Grassroots International

[George Naylor, President of the National Family Farm Coalition, continues his report from the Via Campesina's forum on Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty (August 30-31, 2007) with an update on the presentations he's heard. --Ed.]

What I´ve heard here is that multinational corporations and governments intend to provide our energy-insatiable economies (especially in the US and Europe) with agrofuels, even though demand could never be met and monocropping will foreclose food sovereignty and biodiversity.

George Naylor, President of the National Family Farm Coalition sent us a note from the Via Campesina's International Forum on Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty. The forum, which features farmer and peasant activists from around the world, is taking place today and tomorrow in Mexico City. The race to convert acres from food to fuel crops in Mexico, Brazil and the United States has many, including us here at Grassroots, concerned. We fear that pursuing the industrial scale agrofuel model will worsen hunger, speed up destruction of the natural environment and the fertility of farmland and destroy local communities and ways of life that, once gone, can never be brought back.