agriculture

By staff - La Via Campesina, June 17, 2023

UN EXPERTS’ COMMUNIQUE: Will the rights of trade unions and social and environmental movements be respected by the French government?

On 15 June 2023, seven independent experts from the United Nations expressed their concernⁱ at allegations of excessive use of force during the recent demonstrations against pension reform and mega-water basin projects in France.

“Lack of restraint in the use of force against members of civil society who are peacefully demanding their participation in decision-making processes concerning their future, access to natural resources, protection of human rights, dignity and equality, would not only be anti-democratic, but deeply worrying for the rule of law”, the experts said.

The Confédération Paysanne and CETIM welcome this position and call on the French government to heed these warnings. The concerns expressed are in line with those we voiced in our submission to the UN experts on the occasion of the International Day of Peasant Struggles (17 April). Indeed, mega-basin projects are being carried out at the expense of the right to water of all peasants in the territories because they reinforce the problem of drought and the increasing scarcity of access to water. Peasant organizations and other sectors of civil society have mobilized to question these projects and demand respect for human and environmental rights, suffering unprecedented repression.

This communique from the UN experts has a very particular resonance, given that mobilizations are continuing around water and land issues in many areas, and at a time when the criminalization and repression of these mobilizations and of trade unions and social and environmental movements are still the order of the day.

Human rights issues, and more specifically the rights to water, food, freedom of expression and demonstration, cannot be scorned and repressed in this way. We cannot accept the threats to dissolve the Soulèvements de la Terre movement. In view of the above, we urge the French authorities to honour their international human rights commitments, as recalled by the UN experts.

The Confédération Paysanne is continuing its trade union action to obtain a moratorium on mega-basin projects and for the establishment of a dialogue on the management and sharing of water in France, a sine qua non for the respect of human rights.

By Josh Ewing - Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, June 8, 2023

By staff - Global Justice Ecology Project, May 2, 2023

Note: In collaboration with several Brazil-based organizations including FASE, Global Justice Ecology Project is organizing an international meeting of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees in Espirito Santo, Brazil, where we will meet with members of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in communities that have taken over and occupied industrial tree plantations. Please check out this New York Times article for more on the history and mission of the MST.

The New York Times article by Jack Nicas first appeared April 30, 2023 in the New York Times and discusses the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, a large – and polarizing – social movement in Latin America.

Below are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full on the New York Times website.

The movement, led by activists who call themselves militants, organizes hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s poor to take unused land from the rich, settle it and farm it, often as large collectives. They are reversing, they say, the deep inequality fed by Brazil’s historically uneven distribution of land.

Group organizers and outside researchers estimate that 460,000 families now live in encampments and settlements started by the movement, suggesting an informal membership approaching nearly two million people, or almost 1 percent of Brazil’s population. It is, by some measures, Latin America’s largest social movement.

Despite the landless movement’s aggressive tactics, the Brazilian courts and government have recognized thousands of settlements as legal under laws that say farmland must be productive.

The proliferation of legal settlements has turned the movement into a major food producer, selling hundreds of thousands of tons of milk, beans, coffee and other commodities each year, much of it organic after the movement pushed members to ditch pesticides and fertilizers years ago. The movement is now Latin America’s largest supplier of organic rice, according to a large rice producers’ union.

By Max Ajl, Luana Carvalho, Pedro Horta and Lanka Horstik - Global Climate Jobs, September 19, 2022

By staff - La Via Campesina, September 17, 2021

By staff - La Via Campesina, September 12, 2022

The new edition of the Nyéléni newsletter is online! 

At a time when the media is sounding the alarm on high prices and shortages due to the war in Europe, even if there is not always an exact correlation, we are once again questioning the information that places large corporations as the suppliers of most of our food. Anchored to this fabricated image, the industrial agri-food system pushes a new assault on agriculture with the digitalisation of its processes, promotes “carbon sequestration” based on so-called “nature-based solutions”, continues its drive to control and regulate supply chains to benefit its interests, and even seeks to supplant the attempts of peasants in many parts of the world by sponsoring an “agroecology” that is now promoted by the same corporations and investment funds that for centuries have stripped peasants of the possibilities of an independent agriculture.

We are therefore committed to defending our Food Sovereignty: the possibility of being able to reproduce our seeds on our terms and in our spaces, i.e., in full freedom, and to maintain our total independence in producing our own food. For this, it will remain crucial to challenge land grabbing and to insist on autonomy and on the defence of peasant and Indigenous territories and even urban spaces of popular self-management within neighbourhoods.

IPC for Food Sovereignty, FoEI and GRAIN

Click here to download the English edition or read it directly in the website at www.nyeleni.org For any further information, contact info@nyeleni.org

Circulate it!

By Olivia N. Guarna - Vermont Law & Graduate School Center for Agriculture & Food Systems and Farmworker Justice , September 2022

THE USE OF PESTICIDES IS UBIQUITOUS IN OUR FOOD SYSTEM. In the United States, approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied annually across sectors. Nearly 90 percent of conventional pesticides are applied in the agricultural sector. As a result, farmworkers are routinely exposed at unusually high rates to chemicals that pose substantial risk to human health and safety. These risks are exacerbated by insufficient worker training and frequent improper handling and application.

Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems released a report in 2021 entitled Essentially Unprotected, which contains a detailed overview of the landscape of pesticide laws at the federal and state level. As demonstrated in the report, there are still key gaps in existing law to sufficiently protect farmworkers. Given these significant gaps, it is particularly alarming that compliance with current protections appears woefully low. The failure to adequately enforce pesticide laws leaves farmworkers unprotected and at continued risk of injury and illness.

The system of pesticide law enforcement is complex and varies widely between states. This report seeks to explain some of the nuance reflected in the regulatory structure of enforcement while highlighting recommendations for consistency and improved health and safety outcomes. However, it is essential to note that poor compliance and enforcement are symptomatic of other issues, many of which plague farmworkers beyond pesticide exposure. For example, enforcement is considerably affected by workers underreporting exposure incidents and suspected violations due to fear of retaliation by their employers.

Many farmworkers are undocumented or on an H-2A guestworker visa and thus face fears of deportation or blacklisting if they speak out against employer abuse. Additionally, farmworkers often do not have access or resources to seek out medical attention after exposure. If they do, doctors may not be aware that their symptoms indicate pesticide poisoning or may not know how and to whom to report the incident. Even when doctors can draw the connection, not all states require that doctors notify health authorities or the state agency responsible for enforcement.e, enforcement is considerably affected by workers underreporting exposure incidents and suspected violations due to fear of retaliation by their employers.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Olivia Weeks and Marc Edelman - The Daily Yonder, August 26, 2022

Marc Edelman is a writer and Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College. In his work, academic and otherwise, Edelman investigates what he terms the underdevelopment of rural America. In a 2021 paper entitled “Hollowed out Heartland, USA” he writes “Rural decline is not simply the result of deindustrialization spurred by free trade, the farm crisis, or automation and robotization. Since the 1980s, financial capital has developed imaginative new ways to strip and seize the assets present in rural zones, whether these be mutually-owned banks, industries, cooperatively-owned grain elevators, local newspapers, hospitals, people’s homes, or stores located in towns and malls.” In the wake of the fiscal austerity agenda enacted by financial and political elites in the late 20th century, the vast majority of the wealth created in America’s countryside “has accrued to shareholders in corporations and financial institutions headquartered in a handful of distant, economically dynamic urban centers.” The financialization of the American economy, especially in those places furthest from economic hubs, can be extremely opaque. But its repercussions – many of which are often seen as causes and effects of backwardness and small-town decline – are all around us.

We discuss the destabilizing effects of such uneven development, the parallels between rural and urban landscapes of decline, and the political choices that sacrificed rural prosperity to urban agglomeration, below.

By Teniope Adewumi-Gunn and Juanita Constible - Natural Resources Defense Council, August 2022

We are in the midst of a profound public health crisis. Rising temperatures fueled by climate change are contributing to more extreme weather events, spikes in air pollution, more frequent wildfires, and increases in tick- and mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. The resulting health harms fall more heavily on some populations than others, including workers. Workers face a range of climate-related hazards on the job, but one of the most pressing and well-understood hazards is extreme heat.

Extreme heat is killing and sickening workers. Both short stretches of extreme heat and chronic exposure to heat can cause significant effects on their physical, mental, and social well-being. Heat can cause rash, cramps, exhaustion, and stroke, the most serious heat-related illness. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) estimates that from 1992 to 2019, more than 900 workers died and tens of thousands more were sickened due to extreme heat.

However, these numbers greatly underestimate the scale of the problem due to lack of reporting by negligent employers and by workers afraid of retaliation (e.g., loss of employment or deportation if they are undocumented). These numbers are further deflated when heat is not identified as a cause of, or contributor to, illness or injury. Negative outcomes from cardiac or respiratory illnesses are often not attributed to heat, even if that is an underlying cause. Physical and mental effects of heat such as disorientation can also increase the risk of other work- related injuries including falling from heights, being struck by a moving vehicle, or mishandling dangerous machinery. Research has shown that the number of workers facing health outcomes from extreme heat are higher than those reported by the BLS SOII. In fact, in California alone, a study of workers found more than 15,000 occupational heat-related illness cases from 2000 to 2017. The California cases were three to six times higher annually than the numbers reported for California by BLS.

Exposure to extreme heat impacts both indoor and outdoor workers. From agricultural and construction workers, who have the highest incidences of heat-related illnesses, to warehouse and other indoor employees working without adequate cooling or ventilation, heat touches many workplaces. Workers of color also experience greater rates of heat-related illnesses and fatalities than do white workers. Workers of color are overrepresented in industries with a high risk of heat illness, but racial disparities in heat illness and death also exist among those working the same jobs. Additionally, not all workers tolerate heat the same way. Those with personal risk factors such as heart disease, medications, and pregnancy are more likely to experience heat stress.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).