The National Family Farm Coalition's Disparity to Parity campaign is a call for a racially just, economically empowered, and climate resilient food system.
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance held its fourth national assembly in Bellingham, Washington in October. In the statement below, the alliance expresses its solidarity with migrants and movements as they face attacks around the world. At the same time, it puts forward a vision for a different food system.
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a potentially disastrous “trade” deal, fundamentally undermines economic and social equality, environmental protection, and human rights. With Congress poised to vote on the Obama-touted deal, it’s time to expose the false promises of the TPP.
The final TPP text was finally released in November after seven years of secretive negotiations, during which 500 official U.S. trade advisors representing corporate interests had special access and Congress, the public and press were shut out.
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.
The Farm Bill presented Congress with an opportunity to change some of the fundamental structures of our food system, by creating a farmer-owned reserve and establishing a price floor that reflects farmers’ true cost of production. It may not surprise many of us to know that Congress did not live up to this responsibility.
Farmers demonstrated the strength of their solidarity with pro-union forces in Wisconsin through the creative force of a “tractorcade,” and the inspiring power of their words and actions. Grassroots International allies from the Family Farm Defenders and the National Family Farm Coalition played prominent roles in the effort to show support to Wisconsin workers.
Grassroots International’s global partners like the Via Campesina have frequently told us: “You have to work hard to change things in the U.S. for our hard work to bear real fruit.” In other words, for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary.
On the campaign trail, President Obama vowed to “stand up to corporate mega-farm lobbyists who have long had too much influence over rural and agriculture policies.” But now he’s nominated to two key posts the same ‘Big Ag’ industry insiders he previously promised to oppose: Islam Siddiqui and Roger Beachy.
Take action now to tell President Obama to keep his campaign promise to stand up to corporate agriculture and withdraw his support for Siddiqui and Beachy.
At a gathering of food and trade activists from around the United States and Canada, Grassroots International's partner, the Via Campesina, receieved the 2009 Food Sovereignty Prize for its relentless struggle for the rights of peasants and small producers of the world and against the disastrous neoliberal system of industrial agriculture. The award was received during the annual conference of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) held in Des Moines, Iowa, October 10-13.
Even though I grew up in Missouri, my first introduction to agriculture did not occur until my college days in Northfield, Minnesota, in the early 1980s. Depending on which way the wind blew, my college (Carleton) was filled either with the toasted grain aroma from the Malt-o-Meal factory or the smell of the surrounding dairy farms. Sadly, the dairy farms began to lose out in more than just the scent in the air. I remember clearly my sophomore year when a big stoic man stood up at church and, with tears in his eyes, told us that the last of his dairy cows were sold in an attempt to pay off farm creditors. Thus began my awareness of corporate farming, agricultural and trade policy and their devastating impact on families and communities.
Ben F. Burkett is president of the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) in the U.S., and a cooperative-marketing-specialist member of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund. He was in Mozambique attending the 5th International Conference of La Via Campesina as a delegate of the NFFC. La Via Campesina is an organization of organizations, part of a global movement of peasants, family farmers, indigenous and landless people. The interview was conducted (and later edited) by Nic Paget-Clarke for In Motion Magazine on October 22, 2008 during the Via Campesina conference. The conference was held at the FRELIMO Party School in Matola, Mozambique.
Family farmers and other food justice activists will mark April 17, the International Day of Peasant's Struggle, with a protest against corporate speculation on agricultural commodities which is behind the global food crisis now threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers. This action is in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the world's largest umbrella movement of family farmers, Grassroots International's ally the National Family Farm Coalition, rural workers and indigenous peoples.
Specific demands include:
The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House Washington, D.C. 20500
March 24, 2009
Dear Mr. President:
In 2008, the price of basic food staples rose by incredible proportions. Between May 2007 and March 2008, hard red winter wheat rose 137 percent, from July 2007 to June 2008 corn prices rose 98 percent. Other food commodities rose in a similar fashion putting daily sustenance out of reach for 200 million more people in the developing world.
Recently I returned from the Via Campeisna's Vth International Conference in Mozambique, followed by brief visit with social justice organizations in South Africa. Also in Mozambique, as delegate to the Via Campesina Conference, was Grassroots International colleague John Peck of the Family Farm Defenders and the National Family Farm Coalition. John wrote the article below just days after hearing the President of Mozambique, Armando Emilio Guebuza, address the Via Campesina Assembly. In his address, Guebuza unfortunately noted that his government would be supporting the expansion of jatropha plantations for agrofuels production.
Grassroots International and the National Family Farm Coalition announce the release of a new popular education tool that can help you understand and fix the world food crisis: Food for Thought and Action: A Food Sovereignty Curriculum.
It's been said that "you are what you eat." In the face of a global food crisis, it's clear that we've been forced to swallow far more than what's on our plates. Our global food system is broken, with nearly a billion hungry people around the world and millions more forced from their failed farms as industrial agriculture privatizes and despoils our water, soil and biodiversity.
Grassroots International ally and grantee, the National Family Farm Coalition (a member of Grassroots' partner the Via Campesina), celebrated the demise of the recent Doha Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. Grassroots supports the NFFC's and Via's demand for the WTO to "get out of agriculture" as this is imperative to realizing food sovereignty. The disastrous neoliberal trade policies pursued by the WTO benefit the "industrial agricultural complex" while harming family farmers, peasants and farm workers worldwide.
Dear Member of Congress:
All around the globe, food riots have shaken countries from Haiti to Egypt to India to Uzebekistan while rising rice prices cause grief in many Asian countries. A global food crisis threatens to impoverish millions around the world. Here at home, livestock and dairy producers, bakers and food processors have expressed their fears over skyrocketing commodity prices while higher food prices are eating into many family budgets. News reports nervously highlight that U.S. and world grain stocks are at all-time lows since World War II.
