Saving Water with Agroecology
It is still dark outside when the farmers awaken. The cool air of the morning won’t last too long once the sun rises. When the sun slowly breaks the dawn, the sleepy bodies demand a cup of coffee. The flame...
News | Page 39 of 88
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Who Fishes Matters
I recently had a chance to interview Grassroots International friend and ally Niaz Dorry, Executive Director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA). The organization brings together fishing communities in Grassroots’ own backyard (from southern New England up to Atlantic Canada). As a self-organizing and self-governing organization, NAMA seeks to restore and enhance an enduring marine system supporting a healthy diversity and an abundance of marine life and human uses. NAMA is a member of Grassroots’ the National Family Farm Coalition (a Grassroots’ grantee), which in turn a member and anchor group of the Via Campesina (a Grassroots’ partner). I’m happy to share highlights of this interview during the month of World Fisheries Day (November 21).
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Rehabilitating Haiti’s Central Plateau Through Agroecology and Water Access
The Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) is one example of the amazing work peasant organizations are doing across rural communities in Haiti. In those communities, peasant organizations are working hard with limited resources. While post-2010 earthquake relief funds from big international funders (like USAID) are being squandered building large industrial complexes on productive agricultural land, peasant organizations are planting trees to stave off soil erosion, preserving Creole seeds to ensure seed sovereignty for future generations, and improving access to life-giving water.
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Gaza’s Civilians under Attack
The toll Operation Pillar of Defense (Pillar of Cloud in Hebrew) is taking on Gaza’s population is unimaginable to most Americans, but Twitter is changing that. As information flows from Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, and Khan Younis the pain, suffering, and senseless death of innocent men, women, and children cannot be denied. More than half of the 105 Palestinians killed during the last seven days of this operation have been civilians, including children.
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Message from Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights
Operation Pillar of Defense (Pillar of Cloud in Hebrew) is once again destroying Gaza missile by missile, building by building. Our partner Raji Sourani, the director of Palestinian Center for Human Rights, sees history repeating itself with each civilian casualty. As he makes clear in a recent article on Al-Jazeera (posted below), the world is standing by while scores of civilians lose their lives, Gazans human rights are violated and community infrastructure is destroyed.
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Grassroots International Condemns Violence in Palestine/Israel
Once again, the steady violence that passes for “normal” in Palestine and Israel has escalated to alarming proportions. After months of rocket exchanges between militants in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the situation rapidly deteriorated in the past 24 hours. Grassroots International joins the growing chorus of voices calling for an end to violence from both sides, a return to negotiations for a just and lasting peace, and enforcement of international human rights and humanitarian law as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.
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First Global Encounter on Agroecology and Peasant Seeds
Members of the Via Campesina gathered in Thailand to discuss, strategize and coordinate about one of the mainstays of farmers across the globe: Seeds.
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Communities Stand with those Impacted by Hurricane Sandy in Haiti, Cuba, and the Northeast US
Last week, a broad group of organizations involved in a Climate Justice Alignment process in the US released the statement below, in solidarity with communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean and the US Northeast. Grassroots International is proud to be part of the Climate Justice Alignment, working with allies such as the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Movement Generation, and the Black Mesa Water Coalition to build up a campaign for a Just Transition. This critical effort aims to move us away from an economy based on extreme energy (such as oil, tar sands, gas, agrofuels, mega-dams, nuclear power, and other forms of death-dependent energy). At the same time
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Brazil’s “Green Energy” too Costly, say People Affected by Dams
Before becoming Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Roussef helped to engineer an ambitious development plan that would change the country. Known as the Accelerated Growth Plan and the Ten-year Energy Plan, it would build 134 dams by the year of 2020 in the Amazon alone. Among the losers in the plan: thousands of acres of forest; habitat for endangered species; and thousands of families unfortunate enough to have ancestors who chose to settle these lands. According to Grassroots International’s partner, the Brazilian Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), the ambitious development plan failed to include any funding to offset hunger and unemployment, or to revamp public services for those displaced populations whose livelihoods will be wiped.
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Hurricane Sandy Washes Away Haitian Livelihoods
Hurricane and Superstorm Sandy caused billions in damages from the Caribbean to Canada, killed more than 100 people and left many in its wake without basic necessities. For those of us who live in countries where our cities, states, and federal governments have the resources to tackle complex emergencies, the return to normal life, though unimaginable now, will slowly unfurl.
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For-Profit Folly in Haiti
Over the past few decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has seen its staff level drop significantly at the same time as the amount of money under its discretion has rapidly increased.
Over this time, USAID has stepped up its reliance on for-profit contractors to fill the void. The result, as Hillary Clinton stated in her confirmation hearing (USAID is part of the State Department), is that USAID has “turned into more of a contracting agency than an operational agency with the ability to deliver.”
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No Olive Branches Here: Settler Violence Threatens the Olive Harvest in the West Bank
Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and their property, which escalated this summer, is on the rise again with this October’s olive harvest season in the West Bank. Officials from the United Nations as well as activists in Palestine and Israel are calling on Israeli forces to intervene to stop the violence.
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Korean Women Peasant’s Association Awarded the Food Sovereignty Prize
Last Wednesday, October 10th, in New York City, I had the privilege of witnessing the US Food Sovereignty Alliance award the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize to the Korean Women Peasant’s Association (KWPA).
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Message from Rafael Alegría, Honduran leader of the Vía Campesina
On May 1 of this year, my colleague Saulo Araujo (Program Coordinator for Latin America) and I spent the day with Rafael Alegría, a leader of the Vía Campesina based in Honduras. The video below offers some of his reflections.
Rafael’s message is clear: -
Five reasons organic food is good for you and the planet
A recent study by Stanford researchers raised controversy and debate about the comparative health benefits of organic versus conventionally grown food. Bottom line, according to researchers: organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs are comparable in their nutrient content.
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Palestinians Face Food and Water Crisis in the West Bank Spurred by Israeli Control of Resources
Beit Ummar used to be known as the fruit basket of Palestine.
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Honduran peasant leader’s life under threat
Yesterday, Grassroots International received the alarming news that our partner Rafael Alegria, a leader of La Via Campesina in Honduras, has been moved to a safe house in fear for his life, following the murder of his closest legal advisor, Antonio Trejo Cabrera.
This comes as the violence in Honduras against farmers and Afro-descendent leaders continues to escalate. Politically motivated killings, kidnappings and death threats have increased steadily since the 2009 coup in the country and the installation of a post-coup regime. In the Aguan Region alone, more than 65 landless farmers have been killed. -
Does the Right to Food Mechanism help nations achieive food sovereignty?
In the current context in which we see local food economies being encroached by a few corporations, food sovereignty is an ultimate goal for not only farmers, but consumers as well. This battle for the right to decide food and agriculture policies requires different tactics and strategies from the organization of community-led seminars, planting of every inch of vacant space to global actions. One of these local-global actions has been to design of new policy frameworks such as the Right to Food mechanism.
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The Anti-Walmart Motto
If Walmart really tried, I doubt they could have picked a slogan more completely counter to the wisdom, values and insights of global movements of small farmers and indigenous peoples.
The difference between "Live better" (Walmart's latest slogan) and "living well" (the organizing principle of small farmers around the world) means the difference between personal success and community contentment.
And whereas Walmart wants to “Save money,” indigenous and peasant groups in the Global South want to save the planet through grassroots alternatives to corporate globalization.