Grassroots International friend Anna Lappé is currently in Mali for the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum along with Grassroots' Resource Rights Specialist Corrina Steward and over 500 other delegates from around the world. She just sent us a blog on the Forum that she posted on the Guerilla News Network Post, which was founded by her broher Anthony.
Nyeleni’s persistent spirit is coming through.
We now have electricity and running water. Getting internet is unlikely. These blogs are traveling from Sélingué (via portable USB flash drive) 2.5 hours to Bamako where there is one internet café. An organizer sits there waiting for material to upload on the Nyeleni website.
Today was the opening, inaugural ceremony.
[Editor's note: Grassroots International's Resource Rights Specialist Corrina Steward is in Sélingué, Mali, West Africa for the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum with hundreds of women, peasants, fishers, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and other activists from 80 countries around the world. She sent over this first of many blogs that will provide a daily glimpse of the proceedings as participants deliberate about food sovereignty and how to achieve it. Check in for Corrina's reports as well as from others from the Middle East to Latin America and elsewhere.]
As I write, Corrina Steward, Grassroots' Resource Rights Specialist, is en route to Mali for Nyéléni 2007, the Forum on Food Sovereignty where hundreds of farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and environmental and indigenous organizations will convene to share ideas and develop an action plan for building a food system that is equitable, healthy and sustainable.
The recent news about rising corn prices in Mexico (and here in the US), in part a result of growing demand for "clean biofuels" such as ethanol, warrants focusing on a variety of act
The Journal of Agriculture and Human Values has published the paper "From colonization to “environmental soy”: A case study of environmental and socio-economic valuation in the Amaz
Peter Rosset, a member of Grassroots International's Resource Rights Advisory Group based at CECCAM (Center for the Study of Rural Change in Mexico) in Mexico City, recently wrote this l
Editor's note: As debate over Mexico’s economic policies is happening at the highest levels of the government, peasants took to the streets over the price of tortillas. Even the New York Times is taking notice. Today, the Times reported:“Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.”And for what might be the first time ever, the NYT explained that what protesters are asking for is food sovereignty. We are thrilled that a national newspaper is taking notice of this growing fight for policies that do not undermine local, national and global food systems.Two close Grassroots International advisors, Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly, are on the ground in Mexico. They have sent us this first of many reports to come, and we are excited to be able to share them with you here.
In less than one month, hundreds of farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and environmental and indigenous organizations will convene in Mali for Nyéléni 2007: Forum for Food Sovereignty.
In order to raise awareness about our food and farming system we asked the people in our community to complete the phrase “Food is…” We received responses from all over the United States, Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and Palestine.
Responses ranged from one word to poems and essays and illustrated what Grassroots International has known since we launched our Resource Rights Initiative—people around the world have a lot to say about our food and farming system and recognize that it is more than a simple commodity.
The legend of the first Thanksgiving is a tale of different worlds coming together in peace to share the bounty of the harvest, of Old World and New World crops and cultures coming together for the
Every year, as Thanksgiving comes round the corner, I think about food—the history of food and the history of the peoples who grow and eat it.
I think about salads in the same way I think about eggs: I can eat them at any time of day, cooked any which way, and with almost anything I have around.
This recipe was handed down from my grandmother. My mom now makes these muffins for almost every holiday or special occasion.
My mother has a book of hand written recipes that provide a map to my childhood. It's as old as I am, 29 years old.
Progress by Grace Darby
When I was a girl,
Eggs were warm, silky brown ,
From haystack barn, manger
When I was seven, the owners of my dad's workplace shut down production and locked the workers out.
All people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone. This is the basic principle behind food sovereignty. If you want to support domestic food security through the production of healthy food at a fair price, and you believe that family farmers and fishers should have the first right to local and regional markets, then food sovereignty is for you.
Food is a right, a responsibility, a gift, a life, a mystery, a puzzle of unequal distribution of resources which must be solved right now.
Many developing countries and civil society organizations welcomed with great excitement and relief the once-again-collapsed World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in July 2006. However, the suspension of the global trade organization’s authority on agriculture has not resulted in a sea change in global agricultural policy.
Grassroots movements have made great strides towards putting the power of the food system in citizens’ hands, but ongoing bi-lateral and regional trade negotiations threaten to curtail these advances.
