US Food Sovereignty Alliance

Category: Food Sovereignty

Contains all pages under the Food Sovereignty menu item.

  • Register for a USFSA webinar on May 7

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    Agroecology Under Attack at the UN: Why It Matters to Our Movements and What We Can Do About It

     

    Thursday, May 7th 1 – 2:30 pm EDT

     

    This webinar is for US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) Members and Allies, hosted by the USFSA International Relations Collective.

    The global climate crisis, and now the global coronavirus pandemic, have highlighted and exposed the danger of corporate agribusiness and the failures of the industrial food system. Now is the time for our organizations and movements to demand food sovereignty and agroecology.

    Social movements have made great advances at the United Nations, gaining recognition of agroecology, farmers’ rights to seeds, and the human rights of peasants. But many of these advances are under attack by the US government and agribusiness, which seek to co-opt agroecology, discredit social movements, and roll out their own predatory technologies instead.

    Join USFSA members and allies as we discuss the importance of the UN to social movements, the threats to the global struggle for food sovereignty coming from the US government, and what we can do about it with allies across the world.

    Speakers:

    • Patti Naylor, farmer from Iowa, member of Family Farm Defenders and the National Family Farm Coalition
    • Jim Goodman, former dairy farmer from Wisconsin, Board President of the National Family Farm Coalition
    • Pat Mooney, founder and former Director (now retired) of ETC Group

    Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkcu-urT4rHNclELa8ZPZza2zUE72pY6eA

     

    Additional Background for Webinar:

    The world is facing multiple environmental crises – lack of fresh water, warming climate, and loss of biodiversity – due to the expansion of industrial agribusiness. The brunt of these crises is most acutely felt by rural communities. Rural communities contend not only with the environmental destruction, but also with the related economic impacts as farmers are pushed off their land to make way for large-scale projects and agricultural workers are deprived of their means of livelihoods.

    The COVID-19 pandemic and the government response to “lock down” social and economic activity are already causing food insecurity in many communities. Moreover, the global disruption is very likely leading us to a global food crisis, while deepening the economic crisis created by capitalism and imperialism. This crisis could be even more devastating than the crisis a little over a decade ago that resulted in the reform of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in attempt to make it more democratic. Through the reform of the CFS, those most affected by the food systems – family and peasant farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, and food system workers – and their allies can engage directly with policy makers in shaping the decisions that impact their lives. Thanks to the vigorous participation of these movements, the reformed CFS policy processes have systematically centered the right to food and other human rights in food security and nutrition related policies at global regional and national levels.

    Through the tireless work of rural social movements like La Via Campesina (as well as the participation of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance), and with the support of a dedicated scientific community, the CFS has begun recognizing agroecological approaches as critical to building the resilience of the food systems and ensuring food security in the face of multiple environmental crises.

    The CFS is now in the process of developing global policy guidelines on agroecology. However, agribusiness is pushing back against agroecology and delegitimizing it while simultaneously trying to dilute and co-opt it. Additionally, the landmark 2001 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, which recognizes farmers’ rights to seeds, is facing a new set of attacks from giant seed companies who argue that new genetic technologies exempt them from following it.

    Corporations and their allies are turning to new technologies—such as genetic sequencing, precision agriculture, and block chain—as a new solution for sustainable food systems. Hailed as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” these ‘innovations’ are being promoted by the US government at every international forum, including CFS, to maintain corporate control of global food and agricultural systems and sideline the movement for agroecology. The US Ambassador to the CFS (and to the other three UN Rome-based agencies, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization), is a multinational agribusiness owner who has been outspoken in promoting a corporate agriculture agenda and discrediting agroecology.

    Additionally, the UN Secretary General is planning an international Food Systems Summit for September 2021. However, rather than partnering with the most inclusive international forum on food security, the UN’s own Committee on World Food Security, or with organizations and experts that have been building sustainable food systems grounded in justice and equity, they are partnering with the World Economic Forum (which represents the world’s billionaires and corporate elites). Moreover, the chair of the Summit is none other than the President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which has done the most to push GMOs on Africa at the behest of the Gates Foundation (which pushes GMOs around the world). The way this Summit is being planned represents a very serious threat to the integrity of our work and our movements.

    While international policy spaces at the UN do not usually get much attention from organizations in the US, what is happening in these three spaces is critical for the work to advance agroecology, food sovereignty, and just and sustainable food systems.

     

    Additional Resources:

    The Next Agribusiness Takeover: Multilateral Food Agencies.” ETC Group. February 12, 2020. https://www.etcgroup.org/content/next-agribusiness-takeover-multilateral-food-agencies.  – “Between now and late 2021, the World Economic Forum, agri-food conglomerates, IT companies and philanthropists (led by the Gates Foundation) have teamed up to spearhead three separate initiatives which could converge and utterly transform the multilateral agricultural system. At stake is influence over four institutions with a combined annual budget of $11 billion and 5100 scientific/professional staff.”

     

     

     

     

    La Agroecología está bajo Ataque en la ONU: porque esto es importante para nuestros movimientos y cómo podemos defenderlo 

     

    Jueves, 7 de Mayo del 2020 de 1:00 hasta las 2:30 EDT

     

    Este seminario por internet es para los miembros e aliados de Alianza por la Soberanía Alimentaria de los Estados Unidos (USFSA) y es auspiciados por el colectivo de Relaciones Internacionales de la USFSA.  

    La crisis climática global, y ahora la pandemia mundial de coronavirus, han resaltado y expuesto el peligro del agronegocio corporativos y las fallas del sistema alimentario industrial. Ahora es el momento para exigir la soberanía alimentaria y la agroecología.

    Los movimientos sociales han logrado grandes avances en las Naciones Unidas, obteniendo el reconocimiento de la agroecología, los derechos de los agricultores a las semillas y los derechos humanos de los campesinos. Pero muchos de estos avances están siendo atacados por el gobierno de los EE. UU.  y los agronegocios, que buscan cooptar la agroecología, desacreditar los movimientos sociales y desplegar sus propias tecnologías depredadoras.

    Únase a los miembros y aliados de USFSA mientras discutimos la importancia de la ONU para los movimientos sociales, como el gobierno de los EE. UU. está amenazando a la lucha global por la soberanía alimentaria y lo que podemos hacer al respecto unidos con aliados en todo el mundo.

    Presentadores: 

    ∙                Patti Naylor, productora familiar de Iowa, miembro de los Defensores de Las Fincas Familiares y de la Coalición Nacional de Productores Agrícolas Familiares.

    ∙                Jim Goodman, anterior productor de leche de Wisconsin, Board Presidente de la Junta de Directores de la Coalición Nacional de Productores Agrícolas Familiares.

    ∙                Pat Mooney, fundador y previo Director del Grupo ETC

    Matriculase aqui: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkcu-urT4rHNclELa8ZPZza2zUE72pY6eA

    Para más información visite: https://usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org/register-for-a-usfsa-webinar-on-may-7/.

     

  • Resilience, Recovery, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

    “Food sovereignty is a struggle for life itself”

    When Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico, Organización Boricuá was ready to deploy one of its key tools for building food sovereignty: agroecology support brigades.The brigades use a model of collective work to develop agroecological food production at farms, schools, community gardens, and other spaces around Puerto Rico. And in the wake of Hurricane María’s devastation, they help producers rebuild. The three-decade-old organization, made up of a network of farmers, farmworkers, and activists, promotes agroecology as a foundation for food sovereignty in the archipelago.

    “We believe that the struggle for food sovereignty must be based in collective processes,” Organización Boricuá’s Jesus Vázquez said during the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Assembly in Bellingham, Washington, in October 2018. “We move from farm to farm, plot to plot, community garden to community garden creating a support network for agricultural work,” Jesus explained, describing the mutual support model. “At the same time, we are also training ourselves on the farms and protecting the water, defending the land, and defending the rights of those who work the land.”

    Another part of Organización Boricuá’s work involves teaching agroecology to children through a school agriculture and environment program. Dalma Cartagena has been working with children to produce organic and agroecological food at schools for three decades. “For me, the most important are the skills in producing healthy food that the children learn and will be able to use in the future,” Dalma said. “And they have learned that what we do for our families and for our community also benefits our country and our entire planet Earth.” Organización Boricua received the USFSA’s 2018 Food Sovereignty Prize for its work promoting food sovereignty and agroecology through support brigades. “We say that the struggle for food sovereignty is a struggle for life itself,” Jesus said. “In the end, it’s about ensuring that food and the food system are in the hands of people, not corporations.”

    Food Sovereignty Stories is a video series exploring what food sovereignty can look like for diverse social movements across the United States. Share this video and follow USFSA for updates!

  • World March for Women: Linking Struggles from Across the Globe

    World March for Women: Linking Struggles from Across the Globe

    Sophie Ogutu is a feminist human rights activist who works with the Kenyan chapter of the World March of Women, an international feminist movement fighting to eradicate the causes of gender violence and poverty. 

    The World March of Women also embraces food sovereignty as a fundamental human right, with a particular focus on women.

    Women not only disproportionately bear the burden of hunger, they also at the foundation of the world’s food system. In sub-Saharan Africa, women produce up to 80 percent of all food, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. At a global level, women produce more than half of all food grown.

    For Sophie, linking up struggles across the globe is a powerful part of her work. “I think it is very important that we were part of this because we were able to look at how our comrades from other parts of the world are dealing with their struggles and are making change,” she said during the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Assembly in Bellingham, Washington, in October 2018, which she attended with another activists from the World March of Women Kenya.

    “It’s a platform of strategy, it’s a platform of building our synergies. It’s a platform where we know that when we bring our minds together, we are facing a global struggle right now that we are all in,” she added.

    Sophie shared that she was struck by the stories she heard at the assembly of so many local communities facing food security challenges. “Coming here in the USA and seeing a lot of people also hungry in a very fast-growing economy country breaks my heart, but it also gives me a lot of hope when I see so many people to discuss and address those issues,” she said. “Without hope we have nothing.”

    She stressed that the alternatives that movements like the USFSA and the World March of Women strive to build are global in nature, calling for joining forces across borders. “We cannot do it in solitude,” she said. “For us, being here really strengthens and helps us to build this together.”

    Food Sovereignty Stories is a video series exploring what food sovereignty can look like for diverse social movements across the United States. Share this video and follow USFSA for updates! 

  • Fighting for a Democratic Food System: From South to North

    Fighting for a Democratic Food System: From South to North

    A democratic food system: That’s how Joan Brady defines food sovereignty in action. Joan is a food producer in southern Ontario and is a member of the National Farmers Union of Canada and North America regional coordinator of La Via Campesina, the international social movement organization that popularized the term food sovereignty.

    “Not only am I a farmer-producer,” Joan said during the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Assembly in Bellingham, Washington, in October 2018, “I am a leader within my community to build the alternative food system—one that recognizes and values the work that farmers do, that recognizes and values that citizens can choose what to eat and that they should be part of the decision making process.”

    During the Assembly, Joan spoke passionately about her experiences as a hog farmer in Canada, and how it has informed her work to cultivate food sovereignty at home and internationally. She described a difficult environment that saw family hog farmers unable to make a living wage and turning to food banks as they felt cornered in the business. When she no longer saw a future in hog farming, Joan made the difficult decision to leave the industry and start over in 2006. She continues to produce food in a market-garden.

    Joan connects the systemic challenges she faced while being forced out of the hog industry to the global agribusiness model that impacts small farmers and peasants around the world. This also informs her activism, which focuses on linking up struggles to advance food sovereignty as a alternative.

    “I am very much a believer that the answer is within the group, that we as citizens—and especially as peasants and farmers and migrant workers and indigenous people and fisherfolk, who are in Via Campesina—we do have those answers,” she said.

    Joan attended the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Assembly for the first time in 2018, and she said she was “blown away” by the cross-pollination between different movements and struggles, from urban agricultural projects in US inner cities to agroecology initiatives in rural areas in Latin America. She was also optimistic about the growing movement.

    “This is a place where we link up with people who are passionate and who understand what food sovereignty is,” Joan said. “And they’re going places.”

    Food Sovereignty Stories is a video series exploring what food sovereignty can look like for diverse social movements across the United States. Share this video and follow USFSA for updates!