Peasant Agriculture and Food Sovereignty are Solutions to the Global CrisisMaputo, Mozambique, October 19-22, 2008
The
entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions. There is
a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial
crisis. The solutions put forth by Power – more free trade, more GMOs,
etc. – purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the
capitalist system and of neoliberalism, and they will only worsen its
impacts. To find real solutions we need to look toward Food
Sovereignty as put forth by La Via Campesina.
How did we get to this state of crisis?
In
recent decades we have witnessed the advance of finance capital and
transnational corporations (TNCs) across all aspects of agriculture and
the global food system. From the privatization of seeds and the sale
of pesticides, to buying the harvests, processing the food,
transporting and distributing it, all the way to retail sale to
consumers, everything is controlled by a handful of corporations. Food
has gone from being a right of all people, to being just another
commodity. Our diets are being homogenized, with food that is bad for
you, is priced out of the reach of most people, and makes us lose the
culinary traditions of our peoples.
At the same time we are witnessing an offensive of capital for
the control of natural resources, the likes of which we have not seen
since colonial times. The crisis of the rate of profit has led Capital
to launch a privatizing war for the eviction of our peoples, peasants
and the indigenous, the theft through privatization of our land,
territories, forests, biodiversity, water and mineral resources. It is
an aggression against both rural peoples and the environment. The
planting of large-scale agrofuel monocultures is an aspect of this war
of displacement. It is routinely justified with the false arguments
that agrofuels are the solution to the energy and climate crisis. But
the truth is that the current dependence on long distance transport of
goods, and individual transport of people in automobiles instead of
mass transportation, have more to do with these crises than anything
else.
Now, with the food and financial crises, everything is
getting worse. The food crisis and the financial crisis are linked
through financial speculation on the prices of food crops and land, to
the detriment of people. Now as the crisis grows, finance capital is
more desperate every day, assaulting our government treasuries for
their bailouts, which will only force more budget cutting in our
countries, and make poverty and suffering even more widespread. Hunger
is continuing to grow in our world. Exploitation and all forms of
violence, especially directed at women, are on the rise. With the
economic recession in rich countries, xenophobia is spreading, with
more racism and repression, and the dominant economic model offers ever
fewer options to our rural youth.
In synthesis, things are
going from bad to worse. Nevertheless, we must recognize that like all
crises, this one also generates opportunities. Opportunities for
capitalism, which uses crises to reinvent itself and find new sources
of profits, but also opportunities for social movements. Among the
latter are the fact that the principal theses of neoliberalism are
being stripped of their legitimacy in public opinion, and the fact the
international financial institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO) are proving
to be incapable of administering the crisis (in addition being among
the cause of the same crisis). This creates the opportunity to
eliminate them, and create new institutions to regulate the global
economy that serve public interests. It is clearer every day that the
TNCs are our real enemies behind these other enemies. It is clearer
every day that the neoliberal governments do not serve the interests of
their peoples. And it is clearer every day that the global corporate
food regime is not capable of feeding the great majority of people on
this planet, while Food Sovereignty based on peasant agriculture is
more needed than ever.
Facing this reality, what do we defend in La Via Campesina?
Food Sovereignty: getting speculative finance capital out of our food
system, and re-nationalizing food production and reserves offer us the
only real way out of the food crisis. Only peasant and family farm
agriculture feed people, while agribusiness grows export crops and
agrofuels to feed cars instead of human beings. Food Sovereignty based
on peasant and family farm agriculture offers us a way out of this
crisis.
As solutions to the energy and climates crises: the
dissemination of local food systems, that are not based on
long-distance transport nor on industrial agriculture, could eliminate
as much as 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial agriculture
warms the planet, and peasant agriculture cools the planet. Changes in
patterns of transportation for people and patterns of consumption are
additional the steps needed to address the energy and climate crises.
Genuine integral agrarian reform and the defense of the territories of
indigenous peoples are essential steps to roll back the evictions and
displacement in the countryside, and to use our farm land to grow food
instead of exports and fuels.
Sustainable peasant and family
farm agriculture: only agroecological peasant and family farming can
de-link food prices from petroleum prices, recover degraded soils, and
produce healthy local food for our peoples.
The advance of
women is an advance for all: the end of all forms of violence against
women, including physical, social and other forms. Achieving true
gender parity in all internal spaces and organs of debate and
decision-making, are absolutely essential commitments to advance at
this time as social movements toward the transformation of society.
The right to seeds and water: seeds and water are sources of life, and
are the heritage of our peoples. We cannot permit their privatization,
nor the use of GMOs or of terminator technology.
No to the
criminalization of social protest, yes to the UN Declaration of Peasant
Rights, proposed by La Via Campesina. It will be a key tool in the
international legal system to strengthen our position and our rights as
peasants and family farmers.
Rural youth: We urgently need to
open ever more spaces in our movement for the incorporation of the
creativity and strength of our rural young people, in their struggle to
create their future in the countryside.
Finally, we are the women and men who produce and defend the food of all peoples.
All
the participants in the V Conference of La Via Campesina commit
ourselves to the defense of peasant and family farm agriculture, food
sovereignty, dignity and life. We offer real solutions the global
crisis we face today. We have the right to continue to exist as
peasants and farmers, and we have the responsibility to feed our
peoples.
We are here, the peasants and family farmers of the world, and we refuse to disappear.
Food sovereignty now! Unity and struggle of the people!
Globalize struggle! Globalize hope! |
