US Food Sovereignty Alliance

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  • 2018 USFSA Bellingham Declaration

    2018 USFSA Bellingham Declaration

    The IV National Assembly of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance was held in Bellingham, Washington, and the following declaration and statement of solidarity was created. The Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony also took place during the Assembly. The press release can be found below.

    The Bellingham Declaration
    US Food Sovereignty Alliance
    October 2018

    PDF of Bellingham Declaration |  PDF de Declaración en Español

    The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) held its IV National Assembly from October 12th thru 14th in Bellingham, Washington with the participation of 117 members, allies, and individuals from 71 organizations and 7 countries.  The theme “Defending Mother Earth for an Agroecological Life:  No Walls, No Capitalism” was enacted through art, drama, music, dance, organizing, debate, analysis, healthy locally-sourced food, and spirited “mística” ceremonies.

    Anchored by the farmworker-led organization Community to Community Development (C2C), the assembly overflowed with a joyous, intelligent, and diverse rainbow of origins, identities, and organizers of all ages from various sectors of the food system, including farmworkers, food chain workers, fishers, family farmers, urban agriculturalists, food providers, and social justice advocates fighting for their livelihoods, freedom, and dignity through food sovereignty, and an end to patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial ways of thinking and acting.  Building on regional assemblies in the Northeast, the South, the Midwest and the West, the IV National Assembly vibrated with an expanding and deepening energy!

    Challenged by the current political and ecological moment—characterized by the rise of right-wing, racist populism allied with neoliberal, corporate economics, coupled with massive impoverishment and oppression of peoples, and the threat of climate catastrophe—our motivation intensified.  Those assembled discussed and the Alliance’s national coordination proclaims the following solidarity positions of the USFSA:

    * In solidarity with La Via Campesina, we call on the United States and other members states to support the Declaration of Peasants Rights being pushed forward at the U.N.  The struggle for Food Sovereignty depends on the protection of the rights of peasants and small- and medium-sized family farmers.

    * We oppose the expansion of the H2A visa guest worker program, particularly when used as a means of displacing farmworkers organizing themselves into unions.  H2A workers tied to a single employer have not been able to unionize themselves, and are often subject to wage theft, extortion by labor contractors and foremen, and other abuses.  We denounce in the strongest terms efforts to expand and weaken existing safeguards and housing provisions in guest worker programs by establishing a proposed H2C visa, which would spread and intensify the defects of H2A to food processing industries.  We also support the boycott of Reynolds American Tobacco VUSE e-cigarettes until that corporation signs an agreement to guarantee the right to organize without retaliation to all farmworkers in the tobacco fields, whether H2A or undocumented.

    * We denounce the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in implementing the racist policies of mass detention and deportation, and stand in solidarity with immigrant and refugee peoples currently residing and working in the U.S.

    * We add our collective voice to the Call to Protect Food Systems from Genetic Extinction Technology and call for a global moratorium on any release of engineered gene drives, which could contaminate ecological systems, species, and food webs with genetic traits designed to create species extinction.

    * We denounce proposals in the Farm Bill that would increase work requirements for SNAP eligibility, end the Double Up Bucks farmers market program, defund critical conservation programs, and reduce support for beginning and socially challenged farmer programs.

    * We reject the King amendment in the House Farm Bill, which would give agribusinesses greater control and restrict state and local governments from regulating agricultural products, and could nullify the Food Sovereignty Ordinances passed in Maine, as well as laws that curb pesticide use, regulate farmworker safety, prevent cruel livestock practices, and label GMO foods.

    * We call for an expansion of agroecological practices and the protection of our agroecological biodiversity in food, fiber, forest and aquatic systems across the planet, as one of the essential solutions to the climate catastrophes humanity faces.  We know that small farmers, family fishers and foresters all cool the planet.  Agroecology cools the planet!

    * Lastly, the USFSA stands in solidarity with our global allies, particularly members of La Via Campesina, suffering the overthrow or threat of overthrow of popular, democratic governments.  Whether in Honduras, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela or elsewhere, these “soft coups” are a threat to democratic processes and to food sovereignty everywhere.
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    The IV Assembly debated and affirmed the formation of the following national Collectives:  Political Education, Agroecology: Land and Water, Narrative Strategy, International Relationships, and Youth.   These collectives together with the regional bodies will carry forward the work of USFSA, coordinated by representatives from grassroots organizations from the regions, with the help of grassroots support organizers.

    With our collective strength, we shout “No!” to injustices in the food system everywhere and “Yes!” to the people rising up to radically transform unjust systems and practices, for the betterment and survival of humanity and defense of Mother Earth.   And to the inspiring sister movements across the planet working for food sovereignty, we sing out a resounding ¡VIVA!  WE STAND WITH YOU!  WE ARE PART OF YOU! 

    During the Assembly, the winners of the Food Sovereignty Prize were acknowledged for their powerful work to promote food sovereignty. Here is the release:

    Grassroots Movements Celebrated for Building Solutions to Food and Climate Crises

    Black Mesa Water Coalition, Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico Win the Food Sovereignty Prize

    FSP winnersJesus Vázquez and Dalma Colón from Organización Boricuá; Sheldon Natoni and Roberto Nutlouis from Black Mesa Water Coalition

    October 14, 2018 (Bellingham, Washington) – The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) honored Black Mesa Water Coalition and Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico on Sunday at the tenth annual Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony on Lummi and Nooksack land in Coast Salish Territory, in the city now called Bellingham, Washington.

    Black Mesa Water Coalition, the domestic honoree, was awarded the prize for restoring indigenous food sovereignty and uplifting youth leaders among Navajo and Hopi communities. Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico, the international honoree, was recognized particularly for mobilizing Food Sovereignty Brigades to assist farmers recover in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

    Presented as an alternative to the World Food Prize, the Food Sovereignty Prize honors steadfast commitment of food sovereignty. Social movements, community organizations, and activists around the world recognize the importance of the prize.

    “These grassroots organizations demonstrate how frontline communities most affected by social and ecological crises are the ones with solutions to society’s most pressing problems.” -Doria Robinson, Urban Tilth (coordinator of the Western Region of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance)

    Black Mesa Water Coalition utilizes green economic development and other diverse strategies, rooted in indigenous knowledge, to address issues of poverty, hunger, and environmental injustices driven by extractive industries and centuries of colonialism. “We need to notify humanity that we need to drastically change the way we do things, especially getting away from fossil fuels, and the food system is one way to begin that transition.” -Roberto Nutlouis, Black Mesa Water Coalition

    Organización Boricuá organizes farmers to transition to sustainable agriculture and sovereignty in Puerto Rico. “Agroecology as Puerto Ricans, coming from a colonial context, has given us a space to organize and deepen our struggles. This work is a vehicle of transformation for a sovereign, free, and just Puerto Rico.” -Jesus Vázquez, Organización Boricuá

    Media contacts:

    Liz Darrow (360) 220-9065, c2cmedia@foodjustice.org
    Ahna Kruzic, (510) 927-5379, ahna@panna.org

    www.usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org

  • USFSA organizing its IV National Assembly

    USFSA organizing its IV National Assembly

    Our food is being used as a weapon, and we are living in a political moment that demands coordinated action.

    Currently, we are seeing how political borders are being used to attack workers and families. Whether it’s the more than 500,000 people who were cut from the food stamp program over the last 3 years, the fact that four of the six largest agribusiness corporations have merged, or that farmers across the country are losing their lands while food chain workers are working under exploitative and dangerous conditions, and often fear deportation.

    We must continue to dream of a better world and work to build a new food system. We need a system that respects communities and human rights and nourishes rather than ravages the land. That system is based on food sovereignty, the human right to food, and the rights of Mother Earth.

    On October 12 – 15, 2018, grassroots organizations, activists, faith-based community, scholars, union members, farmers and fisherfolk, and other food chain workers from around the US and the world will converge on Bellingham, WA, for the IV National Assembly of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA). The Assembly will provide a space to learn about food sovereignty, share struggles and collective wins, and build solidarity.

    The USFSA has a goal of bringing together as many people as possible in a World Social Forum style gathering that will encompass a range of panels, political education, arts and other cultural exchanges to pave the way for stronger political action in the United States. The space will be an opportunity for mutual learning. Please stay tuned for information on how to submit a proposal for a panel, registration, and more. Together, we’ll deepen relationships across sectors and geographies to build a path for community liberation and reclaim our food system.

    The Assembly will also include the 2018 Food Sovereignty Prize awards ceremony honoring movements in the US and internationally. Lauded as an alternative to the World Food Prize, the Food Sovereignty Prize champions real solutions to hunger and is recognized by social movements, activists and community-based organizations around the world.

    Please save the date and sign up (or follow us on Facebook or Twitter) to get the latest updates on the organizing and registration process. If you are interested in participating in the planning of the Assembly, please email info (at) usfoodsovereigntyalliance (dot) org.

  • Nation-wide Day of Action on World Food Day

    Rwanda, Rukira, February 2005
    World Food Day and the Day of Action is October 16, which takes place during the Food Week of Action, October 9-17.

    People and groups across the U.S. and worldwide are taking back their food systems – fighting for their land and waterways, reclaiming vacant lots, teaching others how to grow food, and developing local distribution systems – while simultaneously creating jobs, providing healthy food, protecting Mother Earth, building rural-urban connections, campaigning for just policies, and revitalizing their communities.

    Take action to advance food sovereignty on October 16!  Learn about the Priority Actions for this year and find other resources.

    1)  Announce your event or action: bit.ly/29CPV9w

    2)  See the global list: bit.ly/action16list

    3)  Open the map of actions: bit.ly/wfdmap16

    Join the Food Week Webinar on ‘TIAA-CREF and Land Grabs’ on Thursday, October 13 at 8:00pm (ET) / 5:00pm (PT).  Register for free here

    The 2016 Food Sovereignty Prize Ceremony will be in Seattle this year.

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  • Announcing 2016 Food Sovereignty Prize Honorees

    Announcing 2016 Food Sovereignty Prize Honorees

    The 8th annual Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded at Town Hall Seattle on Saturday October 15 to Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and Farmworker Association of Florida!  Register for the event

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    International Allies Challenge Corporate Control of the Food System and False Solutions of Biotechnology Eighth Annual Food Sovereignty Prize, Honors Grassroots Organizations Calling Big Ag’s Bluff

    SEATTLE, WA, August, 31 2016 ­– The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) is pleased to announce the honorees of the eighth annual Food Sovereignty Prize: the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and the Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF). The honorees were selected for their success in promoting food sovereignty, agroecology and social justice to ensure that all people have access to fresh, nutritious food produced in harmony with the planet.

    Lauded as an alternative to the World Food Prize, the Food Sovereignty Prize champions real solutions to hunger and is recognized by social movements, activists and community-based organizations around the world. The 2016 honorees are strident in their resistance to the corporate control of our food system, including false solutions of biotechnology that damage the planet while exacerbating poverty and hunger. Their programs and policies support small-scale farmers and communities, build unified networks, and prioritize the leadership of food providers, including women, farmworkers, peasants, indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities within the system.

    “Hunger is not a technical problem, it’s a political problem,” said John Peck, Executive Director of Family Farm Defenders and US Food Sovereignty Alliance member. “Small farmers have had the solution to hunger for millennia in agroecology and food sovereignty.”

    “The Borlaug and Gates Foundations and multinational corporations like Monsanto promote biotechnology because they profit from it. Ask the millions of farmworkers, family farmers and family fishermen feeding their communities what they need and they will tell you: access to land, clean water and their own seeds,” noted Diana Robinson, Campaign and Education Coordinator at the Food Chain Workers Alliance and US Food Sovereignty Alliance member.

    About the Honorees

    The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) was founded in 2008 by a group of activist networks and launched in Durban, South Africa, during the 2011 alternative people’s climate summit, organized to counter the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference Of the Parties 17 talks (COP17). AFSA brings together organizations representing smallholder farmers, pastoralists and hunter/gatherers; indigenous peoples; youth, women and consumer networks; people of faith; and environmental activists from across Africa. Together they advocate for community rights and family farming, promote traditional knowledge systems, and protect natural resources. In the face of increased corporate agribusiness interests threatening their food systems, including massive land and water grabs, the criminalization of seed-saving practices, and false solutions to climate change such as so-called “Climate-Smart Agriculture”, AFSA unites the people most impacted by these injustices to advance food sovereignty through agroecological practices, policy work and movement-building efforts.

    Bern Guri, The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa’s chairperson, noted, “Africa has a myriad of ways to feed her people and to keep her environment safe. However, a few international corporations from the global North have generated approaches strictly for their own profit by misleading our leaders and our people, stealing our seeds and culture, and destroying our environment.”

    For AFSA it is clear that the way forward will allow food producers, supported by consumers, to take control of production systems and markets to provide healthy and nutritious food. Facing the many ecological, economic and social challenges in today’s world requires an urgent transition to agroecology to establish the ecologically sustainable, socially just and nutritious food systems of the future, and it can be done through the collective, inclusive and democratic co-generation of the knowledge held by farmers, consumers, researchers and African governments, who are meant to serve the interests of their (farming) populations.

    The Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF), founded in 1986, has a long-standing mission to build power among farmworker and rural low-income communities to gain control over the social, political, workplace, economic, health and environmental justice issues affecting their lives. Their guiding vision is a social environment in which farmworkers are treated as equals, not exploited and deprived based on race, ethnicity, immigrant status, or socioeconomic status. As members of the world’s largest social movement, La Via Campesina, FWAF is building collective power and a unified force for providing better living and working conditions, as well as equity and justice for farmworker families and communities. This includes building leadership and activist skills among communities of color who are disproportionately affected by pesticide exposure/health problems, environmental contamination, racism, exploitation and political under-representation while lifting up women’s wisdom and leadership.

    “Farmworker families pay the greatest price in the corporate food system of today. They work in fields of poison and exploitation so that people can easily access cheap foods,” explained Elvira Carvajal, Farmworker Association of Florida’s lead organizer in Homestead, Florida. “We have a vision to bring together the community around the art of healing with good food and herbs, which is part of our culture. We practice agroecology in the community by sharing the knowledge we bring from our grandparents, our mothers, our families, our ancestors. The meeting of cultures that happens in the gardens, where we grow our own food without chemicals, and sharing plants and traditions and knowledge across generations is a beautiful thing. I am proud of our own people practicing food and seed sovereignty.”

    US Food Sovereignty Alliance members Community to Community Development and Community Alliance for Global Justice will host the prize for the first time in the Northwest, welcoming the 2016 Honorees and Alliance partners from across the country to Seattle and Bellingham for several days of activities and actions. The prize ceremony will take place on Saturday, October 15th at 6pm at Town Hall at Eighth and Seneca in Seattle.

    For event updates and more information on the prize and this year’s winners visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org, follow the Food Sovereignty Prize at facebook.com/FoodSovereigntyPrize and join the conversation on Twitter (#foodsovprize).

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    About US Food Sovereignty Alliance

    The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) is a US-based alliance of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based and food producer groups that upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty. The Alliance works to end poverty, rebuild local food economies and assert democratic control over the food system, believing that all people have the right to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced in an ecologically sound manner. Learn more at usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org.

    Media Contacts:

    Heather Day, Executive Director, Community Alliance for Global Justice
    Heather@cagj.org |206.724.2243
    Colette Cosner, Communications Coordinator, Community to Community Development
    Colettecosner@gmail.com | 206.250.2680