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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: emitch@att.net, livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] NYTimes.com: Food That Travels Well
  • Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:17:04 -0600


This might answer your question, Mitch
paul tradingpost@lobo.net
--------------------------------------

Via Campesina Sets an International Agenda
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4459
Laura Carlsen | August 8, 2007
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
americas.irc-online.org

The peasantry has been portrayed historically as a backward sector, rooted
in traditional productive practices and embedded in obsolete cultures.
Peasants' deep ties to natural cycles are often considered limitations to
human transcendence—defined as the conquest of nature and the progress of
technology. Their diversity is seen as an impediment to an efficient,
homogenized society.

Who would have thought that in the age of globalization, small farmers'
weaknesses would prove to be their strengths?

The international forum of Via Campesina in Mexico City last August 1-2
proved just that. The largest peasant organization in the world, Via
Campesina was formed in 1993 and now groups 149 organizations from 56
countries. Representatives from peasant and family farm organizations from
Thailand, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Mexico, and other
countries gathered to discuss "Trade Treaties and Food Sovereignty: a
Farmers' Agenda." As the stories and statistics unfolded, they revealed
common experiences that bridged borders and language barriers.

For most peasant farmers in Mexico, Asia has always seemed literally and
figuratively a world apart. But when Uthai Sa Artchop of Thailand described
how transnational corporations sought to patent and control their varieties
of rice seed, Mexican peasants realized that the Thais' rice was their
corn. When Indonesian farmer Tejo Pramono spoke of how remittances from
sons and daughters working in Hong Kong and the Middle East subsidize a
dying countryside, Mexican farmers thought of their own relatives forced to
migrate to the United States.

Both sides nodded knowingly at the other's descriptions of the loss of
markets to imports, the drop in producer prices due to unfair competition,
and government cutbacks to producers except the large exporters. The
January tortilla crisis in Mexico found its counterpart in the May palm oil
crisis in Indonesia, when the price of both staple foods soared due to
diversion to agrofuels and transnational control of markets.

But the organizations didn't gather only to commiserate. The strengths of
the peasantry also came to light, and these strengths show why Via
Campesina has become an effective and influential actor in international
movements for global justice. As globalization erodes community, threatens
the quality and accessibility of our food supply, and destroys ecosystems,
small farmers are the ones defending these values. In doing so, they hold
important keys to the future survival of the planet and rebuilding the kind
of society we want for our children.

Via Campesina members are deeply involved in building alternatives. The
Landless Movement in Brazil is consolidating its cooperatives, increasing
state-level organization and, in the words of MST representative Soraia
Soriano, "building spaces that are autonomous from the government" since,
as she explained, the current center-left government has divided
organizations.

Other proposals include building global alliances, designing new forms of
professional training, advocating alternative models of consumption and of
relations between producers and consumers, and building a new
agro-ecological model.

In complex times, the messages from Via's farmers were strikingly simple:
to remain farmers, to provide a healthy and sustainable food supply, to
market their product fairly. Some are surprising—the representative from
the Union Paysanne of Quebec issued this plea: "We want neighbors." In
Canada, as in most developed and developing countries, the concentration of
land ownership has forced farmers off the land and dissolved rural
communities. The surviving family farmers find themselves more and more
isolated.

Paul Nicholson of the European Farmers Coalition noted that in the United
States less than 1% of the working population farms for a living and there
are more prisoners than farmers. Not only do large corporations control use
of land through contracting, they are also rushing to purchase land.
Nicholson said that in Europe 80% of agricultural land is no longer in the
hands of the farmers and as land speculation increases, fertile regions
across the globe have attracted the attention of investors. This
agricultural model expels small farmers from the land with negative
consequences for the entire nation. In France the slogan is "Three small
farmers are better than one big one."

Future actions supported by Via Campesina include the campaign of the
National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organization (UNORCA) to
oppose the January 2008 lifting of all tariffs on corn, beans, sugar, and
milk under the agricultural chapter of NAFTA. The National Campaign for
Peasant and Indigenous Dignity begins on August 9 with an encampment at
Mexico City's Monument to the Revolution and will continue with
demonstrations throughout the country. Also in Mexico, the Sin maíz no
hay país campaign (Without Corn there is no Country), began distributing
Mexican corn seed to urbanites as a message to defend native maize
varieties and oppose the cultivation and importation of genetically
modified corn.

Via Campesina has made a strategic decision that to advance the
alternatives they propose, it's necessary to break down the power of the
large transnational corporations. The organization called for an
international day of protest on January 26, 2008. The corporations targeted
include Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Wal-Mart.

As globalization dictates that Big is Powerful and cultural monotony is
imposed from above, small farmers are leaping borders to become the leaders
of an international movement to resist the imperatives of the economic
model. In their diversity they are achieving unity, in their traditions
they find answers to contemporary problems, and in their determination they
provide an example of their slogan—globalize hope.

Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas Program at
www.americaspolicy.org in Mexico City and co-editor of Confronting
Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico.


For More Information

La Via Campesina
International Peasant Movement
www.viacampesina.org

National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA)
www.unorca.org.mx




*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 8/8/2007 at 6:00 AM E. E. Mitchamore Jr wrote:

>I've been reading a lot related to these (International food) issues
>lately, but haven't noticed any organized efforts. Paul Hawken's Blessed
>Unrest describes a "swarm" effect, but I think a lot more could be done by
>coordinating "local" food efforts between different countries and
>ecoregions. There is still a useful place for transported food (who
>hasn't experienced a surplus of Zucchini at some time, only to wish for it
>at another?), but it's not being done very well at this time. I have no
>idea what sort of organization(s) could improve that, but Fair Trade might
>be a good starting point. How could a consortium of co-ops come into
>being?
>
>E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
>www.hillcountrynatives.biz







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