A New Framework for Trade Based on Food Sovereignty — Nyéléni Newletter no. 57

We are pleased to feature the latest newsletter from our friends at Nyéléni. 

The current international trade order was established to support the expansion of transnational companies and to keep colonial powers in control of the world’s natural resources.

The World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, and free-trade agreements have been used to dismantle national policies that ensured people’s sovereignty over national resources and local markets. For this reason, this edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter analyzes the impact of the current global trade system on national policies, particularly those that ensure fair prices for food producers and consumers.

We are striving to rebuild food sovereignty, which means changing the global trade system and allowing countries to develop policies that ensure a decent livelihood for all people, particularly small-scale food producers. Minimum support prices, public stock-holdings, supply management, public food procurement, and so forth: there are plenty of inspiring examples of public policies that ensure a fair income for rural people, guaranteeing that how our food systems are organized is a democratic discussion and not left to the ‘markets’.

This edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter calls for an end to the exploitative model of capital expansion through free trade agreements. We explore the urgent need to break the hegemony of free trade and build an alternative that upholds solidarity and internationalism, and respects the diversity, autonomy, and food sovereignty of nations and communities.

La Via Campesina, ETC Group, Transnational Institute