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Hungry for Land

By: Carol Schachet | junio 5, 2014

Governments and international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest share of the world's agricultural land. When the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation inaugurated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, he sang the praises of family farmers but didn't once mention the need for land reform. Instead, he announced that family farms already manage most of the world's farmland – a whopping 70%, according to his team.
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Building Women’s Leadership in Palestine

By: Jonathan Leaning | mayo 20, 2014

The Women’s Empowerment and Food Sovereignty Project in Palestine, sponsored by Grassroots International and implemented with our Palestinian partner the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, works to bring practical, locally controlled food projects to various communities in the West Bank.
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International Day of Peasants’ Struggles and Peasant Seeds in Resistance

By: Lydia Simas | abril 17, 2014

Campesina(o), campon(a), paysan, peasant
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A Preliminary Report on Seeds & Seed Practices across the United States

By: Carol Schachet | abril 17, 2014

For too many people and communities around the world, the dominant agricultural model is causing economic hardship, the destruction of biological diversity, and the exploitation of earth’s ecological commons. It is a model based on the commodification of life. We can no longer continue the status quo that enables multi-national corporations to corner our food system and our seed commons. Every element that is foundational to life (food, water, land, air) is under threat of privatization and marketization by an economic order that seeks to profit and own our common wealth.
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UN Report Calls for Radical, Democratic Food System

By: Carol Schachet | marzo 12, 2014

The current global food system needs to be "radically" and "democratically" changed in order to alleviate global hunger and serve human rights over the profits of major agribusiness corporations, according to a report released Monday by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
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Women Farmers Leading the Way

By: Lydia Simas | marzo 5, 2014

Women in rural India play a major role in food production. Over 80 percent of women in rural India work in agriculture, from sowing to harvesting crops to collecting and caring for seeds to caring for livestock collecting water. The role of men in agriculture tends to be limited to plowing, applying pesticides, and the business side of farming (like marketing). Although women are the backbone of agricultural production, they are not formally recognized as full-fledged farmers but rather as “farm laborers,” with the tasks they perform put in the category of “unskilled labor.” Without formal recognition as farmers, women don’t have access to credits, compensation and relief benefits offered by the government. And that’s something that the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective wants to change.
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A Path toward Better Agricultural Investment

By: Carol Schachet | febrero 27, 2014

The food crisis of 2008 led to a broad agreement in the agricultural development community that the lack of appropriate investment in agriculture had been a key contributing factor to unstable prices and food insecurity. The crisis coincided with an increase in land grabbing in many parts of the world, but especially in Africa. It is in response to these events that the idea of developing some criteria on agricultural investments came up in international policy and governance arenas.
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Promoting Seed Sovereignty

By: Carol Schachet | febrero 21, 2014

Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of Haiti’s Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) muses, “In the old days, Haitian peasants never sold seeds; seeds were for sharing and exchanging.”
Today the old ways have been pushed aside. Seeds have become big business.
This assault on the basic human right to food commercializes and commodifies one of life’s most essential assets. It jeopardizes human health, threatens the global food supply and steals away the livelihoods of small farmers around the world.
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G8 Brings Big Ag Colonialism to Africa

By: Carol Schachet | febrero 19, 2014

Food sovereignty within several African countries is on the verge of a complete neo-colonial take-over, critics of a recent agricultural initiative being developed by a new G8 alliance warn.

According to a Guardian report published Tuesday, the G8's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition initiative, supported by the Obama administration, has connected African leaders with major agribusiness corporations in an effort to map out a plan for agricultural development on the African continent in the coming years, which will loosen export and tax laws, award "huge chunks of land" for private investment and change seed laws to benefit international corporations and their GMO products.
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Life, Death and Bravery in Central America

By: Barbara Polk | enero 27, 2014

Barbara Polk traveled with other Grassroots International supporters to Honduras and Guatemala in the fall of 2013. The article below provides an overview of the trip and her experiences.
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Recovery in Gaza After Winter Storm Alexa

By: Mina Remy | enero 22, 2014

The occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) faced one of the worst winter storms seen in decades last month. The West Bank experienced record snow fall, which municipalities were ill-equipped to handle. While Gaza was spared much of the snow, the Strip received a devastating wintry mix of freezing rain, strong winds, and bitter cold that paralyzed an area considered a humanitarian crisis long before the storm.
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Haitian Movements Speak Out Against Monsanto, Offer Community-led Solutions

By: Mina Remy | enero 10, 2014

Haiti’s peasant movements are reforesting the countryside, building irrigation systems, feeding communities – just to name a few activites that are improving lives for rural communities across the nation. In the video below, members of Haiti’s Group of Four (G4) and the Dessalines Brigade describe how Haiti’s peasant movement connects with the struggle for food sovereignty in the United States, and globally. The video includes Grassroots International partners from Haiti and Brazil speaking at an Occupy the Food Prize rally on October 17, 2013 in Des Moines.
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Advances on the Journey to Food Sovereignty and Human Rights

By: Jonathan Leaning | diciembre 19, 2013

This last year has seen many advances around the globe for communities and activists pushing to regain their fundamental human rights to land, water, and food. As we now approach the end of 2013, we take this opportunity a look back at some of the accomplishments that have marked the year. In spite of the great challenges—and seemingly insurmountable odds—there is much to celebrate. Below are some of many highlights from the last year.

Winning land for formerly landless farmers in Brazil
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Women Leading the Way for Justice and an end to Violence

By: Lydia Simas | diciembre 19, 2013

By Lydia Simas
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If Farming Is Hard, Free Trade Makes It Harder

By: Claire Gilbert | diciembre 2, 2013

Being a farmer is hard. This is true no matter what policies exist. The work itself is difficult, and making money from farming requires many, many factors to line up just right. Get too much rain, too dry a season, too many bugs and the crop can be destroyed. Prices might be higher, but there’s just not that much to sell. Even a big harvest when everything goes well doesn’t guarantee success. A bumper crop means that there are a whole lot of tomatoes, corn, peaches, or eggplants at the market, so prices go down.
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Scaling up Agroecology: A new report from IATP offers a tool for policy

By: Nikhil Aziz | noviembre 22, 2013

Agroecology is not just a way of doing agriculture but, equally importantly, a way of thinking about agriculture holistically, systemically, and ecologically. Along with respect for nature -- the soil, water, seeds, etc. -- there is equally respect for the people (especially women) engaged in agriculture, including their knowledge, experience, leadership and rights. It is a way of thinking about and doing agriculture that is fundamental to addressing pressing global problems like hunger and climate change.
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Supporting Progressive Grassroots Organizations in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda

By: Grassroots International | noviembre 12, 2013

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimates that 9.8 million people in and around the city of Tacloban in the Visayas region of the Philippines have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda and that at least 660,000 of the affected people were forced from their homes. And authorities fear as many as 10,000 people have died. With the continued threat of landslides and flash floods from additional storms, it is crucial that survivors get access to clean water, food, and shelter as soon as possible.
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Agroecology Learning Exchange Lets Farmers Share Recipes for Success, and Fertilizer

By: Carol Schachet | octubre 31, 2013

Carlos Henríquez can talk about fertilizer for hours. He knows what mix of ingredients will help certain crops grow better, the right “recipe” for creating well-balanced compost and fertilizers, the best ways to keep moisture in the soil even in dry spells.
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The Real Food Prize and Protests Against Monsanto and other Food Imposters

By: Claire Gilbert | octubre 25, 2013

In Des Moines Iowa last week, in a stunning example of irony three genetic engineers were given the World Food Prize. The award winners are major developers of the now 20-year-old science and technology behind genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a highly contentious and potentially hazardous substitute for age-old agricultural knowledge and technology. By presenting representatives from Monsanto and Syngenta with the World Food Prize, its sponsors are attempting to elevate the status of GMOs and lend credence to the [false] argument that we need GMOs to feed the world’s burgeoning population. The truth is that most of the GMOs grown today are for U.S.
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Mexican Tribunal Suspends All Genetically Modified Corn Plantations

By: Carol Schachet | octubre 24, 2013

In an unprecedented move last week, a Federal Mexican Tribunal suspended authorization for the planting of all genetically modified corn by transnational corporations such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta. The Tribunal recognized the legal interests of 53 individuals and 20 civil associations that filed a class action lawsuit against the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment, the federal government and the transnational corporations that applied for permits to plant transgenic corn. While this decision is not a permanent one, it is a groundbreaking victory in preventing commercial GMO plantations until the collective action lawsuit is resolved.
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