmer and member of ANAP.

Due to Cuba’s geography, it is susceptible to declines in agricultural production as a result of

constant natural disasters. The greater biological and human resilience of agroecological systems to the effects of climate change is, without a doubt, an important factor to the success of MACAC.

Over the years, Cuban farmers have witnessed the benefits of agroecology in the face of hurricanes: farms with a greater level of agroecological integration have suffered less in the face of such phenomena. This may be partially explained by the fact that agroecological systems suffer less from erosion and landslides due to greater implementation of soil conservation practices (contour planting, gulley control, greater use of cover crops, etc.). Fewer crops are lost when multiple strata of vegetation exist. Aside from the fact that agroecological farm losses in the face of hurricanes (unlike those of conventional monoculture) are not total, farms with greater levels of agroecological integration recover much more quickly.

The increase in food prices in the international market, as well as the price of inputs indispensable to conventional agriculture, obliges us to consider an alternative model which creates less dependency. Agroecology and MACAC offer the path to food sovereignty in Cuba – assuring greater resilience in the face of climatic adversities; restoration of soils degraded by intensive agrochemical use; and healthy food – while also providing an example, source of ideas, and inspiration for other countries.

More info here.

Voices from the field 3

The Food Box Initiative: rebuilding female-led food systems in Gaza

Gaza Urban and Peri Urban Platform (GUPAP) and Urban Women Agripreneurs Platform (UWAF), Palestine.

In the Gaza Strip, GUPAP supported the formation of the Urban Women Agripreneurs Platform (UWAF) in 2019 to unite and empower women agricultural producers and workers, and build an independent, resilient food system for al Palestinians. In the protracted crisis context of Gaza, food insecurity and restricted access to quality land, seeds and breeds, and to water and the sea has resulted in a decline in self-sufficiency, exacerbating the vulnerability of local communities to hunger. GUPAP-UWAF strategies have focused on reducing dependency on international markets, promoting/using what is locally available, decreasing the ecological footprint of food production and distribution, and rebuilding women owned farms.

An important initiative was raising funds through crowdfunding to buy local food from 52 women farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed in the May 2021 bombings, and distributing this food to vulnerable women facing social and health related crises through food box that included grains, fresh produce, preserved, and medicinal foods. This initiative was supported by local non-governmental organisations and the Ministry of Agriculture in identifying beneficiaries, inspecting food items for quality control and distributing the food boxes. 

The Food Box action was a community-based approach that was owned and led by women. It supported 52 women farmers by marketing their products at fair prices, and 473 women and their families facing particular vulnerable conditions.  Equally important, the initiative shows how solidarity across small-scale food producers, entrepreneurs, local governments and people can be operationalised to design local solutions in a situation of protracted crisis that Gaza has been facing.

This testimony is drawn from the report:  Solidarity marketing campaign to enhance resilience of UWAF members in the Gaza strip

Voices from the field 4

How are small-scale farmers in Sri Lanka dealing with the food crisis?

S.M.N. Maheshika Premachandra, Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR), Sri Lanka.

As Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in decades; around 30% of Sri Lankans are coping with food insecurity, and one out of four are and one out of four are skipping meals regularly. While the rest of the country is struggling with food accessibility and therefore a nutritional diet, rural smallholder farmers were quite able to fulfil their food based needs in their households thanks to being who they are. In Sri Lanka, close to 1.65 million smallholder farmers are responsible for 80% of total food production. An estimated 40% of households in the country are agricultural households, 94% of which are engaged in crop production activities and 12% in livestock farming.

In rural Sri Lanka, not only the farmers were able to feed their families, also those who around them were able to share or buy fresh produce from the farmers. Their way of farming was not heavily affected by the chemical fertilizer or pesticides shortage; in fact, they were able to explore and expand more in to natural farming methods with growing demand of food in the near markets and them being more experienced to farm with out chemicals. However, rural and urban households are depleting their savings or using credit to buy other dry-essentials due to increasing market prices.

However, In the “farming estates sector” which includes tea plantations and other similar “estates,” more than half of households live with food insecurity as they have been for years. These households are worse off than urban populations and other rural residents. Most of the estate communities in up country don’t possess land to cultivate: don’t have enough room to even pant a small chili tree. Most young women in the estate households are compelled to seek job opportunities as house maids in middle east; in fact, significant portion of the work-related migration during the first quarter of this year, comes from estate communities.

Boxes

Box 1

Transformative solutions to the global systemic food crises

In 2022 a worldwide grassroots consultation on impacts of the food crisis, and proposals from below showed the reality lived by small scale producers and communities around the world who are facing up to and leading responses to the food crisis[1]. The findings were stark:

Poverty, price gouging by corporates and market led food provision meant that even if food was available, it remained unaffordable for millions. Conflicts, wars and state violence have persisted, and food is being used as a geopolitical weapon. Those countries and populations least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions experienced the impacts of climate change most acutely, with extreme weather events and failed harvests leading to the loss of livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers. Gender inequalities persist, and so women and LGBTQI people are particularly at risk in times of crises and scarcity. Multiple inequalities often combine discrimination based on class, social privilege, race/ethnicity, caste, gender, occupation, religion and age. The neoliberal food system driven by corporate profit contributes to many of these problems and is also unsuited to solving them.

Instead, largely ignored by the State in crisis responses, grassroots communities of small scale producers and citizens of various marginalised groups came together to provide their own solutions. Based on their praxis, several demands were articulated.  Overall, policy responses need to be anchored in a comprehensive human rights approach, recognising the agency of those most affected as rights-holders, and the accountability of governments as duty-bearers.

In the short term movements demand that emergency food aid provision must support local food systems, cultures and initiatives. They must not become another route for corporations to distribute ultra processed products. Small scale producers must be provided domestically available inputs such as indigenous seeds and bio fertilizers in order to feed their communities. Taxes on huge profits of corporations and on extreme wealth are urgently needed to fund social policies.

In the medium term movements demand regulations to stop food speculation and strengthen the powers of market and financial regulatory authorities. They call for an end to illegitimate debt – highlighting the need to restructure and cancel private and public debts in developing countries. A moratorium on the use and processing of agricultural commodities for non-food purposes, such as agrofuels is crucial.

In the long term we must break food import dependency and support domestic food provisioning, transform food systems through agroecology and implement food sovereignty. This requires governance systems that ensure human rights and democratic multilateralism.

Practically, this demands measures to limit corporate power. Trade and investment must be reoriented to serve people and societies, not corporations. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) should be halted, and existing WTO agreements must be dismantled.

There are also myriad positive measures that can put us on a path to these long term goals for example: using public procurement and food reserves effectively; building territorial markets; reviving indigenous crops and breeds; integral and popular agrarian reform and commitment to implement the UN declaration on the right of peasants and people in rural areas and the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Overall, we need more democratic control over food systems at all levels.

Box 2

Our future is public!

From 29th November to 2nd December over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in December 2022 in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future[2]. Hundreds of organisations across socio-economic justice and public services sectors, from education and health services, to care, energy, food, housing, water, transportation and social protection, came together to address the harmful effects of commercialising public services, to reclaim democratic public control, and to reimagine a truly equal and human rights oriented economy that works for people and the planet.

For the first time since this process started some 5 years ago, food was part of this conversation. Since food is not a public service, we explored in this sectoral dialogue the connections between public services and the public policies needed to realize the right to food. Likewise, our dialogue touched upon understanding what we mean when reclaiming the public and how to democratize the economy through the strengthening of the agroecological transition.

In our conclusions, we highlighted that food is so essential for our survival and well-being, that it must be at the centre of public policies and services. Food is inextricably intertwined with health, care, education, work, transport, water, climate, political agency and participatory democracy.  Food must be prioritized as a human right, within the framework of a comprehensive, complex and interdependent understanding of human rights, where it is essential to include the rights of all small-scale food producers, workers, and women, including collective rights and the right to food sovereignty. Food systems are the vehicle for the continued reproduction of living cycles, making human health indivisible from the sound ecological foundations of Mother Earth.

There was a strong call to unite across sectors, regions and movements to formulate common strategies and new alliances to realise food sovereignty, transition to agroecology across the world,  and ensure that the rights of all actors involved in food systems are respected. In particular, we talked about the role of agrarian reform in agroecological transitions, the importance of the care dimension in food systems, the role of public food procurement for public institutions (schools, hospitals, prisons, etc) and the need to strengthen and better coordinate our existing campaigns against agrotoxics.


[1] More info and full report here.

[2] Read the declaration here.

In the spotlight

In the spotlight 1

Trapped by markets

The world is facing the third global food crisis in the past 50 years which will greatly increase food and economic insecurity for hundreds of millions of people around the world. The recent  State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) reports indicate the failure of global efforts to end hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, which have been rising since 2014. 

Policy makers attribute this grim reality to the economic downturn from the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating climate change, and the Russian war on Ukraine. The pandemic certainly resulted in an alarming increase in hunger, food insecurity, job and income losses, poverty, and inequality. But the SOFI reports show that world hunger levels were high even before the pandemic struck in 2020.  The Russia-Ukraine war has disrupted grain exports and supply chains from the Black Sea region, resulting in soaring prices for grain, energy, fertilizer, and other products.  But policy makers are ignoring the roles of commodity markets, agribusiness corporations and financial investors in triggering food price volatility and making our economies vulnerable to recurring food crises.

Central to these recurring crises are market structures, regulations, and trade and finance arrangements that bolster a global corporate dominated industrial food system, and enable market concentration vertically and horizontally, and financial speculation in commodity markets. Over the past decades,  finance corporations have invested in commodity production, processing, retailing, agrochemicals digital technology, logistics (transportation and storage) and large-scale land deals, and are increasingly the hidden faces behind land, water and resource grabbing and rural dispossession.

According to Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, “… food prices are soaring not because of a problem with supply and demand as such; it is because of price speculation in commodity futures markets.” 

National responses to the crisis have varied depending on food stocks, production capacities, debt levels, and purchasing power. Low-income food importing countries in face multiple challenges of high indebtedness, depreciating currencies, and insufficient funds and infrastructure to boost the availability of locally produced foods. As the war continues, more countries have restricted exports to meet domestic needs, which though understandable, have further contributed to increased prices of agricultural commodities.

Multilateral responses to the crisis have prioritized the functioning of global supply chains for agricultural commodities and inputs (especially fertilizers) by removing export bans/restrictions and supporting further trade and investment liberalization. No measures have been proposed to stop food speculation, regulate agriculture markets, and deconcentrate agri-food markets from corporate domination.

More info:

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. 2021. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming Food Systems for Affordable Healthy Diets. Rome: FAO.

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. 2022. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022. Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable. Rome: FAO.

UN Security Council Aria-Formula Meeting on Conflict and Hunger. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri.

The Global Food Crisis this Time, Focus on the Global South.

Is the Global Value Chain Breaking up, Focus on the Global South.

Pro-corporate Multilateralism and Food Insecurity, Focus on the Global South.

In the spotlight 2

Five real solutions to the food crisis in Africa

When the first Europeans landed on African shores, the seed of the food crisis was sown. Tens of millions of Africans were taken to process commodity products, primarily sugar, in the Caribbean. Before Europeans arrived, Africa had a well governed, thriving socio-economic and food system. Under colonialism, the focus shifted to extracting African raw materials to fuel Europe’s industrialization. This reduced Africa to producing a few export commodities, preventing the diversification of agricultural systems geared toward local development and regional markets. Since independence, internal mechanisms for self-organization and growth have been hampered by debt incurred through donor-led investment, IMF structural adjustment programs, and increased reliance on external resources, including food.

COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war exacerbated Africa’s food crisis. The cost of food, agricultural inputs, and fuel has rocketed. How will Africa get out of this quagmire? How can Africa produce enough nutritious, healthy food while preserving its food culture and ensuring justice in its food system without negatively impacting the environment?

Overcoming the narrative

We must debunk the green revolution narrative, which looks at the African food system only through the prism of productivity. According to this story, the solution is to increase the production of high-calorie foods, primarily three cereals, maize, rice and wheat through increased use of toxic agrochemicals and hybrid/GMO seeds, allocating large land tracts to agribusinesses. Rather than boosting productivity, this harms food security, damages the environment, exacerbates nutrition deficiency, and erodes food cultures and human rights. This must stop!

Embracing agroecology

Multiple research reports and personal field visits to farms managed in harmony with nature -combining local knowledge with cutting-edge science – have demonstrated that it is possible to produce more nutritious food without harming the environment. Agroecology responds to the numerous crises we face on both the human and planetary levels. To avoid disaster, Africa should embrace agroecology.

Debt relief

The debt burden exacerbates hunger and severely restricts agricultural investment in Africa. Only a few countries have committed 10% of their GDP to agriculture. Thirty-three African countries are classified as Least Developed Countries, with the majority heavily in debt. African governments are sinking into debt due to the climate crisis and investing conditional loans in false adaptation solutions. According to the UN, countries could pay an extra USD 168 billion over the next ten years for such adaptation programs.  We must advocate for debt relief and restructuring.

Proper food policy

We require continental and national food policy and governance systems that prioritize a healthy and sustainable diet for all. This will ensure policy coherence and establish a governance structure for implementation. The right kind of food policy prioritizes people over profits, combats food dumping, and promotes the growing and consumption of local healthy foods.

Supporting territorial markets and agroecological entrepreneurs

The African landscape is covered in territorial markets. For many small communities, they serve as the economic, cultural, and political centers. These centers must be constructed to promote local cuisine and combat shocks. During COVID 19, many rural communities relied on territorial markets. Along with this, we also need to help the burgeoning agroecological entrepreneurs as they find solutions to the issues of getting healthy food to consumers and providing employment for millions of young people in Africa, the majority of whom are women and girls.

The colonial legacy and elite control of our food system will not go away with a wish. We must organize, define our strategy, and fight for change. The movement must propose solutions, focus on agroecological transition, and demonstrate effectiveness. To tackle the food crisis, the movement must promote healthy food production and consumption.

Only food sovereignty, which promotes self-sufficiency and local control, can assist us in avoiding the impending food catastrophe.

Newsletter no 51 – Editorial

Grassroots solutions to the global food crisis

Illustration: Carlos Julio Sánchez for LVC

In 2008, numerous experts -– from peasants to policy  makers – warned of a “perfect storm” of crises in the industrial food system. Our movements had already been raising the alarm about growing corporate control, financialization of food, resource grabbing, economic injustice, and destruction of the territories of small-scale food producers by large scale commodity agriculture, deeply dependant on fossil fuels and other mined inputs. Fifteen years later we see that crises are a recurrent phenomenon in the capitalist food system. Intensifying environmental impacts, resource wars and conflicts, rising debt, structural injustices and inequalities are compounding the effects on our peoples.

Food sovereignty remains our answer to the food crisis. Now more than ever our communities and countries need to focus on agroecological food production. As this edition shows, we have a multitude of praxis and political proposals for solutions, but we need to build our power to fight the extractive and profit driven corporations from overtaking our food system. The food crisis is one aspect of deeper drivers that are causing overlapping crises of ecological destruction, the re-enforced rise of patriarchy, and increasing criminalisation of rights defenders s in collusion with capital, who are pervading every aspect of our lives from food to social engagements and  our interactions with nature.

Many movements have made common cause to challenge the drivers of these multiple, interconnected crises, including demands for climate justice, an end to fossil fuels with responsibility lying first within the historically polluting developed nations and then with elite consumers everywhere, cancellations of illegitimate debt, and rescinding unjust trade investment and tax regimes. Feminist movements are showing us the path towards economies of life and care, intersectional justice and building political power. Anti-racist, decolonial, peace and all anti-oppression movements are showing us new imaginaries of community, reminding us of our ancient practices of togetherness as peasants, women, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fishers and workers, and the urgency of solidarity with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Knowing that we must build and strengthen our movements from the ground up, and find cohesion across all regions and peoples facing injustice,  we are convening the Nyéléni process 2021 – 2025 to provide spaces for coming together. We invite all movements to join us.

Food Sovereignty now!  

AFSA, Focus on the Global South and FoEI

Voices from the field

Voice from the field 1

Micherline Islanda, Union of Small Producers (Tet Kole ti Peyizan Ayisyen), Haiti

The term “food system” designates all the stages necessary to feed a population, from growing, harvesting, and packaging, to transportation, marketing, consumption, and waste.

Access to land is a huge problem in Haiti and a huge barrier to food sovereignty. The dominant industrial food system is not sustainable because it does not provide enough nutritious and culturally appropriate food to everyone and additionally compromises the health of the planet. Industrial agriculture is among the major polluters, threatening the survival of future generations. 

To address these challenges, we conduct training sessions based on LVC’s axes of struggle. We organise young people and gather to study the origin of this domination and economic exploitation. We analyse the actions of the State and the structural and systemic issues that prevent peasants from owning or accessing our territories. We also work on social and cultural domination, access to credit, marketing, processing, handicrafts, fisheries and fish farming, livestock, land tenure, environment, infrastructure, tourism, mining and energy resources, access to drinking water and sanitation. We study local agroecological systems that are important to build food sovereignty. We practise and share agricultural production that is centred on family farming practices.

Voices from the field 2

Chengeto Sandra Muzira, Zimbabwe Small Holders Organic Farmers’ Forum (ZIMSOFF), Zimbabwe

In Africa, the organised peasant youth of La Via Campesina play a significant role in pushing the agroecology agenda; we play a significant role in fostering a general understanding and appreciation of agroecology among the general public through a variety of avenues and platforms. Yet, the lack of adequate public policies or public-financial assistance to peasant youth as well as the increasing appropriation of peasant seeds by industry poses a great challenge for the youth here.

Various organizations in Southern, West and Eastern Africa have played a great role in addressing these challenges through capacity-building workshops on agroecological practices. Peasant youth are also encouraged to engage in the different Ministries of Agriculture during policy formulation and implementation. Young peasants in our organisations also receive training on the latest technological developments and the opportunities and threats. For instance, our workshops have debated the dangers of GMOs in the continent of Africa and the growing digitalisation of agriculture. 

Organizations such as Kenya Peasants’ League, Eastern and Southern Africa Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) Uganda, Zimbabwe Small Holders Organic Farmers’ Forum (ZIMSOFF), Landless People’s Movement, West and Central Africa (WECAF) members, União Nacional de Camponeses (UNAC), and Confédération Paysanne du Congo (COPACO) have further continued to network and exchange knowledge between young peasant farmers through seminars, conferences and symposiums on agroecology.

Voices from the field 3

Marlan Ifantri Lase, Serikat Petani, Indonesia

The threat of a food crisis can be tamed in Indonesia because in many ways we are still a strong agricultural society. Yet, Indonesia is relying on food imports such as rice, meat, wheat, and also sugar. It is because of the continued application of ‘food security’ as an approach to agricultural and rural development that the food imports are threatening our society.

The government must accelerate the implementation of agrarian reform and protect our local market as ways to help food producers live in dignity, so that young people can find peasantry and agriculture/food production attractive.

Serikat Pateni Indonesia has helped to establish Food Sovereignty Areas (KDP) in our agricultural land and territories. KDP is an area where we make use of natural resources in the area in agroecological manners. We adopt agroecology to produce sufficient, safe, healthy, nutritious and sustainable food by and for the people. We create livelihood support by linking the harvest to dynamic peasant markets in our territories. We promote and practice the cooperatives’ economic system to ensure fair prices for the welfare of peasants and local consumers.

Voices from the field 4

Vimukti (Anuka) De Silva, Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform, Sri Lanka

The economic, political and social instability in debt-based economies like Sri Lanka is crushing the dreams of young people. Peasant youth, already vulnerable in many ways, face a daunting future. Many of us desperately migrate to cities and other countries for very dangerous and insecure jobs. The micro-finance loans have trapped women and rural families in a vicious cycle of debt and indignity. Organised as the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform, we are constantly trying to build an alternative political and economic process by uniting the youth to stand up for their rights. The dominant capitalist model considers food as a commodity to trade. Food production in the capitalist framework does not find the answer to hunger in any way. Therefore, we are looking to agroecology and food sovereignty, real solutions for society and the food chain.

Boxes

Box 1

African peasant youth in defence of Agroecology

Excerpt from a Declaration by the Peasant Youth Articulation members in Southern and Eastern African region of LVC.

“We the young peasants, members of La Via Campesina in Southern and Eastern Africa, recognize that agroecology has the ability to restore degraded agricultural ecosystems, including the loss of biodiversity, and sustainably feed many African countries’ rapidly expanding populations. Agroecological production systems are diverse and improve ecosystem health and services, making ecosystems more resilient to changing climatic conditions, significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and address socioeconomic barriers that perpetuate injustices and inequalities in our food systems. Additionally, the peasant agroecology approach is transversal, contributing importantly to various layers and dimensions of local social contexts.

We further recognize that Agroecology is the best way to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects, because it uses farming techniques like crop diversification, conservation tillage, green manures, natural fertilizers, biological pest control, rainwater harvesting, and production of crops and livestock in ways that store carbon and sustainably protect natural resources.

We want our governments to take decisive action towards the domestication of the UNDROP which sets platforms for voices from rural communities to be heard and stresses that small-scale farmers, especially the youth, have a right to protect and conserve production resources and the productive capacity of their lands. Our governments must support the creation of conditions for strengthening the skills development of the youth to create ethical and profitable opportunities in areas and activities that protect and restore ecosystems. It is imperative to support peasant family farms in all the diverse ways as they are the key champions of agroecology, a lasting solution to achieve climate justice.”

Box 2

Latin American peasant youth in defense of food sovereignty

Excerpt from a Declaration by the youth representatives from 11 countries of South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean.

“As in other productive sectors of the world, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been very negative in the agricultural sector, generating a great social and economic loss. Small- and medium-sized producers have been affected and the lack of government support in some countries aggravated the impact of COVID-19, worsening the social, political, health and economic crisis.

We, the youth, reaffirm our commitment to defend agroecology as an important part of the struggle for food sovereignty and the rights of peasants. We stand in solidarity with the countries of Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia as they resist the interference by and influence of capitalist, neoliberal countries, where agribusiness and transnational corporations continue their indiscriminate onslaught. We denounce the criminalization of the struggles, attacking the sovereignty and autonomy of the peoples, provoking displacements, forced migrations and worsening of poverty in some countries. We call for guaranteed full respect for gender equality, the fundamental rights of the entire population and a life free of violence and insecurity. We also call for the guarantee of the universal right to health to all, and denounce the attempts to monopolise COVID-19 vaccines by the rich countries, thus violating the right to health of the most impoverished countries.”

Box 3

The future of family farming: Discussing intergenerational turnover

Contribution from International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC)

The future of family farming—including agriculture, fishing and pastoralism—is threatened by multiple factors such as the effects of climate change, the loss of traditional knowledge and the detrimental effects of food policies which, at different levels, favour corporations over small-scale farmers and profit-making over the right to food. The combined effect of these factors is leading to a gradual loss of family farmers, which undermines food security worldwide. In this already difficult context, the survival of family farming is at greater risk due to the difficulty to ensure generational turnover.

According to the Global Action Plan of UN Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF), “generational turnover” refers to “the capacity to retain young people on farms and in rural communities” and is one of the preconditions to keep agriculture and food production “viable and sustainable”. In its recent report on Youth Engagement and Employment in Agriculture and Food Systems, the High-Level Panel of Experts of the UN Committee on World Food Security refers to the notion of “generational sustainability” defining it as “intergenerational collaboration and the evolving, dynamic balance between generations”. In the report, generational turnover is connected to the degree of youth engagement in food systems and particularly: “a carefully built and maintained inter-generational balance and multi-directional exchange of generation-specific knowledge, resources and livelihood strategies can enhance the role of young people in leading successful and endogenous innovation in food systems and contributing to sustainable agrarian, rural and urban transformations”.

What are the barriers which globally prevent generational turnover in family farming? And which visions, policies and actions are needed to overcome such barriers and ensure generational sustainability while at the same time meeting the needs and aspirations of different generations?

Between May and October 2022, the Youth Working Group of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) has carried out a dedicated global consultation to address these questions. The consultation intended to create a space for youth and non-youth IPC members from around the world to gather, discuss their needs and share ideas. Although the analysis of results has not been finalised, the consultation made visible the existence of multiple obstacles which are common across all regions of the IPC. Among them:

• The marginalisation of family farmers in food systems, including unsupportive legal and policy environments.

• The lack of adequate legal services, enabling policies and physical infrastructure to facilitate the intergenerational transfer of natural resources, farm assets and knowledge and skills, especially outside the family domain.

• The reproduction of socio-cultural barriers rooted in patriarchy and colonialism which make it difficult or impossible for young women, gender/sexually diverse youth and Indigenous youth to access inheritance rights.

• The low economic viability of family farming makes it difficult or impossible for a young person to live and work as a peasant/food producer.

• The decreasing attractiveness of family farming for young people due to the persistence of a social stigma related to being a peasant as well as to the lack of respect for the social status of family farmers.

• The decreasing attractiveness of family farming for young people due to the emerging difficulties of producing food in a changing climate.

• The increasing youth exodus from rural to urban areas due to the lack of adequate infrastructure and services to meet the needs of today’s rural youth.

• The marginalisation of youth in decision-making spaces at different levels (regional, national, international), which often makes youth participation merely performative and undermines the possibility of enhancing youth agency.

• The lack of suitable spaces to ensure intergenerational dialogues about generational turnover as a two-sided process and not only a unilateral transfer from older to younger people.

During the consultation, the IPC Youth WG identified the need to keep our attention on the issue of generational turnover in family farming and continue working on it in close collaboration with other WGs in all regions and with all constituencies as a topic concerning everyone and not only the youth. The aim could be to identify a common IPC position and global strategy to improve generational turnover in family farming. The youth have also discussed the importance of using the outcomes of the consultation to continue influencing the agenda and work of the FAO, particularly in the context of the UNDFF.

Box 4

L’estaca

In this video, peasant youth from Europe, organised by the European Coordination of La Via Campesina (ECVC), sing the popular protest song L’estaca by the Catalan songwriter Lluís Llach—one of the symbols of resistance against Francoism. In the song, fascism and all forms of oppression are described as a pole (“l’estaca”) to which we are all chained but which, if we pull hard and together, we will manage to bring down. The song has been translated into a multitude of languages, becoming a universal hymn of liberation from all kinds of authoritarian and oppressive regimes and a call to unity towards freedom from all constraints.

The original song in Catalan:

Read here the translation of the song in English.

L’avi Siset[1] em parlava
de bon matí al portal
mentre el sol esperàvem
i els carros vèiem passar.

Siset, que no veus l’estaca
on estem tots lligats?
Si no podem desfer-nos-en
mai no podrem caminar!

Si estirem tots, ella caurà
i molt de temps no pot durar,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba
ben corcada deu ser ja.

Si jo l’estiro fort per aquí
i tu l’estires fort per allà,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba,
i ens podrem alliberar.

Però, Siset, fa molt temps ja,
les mans se’m van escorxant,
i quan la força se me’n va
ella és més ampla i més gran.

Ben cert sé que està podrida
però és que, Siset, pesa tant,
que a cops la força m’oblida.
Torna’m a dir el teu cant:

Si estirem tots, ella caurà
i molt de temps no pot durar,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba
ben corcada deu ser ja.

Si jo l’estiro fort per aquí
i tu l’estires fort per allà,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba,
i ens podrem alliberar.

L’avi Siset ja no diu res,
mal vent que se l’emportà,
ell qui sap cap a quin indret
i jo a sota el portal.

I mentre passen els nous vailets
estiro el coll per cantar
el darrer cant d’en Siset,
el darrer que em va ensenyar.

Si estirem tots, ella caurà
i molt de temps no pot durar,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba
ben corcada deu ser ja.

Si jo l’estiro fort per aquí
i tu l’estires fort per allà,
segur que tomba, tomba, tomba,
i ens podrem alliberar.

[1] “Siset” is short for “Narcis”. It seems to refer to Narcís Llansa, an old man with whom Llach went fishing when he was young.

In the spotlight

In the spotlight

Climate chaos, COVID-19 and armed conflict have sent shockwaves through the global economy, and these overlapping crises are impacting world food security in unprecedented ways.

The current global food crisis worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, nearly 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet, and about 2.3 billion people faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2021.

As indicated by all-time record highs on the UN FAO’s food-price index, the global food crisis was aggravated again in March 2022, largely due to supply-and-demand imbalances in grain, oilseed, fuel and fertilizer markets following a spate of geo-political conflicts and wars.

The underlying causes of food insecurity are closely linked to structural poverty and unjust trade relations between countries, and similarly to the food price crises of 2008 and 2011, the present-day food crisis is significantly influenced by financial speculation and price volatility in global markets.

La Via Campesina (LVC) and our allies of the global food sovereignty movement continue to resist industrial agribusiness and the false solutions of neoliberalism. We are alert and organized toward the implementation of real, popular solutions for profound social change. End WTO! Build international trade based on peasants’ rights, agroecology, and food sovereignty!

The youth are the protagonists of social transformation 

The youth are political subjects that have a unique role to play in exercising democratic control over food systems. First and foremost, young people are tasked to learn from history. A historically-informed analysis of social, political, economic, and environmental issues is indispensable to coordinating effective strategies and concrete actions that address their root causes.

Young people are also tasked to analyse the present moment with clarity and precision from our own particular generational perspectives, utilizing concepts like food sovereignty and tools like UNDROP[1] which we’ve become equipped with through LVC’s training processes.

In addition, it is essential that the youth continue to seek solutions to existing problems while concurrently striving to secure the rights and well-being of future generations. 

The youth are central to food sovereignty struggles—they have the vital task of widening participation and forming new leadership. Over the last decade, several members of our global food sovereignty movement, who converged and organised at the Nyéléni meeting in 2007 in Mali, have emphasised the need for young peasants and activists to take the mantle of the struggle forward. As a result, over the years, through spaces such as the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and others, we have built a unified struggle and created platforms of education and training for young people in the movement coming from peasant, Indigenous, fisherfolk and pastoralist communities.

Meaningful opportunities for the participation of young people at all levels of the struggle for food sovereignty have enabled us to become increasingly integrated into the movement, and through our autonomously organized spaces, we have been articulating our political priorities and proposals for action.   

The youth are demanding radical solutions to the current food crisis

Over the last three decades, grassroots social movements have stepped up the pressure on governments to bring in the political and economic democratization of food and agricultural systems. From the beginning we have fought to ensure the direct, effective participation of peasant and Indigenous organizations in the elaboration, implementation, and monitoring of agricultural policies and rural development programs.

Core issues that led to the formation of the international food sovereignty movement remain highly relevant and at the forefront of our political agenda today, including external debt, international trade, and environmental protection, as well as agroecology, gender equality, women’s and LGBTTQI+ rights, and peasants’ rights. The youth are raising these banners of struggle in mass mobilizations, communication campaigns, and political education processes. We are also advancing in policy negotiations and advocacy efforts across UN spaces.

Between May and October 2022, LVC youth engaged in consultations organized by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), in collaboration with the FAO and under the framework of the UN Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF). The regional consultations revolved around Pillar 2 of the Decade[2], addressing topics such as youth migration, gender inequalities, land and market access, and the intergenerational transfer of productive resources and knowledge. The process provided space to identify common challenges and discuss policy approaches related to generational turnover in family farming, and its outcomes are intended to contribute to the implementation of the Decade’s Global Action Plan. The consultations clearly underscored that comprehensive and genuine agrarian reforms, agroecology training, and adequate farm succession plans are urgently needed to enable the youth to have a future in the countryside.

In June, the youth joined the mobilization against the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva. We contributed to internal debates for contextual analysis of the global food crisis as well as public dialogues held in activist spaces and at a university. The youth were also actively part of the delegation that stayed in Geneva to advance peasants’ rights advocacy in the UN Human Rights Council. We arranged and attended meetings with Member State representatives in order to gauge their political will to support a forthcoming resolution in the Council to initiate a special procedure for the implementation of UNDROP.

We have also greatly contributed to a policy process in the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), titled “Promoting youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems.” For over two years, we have been coordinating and actively participating in the youth working group of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM).

We now have political opportunities to organize at the national level and pressure States to implement the relatively good aspects of the CFS policy document, such as recommendations in support of human rights, dignified livelihoods, informal markets, public procurement, urban agriculture, and gender transformative policies, as well as the connection drawn with the UNDFF and the reference to redistributive reforms in the context of the CFS Voluntary Tenure Guidelines.  

The long-term sustainability and impact of our collective movement for food sovereignty lie in creating and expanding our alliances across allied sectors, joining forces with both urban and rural movements, workers’ unions. An equal emphasis must also be placed in organizing processes that greatly depend on the meaningful engagement and training of youth across the entire movement and allied sectors. The continuity, coherence, and ongoing relevance of the food sovereignty movement relies upon generational renewal through capacity-building for young people, the facilitation of intergenerational dialogue, and mobilizing everyone for transformative social change.

[1] UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

[2] Pillar 2–Transversal. Support youth and ensure the generational sustainability of 28

family farming.

Newsletter no 50 – Editorial

Youth and the democratization of food systems

Illustration: Sophie Holin for LVC, Instagram: @soph.ieholin

It’s December. Yet another year in our cycle of life is drawing to a close as we search for hope and solidarity in the face of daunting adversities. The world is marred by rising temperatures, erratic weather events, extreme poverty, hunger, wars, conflicts and violence.

A systemic model that placed the interests and profits of the few over those of the many has created this catastrophe. The global industrial food system is a case in point—it is among the largest polluters on the planet. It uses nearly two-thirds of the world’s resources but can only feed a quarter of the world’s population, leaving behind a trail of destructive and polluting practices along its supply chain. In contrast, peasant agriculture, which still feeds 70% of the global population, sustains harmonious and healthy cycles of food production, distribution and consumption.

It’s high time we reminded global food governance institutions and governments that the real solutions to the global food crisis lie in giving peasant communities, Indigenous Peoples, migrant workers, landworkers, small-scale fishers and pastoralists the power and the autonomy to build food sovereignty in our territories. We must rally behind food systems built by and for the people in an agroecological way that respects the cycle of life in all its forms. A vital element in protecting and multiplying these diverse, decentralized and resilient food systems are the conditions available to the young and future small-scale food producers to engage in the production process. This edition of the Nyéléni newsletter delves into the democratization of people’s food systems and the critical need to keep the role and future of the peasant youth in this process.

La Via Campesina Youth Articulation