The Journal of Agriculture and Human Values has published the paper "From colonization to “environmental soy”: A case study of environmental and socio-economic valuation in the Amaz
Peter Rosset, a member of Grassroots International's Resource Rights Advisory Group based at CECCAM (Center for the Study of Rural Change in Mexico) in Mexico City, recently wrote this l
Editor's note: As debate over Mexico’s economic policies is happening at the highest levels of the government, peasants took to the streets over the price of tortillas. Even the New York Times is taking notice. Today, the Times reported:“Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.”And for what might be the first time ever, the NYT explained that what protesters are asking for is food sovereignty. We are thrilled that a national newspaper is taking notice of this growing fight for policies that do not undermine local, national and global food systems.Two close Grassroots International advisors, Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly, are on the ground in Mexico. They have sent us this first of many reports to come, and we are excited to be able to share them with you here.
In less than one month, hundreds of farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and environmental and indigenous organizations will convene in Mali for Nyéléni 2007: Forum for Food Sovereignty.
In order to raise awareness about our food and farming system we asked the people in our community to complete the phrase “Food is…” We received responses from all over the United States, Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and Palestine.
Responses ranged from one word to poems and essays and illustrated what Grassroots International has known since we launched our Resource Rights Initiative—people around the world have a lot to say about our food and farming system and recognize that it is more than a simple commodity.
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
Every year, as Thanksgiving comes round the corner, I think about food—the history of food and the history of the peoples who grow and eat it.
I think about salads in the same way I think about eggs: I can eat them at any time of day, cooked any which way, and with almost anything I have around.
This recipe was handed down from my grandmother. My mom now makes these muffins for almost every holiday or special occasion.
My mother has a book of hand written recipes that provide a map to my childhood. It's as old as I am, 29 years old.
Progress by Grace Darby
When I was a girl,
Eggs were warm, silky brown ,
From haystack barn, manger
When I was seven, the owners of my dad's workplace shut down production and locked the workers out.
All people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone. This is the basic principle behind food sovereignty. If you want to support domestic food security through the production of healthy food at a fair price, and you believe that family farmers and fishers should have the first right to local and regional markets, then food sovereignty is for you.
Food is a right, a responsibility, a gift, a life, a mystery, a puzzle of unequal distribution of resources which must be solved right now.
Many developing countries and civil society organizations welcomed with great excitement and relief the once-again-collapsed World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in July 2006. However, the suspension of the global trade organization’s authority on agriculture has not resulted in a sea change in global agricultural policy.
Grassroots movements have made great strides towards putting the power of the food system in citizens’ hands, but ongoing bi-lateral and regional trade negotiations threaten to curtail these advances.
Grassroots International is pleased to announce a new book co-edited by our Resource Rights Specialist, Corrina Steward, "Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas" (International Institute for Environment and Development, IUCN Commission on Environmental Economic and Social Policy, and Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2006). The publication explores the emerging alliances among small farmer organizations, environmentalists and scholars to promote ecologically sound and economically just food and agriculture systems across the Americas.
Where I come from, we are born farmers. Our entire life, our entire livelihood and our entire economy depend upon agriculture.
--Mariam Sissoko, CNOP, Mali
What better place to talk about the right to food, land and water than in one of the US's great food capitals, New Orleans? I've just returned from Share our Strength's (http://www.strength.org) annual Conference of Leaders - a remarkable network of restaurateurs and chefs seeking to end childhood hunger, a network with which Grassroots International is honored to collaborate.
Building local, national and international solutions for hunger and the crisis in the global rural economy
Earlier ths week at the Community Food Security Coalition conference in Vancouver, BC, Grassroots and the National Family Farm Coalition debuted a new booklet that we created this summer on food sovereignty.
In the simplest terms, food sovereignty is the belief that communities should have plenty of food that's not only healthy for the bodies, healthy for their way of life and that the communities themselves have control over.
The Nation ran a special "food issue" that addressed America's values with respect to food, farming and policy. The main tenet of the issue is that the U.S. food system is broken. At Grassroots we believe this is true. We take the notion even further: the global food system is broken.
U.S. food and farm policy is foreign policy that shapes agricultural conditions globally. The results are devastating for millions around the world: hunger, environmental degradation and human rights violations.
