Agriculture and Food Sovereignty

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 grassroots (...)
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 rural (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)