The tidal wave of American interest in local, sustainable agriculture, and the waves of protest around the world over staggering food prices, seem to have washed over the heads of most members of Congress without them even noticing. The 2008 Farm Bill proves it.
Food prices have been increasing sharply. According to the World Bank, global food prices have climbed by 83% over the last three years. The real price of rice rose to a 19-year high in March 2008, an increase of 50% in two weeks alone while the real price of wheat hit a 28-year high, triggering an international crisis.
Suddenly everyones talking about local: Local is the new organic, were told. Farmers markets are springing up in food co-operative and church parking lots and on Main Streets throughout the country. More people are joining CSAs (community supported agriculture) and choosing locally grown products in their grocery stores. And as this trend continues, more and more consumers are starting to ask hard questions about where their food comes from and how its grown, who are the people growing it and under what conditions, and equally important of course, whos making the decisions that control our food choices and whos making the profits from those purchases?
The U.S. Senate ignored the wishes of 4 million Peruvian farmers and countless numbers of American family farmers, ranchers, and consumers earlier this month when it voted to create a new Peru Free Trade Agreement (Peru FTA). The agreement, modeled on failed free trade policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA, will allow American agribusinesses to dump tons of below-cost commodities such as corn and soybeans into the Peruvian economy, thereby creating unfair competition for Peruvian farmers. It will also allow Peru to flood the U.S. market with cheap fruits and vegetables at a time when American family farmers are trying to build sustainable food systems by offering affordable local produce to consumers.
This week we received a letter from Chavannes Jean Baptiste, Executive Secretary of the Peasant Movement of Papaye, one of Grassroots International's partners in Haiti. His letter highlights the root causes of the ongoing neglect of rural communities in Haiti and the devastation in the countryside due to recent floods. Please read his words below:
More and more people around the world are taking up the call by peasant and small farmers, indigenous peoples and pastoralists for food sovereignty as an expression of, and a way to realize the right to food. Earlier this year members of the Via Campesina and other organizations met in Mali to put in motion an action plan for achieving food sovereignty. On October 16th, World Food Day, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) endorsed food sovereignty as the right to food. As IFOAM notes, food sovereignty as the right to food means the right to feed oneself as opposed to the right to be fed.
With one common sense reform to the U.S. food aid program, we can save many more lives without spending one cent more. Take Action Now or read on for more information.
This morning I got an e-newsletter from the Worldwatch Institute featuring a video on the joys of eating local food, something we've been talking a lot about here at Grassroots.
The legend of the first Thanksgiving is a tale of different worlds coming together in peace to share the bounty of the harvest, of Old World and New World crops and cultures coming together for the
