Source: Via Campesina

Today’s the International Day of Peasants’ Struggle, and there’ll be over 60 actions taking place around the world to celebrate it.

The day is as good as any to write about a concern that every writer about social movements has to face. It’s a question about representation. While I’ve certainly got some ideas about the structure of the modern food system, and am happy to share them, the voices of the people most directly involved can often get muffled by voices like mine.

So, on the contact form, I’ve wangled a way for folk (particularly the media) to get directly in touch with farmers and peasant movements in Via Campesina. Can’t think of something more appropriate for today than for me to get out of the way of farmers and landless people speaking for themselves. ... read more »

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Posted on 17 April, 2008 - 16:36

So here's a response from Via Campesina to the food price crisis. I imagine that in the wake of the food riots, the temptation to say 'told you so' must have been overwhelming to the representatives of farmers' and landless peoples' movements around the world.

But instead they've an admirable critique of some of the dominant myths about the way our food comes to us, about who wins and loses from the high prices, and what to do about it. Their solutions are ones that have been proposed for decades. The question is whether anyone will listen to them now, or whether the shock doctrine will prevail here too, with food corporations seeking to privatise the food system yet further. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 April, 2008 - 13:15

Here's an interesting document from Via Campesina, provocatively titled Small Scale Farmers are Cooling Down the Earth. To see how they do it, scroll down to the lists.... ... read more »

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Posted on 24 November, 2007 - 16:46

Although the front page here is usually reserved as a place where I fulminate on a particular agriculture-related theme, I wanted to draw attention today to other peoples attempts to speak out against corporate agriculture. On Sunday at the G8 summit in Rostock, Germany, over 5,000 protesters participated in an International Day of Action on Agriculture.

Do check out these splendid photos of the recent protests, brutally repressed by police. ... read more »

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Posted on 6 June, 2007 - 05:27

Syngenta Threatens to Violently Expel the Family Farmers of the Via Campesina from the Free Land encampment: Act Now!

The multinational Syngenta Seeds is pressuring the Governor of the State of Paraná to expel the family farmers of the Via Campesina currently residing on the Free Land encampment with police force.

The 120 families occupied the area more than a year ago, in protest to the environmental crime committed by Syngenta. The multinational illegally cultivated genetically-modified soy and corn at the site, within the protective zoner of the Iguaçu National Park. The family farmers demanded that Syngenta pay the fine of US$ 465,000, imposed on the corporation by the IBAMA, the federal environmental agency. In November of 2006, the Governor of Paraná expropriated Syngenta´s site, and planned to turn the area into an agroecological research center. ... read more »

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Posted on 31 May, 2007 - 16:51

It's a long list, but a good reminder that, throughout the world, there are dozens of events to celebrate International Peasants Day today, April 17th.

Bolivia
Via Campesina Bolivia is celebrating the 17th of April in Montero, in the rural area around Santa Cruz. The event on Agrarian Reform, Food sovereignty and Gender will also be attended by the members of the International Coordinating Committee of La Vía Campesina.
Contact: lulabar_yuramihuilai@yahoo.es

Switzerland

The Swiss peasants of the organisation UNITERRE are organising a tractor’s parade, a press conference and a stall with local products in Geneva to celebrate the 17th of April. The issue of the action day will be « The planet is getting hot, Food sovereignty is “well cooked”! It is time to chose your meal!» ... read more »

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Posted on 18 April, 2007 - 01:19

Here's a brief newsy post from the Via Campesina's first day of activities at the World Social Forum - expect a tidied up version of this on the Via Campesina site soon...

The 2007 World Social Forum is a place where many of the world’s contradictions are writ small. A single plate of food from the vendors outside the gates costs the same as the average weekly wage here in Kenya. One group, the Via Campesina peasant movement, was reminding the world that everyone has to eat, and advancing its vision of ‘food sovereignty’, a programme that promises food for all, and a secure livelihood for those who grow it. ... read more »

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Posted on 23 January, 2007 - 15:51

As part of the Land Research Action Network (with whom I've just co-edited this book) I'll be attending the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Depending on the internet connection, news from me might be a little slow in the next few days. But in the meantime, you can check out this experimental food newswire which has the latest from many of the best thinkers and doers in the world of food politics. ... read more »

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Posted on 20 January, 2007 - 14:08

The Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform and Via Campesina sent out this alert today:

32 members of the “Vallecito Peasant Movement”, situated in Sinaloa, Tocoa municipality, Department of Colón, Honduras, became victims of severe violence on October 6, 2006. Two peasants were wounded by bullets, and the others were beaten up by police agents. The victims belong to 88 peasant families of the Movement who were settled by INA (the National Agrarian Institute) on land in this region. At this moment the peasant families live in precarious conditions in a refugee camp of INA without adequate food or housing. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 December, 2006 - 16:43

In 1994, Bina Agarwal, a professor at the University of New Delhi, wrote the seminal book on gender and land rights - A Field of One's Own. Last week, the US State Department released a rather distorted version of Agarwal's conclusions. In a release entitled "Women's Lack of Property Rights Linked to Abuse, Experts Say", the State department has reduced the complex web of social and material burdens on women to one simple solution, and one simple right - the right to private property.

Of course, it is an indictment of our planet that women control pitifully little of it - one factoid based, as far as I've been able to find out, on data that's now over 20 years old, is this: women grow more than half the food in the Global South, but own less than 1% of the land there.

But rights to property are one set of rights among many - such as rights to healthcare, to education, to employment. And in Promised Land, a book I've just finished editing, Sofia Monsalve has put the case for women's rights to land in a far broader context.

... read more »

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Posted on 13 December, 2006 - 09:06