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Food Sovereignty

Legislative activity heats up

By: Carol Schachet | May 20, 2009

Both the House and Senate are considering legislation with tremendous implications for farmers and agriculture across the globe. On the Senate side, the Global Food Security Bill, S.384 (also known as the Casey-Lugar Bill), calls for the United States to play a leadership role in implementing questionable food production strategies in developing countries. The bill mandates that massive investments in foreign assistance for agriculture shall include genetically engineered (GE) technologies. However, numerous studies and reports tell otherwise and warn of the dangers posed by GE technolgies, including soil erosion, cross-breeding, lower long-term yields and other environmental hazards.
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Food Sovereignty

Food Sovereignty: A New Model for a Human Right

By: Carol Schachet | May 20, 2009

Last month, Grassroots International, along with a few other U.S. food justice organizations, collaborated with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter to organize his U.S. visit. Among his most important stops, de Schutter spoke at the United Nations on May 4, 2009, presenting a report on the right to food in the context of the global food crisis.
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Food Sovereignty

Building Indigenous Women’s Leadership – One, two, five women at a time

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 11, 2009

My colleague Saulo Araujo and I were recently in Guatemala visiting our partner CONIC (National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples & Campesinos). CONIC's staff took us to visit a local community they have been working with in the village of Cocorval, in the Department of Chimaltenango, over an hour's drive from Guatemala City on a "chicken bus."
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Food Sovereignty

Feeding the world and cooling the planet

By: Carol Schachet | May 11, 2009

"The cascading series of events now known as the world food crisis started in Mexico as the 'tortilla war' in January 2007. It then flared up in Italy as the 'spaghetti strike' nine months later. Later it became an unstoppable avalanche ... La Vía Campesina believes that this crisis is the result of decades of destructive policies: pressure from international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to decrease investment in small-scale food production through structural adjustment programs; increasing the power of transnational corporations; financial speculation; and more recently, governments' support for the frantic escalation in the production of agro-fuels."
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Food Sovereignty

Liberation: Of Land & Women

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 11, 2009

Saulo and I traveled with our partner Rafael Alegria of the Via Campesina and COCOCH (Honduran Coordinating Council of Campesino Organizations), about an hour northeast of Honduras' capital Tegucigalpa, near the town of Comayagua, to meet Analina Claros, one of the leaders of the Nueve Noviembre (November 9^th) settlement, and her neighbors. This is what she shared with us over a wonderful homecooked stew of chicken and vegetables and freshly made corn tortillas, all grown and raised in their settlement:
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Food Sovereignty

Brazilian Activist from MST Participates in the Brooklyn Food Conference

By: Saulo Araujo | May 7, 2009

The Food Sovereignty movement in the United States is well and alive. And thanks to the work of food cooperatives, community supported agriculture (CSA) and local farmers, little by little more neighborhoods and cities are joining this social movement that is reclaiming the right to quality food.

This past weekend, the movement's strengthen was displayed in Brooklyn, NY, where over 2,000 people met in one of the largest U.S. events for Food Sovereignty this year.

Participants in the Brooklyn Food Conference represented different places and backgrounds in the U.S. food movement. Event speakers included some of the leading voices in the United States, such as social activist Malik Yakini from Detroit, and Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved.
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Food Sovereignty

The People at the People’s Summit

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 5, 2009

Many social movements from across the Americas were in Trinidad for the 4th People’s Summit to articulate their demands for moving the hemisphere towards economic (including trade) and climate justice, food sovereignty, human rights, and an end to militarization. They represented movements of women, peasants, indigenous peoples, labor and those struggling for environmental justice.
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Food Sovereignty

Swine Flu Déjà Vu?

By: Carol Schachet | May 1, 2009

As more cases of Swine Flu are reported across the globe, two kinds of opportunism seem to be spreading as well. First, non-profits spin the story to seek funding or media coverage for whatever portion of their work might overlap with the rising pandemic. Some are more relevant-and actually engaged-than others. Second, businesses might use the health scare for their own purposes.
In Egypt, pigs are being slaughtered to "prevent" the spread of swine flu in a country where even a single case of the illness has not yet been confirmed.
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Food Sovereignty

Women’s Rights Are A Precondition to Food Sovereignty

By: Nic Paget-Clarke | April 23, 2009

Matola, Mozambique
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Food Sovereignty

Business as Usual Will Not Solve Global Hunger Crisis

By: Carol Schachet | April 17, 2009

Washington D.C. (April 16, 2009) - The U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis, a group representing anti-hunger, family farm, community food security, environmental, international aid, labor, food justice, consumers and other food system actors, urges the G8 at the upcoming Agricultural Ministerial in Treviso, Italy to reject the failed policies of the Green Revolution. A recent landmark report backed by the UN and World Bank argues for agroecological and sustainable agriculture, rather than reliance on chemical-intensive practices and genetic engineering.
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Food Sovereignty

Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops

By: Carol Schachet | April 17, 2009

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that genetic engineering has not significantly increased crop yields in relation to other agricultural technologies.

In an April 14th, 2009 press release, Doug Sherman, author of the report and biologist in the UCS Food and Environment Program, commented "The biotech industry has spent billions on research and public relations hype, but genetically engineered food and feed crops haven't enabled American farmers to grow significantly more crops per acre of land ... In comparison, traditional breeding continues to deliver better results."

Read the full report here.
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Food Sovereignty

U.S. Family Farmers Mark April 17th With A Protest Against Commodity Speculation

By: Carol Schachet | April 16, 2009

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:
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Food Sovereignty

Why the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act will Fail to Curb Hunger

By: Carol Schachet | April 16, 2009

"A new bill before the U.S. Senate stands to completely overhaul the way the U.S. offers agricultural development and food aid to the developing world. This bill, the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act, aims to reform aid programs to include a stronger focus on long-term agricultural development and the restructuring of aid agencies to better respond to crises. While this renewed focus is commendable, the Lugar-Casey bill also mandates funding for genetically modified crop research as a major underpinning of its food security strategy. Just as food aid expands markets for U.S. grain even as it destroys markets and farm livelihoods abroad, the agricultural development aid in the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act will open markets in Africa and elsewhere to the U.S.
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Food Sovereignty

April Showers with Significant Trade, Food and Agricultural Policy Debates

By: Maria Aguiar | April 16, 2009

When it rains, it pours. This week has seen a deluge of global food and trade strategies, all of which may deeply impact food and agriculture policies for Grassroots International, our partners and our allies.
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Food Sovereignty

April 17 – International Day of Peasants’ Struggle

By: Carol Schachet | April 14, 2009

Since 1996 April 17 has been declared by La Via Campesina "International Day of Peasants' Struggles." This day commemorates the slaughter by the Brazilian police of 19 peasants of the landless movement (MST) while they mobilized to get access to some land. Thirteen years later, the struggle for recognition of peasant rights remains a priority of the Via Campesina, one of Grassroots International's partners.

According to the Via Campesina's press release,
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Food Sovereignty

Food Security and Fair Trade Coffee

By: Lilian Autler | April 9, 2009

The Oaxaca State Coffee Producers Network (CEPCO), one of Grassroots International's partners in Mexico, works with largely indigenous coffee-growing families to fortify their economic wellbeing. CEPCO has been instrumental in strengthening organic coffee production among members and in diversifying the local economic base in an effort to ensure that local indigenous communities can stay on their traditional collectively owned land.
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Food Sovereignty

Celebrating the United Nations Right to Food Day

By: Maria Aguiar | April 7, 2009

Since late spring of 2008 I have been playing an active role in the work of the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis. This broad network of farmer, fisher, farmworker, labor, faith, food and hunger and policy advocacy organizations has echoed the call of global social movements and civil society to implement a clear and simple set of principles included in the findings of the 2008 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and join the community of nations supporting the right to food.
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Food Sovereignty

“Doha round [of the World Trade Organization] will not prevent another food crisis”

By: Nikhil Aziz | April 3, 2009

The Right to Food like many other human rights has been under threat from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its rules that often prevent countries from designing and implementing domestic policies that aim to realize those rights. Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food recently presented the conclusions from his mission to the WTO to the UN Human Rights Council.
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Food Sovereignty

Impressions from the Middle East: Updates from Our Partners in Palestine: Part III

By: Marie Kennedy | March 25, 2009

Grassroots International Board Member Marie Kennedy and staff member Salena Tramel visited partners and allies in the West Bank and Israel prior to joining a delegation to Gaza, co-sponsored by Code Pink. This entry is from Marie's notes from her meetings in the West Bank.

March 1, 2009 – A Conversation with Rula Al-Khateeb of the Palestinian Farmer's Union (PFU)

Rula Al-Khateeb, delegate at Via Campesina's 5^th International Conference in Maputo, Mozambique last October, and Public Relations Coordinator of the Palestinian Farmer's Union met with us to discuss the PFU and its progress in becoming a Via Campesina member organization.
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Food Sovereignty

Food Speculation Coalition Letter to President Obama

By: Carol Schachet | March 25, 2009

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.
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