permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@bellsouth.net>]

ICPPC Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming
Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF)
-
Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming

The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC)
held their Anniversary conference this past weekend. Here is the
Manifesto circulated at the conference. It was submitted to Hartke is
Online! by their co-director, Sir Julian Rose.

ICPPC Anniversary Conference Statement

Manifesto for 21st Century Food and Farming
“Farming for the People with the People”

The global food economy, served and shaped via state and corporate
control of the food chain, has resulted in unquantifiable levels of
pollution, destruction and exploitation in every dimension of
agriculture, from soil to seed, to plant, to animal and to man. In
other words: our existence.

As we approach the second decade of the 21st century, it is becoming
abundantly clear that an entirely new vision, understanding and
implementation is required in order for agriculture to truly serve its
original purpose of feeding humanity (all peoples) with good quality,
affordable and mostly local foods in ways that do not harm the
environment.

In order to make this wholesale shift it is necessary to entirely step
aside from State and corporate control of the food chain. No
compromise is possible here. Maintaining and re establishing the
genuine independence of farmers throughout the world is a prerequisite
for our survival as sentient, healthy human beings.

Non participation in the corporately controlled global market place
must, in order to be effective, be accompanied by the widespread
implementation of localised, quality food production and consumption
practices. Practices that bring into close proximity the food grower
and the food consumer; at the same time – by-passing entirely, the
corporate multiple chains that profit by keeping them separate. This
is the only way that genuine accessibility of optimum condition foods
and medicinal plants can be ensured for billions of people throughout
the World.

Continuing to adhere to the present corporate and state controlled
food and farming regimes means that:

Farmer’s time honoured right to save their seeds and to cultivate,
distribute and trade the produce resulting from these seeds will
continue to be subverted, curtailed and stolen.
People’s right to perpetuate the biodiversity of locally adapted
native plants, herbs and animals for culinary, medicinal and general
environmental health will be denied.
People’s rights to gain lawful access to unused or barren land for the
purpose of growing food for their own consumption in ways that do not
harm the environment will be blocked.
People’s time honoured right to carry on the daily operations of good
farming practice unhindered by state and corporate power structures,
will be denied.

It is the obligation of head’s of state to consult the people, in
advance, about any new laws or alterations of the current law and any
political questions concerning agriculture.

“Farming for the People with the People” therefore calls for all
farmers, growers and sympathetic citizens, to take back control over
their destinies and to join together to free our agricultural
practices from the corporate treadmill of destruction and despair to
which they now are tied.

At the same time, we call upon the Polish government, and all national
governments, to act NOW on the demands of the vast majority of their
citizens to:

Ban all forms of genetic engineering in agriculture, horticulture,
silviculture and fisheries.

Withdraw all financial support for factory farming regimes that
dehumanise agriculture and  debase the animal kingdom.

Prohibit, without exception, any and all patenting of plants, animals,
their traits and genes, as well as patents on breeding methods.
Thereby making it unlawful to attempt to exercise control over
biodiversity.

Every Country should have the right to protect its food sovereignty.

We call for a people led and people owned  renaissance of agriculture.
One which will liberate the creativity and ingenuity of man and draw
inspiration from the time honoured peasant and family farming
practices that still form the foundation of self sufficient,
sustainable and ecological agricultural production throughout the
world.

ICPPC Anniversary Statement, November 2010.

Please feel free to use and adopt in your Country!

Sir Julian Rose

Sir Julian Rose is now co-director of the International Coalition to
Protect the Polish Countryside, co-launching a highly successful
Campaign for a GMO Free Poland, as well as, leading a high profile
defense of native farmers, whom he holds-up as the true guardians of
biodiversity and quality of food throughout the world. Julian
contributed to BBC Radio Four’s Farming Today during 2007 with his
monthly broadcast, ‘Letters from Poland,’ passionately highlighting
the crisis from forcing corporate globalization into traditional
farming communities.

Sir Julian Rose was the Chair for Wise Traditions, UK, the first
London conference of the Weston A. Price Foundation, to be held on
March 21, 2010. For more details about this event, visit
http://westonaprice.org/london.