Peasant Struggles for Land, Seeds and Water in Africa
By Tanya Kerssen and Celeste Ariel Peifer, Food First
On April 17 International Day of Peasant Struggle, people around the world will come together to celebrate and support the struggle of rural people to survive and continue feeding the world. The privatization of land, seeds and water threatens to shift control of these vital resources away from peasants and into the hands of multinational corporations. Since the food and financial crisis of 2008, this struggle has intensified, particularly in Africa. Resources managed by peasants to produce food have been eyed by corporations as a new avenue for profit. Eager to increase state treasuries, many African governments have obliged, leading to a wave of back-room land deals and undemocratic development projects. In the face of these resource-grabs, small farmers and peasants are strengthening their organizations and building alliances to assert their right to produce food on the land.
FULL ARTICLE: http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/3393
Bury the Corporate Food System! Peasant agriculture can feed the world!
La Via Campesina
The time has come to radically change the corporate food system. La Via Campesina, a movement representing more than 200 million farmers around the world - women and men - proposes Food Sovereignty as a effective and fair way to produce and distribute food in every community, every province, and every country.
Implementing food sovereignty means defending small scale farming, agroecology and local production whenever possible. It requires that governments support this new paradigm by giving farmers access to land, water, seeds, credit and education, and by protecting them from cheap imports, creating public or farmer-owned stocks and managing production.
Defending food sovereignty would provide livelihoods to billions of people and reduce poverty, the majority of which is a rural phenomenon. Of the 1.4 billion people who suffer from extreme poverty in the developing countries today, 75 per cent live and work in rural areas.
Local food production and direct sales from farmers to consumers guarantee that food remains outside of the capitalist monopoly game. It makes it less subject to speculation. Moreover, sustainable farming allows the environment and the soil to regenerate, protecting biodiversity and people's health. It is also more resilient to climate change and helps stop global warming.
Commemorate International Peasants Day – Get Involved!
April 17th marks International Peasants Day. International peasants – family farmers, rural women, and communities around the world – are on the frontline of the world food crisis. Even though they are the primary producers of food for their communities, they face the greatest threat of hunger. They are innovative stewards of the land, yet are forced to defend themselves against dispossession. The biggest threats to their livelihood right now are “land grabs,” where another country’s government or corporation purchases a developing country’s agricultural land, capitalizing on the short-term need for money in developing countries in exchange for long-term survival. The Food First Information Action Network (FIAN) has a current campaign to stop this practice which is endangering hundreds of millions, and they want your help.
Find out More: http://www.whyhunger.org/programs/3-newsflash/864-latest-news-from-global-movements.html
US events for April 17 International Peasant Day
On April 17, more than 100 events are held each year to defend a food system based on food sovereignty, justice and equality: small-scale farming, agro-ecology and local production. Governments can support this paradigm by giving farmers access to land, water, seeds, credit and education, and by protecting them from cheap imports, creating public or farmer-owned stocks and managing production. Food sovereignty would provide livelihoods to billions of people and reduce poverty, particularly in rural areas where 75 per cent of the 1.4 billion people suffering from extreme poverty reside.
Find Out More: http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/category/peasants-farmers-ranchers/
The Coming Global Food Fight
By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh
April 8th, 2011
Food prices around the world are surging. Between July of last year and this January alone, the price of wheat has doubled. Indeed, the cost of food has now passed the record levels of 2008, when angry citizens staged huge protests in dozens of countries. Currently, protesters across the Middle East include lowering food prices among their demands. When prices go up even a bit, millions more people starve. ...
In Tunisia and Egypt, the average person spends more than a third of their household budget on food, and thus more people feel food price hikes daily in the pits of their stomachs.
A country has “food sovereignty” when its people consume safe and nutritious food largely grown by their own small farmers. Significantly fewer countries sustain this sovereignty today than a generation ago. The reigning development model pushed by World Bank and other experts has left many countries exporting more cash crops like flowers and gourmet vegetables, and importing more of their staple foods.
But there is more to food sovereignty than freedom from imports. In richer countries, food purchases make up a relatively small percent of household budgets. Here in the United States, we spend an average of only seven percent of our budgets on food, although that number rises in poor urban neighborhoods.
In Tunisia and Egypt, however, the average person spends more than a third of their household budget on food, and thus more people feel food price hikes daily in the pits of their stomachs.
FULL ARTICLE: http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/articles/coming-global-food-fight
West Africa: Women in Agriculture
Food sovereignty – the ability to have access to land and the right and freedom to grow (and keep) healthy and affordable food – is not a concept generally applied to citizens of the United States. However, women in many countries, like those in West Africa, have no legal right to own the land they farm or even to keep the food they grow on it.
Fatou Batta, Co-Coordinator for West Africa from Groundswell International, spoke recently in Seattle about the causes of food insecurity in Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso; the role of rural women in agricultural production and food security; the challenges rural West African women face; and some of the solutions they have developed.
...In sub-Saharan Africa, women provide more than 50% of agricultural labor – the highest proportion in the world. In rural Burkina Faso more than 80% of the women are responsible for all farming activities. In some areas of western Burkina Faso, women must work to repay the dowry paid by their husbands, and to do so – and to feed their families – they have to cultivate highly degraded plots no longer useful for raising crops to be sold commercially. ... Despite the importance of their roles, women farmers are not involved by policy makers and funding sources in decisions regarding rural development programs and policies. They have little access to training on technical and management issues and they are not able to access equipment and inputs that are intended for family farms, yet are controlled by the men of the household.
Read More: http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/04/west-africa-women-in-agriculture
Haitians Still Seek to Lead Reconstruction Efforts
March 31, 2011
We [Hatians] reaffirm that the alternative construction of our country, and the viability of a future different from what obtains today, involves a process of radical break with current trends:
- A break with the exclusion which is expressed in the relationship between the rural and the urban sectors, between Port-au-Prince and its hinterland, between men and women, and in the refusal to build accessible and universal social services. It is unacceptable that in the 21st century nearly 50% of the population is illiterate, almost 700,000 children are not enrolled in school, and 630 women die per 100,000 live births.
- A break with the dependence which is expressed through an almost total submission of much of the political class to the great powers, a de facto tutelage brought about by the establishment of MINUSTAH in 2004, which is moving towards a process of unbridled recolonization with the introduction of the IHRC in April 2010. The role played by the international community in decisions regarding the presidential and legislative elections of 28 November 2010 and March 20, 2011 contributes to this increased dependence.
- A break with the hyper-concentrated, extroverted, anti-peasantry, and anti-national growth model expressed through the model of international outsourcing, over-exploitation, speculation, monopolies, and a predatory State. We need to build a development model based on agriculture and agro-industry geared to the priority needs of the domestic market in order to meet our food and energy needs. We need an economic model which breaks with the logic of speculation, and the hijacking of our economic resources by a predatory regime of cronies, and focuses on the production of wealth, the promotion and development of our national culture, and the recovery of our forestry capital.
- A break with the prevailing relationship between State and Nation and property relations, which must be expressed through the establishment of a State which cares about its people, which redefines the collective space, and effects land tenure and agrarian reform in both rural and urban areas.
- A break with the colonial reading of our country which must be expressed through the elimination of a discourse that conveys an utter contempt for our culture and our historical path.
Find Out More: http://grassrootsinternational.org/news/blog/haitians-still-seek-lead-reconstruction-efforts
Landmark conference on land grabbing: Large-scale
agricultural investments do undermine food security
International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty | 12 April 2011
Participants at the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing overwhelmingly found that land grabbing is occurring at a scale and speed as never before, and resulting in widespread displacement and dispossession of rural and urban communities, especially smallhold agricultural producers. Held on 6-8 April at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, the Conference was organised by the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI) in collaboration with the Journal of Peasant Studies and hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium at the IDS. ...
"Land grabs, which aim at 20% profits for investors, are all about financial speculation," said Andrea Ferrante of la Via Campesina. "This is why land grabbing is completely incompatible with food security: food production – or any other legitimate economic activity - can only bring profits of 3-5%. So land grabbing simply enhances the commodification of agriculture whose sole purpose is the over-remuneration of speculation capital".
Full Report: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/18433
MORE:
- Land working group of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (http://wgart.foodsovereignty.org/)
- Land Research Action Network (http://www.landaction.org)
- Conference papers can be downloaded at www.future-agricultures.org
