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Call to Action

Posted: October 23, 2012 at 9:07 pm

Call to Action

The following Call to Action is adapted from the Call to Action to End the Food Crisis issued by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis in 2008 and endorsed by several thousand organizations and individuals. It is included here as a springboard for future action of the Alliance, with the understanding that it will evolve to reflect new ideas, voices, and perspectives as the Alliance develops.

We call on people across the United States to use our political power and actions to fight poverty by rebuilding local food economies, and specifically for food system changes that:

1) Stabilize prices for farmers and consumers locally, nationally and globally by:

  • Ending rampant financial speculation in food;
  • Establishing and strengthening publicly-owned domestic, regional, and international strategic food reserves;
  • Suspending international trade and investments in industrial-scale biofuels (a.k.a. agrofuels);
  • Transforming corporate-oriented food aid;
  • Ensuring fair prices to farmers, fishers, pastoralists and other food providers;
  • Establishing equitable regional and global trade arrangements that enable countries, communities, and all farmers, fishers, pastoralists and other food providers to meet food and livelihood needs.

2) Balance power in the food system by:

  • Reducing the political influence of agrifood corporations on public policy, e.g., by strengthening antitrust enforcement on those corporations and reducing their unregulated market power;
  • Convening multi-stakeholder, representative food policy councils at state and local levels.

3) Make agriculture environmentally sustainable by:

  • Supporting family farms’ transition to agroecological practices through incentives, purchasing and procurement;
  • Halting expansion of government-supported agrofuels (biofuels) and transgenic seeds programs, mandates, and tax incentives and other subsidies
  • Directing state and national farm policy, R&D, education and investment toward agroecological farming and sustainable food businesses.

4) Guarantee the right to healthy food by building local and regional food systems and fostering social, ecological and economic justice by:

  • Calling on the US to join the community of nations to support the human right to food;
  • Supporting domestic food production and independent, community-based food cooperatives and businesses in the United States and around the world;
  • Establishing living wages, so that everyone can afford healthy food;
  • Implementing full workers’ rights for farm workers and other food system workers;
  • Implementing agrarian reform that takes land out of the hands of large corporations and puts it in the hands of communities for local food production.
  • Strengthening the social safety net for low-income people across the US;
  • Creating a solidarity economy that puts people before corporate profit in the US and around the world.

Through , the Earth can feed all living things.

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Alliance Teams

Posted: October 16, 2012 at 6:05 pm

Fighting Against Land and Resource Grabs for Comprehensive Land Reform

Land is becoming increasingly valuable, and globally, small farmers are losing their land as it is bought by foreign governments, international corporations, and Wall Street investors. Small farmers in the U.S. are unable to stay on their rural farmland, and urban land is lost to the gentrification of cities and waterfronts. Farmers are losing control over productive resources (land, water, seeds) and rights to save, exchange and share those resources; fishermen have increasingly limited access to the water; community gardens are cleared for expensive housing and commercial development projects; and farmers from other countries are often forced to migrate to the U.S. to work as food and farm workers. Changes in land and fisheries use and ownership are critical for developing just and sustainable local food economies and ending hunger and poverty. As a common link to all struggles for food justice and sovereignty, efforts to win community access to and control over land, water, seeds and the oceans can enhance and frame all struggles.

 

 

Immigrant Rights and Trade

and food justice are intimately connected to immigrant rights because in the U.S., it is often who work in the fields, on our fishing boats, in factories and processing plants, and in our grocery stores. Moreover, many come to the U.S. to work in agriculture and other industries in the food system because our system of unregulated trade, along with our foreign and agricultural policies, have in turn displaced them from their land: any approach that seeks to address immigration within the U.S. must therefore address the issues of trade. The USFSA thus supports not only the right of to stay in the country to which they have immigrated, but also the right and ability to stay home, a right which is violated by trade rules and corporate interests.

Read the USFSA’s Immigration Policy Principles for Food Sovereignty

Immigration Policy Principles for Food Sovereignty

Principios de la Politica Inmigratoria y la Soberania Alimentaria

Resources on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
On April 10 at 1 pm ET, the USFSA will host a learning call about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being called NAFTA for the Pacific, and its implications for farmers and immigration. If you want to join the call, email info@foodchainworkers.org for the call information.

“‘Free Trade’ is Not Free – Why We All Need to Oppose the TPP”
by John Kinsman, March 12, 2012
“Free Trade Agreements Kill People!”
by La Via Campesina, October 19, 2011

 

Defending Rights of Mother Earth and Defense of the Commons

With each passing year, it is becoming more and more clear how the struggle for food sovereignty is interrelated with the struggle for the future of the planet.  We now know that the industrial agriculture system is one of the main contributors to climate change.  We also know that the people who are on the frontlines of the struggle for a just food system (i.e. family farmers, farmworkers, indigenous communities, and low-income urban communities of color) are the ones who experience some of the first and worst impacts of climate disruption – from droughts and floods, to soaring food prices, to contamination of precious land and water from the extraction of oil, gas, and coal.  At the same time that our communities experience some of the worst impacts, we are also the source of the best solutions to heal and protect our land, water, seeds, and food systems, as part of Mother Earth.  We draw inspiration from and commit ourselves to fight for the Rights of Mother Earth, a concept that has existed for thousands of years in indigenous communities around the world, and which has recently been described in depth through the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.  Across the country, our communities are developing creative and resilient ways to defend the planet and prevent harmful exploitation by unaccountable governments and corporations.  Examples include the cross-border struggle against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline; local fights for public dollars to enable communities to harvest rainwater for food production; marine stewardship; efforts to preserve the centuries-old and ever-evolving ecological relationship between peasant/family farmers and local seeds, free from corporate control; and the global struggle for climate justice.  We look forward to finding ways to lift up these struggles from a local to national and international level.

See updates, resources & actions on the Defense of Mother Earth page

 

 

Addressing Racism and Creating Leadership Structures that Reflect Frontline Communities

As we all know, the food system in the U.S. is dysfunctional and unjust. Our own movement reflects many of these contradictions and divides – this is why the Assembly was so important and why members of the USFSA recommitted to work together to ensure that as social justice advocates, we are conscious of issues of privilege and oppression in our work together. We will learn more together about issues of race and racism, and will work together to create a leadership structure that reflects the grassroots base-building, frontline communities that are most impacted by injustices in the food system.

Throughout the Assembly, participants reaffirmed the value of a US Food Sovereignty Alliance as a space for grassroots and national groups to build their power together in the food system and to provide solidarity to each other’s struggles, particularly in the face of corporate domination. We will continue to look for opportunities to take action in solidarity with each other.

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