2013 Food Sovereignty Prize Honors Grassroots International Partners

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance announced today their selection for the fifth annual Food Sovereignty Prize. This year’s winners and honorable mentions include peasant organizations and movements that Grassroots International has supported over many years, even decades.

Grassroots International is a founding member of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA). The USFSA – a growing alliance of farmer, farmworker, food chain worker, food justice, policy, advocacy, faith-based, and environmental/climate justice organizations both rural and urban – has been working since 2007 to build a movement for food sovereignty in the United States.

The USFSA instituted the Food Sovereignty Prize to both recognize efforts inside and outside the United States towards achieving our shared vision of food sovereignty and to raise awareness within the United States about these important issues.

Out of more than 40 nominations, the Alliance chose Haiti’s Group of 4 (G4) and the peasant-to-peasant learning exchange, Dessalines Brigade, as this year’s winner for their exemplary work in Haiti. Grassroots International has been a key financial supporter of the Dessalines Brigade since its inception in 2007. The G4 is an alliance between the four largest peasant movements in Haiti, two of which are Grassroots International partners (the Peasant Movement of Papaye and the National Congress of the Papaye Peasant Movement, while the other two are Grassroots International grantees (Tet Kole and CROSE).

Grassroots International also provided support to two Honorable Mention recipients as well: the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective (India) and the National Coordination of Peasant Organizations (Mali). The Basque Country Peasants’ Solidarity of the Basque Country in Europe, a member of the Via Campesina, also received an honorable mention.

Grassroots International congratulates this year’s winners and honorable mentions, and celebrates their leadership and power in supporting food sovereignty and human rights.

Below is the press release issued by the USFSA announcing this year’s winners.

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CONTACT: Charity Hicks, Detroit Food Justice Task Force, 313.725.0554 Lisa Griffith, National Family Farm Coalition, 800.639.3276 Christopher Cook, Food First, 415.504.0325  

Food Sovereignty Prize Honors Grassroots Initiatives in Haiti, Brazil, Basque Country, Mali and India

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE–EMBARGOED UNTIL 1 PM EST, AUG. 13, 2013

NEW YORK CITY—Five innovative grassroots groups from across the globe working for democratic access to land, seeds, water and food have been honored with the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance announced today.

Winners of the fifth annual Food Sovereignty Prize were chosen from among more than 40 inspiring projects creating on-the-ground solutions to hunger and poverty, said the alliance, a network of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer advocacy organizations.

Top honors go to the Haitian Group of 4 (G4) and the South American Dessalines Brigade, an international peasant-to-peasant collaboration working to rebuild Haiti’s seed, soil and agricultural systems. Honorable mentions were garnered by Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective of India; National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali; and Basque Country Peasants’ Solidarity of the Basque Country in Europe.

“The Food Sovereignty Prize symbolizes the fight for safe and healthy food for all peoples of the earth,” said Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, G4 Executive Committee member. “It’s a fight that must be waged both locally and globally, and requires deep solidarity among all organizations fighting for food sovereignty.”

Flavio Barbosa, of the South American Dessalines Brigade, added: “Receiving this prize for the partnership between the Group of 4 and the Dessalines Brigade is an incentive for others to participate in long exchanges such as the one we are experiencing in Haiti. And it charges us with even greater responsibility to continue our defense of peasant agriculture and agroecology as a way to produce sustainable, healthy chemical-free foods accessible for all.”

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance will present the awards at a ceremony in New York City on October 15, 2013, at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. The ceremony will be hosted by WhyHunger and feature keynote speaker Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA regional director forced to resign in 2010 after false accusations of racism. The evening will also feature musical entertainment. Subsequent events with the Food Sovereignty Prize honorees to highlight issues of food sovereignty in the US will take place in Des Moines, Iowa, and Detroit, Michigan, on October 16-21.

For event updates and background on food sovereignty and the prize winners, visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org. On Twitter, #foodsovprize.

Since its launch in 2009, the Food Sovereignty Prize has garnered international attention for its recognition of community-based efforts that promote food democracy.  In contrast to the World Food Prize, which emphasizes increased production through technology and this year rewarded scientists from transnational biotechnology corporations Monsanto and Syngenta, the Food Sovereignty Prize honors organizations and movements around the world fighting for the right to food for all people and dignity for those who put food on our plates.

“With this prize, we’re honoring real-world, sustainable solutions to poverty, social instability and food insecurity,” said Montana farmer Dena Hoff, North American Co-Chair of La Via Campesina, the first winner of the Food Sovereignty Prize in 2009. “With 40 nominations from 21 countries and a selection committee comprised of food justice activists, community leaders and academics from the US and Canada, the Food Sovereignty Prize recognizes effective and inspiring examples of communities making creative and truly lasting change in their food security–and in their democracy.” Hoff is the Vice President of National Family Farm Coalition, a founding member of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.

2013 Food Sovereignty Prize Honorees: Snapshots and Background

Winner: Group of 4, Dessalines Brigade/Via Campesina, Haiti & South America In 2007, Haiti’s largest peasant organizations—Heads Together Small Farmers of Haiti (Tet Kole), the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP), the National Congress of Papaye Peasant Movements (MPNKP), and the Regional Coordination of Organizations of the South East Region (CROSE)—joined forces as the Group of 4 (G4), a national alliance to promote good farming practices and advocate for peasant farmers. The G4, representing over a quarter of a million Haitians, invited South American peasant leaders and agroecology experts to Haiti to work cooperatively to save Creole seeds and support peasant agriculture. Together, the G4 and the Dessalines Brigade, as it became known—named for 19th-century Haitian independence leader Jean Jacques Dessalines and supported by La Via Campesina—have collaborated to rebuild Haiti’s environment, promote wealth and end poverty. The partnership also provided immediate and ongoing support to the victims of the 2010 earthquake, and the Group of 4 made global headlines when they rejected a donation of hybrid seeds from Monsanto.

Honorable Mention: Basque Country Peasants’ Solidarity (EHNE), Basque Country In Europe’s Basque Country, the struggle for food sovereignty is embedded in a broader struggle for political and cultural autonomy. A founder of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina in 1993, EHNE continues to be at the forefront of innovative and political food sovereignty approaches. Locally, EHNE offers its more than 6,000 members educational and economic support; its youth program has helped young people return to farming; and it is working to build new relationships between the countryside and regional cities. Due in part to the Basque Country’s vibrant network of small farms, cooperative business and strong local food system, all supported by EHNE, the region has weathered the financial crisis better than much of Europe.

Honorable Mention: National Coordination of Peasant Organizations (CNOP), Mali As the national coordinating body of peasant organizations across Mali, CNOP represents some 2.5 million farmers. The organization works across the country to develop local, regional and national relationships between peasant and other rural development organizations, support family-based agriculture, lobby government and promote the needs of a national peasant movement, including significant efforts against land grabbing. In large part due to the efforts of CNOP to ensure that food sovereignty is the fundamental basis of Malian agricultural policy, Mali is one of only a few countries internationally to include the right to food sovereignty in its constitution.

Honorable Mention: Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective (TNWC), India In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, as in much of India, women have little social, economic or political power, and often struggle to feed their families. Lowest-caste Dalit women, indigenous, and widowed women face even greater hardships. Through the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective, 100,000 marginalized women are organized, many in unofficial worker unions or small collective farms, to strengthen their food sovereignty and thus their broader power. In addition to organizing locally and nationally on issues from their own families’ food security to land rights to opposition to genetically modified seeds, the Collective encourages cultivation of native millet varieties – the hardy traditional grain is nutritious, drought-resistant, and easier to grow in the region than wheat or rice.