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 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.

Boxes

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

Box 1

The Nyéléni newsletter facilitates a pedagogy of peoples in the struggle for food sovereignty

In 2007 the Nyéléni Forum brought together representatives from organisations and movements of small-scale food providers, consumers and civil society organisations engaged in the struggle for food sovereignty. These participants shared knowledge, visions, strategies and practices for transforming their communities, societies and economies through the principles of food sovereignty. These discussions revealed the wealth of knowledge continuously created by food sovereignty practitioners even as they faced social, economic, environmental and political challenges. They also highlighted the centrality of food sovereignty as an alliance-building platform to resist neoliberalism, global capitalism, authoritarianism, and all forms of injustice, inequality and violence. Participants pledged to build solidarity within and across movements, genders, cultures and regions by strengthening communication, political education, awareness and peer-to-peer learning.

The Nyéléni newsletter was created to respond to all these commitments: to give voice to the priorities, concerns, experiences and knowledge of the food sovereignty movement, and to foster dialogue across sectors and actors.

The newsletter was conceived as an educational tool to contextualize and explain complex issues to movement actors—especially those at the grassroots and on the frontlines—as well as a vehicle to bring the first hand experiences of those actors to the fore. While allied researchers are invited to contribute articles, the newsletter mainly contains the movements’ analysis and views. These analyses are complemented by direct testimonies from grassroots actors, information about struggles and initiatives, and outreach materials from movements across the world. The movement members decide the topics of each edition. The articles are written in an accessible style that is easy to understand and translate into other languages. The newsletter can be downloaded/read online for free (in English, Spanish and French) at nyeleni.org and all content is copy-free.

Box 2

Brasil de Fato[1]: a popular communication alternative against the hegemony of the mass media

Brasil de Fato was officially launched on 25 January 2003 during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre with the aim of breaking new ground in the hegemonic dispute in the field of communication. Since its creation, it has covered economic and political events; it promotes the activities and struggles of social movements in Brazil and Latin America from a left-wing point of view, presenting analyses of the current situation and national and international events.

As an alternative media it contributes to the analysis and contextualisation of another Brazil. It presents a Brazil in constant mobilisation and identifies the scenarios of political disputes in order to create a communication agenda by putting on the table issues that the mainstream media intentionally hide or minimise. The alternative media affirms the vision of another world proposed by leftist theorists, creating space for the approach of criticism and cultural valorisation from the popular classes, workers who defend their political interests and promote the debating of ideas. Brasil de Fato is also a space of denunciation deeply committed to transformation, with a vision of international solidarity, pluralist in its ideas, and a source of information and reflection for activists in support of the social struggle.

With media such as Brasil de Fato, a communication strategy is created in the face of the communication hegemony of the dominant groups and is able to transform the national and international political agenda by adding the voices of the movements that fight for the construction of another possible world.

[1] Brasil de Fato is a Brazilian online newspaper and a radio agency. https://www.brasildefato.com.br/

Box 3

Peasant songs – The carriers of wisdom, memories and resistance

To understand the rich and diverse history and evolution of peasant and indigenous practices, one only needs to listen to the countless number of folklore and songs that exist among the people around the world.  In this section we look at two peasant songs from Uganda and Turkey that communicate local struggles of the peasants and Indigenous Peoples.

Icamo Irudu Laki, Uganda (Luo/Lango language)

Composed during a period of food scarcity due to the community’s shift from growing local food crops whose seeds they had control of, to new crops introduced by the government. The harvest from the new crops was sold to middlemen cheaply, leaving farmers unable to buy food for them and their families. The new crops made farmers dependent on the seed traders and government for seeds since they could not save, multiply and freely share them, hence lost seed sovereignty. The song encourages small-scale farmers to go back to local food plants that promote a farmer-managed seed system and address malnutrition and hunger. The song also shows that when you eat local food plants, it’s as if you’re brushing your teeth because they are healthy and free from chemicals. When it’s being sung, there are some additional words that are said by women as they share their achievement stories about overcoming food scarcity in their households using traditional local food plants.

Original version in Luo/Lango

ICAMO IRUDU LAKI          
 Icamo irudu laki X3
 Can dek rac
 Gin omio lango camo ajonga doo
 Can dek rac
  
 Nen ibot Joci gi doo
 Can dek rac
 Gin omio lango camo ajonga doo
 Can dek rac
 Translation
  
 EAT AND BRUSH YOUR TEETH 
Eat local food plants and brush your teeth X3
Food scarcity is bad
The reason why Langis* eat local foods plants without pasting or frying
Food scarcity is bad
  
Look at it from those of Joci**
Food scarcity is bad
The reason why Langis eat local food plants without   pasting or frying
Food scarcity is bad

*Langis are people from the Lango sub-region in the northern region of Uganda, most of who grow crops and keep livestock.

** Joci is the name of a person/neighbour whose household is struggling with food scarcity. It can be replaced with any name of anyone in the community struggling with food scarcity.

İşkencedere’den (Eşkincidere) elime kalan bir çakıl taşı, Turkey

This song was composed during the resistance of the Ikızdere people against a private company with strong ties to the government and a bad history of environmental/land destruction. The company, through a presidential decree, is now destroying the İşkencedere valley for the quarry needed for port construction in İkizdere, Rize.  Ikızdere villagers, led by peasant women took action to stop this destruction of their valley by keeping watch over it while seeking legal recourse and an interdict. Women are in the front line defending their land and the rights of the nature. People are keeping watch on the trees, using the mountain, forest roads as their roads are blocked by the military.

 Original version in Turkish

İşkencedere’den (Eşkincidere) elime kalan bir çakıl taşı
  
Bir gün Boğacak seni anaların gözyaşı
Hep bulanık akıyor İşkencedereleri
  
İki tabur askerle beklersin dozerleri
Ben köyümde büyüdüm
Bilmiyorum şehri
Vermedin insanlara, dozer kadar değeri
  
Translation
                
A pebble left in my hands from Eşkencidere. 
  
One day, the tears of mothers will suffocate you. 
  
The Eşkencidere running muddy now.
You put two battalions of soldiers to wait for the bulldozers. 
I was born in a village, I do not know the city. 
You didn’t give value to the people as you have given to the bulldozers!
  

Box 4

CLOC-Via Campesina school of communication

The Latin American Coordinator of Rural Organizations (CLOC-Via Campesina) held the fifth Continental School of Communication in 2020 as part of its process of technical, political and ideological training for organisational purposes. After several events held in different countries, always for communicators from the organisations that make up CLOC and its historical allies, the 2020 School was virtual.

CLOC is a continental organisation that brings together peasant, Indigenous, Afro-descendant and women’s organisations from 21 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This fifth School made it possible to study the current context of the dispute in communication; on the one hand, as an instrument of manipulation used by imperialism against progressive countries and social movements, and on the other hand, as a popular tool for the construction and strengthening of the peasant movement. They were also able to deepen their understanding of internationalism and its implications for popular struggles.

During the process, the communicators got to know and evaluate the current communication work of the CLOC at the continental level, as a strategy against hegemony in the class struggle, and in favour of food sovereignty, agrarian reform and agroecology.

This fifth School also organised practical workshops with expert facilitators and activists from CLOC and allied organisations, such as ALBA Movimientos, the Continental Day for Democracy and against Neoliberalism, Real World Radio, Código Sur, and communicators from former progressive governments, such as that of Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Through these workshops, the communicators strengthened their skills in areas such as photography, video, audio, graphic design, social networks, newsletters and internal communication.

“It was an important space for exchanging knowledge and updating knowledge, given the great activity that we develop as activists and communicators of the organisations. In general terms, our expectations were fulfilled, although it is never enough when it comes to improving in order to contribute to the great battle for ideas in the communications arena”. Participant of the 5th CLOC School of Communication.

The very rich process of training in popular communication in this fifth school provided many lessons, challenges and, above all, a collective that is growing in transformative dreams and hopes, strengthened in the revolutionary and internationalist spirit.

Communicating to build and to transform. From Our Lands, Unity, Struggle and Resistance, for Socialism and the Sovereignty of Our Peoples!

In the spotlight

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

In the spotlight

The role of rural popular communications in the struggles of the peoples

Communication is a fundamental tool for all struggles, but it becomes absolutely essential for those that are territorially dispersed. The peasant struggle may have physical distances of thousands of miles between people, but it is a unified struggle. Popular communication in rural areas has several roles – to transmit knowledge, to resist corporate media, to recognize other communities, to reach where hegemonic media does not reach, to work from a position of solidarity, to contribute to popular education and to support the struggle.

We talked about popular and rural communication with a number of people – Viviana Catrileo, leader of The National Rural and Indigenous Women’s Association (ANAMURI) in Chile, which is part of the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC-La Via Campesina); Elizabeth Mpofu, general coordinator of La Via Campesina, from Zimbabwe; Anuka De Silva, from the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) in Sri Lanka, member of the International Coordinating Committee of La Via Campesina (ICC), and from the peasant-based media Visura Radio.

“Rural popular communications exist in many different forms and are based on our traditions as peasants and Indigenous People. These include peasant songs, mistica, paintings, art and dance, among other things,” explains Elizabeth Mpofu about the role of communication within communities. These communications are key to intergenerational exchange with diverse objectives – “not only to affirm our identity and belonging, but also to perpetuate our harmony with mother earth, our source of life, our gratitude for our food sources, and to preserve dignity and respect for humanity”.

Telling stories of struggle and resistance, passing on teachings and lessons learned about forms of organization and societies is essential. Especially, explains Viviana Catrileo, in times when “modernity and capitalist conceptions of development have been pulverizing the value of multidimensional life in our lands and their cultural and spiritual diversities, which is linked to the philosophy of ‘kvme mogen’ or living well in its maximum expression”.

For Anuka De Silva, popular media are necessary because communities do not have spaces in the mass media and often do not have access to them either. “We really need to build a solidarity group of strong media for the people’s struggle,” she says.

Popular communication connects people, unites struggles, promotes solidarity, and crosses borders. From the experience of La Via Campesina, Mpofu recounts that the slogan of this immense worldwide movement, “Globalize the struggle, globalize hope,” has been realised thanks to citizen and community based media that in her words “have created a network of global solidarity and built alliances.” “Through the awareness created by alternative media, we have been able to grow and connect the dots of our struggles to build the movement for food sovereignty,” adds Mpofu. From Sri Lanka, Visura Radio shares knowledge from farmers, problematises issues such as health and environmental impact, and tells stories that show the possibility and benefits of building a more liveable reality. This is their contribution to strengthening and building food sovereignty.

No initiative that challenges power is free of difficulties and risks. De Silva tells us: “we have a military government here, they are trying to control us, we have suffered some security threats”. Catrileo also remarks: “To dream and communicate from the anti-hegemonic path is increasingly dangerous and more difficult when it is the impoverished and plundered peoples who intend to make our communication an alternative to the neoliberal model”. “The criminalization of social protest also falls on the media and its popular communicators because at the same time it constitutes a threat to the established order”, she adds.

In the same way, it is a great challenge to sustain economic independence and the lack of material resources. Time management and the insufficient number of people to take on tasks (often there are no resources for paid workers) are also issues that the popular media must overcome in order to continue their work.

Communication is part of a whole. In Mpofu’s words, it is one more ingredient in what will be the final dish. “La Via Campesina is like a pot that cooks and combines and mixes the different ingredients to become a good, tasty and healthy meal, where the diner can identify the individual ingredients while enjoying the meal as a whole. This is how La Via Campesina gives importance to popular rural communications: it embraces diversity to build a collective voice.”

In this diversity we find the intersection of struggles, the need for popular, rural communication with a feminist perspective. “This feminism that seeks to vindicate women in the historical struggle of the peoples and their revolutions is an invitation to add the voices that have been anonymous and marginalized for centuries by patriarchal societies,” says Catrileo. She also emphasises the cross over with the territorial. “The peasant and popular struggles in which we women are framed have clear expressions in the land, in the care and respect for mother earth and the defence of the biodiversity that sustains the balance of nature”.

Rural popular communications are key in the struggle of the peoples. They accompany, build, disseminate and unite the struggles, at the same time that they teach how to live in other ways. Says Mpofu: “Every time we get together as La Via Campesina, we sing, dance, do mistica and exchange information in a way that does not promote competition among members, but rather complements them”.

Newsletter no 44 – Editorial

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

Communicating for food sovereignty: people’s culture and popular education

Illustration: Chille and Yemee for Amrita Bhoomi agroecology school in India.

Food sovereignty, among the multitude of ideas that it encompasses, is also about defending the billion diversities that exist on this planet, and is a celebration of our many unique practices, tastes, cultures and customs. An important pillar in this struggle for food sovereignty is the role played by popular rural cultures, of peasants, fisherfolk, family farmers and Indigenous Peoples. These communities are inheritors of a rich and diverse tradition of oral and visual forms of communication, whether in the form of folklore, legends, tales, proverbs, songs, murals and more. These varied forms of communication are also the recorded histories of human struggles and survival.

However, this diversity is, today, under threat. Just as the agro-industrial complex pushes for a homogenous, singular view of a global agrifood system, the international-corporate-media complex has also resulted in a singular, centralised form of mainstream communication. A handful of corporations today control much of what we read or watch and how people access information.

Despite the challenges, organised peoples and communities around the world are countering this marginalisation of peoples’ culture. The current edition of the Nyeleni newsletter focuses on the wide variety of popular, community-driven communication approaches, drawing inspiration from local symbols, context and culture. It explores how these approaches are integral to pedagogy among peasants, family farmers, Indigenous Peoples and fisherfolk, crucial for political formation and popular education, and an essential element of our struggle for food sovereignty.

Friends of The Earth International, Real World Radio and La Via Campesina

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 42 - Ten years of Nyéléni - Much to celebrate!

Voices from the field 1

Women in the struggle for Food Sovereignty – We want to continue to play our key role: feeding humanity

Excerpt from an interview with Francisca Rodriguez of Anamuri, CLOC-Via Campesina, Chile.

Peasants of the world are highly diverse peoples, communities, organisations and families. We represent different cultures and worldviews.

The process of discussing and debating around food sovereignty has allowed us to recognise and value our peasant activities — and recognise that women have been fundamental to the development of agriculture and continue to be key to the production, processing and transformation of food.

We have strongly promoted Agroecology – not as something new that is emerging – but rather as part of a process of recovering ancestral practices in agriculture, which have been developed by indigenous and original peoples up until the present day.
Never in history have we properly realized the value of the countryside for the survival of humanity itself – we are the guardians of the land, we live where the resources are, and our task is to fight to preserve them for current and future generations.

We are proud to be what we are, we do not want to migrate to the cities or be forced abroad by force, we want to continue fulfilling our fundamental role: feeding humanity with our work, our knowledge and our natural goods, ensuring that the right to food is fulfilled for all without exception, and that Mother Earth is cared for while we obtain our sustenance from her.

Voices from the field 2

Food Sovereignty – challenges and hopes for fisher communities

Ibu Zainab, member of Solidaritas Perempuan Anging Mammiri – Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The challenge faced by fisherwomen in our struggle for food sovereignty is that businesses and corporations are taking away the ocean which is the source of our livelihoods. These corporations deny us access to the ocean, pollute the coastal environment, and even trigger conflicts within communities. Our government has never listened to our demands, but instead sided with these corporations.

As women, our identity as fisherwomen is also not recognized and is often attached to our husbands’ role as fishermen. I hope that the government protects our right to food and our access to marine resources so we can fish and sustain our livelihood as small-scale food producers. There must be a solution to ensure the struggle for space between company interests, government agendas and community rights does not marginalize fisherwomen. Because Indonesia is an archipelago, fishermen and fisherwomen are heroes of the nation in ensuring a healthy diet (fish as major source of protein) and our rights must be respected, protected and fulfilled.

Voice from the field 3

The Importance of alliances for Food Sovereignty from the perspective of two US women farmers

How does organizing in cross-sectoral alliances fit into the global effort toward Food Sovereignty?
Patti Naylor, USFSA member and Coordinating Committee member of the Civil Society and Indigenous Mechanism for North America.

As a farmer, I see around me how corporate-dominated agriculture does not support rural communities, farmer livelihoods, or Mother Earth’s essential sources of life. Nor does it produce healthy food – it instead relies on long, complex supply chains that result in highly processed foods. Food sovereignty is necessary to replace this disastrous system. Coming together in organizations and building our collective strength into alliances is critical as the momentum of industrial agriculture gains speed and power worldwide, becoming a force that could become impossible to stop. Time is critical. The injustices of capitalism, impacts of climate change, and disruptions to territorial markets due to COVID-19 are putting food producers in dire circumstances.

Just like upheavals in the past, farmers, fishers, peasants, and rural workers who cannot survive economically will leave their farms and communities. The production of local food and even the ability to organize in resistance will be greatly diminished. Rural areas will be depopulated as people move to cities in search of jobs. These changes may be irreversible. As we recognize the urgency of these situations, we must continue to build alliances that are strong and are based on clearly defined, common goals to reach food sovereignty for all peoples.

Can you tell about the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA)?
Jennifer Taylor, national coordinator for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.

Like the Nyeleni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty, the USFSA membership is made up of family farmers, fisherfolk, ranchers, farm workers, women, youth, rural and urban workers, consumers, etc. who believe that food is critical to humanity and that healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through agroecological methods is the basis of healthy food systems and healthy environments. We believe in the benefits of agroecology- food sovereignty policies.

The USFSA upholds the right to food as a basic human right. As an agroecology-organic BIPOC small farmer promoting wellbeing and quality of life, I would emphasize that our Human Right is to the availability of and access to healthy, nutritious food, that benefits healthy farms and community environments, and that fosters healthy communities — this critical emphasis upholds the right to local and global food sovereignty and is inclusive of underserved farming populations, black indigenous farmers and farmers of color and their communities. Participatory capacity building of local and global agroecology-organic smallholder farmers and their communities is vital to enable healthy local and global food systems. USFSA supports participatory capacity building strategies that enable the wellbeing, livelihoods, and ability of local and global black indigenous farmers and farmers of color and their communities.

Voice from the field 4

Agroecology is not just a set of practices, but a way of life

Anuka Desilva, MONLAR/ LVC, Sri Lanka.

Agroecology is not just a set of practices, but a way of life. It is as much about nurturing our soil, our fields – as it is about solidarity between our peoples. Without solidarity between people, there is no agroecology.

In Sri Lanka, the young collective of peasants from Dikkubura, Ahangama and Galle have attended agroecological formation sessions, met peasants from other regions, and studied and debated on not just the practises we follow in the field, but also the politics of food in general.

Through several training sessions, our collective learnt and exchanged information regarding the preparation of beejamrutha, jeevamrutha, ghana jeevamrutha, agniastra and other inputs used in natural farming. We also learned about dry-land horticulture and different techniques of grafting in horticulture crops. Various seed saving techniques were discussed too. These were the practical aspects. However, we do not just stop there. We also studied the dynamics of the global food system that is now in the hands of transnational corporations. We analysed the impacts of free-trade agreements on local production and consumption. We studied the gender and caste disparity in the ownership of land in South Asia and much more. So the training sessions are often a mix of practical and political aspects of the peasantry.

Agroecology is at its core giving autonomy to people to design their own food systems, based on local resources and local labour. It is a system that allows us to produce food in harmony with nature and that prioritises the food sovereignty of the local community above everything else.

We need to be clear about this – a set of sustainable practices alone will not help advance Agroecology. The training sessions we have in LVC are about both the practical and political aspects of Agroecology that allow us to make it a tool for achieving food sovereignty.

Voice from the field 5

Food Sovereignty – challenges and hopes for pastoral communities

Fernando Garcia, Campo Adentro, European Shepherds Network — WAMIP, Spain.

In April, while the Covid crisis was at its worst, different social movements’ representatives of the Food Sovereignty movement wrote a letter titled “COVID-19 — Small-scale food producers stand in solidarity and will fight to bring healthy food to all.”(https://www.foodsovereignty.org/covid-19/).

We can hardly foresee the impact that this crisis might entail.
On one hand there is a growing concern regarding the unsustainable patterns of our food models – especially the danger of intensive livestock systems and factory farms which are associated with ecosystem disruption due to industrial agribusiness expansion (such as native forests being removed for palm oil plantations).

On the other hand climate change is more present than ever, and the importance of small-scale food producers is crucial. This crisis is a sort of “stress test” as economists say, for an entire food system that is supplying an ever-growing urban population and is based on globalized transport and circulation. Maybe patterns we have seen increasing till now could change.

This crisis is surely hitting small businesses harder (such as shops and restaurants), which are generally more closely linked to small-scale local producers. Some actors – with e-commerce now king – might promote an even faster digitalization of food systems driven by corporate interests and profit.

Pastoralists in Europe and the world look at these scenarios with great concern, but also with the confidence that comes with the knowledge that they are a vital part of the solution. We hope that the environmentalist movement doesn’t simplify the slogan “no more meat” and impose an urban-western-centred view of veganism, but that it will instead promote a responsible consumption of quality, healthy and local animal products from pastoralist systems.

Grassroot organisations, joined in a renewed World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples & Pastoralists – WAMIP — are now active in different spaces and working to bridge the discussions on Agroecology and Food Sovereignty (born in the context of peasant struggles) to the particularities of pastoralism. We together made and acknowledge the Declaration of Peasants – and Pastoralists – Rights and now we need to make sure that real spaces of participation and recognition put pastoralists first — such as at the Pastoralist Knowledge Hub of the FAO, or the GASL and LEAP initiatives . We have managed to have the FAO COAG (Committee on Agriculture) pass the proposal making 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, and trust IPC and other civil society processes.

The hardest thing is staying in touch in spite of the distances, and to make time for building alliances besides our everyday work…but if we don’t, anti-pastoralist policies and economic interests will put in danger our way of life, and the territories and landscapes that with our animals we nurture.

Voices from the field 6

The fruits of Food Sovereignty — organized youth

David Otieno, Kenyan Peasant League Youth/LVC, Kenya.

Food sovereignty is about food producers and consumers taking total control of the food production process from seeds, land and water to markets, inputs and distribution. We as young people are critical in ensuring that Food Sovereignty is attained. Our greatest strength lies in our collective capacity to live and build a more fair and just world.

Within LVC, we have been organizing ourselves through training processes to establish youth brigades that strive to correct the current broken global food system, which is based on agribusinesses that are also responsible for climate change. We, the youth, have been doing this in order to place LVC members who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than at the mercy of markets and corporations as envisioned by agribusiness.

Through LVC Southern and Eastern Africa, our youth articulation has been in the forefront in reclaiming wastelands for food production. A good example is in South Africa where youth, members of the Food Sovereignty Campaign and the Landless People’s Movement – all members of LVC – have been engaged in an “occupy” campaign aimed at turning wastelands into spaces for producing food.

In Kenya through the Kenyan Peasants League youth collective we are engaged in ensuring that seeds and food has been distributed to members and others who have been in dire need during the coronavirus pandemic. Our efforts have also included assisting older members to till and plant their farms and documenting all the seeds among members to ensure ease of distribution.

MST youth brigades have also been engaged in reconstruction processes especially following cyclone Idai that hit most parts of Southern Africa and were also involved in solidarity initiatives during the coronavirus pandemic.

Looking back at the Nyeleni forum for Food Sovereignty held in 2007 in a small Malian village, one sees that food sovereignty and youths are strongly linked: the struggle for food sovereignty has helped organize youths while an organized youth is ensuring the achievement of food sovereignty.