permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

PEASANT SOVEREIGNTY

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Food Crisis: World Hunger, Agribusiness, and the Food Sovereignty
Alternative (Part Two) - Climate & Capitalism
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2008/04/29/food-crisis-world-hunger-agribusiness-and-the-food-sovereignty-alternative-part-two/

*Fighting for food sovereignty*

The changes imposed by transnational agribusiness and its agencies have not
gone unchallenged. One of the most important developments in the past 15
years has been the emergence of La Vía Campesina (Peasant Way), an umbrella
body that encompasses more than 120 small farmers’ and peasants’
organizations in 56 countries, ranging from the Landless Rural Workers
Movement (MST) in Brazil to the National Farmers Union in Canada.

La Vía Campesina initially advanced its program as a challenge to the
“World Food Summit,” a 1996 UN-organized conference on global hunger that
was attended by official representatives of 185 countries. The participants
in that meeting promised (and subsequently did nothing to achieve) the
elimination of hunger and malnutrition by guaranteeing “sustainable food
security for all people.”[12]

As is typical of such events, the working people who are actually affected
were excluded from the discussions. Outside the doors, La Vía Campesina
proposed food sovereignty as an alternative to food security. Simple access
to food is not enough, they argued: what’s needed is access to land, water,
and resources, and the people affected must have the right to know and to
decide about food policies. Food is too important to be left to the global
market and the manipulations of agribusiness: world hunger can only be
ended by re-establishing small and mid-sized family farms as the key
elements of food production.[13]

The central demand of the food sovereignty movement is that food should be
treated primarily as a source of nutrition for the communities and
countries where it is grown. In opposition to free-trade, agroexport
policies, it urges a focus on domestic consumption and food
self-sufficiency.

Contrary to the assertions of some critics, food sovereignty is not a call
for economic isolationism or a return to an idealized rural past. Rather,
it is a program for the defense and extension of human rights, for land
reform, and for protection of the earth against capitalist ecocide. In
addition to calling for food self-sufficiency and strengthening family
farms, La Vía Campesina’s original call for food sovereignty included these
points:

   - Guarantee everyone access to safe, nutritious and culturally
   appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy
   life with full human dignity.
   - Give landless and farming people — especially women — ownership and
   control of the land they work and return territories to indigenous peoples.
   - Ensure the care and use of natural resources, especially land, water
   and seeds. End dependence on chemical inputs, on cash-crop monocultures and
   intensive, industrialized production.
   - Oppose WTO, World Bank and IMF policies that facilitate the control of
   multinational corporations over agriculture. Regulate and tax speculative
   capital and enforce a strict Code of Conduct on transnational corporations.
   - End the use of food as a weapon. Stop the displacement, forced
   urbanization and repression of peasants.
   - Guarantee peasants and small farmers, and rural women in particular,
   direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels.[14]

La Vía Campesina’s demand for food sovereignty constitutes a powerful
agrarian program for the 21st century. Labour and left movements worldwide
should give full support to it and to the campaigns of working farmers and
peasants for land reform and against the industrialization and
globalization of food and farming.

*Stop the war on Third World farmers*

Within that framework, we in the global north can and must demand that our
governments stop all activities that weaken or damage Third World farming.

<........>

*Self-Determination for the Global South*. The current attempts by the U.S.
to destabilize and overthrow the anti-imperialist governments of the ALBA
group — Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada — continue a long
history of actions by northern countries to prevent Third World countries
from asserting control over their own destinies. Organizing against such
interventions “in the belly of the monster” is thus a key component of the
fight to win food sovereignty around the world.

* * *

More than a century ago, Karl Marx wrote that despite its support for
technical improvements, “the capitalist system works against a rational
agriculture … a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist
system.”[19]

Today’s food and farm crises completely confirm that judgment. A system
that puts profit ahead of human needs has driven millions of producers off
the land, undermined the earth’s productivity while poisoning its air and
water, and condemned nearly a billion people to chronic hunger and
malnutrition.

The food crisis and farm crisis are rooted in an irrational, anti-human
system. To feed the world, urban and rural working people must join hands
to sweep that system away.

*Footnotes*

[1] Frederic Mousseau, *Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? Ending World Hunger
in Our Time*. Oakland Institute, 2005.
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/fasr.pdf.
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology
for Development. *Global Summary for Decision Makers*.
http://www.agassessment.org/docs/Global_SDM_210408_FINAL.pdf

[2] Francis Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset. *World Hunger:
Twelve Myths*. (Grove Press, New York, 1998) p. 8

[3] “About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.”

http://www.agra-alliance.org/about/about_more.html

[4] IRRI Press Release, April 4, 2008.
http://www.irri.org/media/press/press.asp?id=171

[5] “World Bank President Calls for Plan to Fight Hunger in Pre-Spring
Meetings Address.” News Release, April 2, 2008

[6] These figures are taken from the companies’ most recent quarterly
reports, found on their websites. Because they report the numbers in
different ways, they can’t be compared to each other, only to their own
previous reports.

[7] Shawn Hattingh. “Liberalizing Food Trade to Death.” *MRzine*, May 6,
2008.http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hattingh060508.html
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/hattingh060508.html>

[8] Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster and Frederick H. Buttel. *Hungry for
Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment*.
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2000. p. 11

[9] UN Food and Agriculture Organization. *Key Statistics Of Food And
Agriculture External Trade*.
http://www.fao.org/es/ess/toptrade/trade.asp?lang=EN&dir=exp&country=100

[10] J. Madeley. *Hungry for Trade: How the poor pay for free trade*. Cited
in Ibid

[11] Jahi Campbell, “Shattering Myths: Can sustainable agriculture feed the
world?” and ” Editorial. Lessons from the Green Revolution.” Food First
Institute.www.foodfirst.org <http://foodfirst.org/>

[12] World Food Summit. http://www.fao.org/wfs/index_en.htm
<http://www.fao.org/home/en/>

[13] La Vía Campesina. “Food Sovereignty: A Future Without Hunger.” (1996)
http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/1996%20Declaration%20of%20Food%20Sovereignty.pdf

[14] Paraphrased and abridged from Ibid

[15] La Vía Campesina. “A response to the Global Food Prices Crisis:
Sustainable family farming can feed the world.”
http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=483&Itemid=38

[16] By way of comparison, this year Canada will spend $1 billion on the
illegal occupation of and war in Afghanistan

[17] Jubilee Debt Campaign. “The Basics About Debt.”
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=98
<http://jubileedebt.org.uk/?lid=98>

[18] Afsar H. Jafri. “WTO: Agriculture at the Mercy of Rich Nations.” *Focus
on the Global South*, November 7, 2005.
http://www.focusweb.org/india/content/view/733/30/

[19] *Capital, Volume III*. Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, *Collected Works*,
Volume 37, p. 123