Agriculture and Food Sovereignty

Kenya: caught between debt and political indifference

1 May 2019 - by Sushovan Dhar

I reached Kenya on my way back from South Africa on April 13, 2019. This visit was a follow up of the earlier initiatives including a training on debt audit held at Nairobi, Kenya from July 29-30, 2018 in collaboration with the Kenyan Social Movements for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts. (...)
Kenyan Peasants League to Hold First Peasants Agroecology Summer School

1 April 2019 - by Kenyan Peasants League

The Kenyan Peasants League (KPL) a member of La Via Campesina Southern and Eastern Africa Regional Collective is set to hold a Peasants Agroecology Summer School at Mariwa Village in Migori County, Kenya on 15 to 17 April 2019. Hosted by Mariwa and Mulo Clusters, the Summer School will among (...)
Tanzania: After Defaulting on Loans, Kilombero Plantation Ltd (KPL) Goes up for Sale

28 March 2019 - by Oakland Institute

Kilombero Plantation Ltd (KPL), the Tanzanian subsidiary of the Guernsey-registered Agrica Ltd., is up for sale after defaulting on loans from several financial institutions. KPL, heralded as the “best in class” player in the field of socially responsible agribusiness investments in Africa, (...)
The Highest Bidder Takes It All: The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons

21 February 2019 - by Oakland Institute

The Highest Bidder Takes It All: The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribes reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the (...)
Final statement of the first assembly of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty

7 January 2019 - by North African Network for Food Sovereignty

The first assembly of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty took place on 7-9 December 2018 in Agadir, Morocco. It gathered delegations from Egyptian, Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan trade unions, cooperatives and associations that are active in the fields of food sovereignty, the (...)
Democracy not for sale

23 November 2018 - by FIAN, Transnational Institute, Agroecopolis

This Report examines the impacts of austerity in Greece on the right to food. It concludes that the Greek State and the Eurozone Member States violated the Greek people’s right to food as a result of the austerity measures required by three Memorandums of Understanding (2010, 2012 and 2015). In (...)
“What lasted for 3000 years has been destroyed in 30”: the struggle for food sovereignty in Tunisia

29 October 2018 - by Max Ajl

Today (16 October 2018) is the International Day of Action for Peoples’ Food Sovereignty, organised by La Via Campesina. In this article, Max Ajl reports from Tunisia on the struggles for food sovereignty there, and on what it means for the Global South. Gabès, the Tunisian South’s garden-city, (...)
World Bank – IMF Guilty of Promoting Land Grabs, Increasing Inequality

8 October 2018 - by La Via Campesina

“Annual meeting in Bali this week is just a sham to cover up their criminal negligence of people’s interests,” say peasants. 07 OCTOBER, BALI: At a meeting of La Via Campesina facilitated by Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI) in Bali, peasant organisations from Asia, Africa, Americas and Europe have (...)
UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution adopting the peasant rights declaration in Geneva

1 October 2018 - by La Via Campesina

(Geneva, September 28, 2018) Seventeen years of long and arduous negotiations later, peasants and other people working in rural areas are only a step away from having a UN Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local markets and a lot more. On (...)
Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity

24 August 2018 - by Philip Bereano

The activities of the Gates Foundation are a major example of what has come to be called ’philanthrocapitalism’. Philip L Bereano argues that philanthrocapitalism is an attempt to use market processes to do good, and therefore problematic as markets are ill-suited to producing socially (...)
Small–scale farmers of Africa and Denmark reject free trade agreements

27 July 2018 - by La Via Campesina

Representatives of La Via Campesina in Southern and Eastern Africa (LVC SEAf) and in European (ECVC) small-scale farming agree that free trade agreements (FTAs) on farm products benefits primarily transnational corporations and furthers the industrialisation of agriculture. All at the expense (...)
The method in the madness: Uganda’s budget 2018 is divorced from reality

19 June 2018 - by Mary Serumaga

The report of the Auditor General (AG) for 2016–2017 is another catalogue of systemic theft, embezzlement and wastage of public goods. In this, it is similar to audit reports going back at least two decades. It appears that incompetence as much as theft are responsible for the seeming inadequacy (...)
Land-grabbing and the Financialization of Agricultural Land

28 May 2018 - by Mary N. Taylor

On the occasion of the publication of the report Transnational Corporations and Land speculation in Brazil by Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights), Mary Taylor of LeftEast spoke with Fábio Pitta, Devlin Kuyek and Attila Szőcs about the broader (...)
European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) launches a peasant agroecology manual on how to phase out the use of pesticides

22 May 2018 - by La Via Campesina

Europeans are fundamentally questioning the use of pesticides. In 2017, more than one million citizens signed the European Citizens’ Initiative « STOP Glyphosate », which aims to ban glyphosate marketing in the EU, reform the pesticide authorisation process and set targets to reduce their use. (...)
Seed Freedom and the Future of Farming

26 February 2018 - by Vandana Shiva, Joris Leverink

In an era of climate change, rejuvenating and regenerating the soil through ecological processes has become a survival imperative for the human species. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned Indian scholar, environmental activist and author of over twenty books. She has been involved in (...)
The Maghreb seminar proclaims: “No to colonial agreements, for the defence of people’s sovereign right on their agricultural, food and environmental systems.”

19 February 2018 - by War on Want

In December, ATTAC Morocco, a member of the global network for the abolition of illegitimate debts (CADTM), organised a seminar in Agadir, Morocco with the participation of activists from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, to discuss the devastation caused by free trade agreements in the (...)
Final declaration of the Maghreb seminar: ‘Free trade’ agreements and food sovereignty

2 January 2018 - by ATTAC/CADTM Maroc

On December 15, 16 and 17, 2017, ATTAC Morocco, a member of the global network for the abolition of illegitimate debts (CADTM), organized a Maghreb seminar on free trade agreements, agriculture and food sovereignty under the slogan: No to colonial agreements, for the defence of people’s (...)
Farmers storm India’s national capital, demanding freedom from debt and better price for their produce

24 November 2017 - by La Via Campesina

Several thousand small-holder farmers from across India held a massive demonstration in New Delhi, from 20-21 November to draw attention to the acute agrarian distress plaguing the countryside and seeking immediate intervention by the Union Government. Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and South (...)
Rural Peoples - Mobilizing Against the Dispossession of the Commons

28 September 2017 - by FIAN

While neo-liberalism has created an acute crisis around the world, its agrarian variant has turned rural areas into a grand arena of capitalist accumulation in newer ways. It purchases (or acquires with the collusion of the state) peasants’ land at throwaway prices; enforces contract (...)
Colonialism’s new clothes: The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa

22 August 2017 - by GRAIN

Since 2002, African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have negotiated a reciprocal free trade agreement known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU). While it was marketed as the magic bullet towards the ACP countries’ industrialisation and development, it (...)
VII International Conference : Women’s Assembly Declaration

14 August 2017 - by La Via Campesina

We, the women of more than 70 countries, representatives of our movements, meeting for our V Women’s Assembly, in the framework of the VII International Conference of La Via Campesina, address all women, peasant movements and popular movements in general, the following declaration. We are (...)
Understanding feminism in the peasant struggle – A “popular peasant feminism”

14 August 2017 - by La Via Campesina

“A really important part of being women in La Vía Campesina is to identify ourselves and our various struggles” emphasized speakers at the start of the V Women’s Assembly taking place in Basque Country on 17 and 18 July 2017. The peasant women highlighted various aspects of this identity, including (...)
African peasants highlight their struggles at Via Campesina global conference

4 August 2017 - by Boaventura Monjane

Peasants across Africa are intensifying their struggles against land grabs and other harmful policies that promote industrial agriculture. At a recent international conference organized by the world’s largest peasants movement, Via Campesina, African peasants had opportunities to share their (...)
The unbearable burden of being an Indian farmer : shot dead for demanding debt relief

19 June 2017 - by Sushovan Dhar

A nondescript district in the centre of this vast country has suddenly become a most sought after destination for politicians and media people. Lamentably, this transformation has come at the cost of human lives. Farmers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh started their protests since June 1 (...)
Jemna in Tunisia: An inspiring land struggle in North Africa

25 April 2017 - by Hamza Hamouchene

Jemna is a beacon of hope for a Tunisia where its people have sovereignty over their land and resources. Jemna needs to be supported, celebrated and emulated for the sake of its people and for our sake. Over the past several years, the people of Jemna, a region in southern Tunisia famous for (...)