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Food Sovereignty

Is Monsanto’s Gift of Hybrid Seeds a Trojan Horse?

By: Carol Schachet | Junho 4, 2010

No one denies that Haiti needs seeds and support this planting season, as the population still faces steep challenges since January’s devastating earthquake. Many thousands have fled urban areas for the countryside, taxing already strained resources and causing many rural communities to re-purpose for food the seeds set aside for planting.

But is any seed a good seed? No, says Chavannes Jean-Baptiste and other Haitian activists. Chavannes is the executive director of Grassroots International partner the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP).
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Food Sovereignty

Biotechnology: A False Sense of Food Security

By: Carol Schachet | Maio 5, 2010

Recently our colleague Timi Gerson at American Jewish World Service published the article below, debunking the myth that biotechnology will save the world from hunger and exposing the anti-organic bias of biotech advocates. Grassroots International and the American Jewish World Service are working to support food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture worldwide.
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Food Sovereignty

The Joy of Justice: Marching with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

By: Carol Schachet | Abril 21, 2010

Below is a blog from our colleague Stephen Bartlett of Agricultural Missions entitled “Praying with our Feet Journal.” Along with 1,000 others, he participated in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) Farmworker Freedom March, a three-day trek of 25 miles ending in Lakeland, FL where Publix supermarket chain corporate headquarters is located. The farmworkers are calling on Publix to pay them a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they pick, which would nearly double their meager wages. CIW and other marchers are also asking Publix to sign onto a code of conduct which would prevent the from buying tomatoes from any growers that did not meet certain basic working conditions.
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Food Sovereignty

Take Action: Food Sovereignty Threatened by Proposed US Legislation

By: Carol Schachet | Abril 16, 2010

As early as next week, the US Senate could vote on legislation with tremendous consequences for farmers and small producers across the globe. The Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act, also known as S. 384, aims to increase US foreign assistance for agricultural research and production and represents the biggest US agricultural aid initiative in more than half a century.

However, this ostensibly laudable effort is deeply flawed by a clause which specifically mandates research on genetically engineered (GE) crops. Please take action now to tell your Senator to oppose this legislation until the 'GE Clause' is removed.
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Food Sovereignty

True Cost of Cheap Food

By: Carol Schachet | Abril 2, 2010

How does cheap food contribute to global hunger? Tim Wise, a former Grassroots International Executive Director, recently wrote an article in Resurgence magazine explaining the contradictory nature of food and agriculture under globalization.
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Food Sovereignty

Combating Hunger by Reforesting Haiti

By: Carol Schachet | Março 19, 2010

Last August, I stood in Haiti’s Artibonite valley with several peasant organizers and looked out at the mountains leading up to the Central Plateau. The older leaders in the group explained in depth how green the mountains once were, while the younger organizers and I listened in amazement. The tropical lime forests they described from their past were the antithesis of the sandy naked slopes we saw in the distance.
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Food Sovereignty
Beating Hunger in Haiti with Seeds and Tools for Small Farmers

By: Maria Aguiar | Março 11, 2010
On the cusp of Haiti’s spring planting season, we received urgent requests from our partners and allies in Haiti about their dire need for seeds and tools to ensure that food production would be secured in the immediate planting season -- this is all the more important in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and the massive migration to rural areas from Port-au-Prince.

Grassroots International is making three new grants of $25,000 each, all of which will help provide seeds, tools and training for this planting season to these groups:
- The Peasant Movement of Papaye(the MPP). Funds for the MPP will cover the Central Plateau.
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Food Sovereignty

Grassroots International, Partners and Allies Speak about Resource Rights and the Food Crisis in San Francisco

By: Lilian Autler | Março 5, 2010
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Food Sovereignty

Haiti: “Post Disaster Needs Assessment” – Whose Needs? Whose Assessment?

By: Beverly Bell and Camille Chalmers | Março 3, 2010

The Haitian government has been largely silent since the January 12 earthquake. Publicly, that is. Who knows what officials are saying behind closed doors to international governments and other donors? Citizens don’t. They have heard from President René Préval about his personal losses from the quake – his shirts, his palace - but about little else, least of all about the substance of governmental plans for reconstruction.

This week – a full six weeks after the world-historic-level catastrophe – the Haitian government launched a post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA). The PDNA establishes working groups to assess damages and look at the macro-plan for reconstruction.
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Food Sovereignty

Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: 1997 Executive Summary

By: Carol Schachet | Março 2, 2010

CARE has been "helping" people in the Northwest for decades. But each year, the misery of the people of the Northwest increases. What is the real impact of this aid? To make people more dependent, more vulnerable, more on the margins?...The aid is not given in such a way as to give the people responsibility, to make them less dependent....This is what you call "commercializing" poverty....The people's misery should not be marketed.... - Samuel Madisten, Haitian Senator
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Food Sovereignty

Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: 1997 Full Report

By: Carol Schachet | Março 2, 2010

In 1997, Grassroots International released a research study entitled "Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti." Offering an in-depth examination of USAID development policies in Haiti, the study concluded that, as the title suggests, official aid actually damaged the very aspects of Haitian society it was allegedly trying to fix – namely it created a lack of democracy and too much dependency.
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Food Sovereignty

Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy… Still

By: Nikhil Aziz | Março 2, 2010

Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar, echoing the same bad development advice that Haiti has received for decades -- even before the nation faced its current devastating situation. To avoid repeating the past failures, we would be wise to review how previous aid models led down the wrong path.
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Food Sovereignty

One step forward towards a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants

By: Grassroots International | Fevereiro 25, 2010

Recently the Advisory Committee of the U.N. Human Rights Council approved the report “Discrimination in the Context of Right to Food.” Their endorsement of the report is a significant first step towards the recognition of peasant’s rights—something that Grassroots International and our partner the Via Campesina have advocated for years. We now hope that the leadership of the U.N. Human Rights Council will embrace the recommendation of its advisory board. It will be one step forward for justice.
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Food Sovereignty

Aldo Gonzalez of UNOSJO interviewed in San Francisco

By: Lilian Autler | Fevereiro 12, 2010

Grassroots International partner Aldo Gonzalez from the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) joined us in the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of January for a week of meetings, conferences and public events. UNOSJO is an indigenous-led organization working with Zapotec communities to build local autonomy and to increase food security in the Juarez mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico.
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Food Sovereignty

After the Catastrophe: Our Country Can Rise Again

By: Carol Schachet | Fevereiro 4, 2010

Many of Grassroots International’s partners in Haiti recently released the following statement in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti. Our partners have used this devastating and unstable time to bond together and to work to rebuild Haiti with creative bottom-up solutions.
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Food Sovereignty

Haiti: Roots of Liberty — Roots of Disaster

By: Nikhil Aziz | Janeiro 21, 2010

Grassroots International ally Food First's executive director Eric Holt-Jimenez wrote recently -- on HuffPost -- on the long roots of the disaster in Haiti. His point about the "historic bleeding of Haiti's economy and the systematic undermining of its political institutions" being at the root of the disaster as much as the "tectonics that leveled Port-au-Prince" is right on the mark. Grassroots' partners and allies in Haiti have long struggled against that bleeding and undermining, and fought for better Haitian and international policies on agriculture, trade, and food that would sustain their people, and their land.
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Food Sovereignty

We Can’t Change the Climate, But We Can Change the System

By: Grassroots International | Dezembro 17, 2009
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Food Sovereignty

Cooling the Earth with Food Sovereignty

By: Carol Schachet | Dezembro 17, 2009
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Food Sovereignty

Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen

By: Carol Schachet | Dezembro 11, 2009

As dignitaries and politicians meet in Copenhagen to discuss ways to curtail climate change, some of the people most affected by the crisis are also present, including the Via Campesina. One of Grassroots International’s partners, the Via represents more than 150 million small farmers, fishers and producers worldwide. As Henry Saragih, General Coordinator of Via Campesina, notes in the speech below, small farmers are cooling down the earth, while big industrial farms pose grave risks.

Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen
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Food Sovereignty

Grassroots Signs Call for U.S. Leadership at the World Food Summit

By: Carol Schachet | Novembro 16, 2009

As a founding member and part of the ad hoc steering committee, Grassroots International proudly announces the following Call from the US Working Group on the Food Crisis. The statement coincides with the World Food Summit, taking place now in Rome, and it calls the the US government to take bold actions to resolve the global food crisis, including 10 specific recommendations.

Call for U.S. Leadership at the World Food Summit
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