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Via Campesina, Bali Declaration: World Bank and IMF represent the interests of agribusiness, they should GO!

Submitted by x332349 on Fri, 02/22/2019 - 16:51

By La Via Campesina - La Via Campesina, October 11, 2018

We, the peasant women and men of La Via Campesina – a global movement comprising 182 peasant organisations from 81 countries – who have assembled in Bali this week and representing peasant and indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe and Americas, are unanimously and emphatically denouncing the ongoing Annual Meeting of World Bank and IMF.

“WTO Kills Peasants! 21 Years is Enough!! WTO Out of Agriculture!!!” La Via Campesina to step up its resistance during the XI Ministerial Conference

Submitted by x332349 on Fri, 02/22/2019 - 16:46

By Francés: Claude Girod, et. al. - La Via Campesina, December 10, 2017

A large delegation of La Via Campesina comprising peasants, rural workers, indigenous peoples, women and youth from around the world will converge outside the venue of the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is scheduled to take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from the 10th to13th December.

During the week of the conference, La Via Campesina (LVC) will mobilise, organise and join social movements and allies to expose the devastative effects that WTO has had on peasant agriculture and to reiterate our long-standing demand of 21 years, to oust the multilateral trade body from any discussions and decisions regarding agriculture.

La Via Campesina, a global peasant movement with more than 180 member organisations from 79 countries, has consistently demanded to take agriculture out of the WTO’s scope. Instead it has demanded a systemic change that brings about food sovereignty to the worlds peoples. Once again the rallying call from the global peasants’ movement is “For Food Sovereignty, WTO Out of Agriculture!”.

Since its beginnings in 1995 as derivative of General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATTs), the World Trade Organization has promoted the most brutal form of capitalism, better known as trade liberalization. At successive Ministerial Conferences, the WTO has set out to globalise the liberalisation of national markets, promising economic prosperity at the cost of sovereignty. In more or less the same terms, by its “liberalization, deregulation and privatization”, which is called Package of Neoliberalism, WTO has encouraged the multiplication of free trade agreements (FTAs) between countries and regional blocs, etc. In this context, with help from governments that have been co-opted, the world’s largest transnational corporations (TNCs) continue to expand globally and are blatantly undermining democracy and all of the institutional instruments that are meant to defend the lives, the territories, and the food and agricultural ecosystems of the world’s peoples.

Through AoA (Agreement on Agriculture) regulated in the WTO, peasant communities become the most disadvantaged because they have minimal capital resources and little or no protection from national governments as WTO prohibits any protection that stand in the way of market liberalisation. Its role was replaced and eroded by corporations with large capital resources, slowly forming a monopoly scheme. As a result, peasants have to deal with dangerous implications such as land grabbing, criminalization, environmental pollution and the importation of agricultural products.

In the previous Ministerial Conference (MC) in Nairobi in 2015, WTO had made six decisions on agriculture, cotton and issues related to LDCs. The agricultural decisions cover commitment to abolish export subsidies for farm exports, public stock-holding for food security purposes, a special safeguard mechanism for developing countries, and measures related to cotton. Decisions were also made regarding preferential treatment for least developed countries (LDCs) in the area of services and the criteria for determining whether exports from LDCs may benefit from trade preferences.

In the 11th Ministerial Conference the WTO wants to return to the subject of agriculture in relation to public stock-holding, to put an end to small-scale fishing, and to make progress with multilateral agreements such as the misnamed General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Notwithstanding the misleading protectionist statements coming from the developed countries, the WTO will meet again to try to impose the interests of capital at the cost of Planet Earth, of the democratic aspirations of the world’s peoples, and of life itself.

Food for Health Manifesto

Submitted by x332349 on Sat, 01/05/2019 - 16:59

By Renata Alleva, et. al. - Navdanya International, 2019

The Food for Health Manifesto aims to give voice, hope and future to all those who wish to commit themselves to act and consume in keeping with a new sustainable food for health paradigm. Additionally, this Manifesto is intended to be used as a tool to help mobilize the urgent transition to local, ecological and diversified food systems. The Manifesto asserts that health, starting with the soil, to plants, animals and humans must be the organizing principle and the aim of agriculture, commerce, science, of our lives and of international trade and aims to create convergence between consumers, producers and stakeholders for a common vision of sustainable development in line with the Millenium Development Goals.

Read the report (Link).

Tags: 
agroecology
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
agribusiness
food sovereignty movement
permaculture
Vandana Shiva
anti-capitalism
food
climate change
climate justice
toxics
pesticides
genetically modified organisms (GMO)
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reports

Missing Pathways to 1.5°C: The role of the land sector in ambitious climate action

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 10/01/2018 - 17:25

By Kate Dooley, Doreen Stabinsky, et. al. - Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, October 2018

Current climate strategies are leading us to brink of disaster. While some level of removal of atmospheric carbon is inevitably required for the 1.5°C goal, due to historical and committed emissions, it is critical to limit this removal to the lowest amount possible, by restricting future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Ecosystem-based solutions can offer immediate, accessible, cost-effective and equitable strategies for meeting the 1.5°C temperature goal. In the context of international efforts to address climate change and increasing evidence of its rapid environmental impacts this report presents a global call to action for governments, development institutions and the broader climate community that challenges the fundamental assumptions that have so far guided national and international climate policies. Here we demonstrate the potential for targeted policies in the land sector to reduce the sustainability risks associated with mitigating climate change, while protecting human rights—particularly the customary rights of indigenous and local communities—and ensuring ecosystem integrity and food security.

Many narratives about climate change begin by asking what mitigation actions are technically or economically feasible, and how we can use the land sector to sequester as much carbon as possible. They focus on addressing climate change now so that we might ensure food security, human rights and biodiversity in the future, with little emphasis on who bears the brunt of the impacts of mitigation. The analysis in this report starts from a different place, giving primacy to food security, protecting human rights and protecting and restoring natural ecosystems in the battle against climate change.

This report addresses the shortcomings of current modelling approaches to deep mitigation pathways. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for 2°C and 1.5°C almost universally rely on intervention in the land sector on a truly massive scale, with most relying on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to remove carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it underground. In this report we substantiate and quantify the evidence that a large proportion, if not all of the required removals, could be achieved by conserving and enhancing natural sinks, while better land management and agricultural practices could avoid significant amounts of ongoing emissions. Further, when the protection and restoration of natural sinks is achieved through the stewardship of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, securing collective land and forest rights represents a far more equitable and cost-effective way to achieve

climate mitigation targets than other carbon capture and storage measures (Frechette et al., 2016).

This approach relies on ecosystem restoration to deliver ‘the missing pathway’ through avoided conversion of natural sinks and enhancing and protecting terrestrial ecosystems. It prioritises securing indigenous and community rights to land and utilises transformative agricultural practices to help eliminate over-production and consumption, including shifting diets and reducing demand for land for agricultural expansion.

Despite the advantages of multiple ecosystem-based carbon removal pathways in maintaining a liveable planet, such approaches have received little attention from policymakers. Policy choices have been largely informed by modelling that is geared toward accommodating our combustion-based economies, for instance building in the false solution of replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy. Policymakers have largely not been offered options that incorporate how behavioural and societal shifts—and strengthening tenure rights—can mitigate climate change.

The frame for considering pathways to 1.5°C must not be narrowly focused on emission reductions. Certainly the need for climate change action is urgent, but understanding the context for action is paramount. The world is one of growing inequality. Climate change arises from that inequality and feeds it, as the world’s wealthy continue over-consuming diminishing resources. The rest of this introductory section situates climate responses in the intersecting crises of climate, rights and biodiversity; addresses the shortcomings of modelling-based approaches to climate mitigation; and outlines our vision for ecosystem-based solutions that are centred on rights and food sovereignty.

Read the report (PDF).

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third nature
agroecology
permaculture
just transition
Paris Climate Agreement
green unionism
climate change
climate justice
indigenous
greenwashing
biocentrism
food sovereignty movement
La Via Campesina
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agribusiness
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highly recommended

Dangerous Liaison: Industrial Agriculture and the Reductionist Mindset

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 06/11/2018 - 00:00

By Colin Todhunter - East by Northwest, June 11, 2018

Food and agriculture across the world is in crisis. Food is becoming denutrified and unhealthy and diets less diverse. There is a loss of biodiversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water sources polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming.

A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food insecurity has become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful global agribusiness corporations.

Over the last 60 years, agriculture has become increasingly industrialised, globalised and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF/World Bank).

Tags: 
agribusiness
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
food sovereignty movement
agroecology
green syndicalism
La Via Campesina
organic food
genetically modified organisms (GMO)

Political Declaration – Second Continental Assembly of the CLOC-LVC

Submitted by x332349 on Sun, 06/10/2018 - 17:29

By staff - La Via Campesina, Feb 9, 2017

Declaration from the Second Continental Assembly of the CLOC-LVC

(Santandercito 4 May 2017) The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations, CLOC-La Via Campesina, met in Santandercito, Cundinamarca, Colombia – home to Camilo Torres, María Cano, Juan de la Cruz Varela, Víctor J. Merchan. 150 delegates and 80 organisations representing peasants, indigenous, and afro-descendent peoples coming from 22 countries in Latin America also came to commemorate the Second Continental Assembly, under the slogan: Against Capitalism, for the Sovereignty of our Peoples: the Americas remain united in Struggle ­­– dedicated to the Eternal Commander Fidel Castro Ruz.

We are aware that we are living in a period of imperial coups against people and democracy, and where popular struggles, campaigners and organizations are losing their legitimacy. We are aware that we are living in a period of media dictatorships, bureaucracies, bourgeois States and coup governments. We are aware that we are living in a backward-looking period of conservatism, compounded by a sharp resurgence in the Right throughout the world, where, in recent years, governments are stripping away previously-accorded rights. There is currently a dispute as to who holds global hegemony. Ever since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the US had no opposition in holding world hegemony. Today, this is no longer the case, and China is challenging the US to world hegemony. Geopolitics has become a hot topic in the world that is responsible for these coups. What is more, new blocks such as BRICS have challenged this hegemonic power.

We focus our discussion on the obstacles that hinder the construction of a socialist society. We hold our discussions starting from having a clear understanding of the current challenges faced by our continent, and the world capitalist crisis that started in 2008. Today, this crisis has lead to readjustments taking place in peripheral countries, and money is transferred from these to central countries in order to help the latter get out of the crisis. High capital investment seeks ways of using natural assets, oil, land, water and nature as ways of gaining wealth and power.

We reject exclusive, neoliberal, imperial, patriarchal, and capitalist models that run counter to nature’s harmony and its relationship to human beings and the peace of the people, and that break away from the collective and visionary unity of social justice.

We reiterate our commitment as men, women, young people, peoples and nations to transform our societies right down from day-to-day activities, and achieve unity in diversity, all while maintaining an international perspective. We are committed to prioritizing grassroots-work via political and ideological training, and by using alternative tools and our media to strengthen our fights and achieve Socialism.

We reiterate our commitments to our campaigns and we propose a continental campaign for water to be considered as heritage of the people.

We will continue to work with the youth and strengthen their work, as they will be securing victories in future struggles.

We reaffirm our commitment to coordinate struggles via strategic alliances with other popular organizations and movements in an effort to achieve the Bolivian dream of the Patria Grande (Great Homeland): a socialist society where we will have to overcome huge obstacles in order to put an end to violence against women, and to safeguard the lives of the leaders of popular movements. We pay close attention to the Colombian government complying with the PEACE agreements, the rights of peasants, and the self-sufficient nature of the progressive processes coming out of our continent.

The CLOC-LVC closely monitors the Colombian government, ensuring that it complies with the clauses it signed in the Peace agreement. We closely monitor point one in particular –regarding a complete rural reform with a territorial approach – in order to ensure that the Colombian people have access to commons in order to achieve Food Sovereignty.

We salute the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivian Revolution, recognising them as beacons of Socialism in our America. The Revolutions intensify our hope as Latin Americans, and we stand in solidarity with the struggle and resistance of the people and government of Venezuela against the harsh onslaught of the empire.

We consider Food Sovereignty and Agroecology as basic principles, and as alternative methods to cooling down the planet. We consider them as the only way of changing the current model imposed by agribusinesses and transnational companies. We reiterate that peasant and indigenous agriculture is the only way of feeding humanity in a way that is healthy, sustainable, and that safeguards biodiversity and identities.

We call on all socialist fighting forces to revive the constant struggle for ideology and justice, taking inspiration from the historic struggles of previous generations that paid testament to solidarity among people. We are preparing for the La Vía Campesina’s seventh global conference. As part of our contribution to the political debate at the conference, we will discuss the challenges that the world is currently facing, and we will reiterate the need for unity in this Global Peasant Movement.

We will continue to struggle in order to safeguard life, seeds, water, land, territories and all commons that stem from the collective rights that Mother Earth has given us. The aim of our actions is to have a more socially humane, fair and equal society.

A Green New Deal for Agriculture

Submitted by x332349 on Wed, 04/04/2018 - 00:00

Raj Patel and Jim Goodman - Jacobin, April 4, 2019

The food system is breaking the planet. Nearly a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are driven by how we eat, and it’s impossible to tackle climate change without transforming agriculture. So the Green New Deal is wise to call for “a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” Better yet, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey’s proposal includes a call to work “collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector.”

This has the makings of a bonanza for rural America. Healthy food costs more and is harder to access than processed food. Under a Green New Deal that helped Americans eat better, more cash might flow back to the land. And if the federal government were paying more for better food, and understood that well-managed soil can sequester carbon, sustainable farming might be a way to end America’s rural poverty.

Yet almost as soon as the Green New Deal was released, members of the American Farm Bureau criticized the proposal as misguided and uninformed. Early in March, the National Farmers Union, one of the more left-leaning of the large farm organizations, snubbed the Green New Deal for not recognizing “the essential contribution of rural America.” And the recent Senate vote united fifty-seven members of the chamber in opposition. So, why the haters in farm country?

Of course, not all farmers are conservative. Nor is everyone living in rural America a farmer. Farmers carried Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976. Farmers and others active in America’s rural social movements have written enthusiastically about the Green New Deal and its possibilities for family farms, about how it might spur things like rural repopulation, new farm pricing models, and climate-friendly agriculture. But those ideas are written against what the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci called “hegemony.”

A key idea in Gramsci’s work on hegemony is that of a historic bloc, a coalition that licenses and polices a dominant social order. The power within that bloc extends beyond brute force — it tries to establish dominance at the level of “common sense,” styling ideas of what’s socially acceptable and what’s unthinkable. The dominant historic bloc in the United States today is an assembly of property owners, fossil fuel corporations, war-makers, tech giants, media outlets, health care management firms, industrialists, monopolists, and financiers, but involves cultural leadership from some workers and farmers. The reflexive criticism of the Green New Deal, before its details have even been hashed out, is an indicator of the bloc’s hegemony.

The Green New Deal’s success depends on refashioning this common sense. To rewrite common sense is to unpick the alliances that the current bloc works to maintain, to find the fault lines that can pry that bloc apart, and to develop the organizational links that can build a counter-hegemonic bloc. To do that, it’s worth understanding the source of some of the most important alliances in the current configuration of forces in America’s food system: the first New Deal.

The original New Deal today appears as a miracle, an incredible moment in which the nation stood united behind Keynesian policy to accomplish big things. Yet they were achieved not because the nation united behind them, but because the nation was profoundly divided. The New Deal was a project precipitated by class struggle, and is best understood as a series of victories and defeats in the management of that struggle by an anxious bourgeoisie, across rural and urban America.

Tags: 
Green New Deal (GND)
Jacobin
Raj Patel
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
green unionism
agroecology
just transition
agribusiness
food
organic food
food sovereignty movement
third nature
permaculture
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

EPA Moves To Gut Agricultural Worker Protection Standards

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 18:27

By Earth Justice - Common Dreams, December 14, 2017

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will revise crucial protections for more than two million farm workers and pesticide applicators by the federal Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS) and the Certification of Pesticide Applicators (CPA) rule.

The WPS establishes a minimum age of 18 for workers who mix, load, and apply pesticides; increases the frequency of worker safety training from once every five years to every year; improves the content and quality of worker safety trainings; and provides anti-retaliation protections and the right of a farm worker to request pesticide-application information via a designated representative.

The EPA also announced the reconsideration of the minimum age requirements established by the Certification of Pesticide Applicators (CPA) rule, which sets training and certification requirements for Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs), the most toxic chemicals in the market. There are roughly half a million child farm workers in the United States.

Tags: 
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
agribusiness
toxics
herbicides
pesticides
Donald Trump
Scott Pruitt
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Earth Justice

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