Haitian Movements Speak Out Against Monsanto, Offer Community-led Solutions

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.

    Haiti’s social movements, and its peasant movements in particular, have stepped up to the challenge of re-envisioning Haiti and putting that vision into practice. For Haiti’s peasant movements, agriculture – and the peasants who make it possible – is central to Haiti’s just development. Late last year, a union of the country’s four largest peasant movements known as the G4 (all supported by Grassroots International) shared the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize with the Dessalines Brigade for their accompaniment of peasant farmers and zealous advocacy of peasant rights.  As the leaders tell n the video above, their work offers real solutions to hunger and poverty by giving communities power of their food systems and development, and saying know to the false solutions and debt foisted by Monsanto and other seed companies.