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Food Sovereignty

Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary – the United States Social Forum

By: Nikhil Aziz | July 3, 2007

“Our Youth is not the Future, Our Youth is the Present” – Julian Moya, Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), Albuquerque, New Mexico
“We cannot choose the historical conditions we find ourselves in, but we can choose how we respond to them” – Ajamu Baraka, Director, U.S. Human Rights Network, Atlanta, Georgia
These two quotes, among many other hopeful messages I heard at the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) from June 27 to July 1, 2007 in Atlanta epitomized for me the USSF – what it stands for and envisions in terms of a different kind of United States. Both represent the truth embedded in the official slogan of the USSF – Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary.
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Food Sovereignty

Towards a Green Food System: How Food Sovereignty Can Save the Environment and Feed the World

By: Carol Schachet | June 27, 2007

Grassroots International and Food and Water Watch teamed up to issue an informative and compelling report that shows how food sovereignty will not only benefit small farmers all over the world, but will also give environmentalists and consumers what "free” trade and bad farm policies have failed to deliver. Conventional agriculture is a major cause of global warming, and as Congress and the United Nations grapple with a new environmental treaty, a strong food sovereignty movement is more critical than ever. Please read the report to find out more about this remarkable movement, how bridges can be built, and why the time to work together has arrived.
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Food Sovereignty

Join Grassroots International at the United States Social Forum, Atlanta, June 27-30

By: Carol Schachet | June 27, 2007

Please join Grassroots International at the United States Social Forum, Atlanta, June 27-30, 2007. The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression, more than a collection of local solutions. It's an important moment to further build the global movement for social justice.
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Food Sovereignty

River Rerouting in Brazil: Reinventing a Broken Wheel

By: Saulo Araujo | June 27, 2007

1,200 indigenous people, fishermen and peasant farmers occupied the construction site of a major river rerouting project of the São Francisco river in protest. Members of different organizations and social movements in northeast Brazil are demanding that the federal government stop the implementation of this project and guarantee indigenous people’s land rights in the area.
“We are being evicted from our land for this by people who are not concerned with the river or with the livelihood of our families” said Neguinho Truká, leader of the Truká ethnic group.
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Food Sovereignty

Panel Food Sovereignty Perspectives on Crises and Conflicts

By: Carol Schachet | June 26, 2007

Panel Food Sovereignty Perspectives on Crises and Conflicts
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Food Sovereignty

Panel Food Sovereignty Perspectives on Biofuels

By: Carol Schachet | June 26, 2007

Panel Food Sovereignty Perspectives on Biofuels
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Food Sovereignty

Panel 2007 U.S. Farm Bill

By: Carol Schachet | June 26, 2007

Panel 2007 U.S. Farm Bill
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Food Sovereignty

Backroom Deal with the Administration Hurts Farmers & Workers at Home and Abroad

By: Carol Schachet | May 24, 2007

Reports about a backroom deal between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Charles Rangel and the White House on "fast track" -- the authorization the President sought to extend that gives him power to practically bypass Congress on free trade deals because it can only vote on and cannot amend the deals President makes -- in return for concessions in other areas were floating around Washington for some time. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dennis Olson and Alexandra Spieldoch report on what this means for agriculture, here in the U.S. and in the global South.
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Food Sovereignty

The Myth of Biofuels

By: Carol Schachet | May 8, 2007

A Report from Brazil's Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social).By Edivan Pinto, Marluce Melo and Maria Luisa Mendonça*
Recent studies about the impacts caused by fossil fuels contributed in highlighting the theme of bioenergy . The energy matrix is composed of petroleum (35%), coal (23%) and natural gas (21%).On their own, the ten richest countries consume 80% of the energy produced in the world. Amongst these, the USA is responsible for 25% of pollution to the atmosphere. Analysts estimate that within 25 years, the world demand for petroleum, natural gas and coal may have an increase of 80%.
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Food Sovereignty

The Benefits of Local Food

By: Jake Miller | April 24, 2007

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.
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Food Sovereignty

International Peasants’ Struggle Day – April 17

By: Nikhil Aziz | April 21, 2007

The 17th of April is International Peasants' Struggle Day, established after the massacre of 19 landless peasants belonging to the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil on the 17th of April 1996 which occurred during the second conference of the Via Campesina in Tlaxcala Mexico. Many of Grassroots International's partners, including the MST are members of the Via Campesina, and Grassroots directly works with the Via as well.
In commemoration of International Peasants' Struggle Day, the Via Campesina and its allies are organizing activities and actions all over the world. Peasants and friends will rally around the demands that the Via posted on its website.
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Food Sovereignty

Food Sovereignty and Biofuels

By: Saulo Araujo | March 23, 2007

Article three in a three issue series on biofuel in Brazil.
The memorandum of understanding between Brazil and the United States signed during the visit of President Bush to Brazil early this month has been under intense scrutiny. For one, the high U.S. tariffs on Brazilian ethanol make the initiative unrealistic for now. But speculative investors are already rushing to expand the "green desert", as activists have taken to calling the vast areas of monocrops like sugar cane, soybean and castor seed that bring high profits for agribusiness and industry at the cost of rural livelihoods and biodiversity. This expansion takes land and water rights and the possibility of a dignified livelihood away from rural families.
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Food Sovereignty

Harvest of Shame: Bush’s Guatemala Visit Masks CAFTA’s Rotten Produce

By: Nikhil Aziz | March 13, 2007

In the wake of President Bush's visit to Guatemala as part of his 5 nation Latin America tour, the National Labor Committee (NLC, New York) and the Center for Studies and Support for Local Development (CEADEL, Guatemala) just released a joint report "Harvest of Shame" that details the exploitation and human rights violations of children in Guatemala.
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Food Sovereignty

Free Trade in Agriculture: A Debate

By: Nikhil Aziz | March 13, 2007

Foreign Policy in Focus (a joint project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the International Relations Center) recently invited Anuradha Mittal (of the Oakland Institute) and Gawain Kripke (of Oxfam America) to debate free trade. Anuradha was also on a recent panel with Colin Rajah (of the National Netowrk on Immigrant and Refugee Rights) titled, "A Perfect Storm: U.S. Trade, Agriculture and Immigration Policies Undermining Human Rights" that Grassroots International organized at the International Human Rights Funders Group conference in January 2007.
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Food Sovereignty

Women of Via Campesina Brazil in Honor of International Women’s Day Occupy a Cargill-owned Sugar Mill in Sao Paulo

By: Maria Aguiar | March 8, 2007

Grassroots International has received this report from our partners in Brazil. Part of a week-long series of actions honoring International Women's Day and protesting the upcoming visit of President Bush, the women of Via Campesina Brazil and the MST have occupied a sugar mill in the state of Sao Paulo that was recently purchased by Cargill - one of the five largest agricultural transational corporations in the world.
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Food Sovereignty

Via Campesina Brazil’s Women Are for Food Sovereignty and against Agribusiness

By: Maria Aguiar | March 6, 2007

Today, March 6th, Grassroots International received an announcement from the Via Campesina Brazil. The women of the Via Campesina Brazil are honoring International Women's Day by organizing land occupations and protests against large Brazilian and transnational corporations who own and exploit huge tracts of Brazilian land and labor for monocultured cultivation of trees for cellulose for export. The women refer to these huge tracts of land planted only with such trees as the "green deserts" of Brazil - green deserts because they produce no food and very little employment, and are also environmentally damaging. Please read the announcement of our partners below:
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Food Sovereignty

DECLARATION OF NYÉLÉNI

By: Jake Miller | February 28, 2007

Nyéléni Village, Selingue, Mali
We, more than 500 representatives from more than 80 countries, of organizations of peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisher-folk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers, environmental and urban movements have gathered together in the village of Nyéléni in Selingue, Mali to strengthen a global movement for food sovereignty. We are doing this, brick by brick, have been living in huts constructed by hand in the local tradition, and eating food that is being produced and prepared by the Selingue community. We give our collective endeavor the name “Nyéléni” as a tribute to and inspiration from a legendary Malian peasant woman who farmed and fed her peoples well.
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Food Sovereignty

Peasants Cannot Do it Alone, Need Strong Alliances with Consumers, Environmentalists, Indigenous Peoples and Others

By: Nikhil Aziz | February 28, 2007

Peter Rossett, from the Center for the Study of Rural Change in Mexico (CECCAM), is a member of Grassroots International's Resource Rights Advisory Group. He was in Mali for the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum this month and in a piece that was first posted on the Nyeleni website, he stressed the need for different sectors to collaborate, pointing out that "It is clear that the peasant sector cannot change the food system alone; it needs strong alliances with consumers, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, women, fishermen and even herders."
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Food Sovereignty

Joao Pedro Stedile (MST) Says International Financial Institutions Do Not Represent People

By: Nikhil Aziz | February 28, 2007

Joao Pedro Stedile, an MST leader and member of Grassroots International's Resource Rights Advisory Group participated along with his colleagues at the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum. While there he spoke with Radio Mundo Real about how the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank do not represent the interests of ordinary people and argued that international trade must first and foremost meet the needs of people not corporations. The interview originally appeared on the Nyeleni website.
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Food Sovereignty

Environmental Food Sovereignty

By: Carol Schachet | February 27, 2007

Today I facilitated a sub-work group of the Access and Control of Natural Resources thematic working group focused on the environmental aspects of the struggle for food sovereignty. It gave me a great opportunity to hear experiences and learn about the values that different cultures place on natural resources.
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