CADTM - Agriculture and Food Sovereignty

Agriculture and Food Sovereignty

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 (...)
Food sovereignty : A feminist struggle ?

21 March 2017 - by Aurélie Leroy

The starting point of this study is a paradox : among social, institutional and political actors, peasant and family farming are gradually becoming established as legitimate and credible alternatives to an agro-productivist model that has ’run out of steam’. They address both environmental and (...)
Kathmandu Declaration of South Asia Peasants’ Convergence

14 March 2017 - by Collective

We, the representatives of South Asian peasant organizations, agricultural labourer unions, plantation workers unions, young farmers, women, landless and Dalits, Adivasis, small and marginal farmers, pastoralist and herders and other small food producers gathered here in Kathmandu call upon all (...)
India: Statement on Bhangar Land Disputes and Atrocities on Peasants

27 January 2017 - by Radical Socialist

It is over a decade since Mamata Banerjee made peasant discontent with government takeover of their land the unique selling point by which to make herself and her party the focal point of opposition, so that she could co-opt a part of the grass roots agitations that had developed in Singur and (...)
Civil Society Denounces World Bank’s Scheme to Hijack Farmers’ Rights to Seeds

20 January 2017 - by Oakland Institute

Oakland, CA – Ahead of World Bank’s release of the 2017 “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” (EBA) report this month, 157 organizations and academics from around the world denounce the Bank’s scheme to hijack farmers’ right to seeds, attack on food sovereignty and the environment. In a letter to (...)
Marrakech declaration against the summit of false solutions and for a fair and sustainable future for all peoples

29 December 2016 - by Collective

For real alternatives to preserve environmental balances and recognise climate justice, For a fair and sustainable future for all peoples (Marrakech, November 17, 2016) We, the democratic and progressive social movements and organisations who struggle against the continuous destruction of the (...)
Big business in Marrakech: fertiliser industry and finance dominate COP22

9 November 2016 - by ATTAC/CADTM Maroc, GRAIN

Africa will be centre-stage at this year’s Conference of Parties on climate change (COP 22) in Marrakech. According to the Moroccan steering committee, this is the “African COP”. The event will feature an “Africa Pavilion”, with activities supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the New (...)
“The New Green Revolution”

5 September 2016 - by Rémi Vilain

“Addressing extreme poverty and hunger around the world.” These are two goals that have not ceased to appear on “good-practicing and well-intentioned” international institutions’ agendas for several decades. If these objectives are really on the agenda - 800 million people suffer from hunger around (...)
Monsanto in retreat: movement from the grassroots

12 August 2016 - by Silvia Ribeiro

Since August 1st, the news is spreading that Monsanto had to abandon the construction of one of the biggest factories in the world for producing transgenic seed that was to be installed in Córdoba, Argentina, in the municipality of Malvinas Argentinas. From there they had planned to distribute (...)
Kerkennah: on the frontline of resistance to the fossil fuel industry in Tunisia

26 July 2016 - by Hamza Hamouchene

The effects of climate change and neoliberalism converge in Kerkennah in the worst possible way – but the islands are fighting back. Kerkennah is a group of islands lying off the east coast of Tunisia in the Gulf of Gabès, around 20km away from the mainland city of Sfax. The two main islands are (...)
Corporate capture of seeds in Africa

17 May 2016 - by Jana M. Grieb

Organic farmers from Machakos, Kenya, say that fertiliser and seed companies even deploy their own extension officers and agro-dealers in the villages, who aggressively advertise the use of their products. When their promises prove false, nobody compensates the farmers for their losses. The (...)
“Our stomachs will make themselves heard”: What Sankara can teach us about food justice today

10 May 2016 - by Amber Murrey

When it comes to food justice, environmentalism and ecological practices, Thomas Sankara was way ahead of his time. Thomas Sankara helped Burkina Faso become self-sufficient before in basic foodstuffs in just a few years before he was assassinated. In recent weeks, news of food crises in (...)
Corporate vision of the future of food promoted at the UN

19 February 2016 - by La Via Campesina, GRAIN, ETC

Corporate vision of the future of food promoted at the UN: More than 100 civil society organizations raise alarm about FAO biotechnology meeting (Rome, Monday 15 February, 2016) Just when the biotech companies that make transgenic seeds are merging, the corporate vision of biotechnology is (...)
Children Suffer as World Bank’s Borrowers Upend Their Lives

9 February 2016 - by Michael Hudson, Jocelyn C. Zuckerman

In the disappearing rainforests of Indonesia, a 9-year-old boy copes with the trauma of eviction. KEY FINDINGS Over the last decade, projects funded by the World Bank have physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land (...)
Should Plantation workers be working at poverty level wages?

18 January 2016 - by Vijaya Kumar

Special correspondents and bigwigs in the planation industry keep hammering at us that plantation workers in Sri Lankan are vastly overpaid, any increases in pay will be spent on liquor, no increase in pay is possible unless tied to productivity and that workers should agree to a new system (...)
The Blood of the Earth : Agriculture, Land Rights, and Haitian History

15 January 2016 - by Beverley Bell, Jean-Pierre Ricot

Yesterday, January 12, on the sixth anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake, Haitians mourned the countless lives lost. Among the many aftershocks they face is disaster capitalism, in which the Haitian elite and foreign corporations - backed by the US government, World Bank, and Inter-American (...)
No to WTO and Free Trade Agreements

WTO favours developed countries, not the peasants and poor people

24 December 2015 - by La Via Campesina

Under capitalism production is not for consumption but for trade to make profits. Countries particularly the developing ones are being forced to open their borders and markets to cheap and low quality agricultural commodities from countries such as the US, China, EU, Brazil etc. All this is (...)
Doing Business 2016’s reformed indicator will favour land-grabbing

30 October 2015 - by Tiago Stichelmans

the World Bank makes it easier for foreign investors, at the potential cost of local farmers
Together we can cool the planet!

18 October 2015 - by La Via Campesina, GRAIN

For many years, La Vía Campesina and GRAIN have been telling the world about how the agroindustrial food system causes half of all greenhouse gas emissions. But the world’s governments are refusing to face these problems head on, and the Paris Summit in December is approaching without any (...)
“We Are La Via Campesina”

27 August 2015 - by La Via Campesina

La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, is happy to release a new Video. In this video, men and women, leaders of La Via Campesina member organizations in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe share their struggles and fight for food sovereignty, social and climate (...)
Bangladesh: The peasant associations BKF-BKS in the struggle against the effects of climate change and for solidarity

5 August 2015 - by Pierre Rousset, Badrul Alam

Badrul Alam, a representative of the BKF-BKS movement in Bangladesh, was in France in June 2015 and was interviewed by Pierre Rousset. Pierre Rousset – You came to France at the invitation of the Confederation paysanne to participate in the mobilization in Amiens on June 17, in defence of (...)
Power and impunity of transnational corporations stifles people’s voices

4 August 2015 - by La Via Campesina

The power and impunity of the transnationals are stifling the voices of the world’s peoples. (Harare, 9th of July 2015) La Via Campesina strongly decries the fact that international policies and legislative processes which supposedly are decided upon democratically and by the citizens are (...)
Despair and defiance

9 June 2015 - by Sushovan Dhar

India’s tea sector is driven in large part by Assam and West Bengal, which account for over 70 percent of the country’s tea production. There are at least one million tea workers employed on more than 1000 tea gardens in these two eastern states. The 150-year-old tea industry is one of the (...)
It is our responsibility as world citizens to relieve the FAO’s dreadful conflict

2 June 2015 - by Thomas Pogge

Each year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) report. The 2015 report has just come out. In an accompanying letter, the FAO’s Coordinator for Economic and Social Development, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, summarizes its message as follows: “With the (...)