Newsletters Nyéléni in English

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

Voices from the field

Newsletter no 46 - Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land

Voice from the field 1

Life of pastoralist in India during the COVID19 lockdown

Anu Verma, South Asia Pastoralist Alliance & MARAG, India, WAMIP South Asia 

India has 34 million pastoralists managing a livestock population of more than 50 million. Livestock rearing is the second largest occupation in India after agriculture, making a significant contribution of about 8.5 to 9 per cent to the country’s GDP. Its contribution is vital, as pastoralism is the most important means of support for landless pastoralists as well as marginal and small farmers, especially those living in drought-prone, hilly areas where crop production is not assured. It contributes significantly to the livelihood and wealth of communities in terms of milk, wool and meat with no market-based inputs.

Traditional pastoral institutions today are increasingly endangered by mass displacement due to intense competition from agriculture, population growth, herd dispossession and drought. While lockdowns (due to Covid-19) have impacted people from all walks of life, the impact has also been differential. Pastoralists around the country have a hostile policing system to brave, including forest guards. Amidst the outbreak, the regulation and control over their movement has escalated during the most crucial time, i.e., their move towards the summer pastures. While some state governments exempted their movement, like the transport of essential commodities, the shepherds who had gone to their farms were stuck and unable to join their flocks back. “We are unable to freely move with our herds for grazing since villagers are afraid that we are carriers of coronavirus,” said Sumer Singh Bhatti, who owns about 200 camels that feed in dry and desert areas of Rajasthan. “We were sometimes even prevented from going to the village shops to buy food rations. This coronavirus scare has broken the back of camel herders. With summer heat pastoralists will miss opportunities to get green grass as fodder.” said Mool Singh, a pastoralist from Nakrasar village in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, who migrates in March every year to Punjab for his herd to graze on wheat waste.

Voices from the field 2

The future of peaceful transhumance in West Africa

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, coordinator of the Peul Indigenous Women and Peoples Association of Chad and a member of the executive committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), WAMIP Central Africa

As nomads are difficult to control, it doesn’t help governments. Several states have made the decision to focus more on agriculture at the expense of nomadic livestock. Yet in the Sahel, livestock accounts for more than 40% of the GDP of all Sahelian countries and in Chad, more than 20%.

Firstly, communities such as the Fulani, Arabs or Tuaregs, were not fully taken into consideration after colonisation, as they have a lifestyle far from the development imaginary that the state had thought to implement. This is why most nomads have no access to education, health care or drinking water,….

Nevertheless, in Sahelian ecosystems, the uncertainty over fodder resources requires herders to use special breeding techniques to preserve their production capital: livestock and ecosystems. Indeed, pastoralism relies on the great ability of herders to make the most of spontaneous fodder resources scattered in heterogeneous environments.

Governments need to change the way they view nomads and their environmental value. Most livestock species provide multiple services such as protein-rich food, manure and energy. Without livestock we could not alleviate food insecurity. In all our homes, we eat meat and milk acts as a food supplement, herders exchange livestock for millet with farmers, and all of this drives the circular economy in the communities. Herders are not a problem, they are a solution, and they are the past, present and future.

Voices from the field 3

Towards a network of shepherds in North America, a vision from the Sierra Tarahumara

Project “De la Oveja a la Cobija” and Red del Desierto, Campo Adentro, F. Marso

Life in the Raramuri (Tarahumara) communities, in Sierra Madre Occidental, Chihuahua, Mexico, is based on subsistence farming and ranching. The Rarámuri people, some 50,000 strong, survived colonialism in part because they are located in remote areas of the Sierra.   The practice is closely linked to ceremonies and festivities and is developed under a work organization scheme based on natural cycles called Mawechi. Due to the irregular orography, with large ravines and very poor soils, goat and sheep ranching predominates in the area. The processes of social fragmentation caused by extractive and tourist exploitation projects, as well as the generalized insecurity due to the presence of drug trafficking mafias, have caused this practice to diminish in the area.

Recently, there has been renewed attention and enthusiasm among young Rarámuri, mostly women, to continue caring for goats and sheep, based on extensive management that makes use of scarce and scattered pastures, where cattle cannot sustain themselves, and in rotation with the cornfield, taking advantage of its stubble field and manure as fertilizer. In exchange, they obtain meat, milk, leather and wool, and the adult animals are a kind of “piggy bank” that can be capitalized for emergencies.

An association of shepherds and weavers has been formed in this area, grouping 30 Rarámuri women, led by shepherdess Agripina Viniegra, who are responsible for the care of sheep and their productive exploitation, mainly for the creation of wool textiles. Likewise, the young Association of Raramuri Sheep Breeders is approaching shepherds from communities in the states of Nuevo León, Coahuila and San Luis Potosí, proposing the idea of Red del Desierto. They are also making contact with the Navajo people of the Southwest USA to reactivate the North American Region of WAMIP.

Voices from the field 4

Climate change and mining industry threatening Mongolia’s nomadic herders with extinction

Maamankhuu Sodnom, Mongolian Pastoralist Association, Mongolia

Mongolia covers an area of 1.564.116 km2 with a population of 3.4 million people, of which 30% practice pastoralism. Mongolian pastoralists keep mostly sheep, camels, goats, cattle (including yaks) and horses. Seventy percent of Mongolian land is used for pastoralist purposes, most of this territory being barren, semi-arid steppes and deserts. Nowadays, many of these nomadic people are moving to cities as a result of a combination of factors, climate change amongst them.

The climate in Mongolia can be extremely harsh even under normal conditions. There are 4 seasons; Winter is extremely cold and the temperature often goes down to -45oCand summer can be as hot as 45oC. Our spring is always windy and dust storms are the norm. In the last thirty years the Gobi Desert in Southern Mongolia hasn’t seen much precipitation during the summertime, which considerably exacerbated the aridity and adversely affected the activity of animal husbandry.

Previously unseen levels of snow in the winter and sandstorms in the spring helped aggravate the pre-existing predicament, leading to the acceleration of desertification in the entirety of the region. Mongolians are proud of their pastoral culture and their ability to subsist on their livestock even under extremely difficult environmental conditions, however, these days nomadic herders are being threatened by extinction.

The second major factor that threatens the survival of their lifestyle is the mining industry, which has grown substantially in the last 20 years. There are fourteen licensed mining companies in my province alone, Tavan Tolgoi and Oyu Tolgoi being the largest. Oyu Tolgoi is a copper and gold mining company which has been using huge amounts of water from already depleted underground sources. There are no rivers or lakes in the Gobi Desert, forcing pastoralists to dig wells in order to tap into the underground water supply. Many of these wells have already completely dried up, mainly because Oyu Tolgoi uses 950 liters of water per second. The once semiarid region is being turned into a desert at an alarming pace. The Tavan Tolgoi coal mining company exploits and exports coal to China on unpaved dirt roads, further bringing wanton destruction to pastoralists’ lands. Mongolian pastoralists have begun protests, but they lack the resources, organization, and power to effect any meaningful changes as the bulk of the Mongolian economy is dependent on the export of copper and coal to China. Nowadays, we are fighting an uphill battle to save our rangeland.

Boxes

Newsletter no 46 - Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land

Box 1

Shepherds for climate: Is animal husbandry always harmful to the planet? 

The annual report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlights the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock, oil and gas drilling, fracking, landfills, etc. are major sources of methane emissions according to the IPCC. But in the public/media/political debate, we must differentiate between the various sources to achieve a more informed and fairer debate on the necessary climate action. That is why WAMIP has conducted a scientific study together with the international team of PASTRES researchers and published the report “Is livestock farming always harmful to the planet?“[1]

Not all greenhouse gases are the same. While methane has a short-lived warming effect, CO2 remains forever. In addition, emissions from livestock systems are widely varied and we must differentiate between intensive and extensive systems. Mobile pastoral and extensive livestock systems can be in CO2 emissions balance, and their methane emissions are not additional as they have levels similar to those of the wildlife systems they replace. However, intensive livestock farming is a polluter of CO2 and methane and therefore, we from the pastoralist movement are in favor of its dismantling and penalization.

It is essential to reduce greenhouse gases, but not all sources are equal: grazing, industrial livestock farming or fracking are not the same. Extensive livestock systems support large numbers of people, provide high quality animal products, and can be beneficial to the climate (improving soil fertility or preventing fires).

Therefore, we support emission reductions while addressing Climate Justice issues and recognize pastoralism and extensive livestock farming not as part of the problem of climate change, but as part of the solution[2].

Box 2

Reinventing an ancestral way of life: Shepherd schools

Faced with the threat of the disappearance of shepherding in the mountain areas of Spain, the non-profit organization Campo Adentro-INLAND initiated a system of theoretical and practical training in 2004, aimed at both young people interested in shepherding and active shepherds, enabling the integration of new shepherds and ensuring generational replacement. Hundreds of people have been trained with about 70 applicants each year.

On the one hand, the school trains people to start their own livestock project with agroecological orientation, and to develop their activity with new approaches to economic viability and added value to the product.

Likewise, people who have followed this training will be equipped with the necessary knowledge to work as salaried workers in those livestock farms that require workers, or for the execution of environmental services such as firebreak maintenance.

On the other hand, courses have been offered to active shepherds to improve their cheese making skills or other things that are in demand, as well as training and exchange trips.

The theoretical module is followed by a practical portion of work with the herd-school of Campo Adentro INLAND, which has a branch in the mountains of Madrid and one in the north of the peninsula. Recently, a Junior Shepherd School for children has been established, and also a system of free training scholarships for undocumented migrants interested in this way of life.

Once the students finish the theory and practice, they have to deliver an operational project, which has been tutored throughout the course.

At this point, the School provides the graduate student with support and guidance in the procedures and possible access to land. It is important to take an active role in the incorporation of the student, promoting land stewardship schemes among the different producers with whom they have been in contact, formulas for the transfer of ownership under leases, etc. in cases of early retirement, transfer, social economy formulas, cooperativism, etc.

Box 3

Gender and pastoralism

In 2010, WAMIP called for a Global Gathering of Women Pastoralists, in Mera (Gujarat), India bringing together over 100 women from herding communities scattered across 32 different countries to discuss the myriad of problems faced by nomadic and semi-nomadic women pastoralists worldwide, and how, united, they can strive to solve them. Participants at the Gathering identified key issues, including markets, rules and rights, environment, social movement, education, and, health, as well as a number of priorities for action, such as representation, communication and networking, education and capacity building, and advocacy. They also selected representatives to draft the Mera Declaration to inform and support the development of pastoralist policies, and also to demonstrate commitment to environmental sustainability and protection of biodiversity and common resources for future generations.

Since then, progress has been made in linking the struggles of pastoralist women within the framework of the demands of the feminist movement. The extensive livestock and pastoralist women claim our value both within the sector and in society, fighting to exercise our way of life without inequalities, and constitute a network of mutual support as a space for resistance and awareness-raising. The health and social crisis caused by the pandemic brought ongoing ureflections on care and essential work. Now it is even more necessary to recognize the activity of shepherdesses and livestock breeders who, from their territories, maintain life and highlight the great potential and enormous capacity of women’s networks to face adversities. We need to show the work of these women in caring for and reproducing the basis of life, from the countryside and for society.

Female livestock breeders and pastoralists are defending sorority, demanding the abolition of all inequalities suffered by those who feel themselves to be women in a patriarchal and capitalist context. They defend the right not to be violated, assaulted, raped, murdered; to equal pay, in decision-making, in access to land, in the distribution of care; to decide on their way of life, sexuality and reproduction, whatever their age, origin or citizenship; and to exercise and be considered valid as farmers and herders, and not mere “companions” or “helpers” of the men with whom they work.

We demand a liveable rural environment, with basic services guaranteed for all: health, education, public transportation, culture, care for dependent persons, access to land, decent housing and accessible services for the prevention of gender-based violence.

As pastoralist women, we demand an environmentalism that considers us as active elements in the region, allies of biodiversity and guarantors of natural environments. Extensive livestock farming is essential for the maintenance of ecosystems, forest maintenance, fire prevention and improvement of pastures, as well as for the struggle for food sovereignty. All this from a feminist way of working, putting the welfare of our herds and the territory we inhabit ahead of economic results, focusing the way we treat them from the care and respect for their needs, a relationship of care that extends to the people we feed with the meat, milk or dairy products we produce.

In a capitalist and ultraliberal framework, we are led to believe that it is no longer necessary to claim our rights, that the rural world is a consumer good, and that work in the rural environment and how it is approached, such as extensive livestock and pastoralism, is not productive and has no future. Rural women are the present, and they will be the future. They will become stronger and stronger. We women are and will be  the front line.

Box 4

The World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Pastoralists – WAMIP on the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists – IYRP

A few years ago, some entities working on grassland ecology (such as the University of Arizona, ILRI, etc.)  launched the idea of campaigning for a declaration of a UN Year on Rangelands. More organisations adhered and it was proposed the year should also include the recognition of pastoralists as custodians of rangelands. This year, 38 countries and 300 organisations are supporting the IYRP. The Mongolian Government presented the request for an IYRP designation at an open session of the October 2018 COAG meeting of FAO in Rome and the proposal was approved without reservations. The proposal has since also been approved by the FAO Council and FAO Conference. A final vote will be held at the UN General Assembly in Fall 2021.

As grassroot organisations composing the global alliance of WAMIP, we express our support to the initiative calling for an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP), as stated in the letter addressed to the Government of Mongolia.

Since its inception within various networks, mainly composed by grassland and rangelands researchers and environmental entities, we welcomed the incorporation of the crucial element of the pastoralist peoples as the most affected by the policies governing rangelands and effective caretakers of them for millennia.

We have witnessed how this call has gathered enormous support from a wide range of organisations, as we can see in the growing number of members joining the RISG globally and in the defined regions. For a good progression of this endeavour, it would be important to make sure that an open definition of what is considered as rangelands is included in all materials and declarations: not only grasslands, but also forests, and crop lands after harvesting. As important as the rangelands definition so is the connectivity amongst them: sheep trails and cattle droves and effective mobility rights are crucial to ensure rangelands’ sustainable use.

On the governance of the IYRP process, we would like to open a process and specific working group to look at how the RISG are being constituted and operate in each region, in consideration of existing pastoralist networks and their recognition and centrality in the process. It is important to ensure pastoralists positions chairing and co-chairing each regional RISG, to be determined in agreement with WAMIP. For example, a process of previous consultation and agreement with pastoralist representatives in any decision or step regarding the IYRP.

When the IYRP is approved, there will be a need to implement actions surrounding it from now until 2026, actions that should be agreed and based on the pastoralist movement’s concerns and priorities, as, at this moment, the empowerment of the management capacities of pastoralist coordination at regional level is crucial.

[1]  The report is available at: https://wamipglobal.com/2021/09/26/pastoralist-movements-takes-part-in-the-report-are-livestock-bad-for-the-planet/

[2] WAMIP brought an international delegation of nomads to Glasgow to participate in the official COP26 negotiations as well as the protests, including a sheep demonstration, and issuing a press release.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 46 - Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land

In the spotlight 1

Digitization, agribusiness and the pastoralist movement

One of the main effects of globalization is the loss of local, regional and national control over economic and political decision-making, a power that has shifted into the hands of globalized actors. At the same time, we are witnessing how global financial capital is becoming increasingly hidden and clandestine. Within this same globalization dynamic, factors affecting food systems, such as land management, price regulation or phytosanitary regulations, are increasingly being determined by international actors. This process of the displacement of sovereign power has many effects on large-scale livestock farming and pastoralism.

Extractivist projects, land privatization, or the demarcation of protected natural areas to the exclusion of local communities, are some of the main problems for small-scale food producers as they dispossess them of their lands.

At the same time, there is a push on the part of the markets to generate economies of scale: macro-farms with thousands of individual animals, and a high concentration in the food chain of pig and poultry farming. This model of livestock farming exploits people, animals and the environment, transforming the work of caring for livestock on a small scale, under industrial logic. Robotization is advancing by leaps and bounds: milking machines, feeding machines, barn cleaning machines…, all to increase the volume of production, while the prices of products such as milk or lamb are increasingly lower and inputs such as feed are rising. This imposition of “growth or die” capitalism is destroying the dairy sector and family livestock farming, and only a few can survive.

Organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) or the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which represent corporate interests, are increasingly strong in the UN. This means that we are facing a scenario where global public governance is being privatized. Proof of this is how the WEF has influenced the UN as the official sponsor of the UN Food Systems Summit, or UNFSS, which has been rejected and boycotted by the food sovereignty movement.

In addition, this excessive power that financial capital exercises over the real economy is deepening with digitization. In the food sector, digitization is having an impact on land management and natural resource management. Geo-stationary satellites are playing an increasingly important role in decision making. The new CAP Eco-Schemes will require each herd to have GPS tracking on 30% of the animals. Previously, the EU also wanted to impose identification chips for each animal. These processes have a whole series of negative consequences for organizations linked to sovereignty, as they exclude them from decision-making. Territorial management issues are digitized while, in rural areas, connectivity is very precarious. The implications of this change in the technological matrix are compounded by the digital divide and financing problems.

The very governance of digitization is private, there is no body dedicated to regulate this new field of dispute. The food sovereignty movement is creating alliances with movements working on the technological issue, since in the present and near future, this is one of the fields where we have to assert our rights and our sovereignty. Undoubtedly, many mechanisms and structures of democratization are still missing. We are fighting for an international public technological structure.

It is not enough to exercise sovereignty at the local or national level – we must organize ourselves to act globally as well, with a political strategy that seeks participation in international public institutions in order to democratize these spaces and be able to influence them. This process would make it possible to confront the challenges of globalization and the unbridled accumulation of wealth.

In the spotlight 2

Environmentalism and pastoralism, an apparent opposition

In September of this year, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Congress, a powerful organization that brings together the main environmental conservation NGOs, was held in Marseilles. That same month, indigenous people and producers from different parts of the world met under the slogan “Our land, our nature, for the decolonization of nature conservation”, representing an alternative reinterpretation of how and by whom the stewardship of the environment is carried out. IUCN has not been free from scrutiny. As have organizations central to it, such as WWF or the Sierra Club, which have been accused of abusive practices towards indigenous peoples, and of racism.

A few years ago, WAMIP denounced how a report by the IUCN itself on measures to “protect nature” in the Ngorongoro region (Tanzania), advised “to remove pastoralist communities from the area”. In a few days the army violently evicted thousands of people from the environment they have grazed for millennia, to make way for new hotels and tourist safaris.

The conservation model with the most economic power that dominates the collective imagination is fortress conservation. This model is based on the erroneous and racist belief that the best way to protect biodiversity is through the creation of protected areas where human influence is suppressed. Its philosophy is that indigenous populations worsen biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, despite the lack of scientific and historical evidence and ample evidence to the contrary.

This model is defended by some international and transnational NGOs such as WWF, WCS or African Parks, is spreading worldwide, and underpins the argument for the creation of natural parks without taking into account the knowledge and experience of pastoralists and rural citizens.

The origins of the fortress conservation model are colonial and racist. Since 1970, more than 1900 parks or protected areas have been created, most of which are in the global south. Currently, summits such as the IUCN Congress are promoting the so-called 30×30 – a plan to convert 30% of the planet into Protected Areas.

From a critical position within environmentalism, we denounce and actively fight against these false measures that, far from presenting solutions to the current situation of climate and social urgency, reproduce the interests of the prevailing economic system, based on the exploitation of finite resources of a planet that has long since collapsed, which, as scientific evidence and human experience show, is not only unsustainable but also directly responsible for climate chaos and the resulting social injustice.

The only sustainable, just and real solutions do not give in to capitalist, colonial and racist interests. The real solutions to climate chaos depend on humanity, on our characteristic diversity and particularly on indigenous peoples and other local communities and their right to land; given that it is diverse indigenous peoples who protect 80% of the most biodiverse areas of the planet in their lands.

We need a model of nature conservation that puts care, diversity and human rights at the center, and confronts the real causes of climate chaos: overconsumption and exploitation of resources led by the global north and its industry.

Newsletter no 46 – Editorial

Newsletter no 46 - Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land

Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land

Illustration by Fernando Garcia Dory, European Shepard Network / WAMIP

More than half of the Earth’s surface is made up of grasslands and rangelands. For thousands of years pastoralist communities have domesticated animals and managed ecosystems in a sustainable way, producing a diversity of cultures and food systems that are adapted and resilient. Associated biodiversity has always co-existed with pastoralism.

Pastoralism is based on the extensive use of territory, sometimes grasslands but also forests or cropland after harvests, marginal lands and other spaces that very often are not suitable for agriculture. Pastoralism is practised by between 200 and 500 million people worldwide in highly variable environments in nearly every country of the world from the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa to the Arctic Circle.

Our way of life has existed since time immemorial, evolving together with the landscape. But today pastoralism is threatened as never before by the forced industrialization of livestock farming. We have to stop the loss of grazing land, “land grabbing” and the restrictions on mobility that make it impossible to maintain a viable pastoralist system. Currently we are defining a possible campaign on Pastoralists Rights. Our identity and culture is being eroded as policies fail to sufficiently include, understand or even recognize the existence of pastoralism. Low economic returns and a lack of recognition mean that young pastoralists in some areas feel forced to leave our way of life or switch to more intensive forms of farming. We are promoting a Youth Section of WAMIP, as for young people it is often difficult to gain access to land.

Policy decisions are made with little or no consultation with local communities. We are the traditional land users but we are systematically excluded from decisions on land management, including the reintroduction or management of wild predators or the designation of Nature Conservation areas. Bureaucratic requirements, biased towards intensive livestock production, impose a huge and unrealistic burden of paperwork on pastoralists.

But all across Europe and the world, we are getting organized into federations, building regional networks and gaining international recognition from leading institutions. We strive to defend the interests of local producers and to increase our political representation. We are creating research centres, teaming up with scientific institutions, training our young people and building our capacity.

WAMIP is an alliance of pastoralist communities and mobile indigenous peoples throughout the world and our common space to preserve our forms of life in pursuit of our livelihoods and cultural identity, to sustainably manage common property resources, and to obtain full respect of our rights. As an independent grassroot movement we work together with other civil society organisations to influence policy makers at national, regional and international level, and supranational bodies such as the UN and subsidiary organisations like FAO, CBD etc.

We fight these trends and maintain our way of life by continuously innovating and improving. We use local breeds to adapt to a changing environment. We try to raise awareness among consumers and to sell directly to them. We are using new media to promote our cultural traditions and organize festive events. Some of us have negotiated contracts to prevent fires, maintain heritage landscapes and provide other environmental services. We are ambassadors of local cultural heritage, sustainable productions and for Food Sovereignty.

European Shepherds Network

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Introducing the message of pastoralist communities, a voice from the land, no 46

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 45 - Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems

Voice from the field 1

Sri Lankan farmers against pesticides

Chintaka Rajapakse, MONLAR (Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform), Sri Lanka

The use of agrochemicals has had disastrous consequences in the past decades. The widespread use of these chemicals has contaminated the soil and the water, which has directly led to the increase in cancers and kidney diseases. Not only has this negatively affected public health, but the overuse of agrochemicals has also undermined food sovereignty, unravelled the ecological balance, and led to the extinction of many animal and plant species. Since almost all agricultural inputs used by Sri Lankan farmers are imported, it has allowed certain companies to build oligopolies.

It is in this context that, as the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR), we have supported the government decision to ban the import of all agrochemicals with immediate effect. The Agriculture Ministry said it would convert the State-owned Ceylon Fertiliser Company Ltd. into an institution that would produce, supply, and distribute organic fertilizer in association with local government institutions. It is a welcomed step forwards. We must now make sure that this is also implemented in practise.

The previous government also took a decision to promote organic agriculture in 2016. Unfortunately, that initiative failed completely by 2018, and Strategic Enterprise Management Agency (SEMA), which was entrusted with implementing the program, was also closed. We must draw lessons from international experience and make sure that the new initiative is implemented successfully. Several farmers are also worried about the short-term implications of this decision. The government must recognise their anxieties and make sure that their concerns and worries are immediately addressed, and lay out a clear roadmap for implementation of this policy.

Voices from the field 2

Mobilizing for access to healthy food

Miriam Nobre, member of SOF (Sempreviva Organização Feminista), and an activist of the World March of Women, Brazil

In Brazil, the Covid-19 pandemic has made, not only social inequalities, but also economic activities that are essential for sustaining life, such as food more evident. Small-scale farming has been hit hard by the suspension of markets and public procurement, which had already been affected by Bolsonaro’s misgovernment. Direct commercialisation networks, especially with responsible consumption groups, have established themselves as an alternative. Due to this alliance, women and quilombola farmers from Vale do Ribeira, in the state of São Paulo, have expanded their membership and their cultivation areas, asserting the defence of their territories and ways of life against threats from mining companies, dams and monocultures with intensive use of pesticides. At the same time, allied groups and collectives in the Greater São Paulo region have also grown and increased their presence in the peripheries, guaranteeing access to good food for indigenous Guarani people, students deprived of school meals, workers and single mothers.

These initiatives are in opposition to the financialization of school feeding programmes. São Paulo City Government, for example, in the face of no face-to-face classes, stopped school feeding programmes and purchases from farmers, instead making a food card with monthly values of 10 to 20 Euros per child available to them. Alongside the increase in food and cooking gas prices, this solution is good for Alelo card administrators and supermarkets.

Groups that organise themselves around multiple and decentralised forms of donation, sale and production in agroecological food gardens in the periphery (re)create a food culture embedded in respectful relationships between people and between people and nature. We are growing in numbers and diversity. The Black rights movement has long protested against the humiliation and murder of Black people in the peripheries at the hands of supermarket chains such as Carrefour. Now they are coming together in this movement so that we have access to good food by ourselves. We recover our health and lost flavours, and free territories from transnational food corporations in the city too.

Voice from the field 3

Africans speak out against corporate hegemony over seed and food systems: farmers’ rights now!

Sabrina Masinjila, African Centre of Biodiversity (ACB)

As part of the global counter-mobilisation against the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), the online event Seed is power: Reclaiming African Seed Sovereignty brought civil society and farmer-led movements together to express their rejection of the current seed and intellectual property protection laws. These serve as instruments that continue to entrench industrial agriculture,  furthering corporate interests at the expense of smallholder farmers’ rights, whose farmer managed seed systems are increasingly marginalised, and even criminalised. This is linked to systems that reinforce indebtedness, inequality, social exclusion and ecological crises.

Instead of adopting seed and plant variety protection laws based on the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) 1991, governments should put in place legally binding and discrete measures to recognise and support farmers’ rights to save, exchange and sell seed, unrestricted by the commercial imperatives of transnational corporations. Central to this is autonomy – a prerequisite and core component of the exercise of rights by family and community farmers and peasants.

Thus, legally binding and enforceable protections are urgently needed against patents, plant variety protection laws, commercial seed laws and digital sequence information, which all erode the exercise of farmers’ rights. Most importantly, the conception of these rights needs to be grounded in a wider vision of food sovereignty that encompasses the rights of both urban and rural dwellers to nutritious and culturally appropriate food – especially for the poor, and for women in particular, who are the main custodians of seed and life, yet they often exist in precarious circumstances, under the weight of patriarchy and economic subordination. Such contexts make it clear how seed is about more than just the act of farming, but also social relationships of care and solidarity, which are also crucial for wider progressive action. Draconian seed regimes are therefore also a direct attack on community, and on our ability to work together in solidarity for a better future.

To rise to the challenge of our ecological and social crises, farmers’ rights should not simply be defended, but actively deepened and widened as a core organising principle of our food systems.

More info at https://www.acbio.org.za/seed-power-reclaiming-african-seed-sovereignty-africans-speak-out-against-corporate-hegemony-over

Voice from the field 4

Indian farmers protest against agriculture laws

Chukki Nanjudaswamy, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), India

We are witnessing a shift towards public-private partnerships in policymaking spaces across the world. A recent example is the UN Food Systems Summit emerging from a strategic partnership between the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. The Summit represents a hostile capture of global governance by Corporate interests. But such trends are also happening at the national level. 

In the middle of the pandemic in 2020, the Indian government hastily passed three laws related to agriculture, using their brute majority in the parliament, with little consultation with farmers to appease corporations. Under the guise of reform, these laws will usher in a free-market-based, export-oriented agricultural system in India, similar to those of Europe and the US. 

These agriculture laws will marginalize small-scale farmers and destroy their autonomy in deciding what to produce, when to produce and how to produce food. India’s public procurement systems need reform, but not the kind where they are entirely side-lined and a free-market system completely takes over.  Food is crucial for everyone. 

Corporatization of agriculture has devastated the autonomy of food producers and consumers everywhere. It makes food an object of speculation and leads to the loss of biodiversity and nutrition. It has a severe impact on nature due to altered land use, industrial storage and processing systems and industrial transport that ships food to all corners of the world. 

Farmers in India are now more aware of these dangers than ever, as they have seen how small-scale producers of the US, Europe and Canada have vanished and been replaced by large industrial farms. In India, millions are dependent on agriculture, forests and fisheries. That is why, for more than a year, protests have been raging across the country. Our demands are clear – repeal the agriculture laws, have public consultations, and bring in reforms that small-scale farmers urgently need. 

Boxes

Newsletter no 45 - Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems

Box 1  

Multistakeholderism: the new corporate weapon

Multistakeholderism is an evolving model of governance that brings together diverse actors that have a potential ‘stake’ in an issue, in order for them to arrive at a collaboratively formulated agreement or solution. For example, stakeholders in a proposed coal mine could include project affected communities, government officials responsible for approvals, investing companies, project financiers, environmental NGOs, etc.  A completely misleading assumption here is that all stakeholders are equal in rights, obligations, liabilities, power, and capacities. But although the rights of affected peoples to their lands far outweigh the rights of external investors to acquire them, their capacities to prevent land-grabbing are often undermined by the financial/political power of investors. At a global level, multistakeholderism contradicts multilateralism, where governments (duty bearers) take decisions on global issues on behalf of their citizens (rights holders) which translate to obligations and commitments that states and international organisations are expected to implement. This includes regulating business activities and holding enterprises accountable when they cause harm.

The rise of multistakeholderism coincides with the mainstreaming of neoliberalism from the 1980-s onwards, increased corporate involvement in various sectors through public-private partnerships, erosion of legitimacy of the multilateral system, reduction of development finance at national and international levels, and rise of venture philanthropy where corporate investors finance social-environmental goals. Over the last 20 years, multistakeholderism has spread into approaches to address extractive industry, industrial agriculture, climate change, land and environmental governance, food and nutrition, internet, and the Sustainable Development Goals, and been boosted through the Global Redesign Initiative and other platforms of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Multistakeholderism blurs the distinctions between public interest and private profit, and human rights and corporate interests. It enables corporations to dominate decision making on critical development issues and evade legal-material accountability for their operations. It presents a direct threat to participatory democracy and just, human rights-based governance.

Box 2

The Nature fraud 

“Boost Nature positive food” is one of the UNFSS Action Tracks and the term nature positive has become almost synonymous with the “nature-based solutions” for food production being promoted by the FAO and others. Analyses of proposals being made in the UNFSS, FAO and other spaces show that nature positive is the latest concept being used to co-opt and undermine agroecology. It strongly promotes sustainable intensification as a solution rather than real transformation and prioritises yield and stability, but does not address social, cultural and political dimensions of transitions to sustainability, including power dynamics and governance. By this metric, more intensive production systems that produce less carbon emissions per unit of yield are considered better than diverse, low input systems. Nature positive repackages several false solutions such as conservation agriculture, nutrient optimization and improved plantation management without addressing the corporate drivers of the industrial model, and its social and environmental impacts.

An even more dangerous side to nature positive framing in the UNFSS is its links with the push for “nature-based solutions” to climate change, in which agriculture and sustainable intensification techniques can be brought into carbon offset and market schemes by highly polluting corporations such as fossil fuel companies and agribusinesses. Sustainable intensification techniques lend themselves well to carbon offsets since they can focus on single practices designed primarily to generate carbon credits. Nature positive framing threatens to co-opt and corrupt genuine solutions such as agroecology and community forest management by lumping them together with dubious and destructive practices and linking them to opaque market-based schemes. “Nature-based solutions” to climate change are already being co-opted by fossil fuel and agribusiness corporations. They claim to be investing in sustainable intensification as a nature-based solution while expanding their massive land grabs and failing to cut actual carbon emissions.

Box 3

For a different food system without smoke and mirrors

In just a few years, the design of food systems has become an area where the most valued attributes are a large scale, totality, entrepreneurship, monoculture, innovation, and technology. These are important attributes from a capitalist perspective, which are only concerned with a production model and consumption to be achieved in a fantasy that does not view people as interdependent or eco-dependent beings. This model rewards extraction-based formulas that destroy territories without even achieving what should be the main objective: to provide food and nourishment for all. It is clearly a failed model, but it is one that is maintained because it can sustain and reinforce multiple interests. It is a model that has turned a right – to adequate food and nutrition – into a commodity to be used in speculation, with the complicity of various agents and public policies at multiple levels. It is a failed model, but it is one that is sustained through an illusion that renders those who truly sustain and feed the world invisible.

These policies and narratives intended to define a food model on the basis of power imbalances and the interests of a select few are the smoke and mirrors of illusionists who, on the one hand present a completely unequal development model as the only option, while on the other hand hide the numerous inequalities it creates in various territories, the precarious realities of many agricultural workers without whom this model would not work, and the reality that it is, in fact, now possible to feed the world in a sustainable and equitable manner.

In this invisible reality, it is small-scale production, a community outlook, agro-environmental initiatives and unequally distributed care work that falls to women and keeps the world turning, as well as the hands of agricultural workers. This year, the pandemic has changed the view of this scenario; it has shaken its foundations and revealed the secrets of the illusion, while showing that the underpinnings it tries to conceal are strong and adaptable and that there are no tricks that can predict or avoid a response from nature. As a result, those who are closer to Mother Earth, those who know her, care for her, respect her and interact with her, are those who are able to listen to her response and adapt to it, although not without paying a high price; even though they are the ones who are cooling the planet, they are also those who are most affected when it rebels.

The transformation needed in the food system requires us to be aware of illusory tricks, confront the realities that are made invisible, and take care of the environment to maintain stability and ensure that we do not become unbalanced. The struggle for this involves sowing seeds and beginning interactions, remaining in territories and preserving communities and their knowledge, for each harvest, for the knowledge that we are interdependent and eco-dependent beings, for each farmers’ market left, for each group of peasant women raising awareness and for each space where we have an impact so that public policies stop playing illusory games and work instead to protect peasant realities and preserve their future.

Box 4

UN Food Systems Summit: Are we transitioning to a corporate-environmental food regime?

We have heard all those fairy tales before – how we can turn nature into a financial asset to save the planet from further environmental destruction But it is not a question of providing the right financial incentives. We need radical approaches that heal eco-systems and not compensate corporations for continuing their dirty practices while taking part in “greenwashing”. Hijacked by the interests of big corporations, the organizers of the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) happily picked up these old stories of carbon markets and REDD+, despite their proven failure. Food systems should now be financialized and become targets of speculative investments, because that seems to be the only way to finance the “costly” transformation towards sustainable food systems. Using the umbrella term “nature-positive production”, another label was added to the many corporate-led solution proposals of the summit, based on digital innovation, techno-fixes, bio-economic and market-oriented approaches, such as climate-smart agriculture and sustainable intensification. People-centered, cost-effective and socially and ecologically just solutions such as agroecology are already on the table. But these ideas are drowned out in the big corporate solution pot without taking into account the actual differences.

The European Green Deal is already full of this “climate-smart” narrative. With the “carbon farming initiative”, for instance, a new business model was created to reward farmers who sequester and store carbon. The UNFSS jumped onto this “green capitalist” bandwagon of the EU, promoting carbon capturing approaches to create “sustainable” food systems by improving soil health. Manifested in the nature of neoliberal capitalism, this pathway is likely to enable a transition towards a “corporate-environmental food regime” (Friedmann, 2005). This new, third food regime is reflected in the UNFSS’ multi-stakeholder framework that provides corporations legitimacy in shaping global food governance. Friedmann (2005: 259) argues that this regime induces a struggle over the “weight of private, public and self-organized institutions”. In such a process, food is no longer a public concern but a private investment.

The current trajectory of the UNFSS allows financial investment companies to buy shares in large agribusiness corporations who control the proposed “nature-positive solution” models. But we cannot allow the finance sector to gamble with people’s livelihoods. In the name of environmental sustainability, the whole meaning of food is changed from an edible good to a financial commodity. Thinking back at the devastating consequences of the food crisis in 2008 that made millions of people go hungry, it should be clear that food must be excluded from financial speculation. Certainly, if this corporate-environmental food regime consolidates, it will “deepen longstanding processes of dispossession and marginalization of peasants and agrarian communities” (Friedmann, 2005: 257). In the end, small-scale producers might be even excluded from the whole agricultural food production process as the world starts “farming without farmers”.

Reference: Friedmann, H. (2005): From Colonialism to Green Capitalism: Social Movements and Emergence of Food Regimes. In: Buttel, F.H. and McMichael, P. (eds.): New directions in the sociology of global development. Research in rural sociology and development, Vol. 11. Oxford: Elsvier, 229-67.

Box  5

Digitalisation in Indian agriculture

Agriculture in India is rife with precarity, leaving vulnerable, marginalised populations (e.g., women and landless workers) historically excluded from land ownership. Large-scale digitalisation in agricultural value chains will deepen indebtedness and power asymmetries.[1]

Broadly, digitalisation in agriculture comprises of three categories: robotics, crop and soil monitoring, and predictive analysis. All of these rely on one crucial ingredient: data.

The economic value of data rests with its ability to show patterns in aggregated big data, and in providing individualised, targeted advertising which is used by large corporations as a profit-making opportunity.

The uses of data in agriculture are far-reaching. Information on sales and prices of commodities can assist in agricultural marketing. Conditions are also ripe for automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in warehouse operations. More threateningly, farmers’ data can be used in credit-scoring algorithms which determine their access to financial services, excluding historically vulnerable groups. 

Digitalisation predates COVID-19, with private sector involvement entrenched in policy approaches such as Doubling Farmers Income by 2022 and NITI Aayog’s National AI Strategy. However, the decimation of agricultural supply chains during the initial months of the pandemic accelerated the pace and reach of digitalisation. E-commerce platforms, for example, capitalised on the moment:  Ninjacart’s B2B demand went up by 300% during the initial months of the pandemic.

The pandemic has also spurred policy and legislative steps. Agricultural reform legislations passed in the middle of the pandemic with little parliamentary debate, encouraging digitalisation in a private sector led financialised model at the cost of farmers and small-scale producers. This is already visible in partnerships signed between the government and Big Tech companies, such as the MoU for building the Agristack platform, signed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Microsoft in April 2021.

These trends can lead to end-to-end consolidation of agricultural value chains by platform and agricultural corporations. Pushing ahead with digitalisation in the absence of appropriate data, AI and platform governance will leave this sector ripe for corporate harvesting, resulting in market consolidation among a few large players.

Instead, the role of the private sector must be carefully negotiated, to ensure that data resources are geared towards the basic needs of farmers and their self-determined empowerment. Digitalisation in agriculture also requires decentralised and federated architectures that preserve the constitutional authority of state governments to regulate this sector towards ensuring public interest.

Lastly, engagement with the legacy problems in Indian agriculture, such as usurious lending and power asymmetries, by prioritising the interests of farmers and marginalised populations is a crucial pillar of responsible and development-oriented digitalisation.

[1] ASHA letter to the Ministry of Agriculture, on file.

 

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 45 - Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems

In the spotlight 1  

Resisting the corporate capture of food! 

The corporate capture of food is based on the belief that transnational corporations are essential for providing food and that their interests are aligned with the public interest. Its proponents portray corporations as better equipped than governments and civil society to draw up the rules and policies that shape our food systems. It is a dangerous worldview which allows corporations to control increasing shares of land, water and fisheries, to quasi-monopolize commercial seeds and intensively use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. It fails to recognize and address the harm that transnational corporations are causing. If this corporate capture is to dominate spaces such as the Food Systems Summit (FSS), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) or the UN’s organization for food and agriculture (FAO), it will further undermine democracy, self-determination, and peoples’ sovereignty.

The FSS has been organized to secure corporate control over food systems amidst the increasing pressure to address the failures of industrialized food systems. Through FSS, the UN may end up helping to consolidate a new ecosystem of powerful actors attempting to privatize governance for a corporate-environmental food regime. These actors are Northern governments, the EU in particular, business platforms such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD); philanthropies such as the Gates, Rockefeller, Stordalen and EAT Foundations and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food; multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN); international NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Care, as well as corporate-friendly scientists.

Our boycott effectively challenged the legitimacy of the FSS and prevented, for the moment, the creation of new, corporate aligned institutional structures.  Our concern in the immediate future will be to resist the capture of the CFS – including the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition – and the Rome based UN agencies, particularly the FAO. As a food sovereignty movement, we have pushed for the democratization of these institutions so that they are more responsive to small-scale food producers claims. In the last 25 years, we have had partial victories. However, all this is in danger now.  The multi-stakeholder coalition mentioned above is now pushing for CFS and FAO to follow up on the Summit results. They want to import from FSS the working methods of multi-stakeholder governance, i.e. ignoring existing rules of procedure; privileging ad hoc coalitions of action without known rules. These coalitions will surely lack transparency, multilateral inclusion, clear decision-making and accountability mechanisms, and will divert resources from the public programs of the UN agencies to these ad hoc, semi-privatized initiatives. We must resist this attempt and continue struggling for strengthening our communal and public institutions all the way from local to global so that food sovereignty can flourish.

In the spotlight 2

Corporations and food systems

Over the past few decades, corporate presence in food systems has expanded significantly across the world, enabled by the aggressive promotion and adoption of neoliberal economic and financial policies by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and most governments. Corporations have become powerful actors in practically every sphere related to food systems: production, storage, processing, packaging and labelling, distribution and retail, safety and quality standards, financing, consumer preferences, research, regulatory frameworks, etc.

Through mergers and acquisitions, a small number of agro-chemical and agro-food transnational corporations have formed mega corporations and greatly increased their economic power to determine what crops livestock farmers grow/raise; what equipment, seeds and breeds farmers use; production technologies, facilities and work conditions; procurement and retail prices; and dominate various aspects of national-international food supply chain and markets. Because of their easy access to finance capital, corporations are able to invest in and use the latest digital technologies to gain information about prices, consumer behaviour, land and water availability, genetic properties, etc., and exercise control over different components of food systems.   

Especially worrying is the expansion of corporate power in national, regional and international policy, regulatory and governance frameworks. Corporations use their financial clout and large market presence to shape policies, laws, regulations, social-environmental programmes, economic incentives and subsidies to secure their operations, financial gains and market power. Corporate lobbyists and experts work directly with government and multilateral agency officials to formulate trade-investment agreements, intellectual property protection and taxation rules, food and environmental safety standards, and immunity mechanisms from social, environmental and financial accountability. Corporations finance research and outreach to support their interests in policy debates and boost popular acceptance of their operations.

Through a complex, extensive network of business councils and multistakeholder platforms and processes, corporations present themselves as a necessary, positive force in addressing climate change, hunger, environmental destruction, pandemics and other crises, obscuring their own roles in creating and deepening these crises. The UNFSS is dominated by such an network within the WEF, and legitimizes partnerships between multilateral agencies, corporations and international NGOs and think-tanks, completely undermining the hundreds of millions of small-scale food producers and workers who feed much of the world through diverse, territorially rooted food systems.

The so-called solutions to the urgent problems facing the world emerging from the UNFSS are basically expensive, corporate controlled schemes, and patent protected technologies and products that will further expand corporate power into our food systems. They will divert much needed financial resources away from public goods, services and programmes, and perpetuate an unjust, unequal economic system in which the rights of people and communities will be secondary to corporate profits. To dismantle corporate power, we must challenge and change the governance structures through which it is gaining ground.

Newsletter no 45 – Editorial

Newsletter no 45 - Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems

Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems

This year marks 25 years since the paradigm of food sovereignty was launched at the World Food Summit 1996 in Rome as a direct challenge to market-based food security promoted through the World Trade Organisation (WTO).  Food sovereignty asserts the autonomy and agency of small-scale food producers and workers in the face of increasing corporate power over the entire realm of food.  Since its launch, the food sovereignty movement has grown, diversified, and birthed numerous initiatives to address historical and emerging injustices, inequalities, rights abuses, and oppressions. Today, the movement is at the cutting-edge of real systemic change, with millions of people all over the world engaged in and supporting solidarity economies, agroecology, territorial markets, cooperatives, the defense of land and territories, and the rights of small-scale food producers, workers, migrants, indigenous peoples, women and people living in protracted crises.

Ironically, this year, the United Nations will convene a Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) that is the polar opposite of food sovereignty. The structure, content, governance and outcomes of the UNFSS are dominated by actors affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF), as well as government and UN officials who believe that successfully tackling hunger, unemployment, climate change and biodiversity loss requires the central involvement of corporations since they have capital, technologies and infrastructure that surpass most nations and the entire UN system. 

The coincidence of these two moments clearly shows fundamentally opposing ideas about food systems. The UNFSS adopts a lens that serves the interests of the industrial, globalized, corporate controlled food system. By deepening dependency on corporate dominated global value chains, and capital-intensive and market mechanisms, this approach sidelines human rights and impedes real transformation of food systems. Food sovereignty, on the other hand, tackles root causes of hunger and malnutrition, emphasizes democratic control over food systems, confronts power asymmetries and calls for radical economic, social and governance changes to build just, equal, territorially rooted food systems that are in harmony with nature, revitalize biodiversity, and ensure the rights of people and communities. 

Corporations are using their considerable resources to co-opt the conceptualization and governance of food systems through financing, trade, investment, and multi-stakeholder platforms. The UNFSS is a dangerously perfect example of corporate designed multistakeholderism, where corporations can influence public decision making at the highest level but make no public interest commitments themselves. The UNFSS process has been characterized by a lack of transparency in decision-making and strong involvement of corporations in all parts of its structure, posing serious problems of accountability, legitimacy, and democratic control of the UN.

Over the past year we have demonstrated our ability to mobilize across multiple constituencies around the world against the corporate capture of food and for food sovereignty. We have succeeded in challenging the legitimacy of the Summit and prevented formal agreement to the creation of new institutions, such as a panel of experts on food systems.  The Counter-Mobilization to Transform Food Systems organized from July 25-28 reached almost 11,000 people world-wide.

Food is a basic need and a human right: food systems provide livelihoods for nearly a third of humanity and are intimately connected to health and ecosystems.  We need, therefore, to continue strengthening the convergence of food, health, environmental and climate justice movements, and continue to rise up against corporate food systems that are destroying our planet and our communities.

FIAN and Focus on the Global South

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Food sovereignty – resisting corporate capture of our food systems, no 45

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Agroecology in action

Newsletter no 20 - Agroecology and climate

Agroecology in action 1

Reproducing and exchanging seeds

The historical practices of reproducing and exchanging seeds with neighbours and between farms constitute a key strategy for good sovereignty and agroecology, which makes possible the construction, development and maintenance of diverse, complex, autonomous and resilient food systems.

The reproduction of seeds permits each family or farm to have the quantity of seeds at their disposal that they need – in order to plant or sow at the moment they consider most appropriate – which allows the productive system to be integrated into the family’s dynamic as well as the weather conditions. In addition, as Blanca from the Uruguayan Native and Indigenous Seed Network says; “When you produce your own seed, the seed is automatically «guaranteed», because you know what you are planting and what its behaviour will be.” As farm-saved seeds have developed a constant dialogue between farmers and their environment, their management is simpler and better adapted to local conditions – rendering it more resistant and less dependent on inputs. Seeds produced in this way can be planted with diverse ends: they can be used to produce food for the family and community, for animals and as a green manure.

As Pablo, also a member of the Network in the department of Tacuarembó in Uruguay says: “The exchange is so important because if one year you lose a variety you know that your neighbour will have it. In this way the community will never lose everything. For this reason working in groups and in networks is fundamental.” In the case of the Native and Indigenous Seed Network, the existence of 24 local groups has made it possible to recuperate, reproduce and exchange seeds in diverse conditions, enriching these productive agroecological systems.

Autonomy is not constructed from the level of the individual, but from a group-community level and through the process of exchange with other groups and communities. The practice of exchange feeds relationships between neighbours and builds the social fabric at a local, regional and national level. For this reason the organisation of different types of meetings throughout the year by the network is so important: Meetings of local groups, groups representatives at national level, regional meetings, and every two years a national level meeting of all members. These meetings are always accompanied by a party and celebration where seeds and knowledge are exchanged.

The most important issue – which gives continuity to this process of co-evolution of seeds and knowledge, is the permanence of people in the fields. For this it is vital to continue the struggle to ensure that people can live and produce from the land, in their territories.

Agroecology in action 2

Agroecology as a model of production

Ramrati Devi is a small scale farmer from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. Her husband was a farmer but like many others in India, he abandoned it due to poor yield that led to losses with each harvest. That was when Ramrati decided to take the reins in her hands. She became a member of Laghu Seemant Krishak Morcha or Small and Marginal Farmers Front, Uttar Pradesh. There, she learnt about agroecological practices. With organic farming techniques she changed things around for her family today. Simple practices – such as multiple cropping on her one-acre farm- have produced high yields and a variety of food. She grows as many as thirty-two different varieties of crops that include wheat, mustard, sugarcane, garlic, coriander, spinach and potatoes for her family’s daily consumption.  Her family of twelve members depends on the farm’s food.  Ramrati is a role model and preacher of agroecological practices now.

Besides its emphasis on sustaining the environment and social inclusion through participatory frameworks, agroecological models have produced impressive economic results in terms of yields, productivity, nutrition and efficiency. It also contributes significantly towards food security and sovereignty. Agroecology models are redefining the relationship between farmers, agriculture and nature where instead of machines, farmers’ families are toiling happily; instead of costly external inputs, only farm based inputs are the used in the form of biopesticdies and biofertilizers; where monoculture is replaced by biodiversity; and where women farmers have an equal status with their men folks as seeding, weeding, thrashing, harvesting are their forte.

Agro-Ecology is fast becoming a dominant agricultural paradigm for small-scale resource poor farmers around the world. Farmers are adopting this farming technique not only for their sustenance but also to resist the corporate agricultural model pushed through green revolution and then, the gene revolution. In this age of ever increasing cost of production, indebtedness and large-scale suicides, farmers have to make their choice for changing their agricultural practices towards holistic and ecological model.  The diversity of agro-ecological models being practiced in India offer them this option in the form of Natural Farming, Zero Budget Natural Farming, Permaculture, Organic Farming, Rishi Kheti. However Agroecology based organic farming is different from the neoliberal organic farming model being promoted by the same corporations who have thrived on green revolution technologies, making farmers dependent on non-sustainable and costly external inputs.

Many more farmers like Ramrati Devi are required to spread the agroecological paradigm to defeat the capitalist and export oriented neoliberal agriculture who has threatened the survival of millions of small and marginal farmers in India and around the world.

International Forum on Peasant Agroecology Mali 24th-27th of February

Voices from the field

Newsletter no 44 - Communicating for food sovereignty: people’s culture and popular education

Voice from the field 1

Illustrations and comics to promote food sovereignty and peasants’ rights

“The Amrita Bhoomi book of Illustration on Natural farming explores the experiences of rural farmers in their ecological practices of soil restoration whilst also highlighting the horror of industrial farming. Working with peasants and children at Amrita Bhoomi we collated stories and inputs, using the local white bird and the ever-giving earth worm to weave these stories.” say Chilli and Yeme who worked on this book (only in Kannada language).  “Using local symbols and folklore, we created a story to teach children the importance of the agroecology and natural farming as an alternative. School Children in our area now uses this book and develop short projects around it.” adds Chukki Nanjudaswamy from Amrita Bhoomi.

Meanwhile, Confédération Paysanne in France has developed an illustrated novel on corporate capture of the seed system. Damien Houdebine, National Secretary in charge of plant and vegetable production, talks about The History of seeds: Resistances to the privatization of living things : “The debates on seeds and GMOs are highly publicized but there is an abundance of incorrect information in circulation! We wanted to create accessible educational materials aimed, in particular, at young people. We think we’ve met that challenge with this comic! Its publication has been a real success. It is on the table at every peasant festival and accompanies us on all our actions for food sovereignty!”

Carlos Julio, an artist and activist with the MNCI Somos Tierra (Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indígena) in Argentina who illustrated the sketches of Peasant and Rural Women with Rights explains: “The best praise I usually receive as a cartoonist is when comrades from the Peasant Movement tell me “I felt reflected in that drawing”, “it expresses our struggles”, “it expresses our life”…”. Another praise that moves me is when they tell me “it made me laugh a lot”. I also know that when we make materials for reflection and debate, the drawings help to question reality, and to get a message across, beyond words. I really liked doing the drawings for Peasant and Rural Women with Rights. Showing peasant life, making people smile, making them think and discuss. That’s no mean feat”.

Voices from the field 2

Voz Campesina, the role of community radios in promoting food sovereignty

Azul Cordo, Real World Radio

Ten years ago, Real World Radio and The Latin American Coordinator of Rural Organizations (CLOC-Vía Campesina) created “Voz Campesina”. It is a radio programme that covers the main issues of the peasant movement, its struggles, challenges and achievements, and guarantees coverage of events organised by CLOC and its allies.

Voz Campesina has its own agenda and, at the same time, brings a peasant and popular, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-colonial and feminist perspective on other issues that affect everyone. For example, in the last year, it provided analysis on the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding that it is the consequence of the neoliberal systemic crisis that we have been going through for years, with an emphasis on the solutions that the peasantry already has in place, such as agroecology and food sovereignty.

Each programme seeks to guarantee the representation of men, women, young people and adults from CLOC and from the South and Central American and Caribbean regions. In its content, peasant experiences for access to land are relevant, along with analysis and denunciations from the regions. Broadening the dissemination is a challenge. The programme is available on the RMR and CLOC websites and can also be played on podcast platforms.

Voices from the field 3

Peasant newspapers, an example from South Korea

Jeungsik Shim, editor in chief of KPL News, South Korea

The KPL News is a newspaper that is run and distributed by the Korean Peasant League. Since its foundation in 1990, KPL realized the need of its own media. KPL continued to struggle for peasant issues, but the existing media was not paying attention, or they distorted the struggles. Finally in 2006, KPL took over a weekly newspaper specializing in agriculture and issued the first edition on September 25th as reorganized KPL News (Han-kuk-nong-jung in Korean).

It is a weekly newspaper specializing in agriculture, covering news on farmers and rural areas. Newspapers are published every Monday and are published four times a month and 48 times a year, and are delivered to over 30,000 peasants across the country. It also has a web version http://www.ikpnews.net/ which is updated frequently so that readers who do not receive paper newspapers can read them anywhere in the country.

Voices from the field 4

Arpillería, an art form for telling and not forgetting

Blanca Nubia Anaya Díaz, member of the Movimiento Social en defensa de Ríos Sogamoso y Chucurí, Colombia

The Movimiento Social en defensa de Ríos Sogamoso y Chucurí is a movement that was born to oppose the Hidrosogamoso dam, and is also part of the Ríos Vivos Colombia movement. Arpillería is an art form that allows us to tell what we have lived through in a different language. In our eagerness to make the problem visible and bring the message to others, we took threads, needles, scraps of cloth and began to stitch everyday scenes onto jute.

We make these memories so that those who see them will not allow megaprojects to cause this damage in their lands. We capture what we have lived through, which is why in the scenes there are dead fish and few people. We use rustic materials and support the work with collage. We want to show people what we have lost.

The idea is to continue with arpillería because it is a very beautiful technique. Between threads and needles, we chat, talk, tell stories. When we started making these environmental memoirs, we discovered that our dead were not free, that our displaced people were not the bad ones, that all this had a background that little by little we discovered and we captured in the jutes.

We are going to continue working because we want to create a memory so that this is not repeated – a memory of peace. We fight for peace and our weapons are a needle and thread.