In the last 30 years, more and more people aredefending and promoting the right to control their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, and the policies that affect those systems. ‘Food sovereignty’ is a term that encapsulates this these efforts, and that has catalysed these social movements. It entails people’s control of natural resources and markets, including access to land, seeds and water, as well as fair prices for small scale producers. Food sovereignty holds the wellbeing and local knowledge of producers and consumers at the centre of food practices and policy. Importantly, it stipulates the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food, and values environmentally respectful production practices.

Food sovereignty is fundamentally different from food security. Food security vouches for the provision of sufficient food to feed a population, and access to that food through market mechanisms. However, food security does not necessarily include a consideration for where food comes from, the quality or type of food, or the conditions under which it is produced and distributed, including aspects of human rights. Food sovereignty does.

A brief history of food sovereignty

The principle of food sovereignty was first launched by La Via Campesina – an international peasants movement – in 1996 during the FAO World Food Summit which took place in Rome. This occurred at the same time as the first global coordination of food producers and civil society organisations was created (called International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty – IPC). In 2007, an alliance of social movements representing peasants and family farmers, artisanal fisher folk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers, environmental and urban movements gathered in Mali to build a common understanding of food sovereignty, and to strengthen the global movement.

A matter of power

The importance of the global food sovereignty movement is growing as agribusiness gains economic and political power, and as industrial agriculture dominates world food produc-tion and consumption. This system has been support-ed and shaped by trade deals and international policy. Liberalised agricultural markets have benefited a small number of very large transnational companies who now dominate the supply of seeds, agrochemicals, processing, logistics and even food production. The mergers of Dow Chemical with DuPont, Syngenta with ChemChina, and if allowed, Monsanto with Bayer AG, will result in three companies controlling around 70% of the world’s agrochemicals and more than 60% of commercial seeds.

Everyday change

This concentration of power undermines the livelihoods of small scale farmers and producers across the supply chain, and moves those who do not farm ever further away from the sources of the food they eat. Industrialised food creates both a physical and a social distance between the consumer and the farmer. Nevertheless, as this issue of Farming Matters clearly demonstrates, change is occurring through the everyday practices and the powerful and diverse actions led by small scale food producers and (urban) citizens around the world.

Peasant farming versus industrial farming
 
Peasant and small scale agriculture is an integral part of food sovereignty and nutrition. According to the FAO, peasant agriculture provides around 70% of the food consumed globally, including the food consumed by the majority of those suffering from extreme hunger and malnutrition. Furthermore, it produces this food with just 30% of the resources and inputs used in agriculture. It uses around 20% of fossil fuels and 30% of water and is based on an enormous genetic diversity, using around 8000 livestock breeds and millions of plant varieties. Globally there are an estimated 1.5 billion peasant farmers, 800 million urban gardeners, 410 million people relying on forests or savannas as a primary source of food, 190 million pastoralists and over 100 million peasant fishers.
 
This is in stark contrast to industrial agriculture, which accounts for only 15% of the food that is traded internationally, but accounts for more than 80% of the fossil fuels and 70% of the water used in agriculture. It also uses a narrow genetic base of less than 100 livestock breeds and 150 plant specials. Nevertheless, the industrial agriculture sector benefits from the vast majority of funded research. 96% of all recorded food and agricultural research takes place in industrialised countries and 80% of that research is focused on industrial food processing and retailing.
 
Source: http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/web_who_will_feed_us_with_notes_0.pdf

More people around the world are starting to appreciate the role of food producers in society, and seek more direct relationships with them. Initiatives that support farmers’ markets, create community supported agriculture, seek the involvement of chefs and establish public purchasing arrangements are popping up everywhere. This issue describes several such experiences: for example how a fisherperson in the Faroes Islands organises to sell his fish directly to consumers , and how agricultural workers in Italy fight for dignified living and working conditions.

Food sovereignty in policy

Around the world, food sovereignty has been adopted as a political framework at the national level.  In 2008, Ecuador was the first country to instate food sovereignty in its constitution, although its implementation is flawed. Since then, other countries have followed including Senegal, Mali, Bolivia, Nepal, Venezuela, and most recently Egypt (2014). As the first country on the European continent, Switzerland is on its way to bring food sovereignty into national legislation.

Important change is also happening in international policy making around food and farming. The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of national food security is one such example. The food sovereignty movement, through the IPC, had a leading role in reforming the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). They did this by establishing the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) in 2009 a unique, autonomous and self-organised space for inclusive civil society participation in global governance of food security and nutrition. The Declaration on the Rights of Peasant Men and Women and Other People Living in Rural Areas is another breakthrough as an international human rights instrument to protect peasant food production. After 15 years of work, the declaration is close to being adopted by the UN. While these are very important steps, the meaningful implementation and use of these policies and frame-works by (sub)national governments remains a challenge and will continue to need monitoring and pressure.

Grassroots responses

The great significance of food sovereignty as a concept is that it has been developed and driven by the organisations of peasants and small scale food producers. Because of this, it is a self-organised, grassroots response to the dynamics of the global food system. In this issue of Farming Matters we show how in Korea women’s groups are fighting to keep their own seed, in Zimbabwe schools are turning their yards into edible forests, and in Brazil farmers are working with nature aiming to live in an autonomous, sustainable way. The latter story is a good illustration of how agroecology is a means of reaching food sovereignty. In our special section on Europe we show how urban dwellers in Turkey are organising around local food in a violent context through a struggle to keep urban gardens alive, and how the food sovereignty movement in Eastern Europe is overturning supermarkets with food hubs and coops.

All these initiatives shorten food chains and create new alliances between producers and consumers. Moreover, these initiatives are founded on principles of environmental and social responsibility. Clearly people around the world are starting to understand the multiple benefits of adopting responsible food practices, forming a major force for change.

Adam Payne (adam@organiclea.org.uk) is a farmer and member of the Land Workers Alliance and Stanka Becheva (stanka.becheva@foeeurope.org) is food and agriculture campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe.

The post Editorial: Food Sovereignty from the ground up appeared first on Ileia.

Currently, we live in a world of extremes in the global food system. On one hand, there are the politics of the capitalist system, of those who control the world and just want to make business at our expense. They perpetuate the vision of food security in which a few big corporations produce all the food that we are expected to buy and eat. One of the problems with this situation is that we will not know the origin of those foods, how they are produced and processed, and whether or not they are genetically modified.

On the other hand, there are the people, us, we are the peasants. We embody food sovereignty. The word sovereignty is another word for freedom. And food sovereignty means having control of our peasant seeds, the seeds that we ourselves have selected, planted and harvested for generations. It means producing the food that we know, and owning this knowledge.

But there are a few obstacles that stand in the way of our freedom. The first one has to do with the politics of international trade and economic globalisation, which promote the vision of food security. We peasants produce for ourselves but we also  sell on the market. Yet legislation created by the World Trade Organization favours large corporations and blocks the access to markets for peasants. It is this type of policy that turn us from producers into consumers of food.

Another obstacle is war. And war is situation created by a few politicians but in which we all lose. Through war we lose our land and our homes which we have struggled to build. Through war we lose our animals and we lose access to the waters where we fish. We must find a solution to war, but cannot do this alone.

Therefore, we need to join forces in order to achieve our vision of food sovereignty. All over the world, civil society is increasingly supporting agroecology and food sovereignty. People are also fighting for control over natural resources and sustainable management of the environment. There is still a long way to go. In Africa, we face repression and land grabbing, and in Europe people face difficulties accessing land and lack of political willingness.

Nonetheless, we move forward. Meetings like the Nyéléni forum on food sovereignty offer a space of convergence where we can discuss how to achieve this vision. When everybody commits to the cause, we can achieve a lot.

Massa Koné (kmassa26@gmail.com) is secretary general of the Union of Associations and Coordination of Associations for the Development and Defence of the Rights of the Deprived (UACDDDD) and spokesperson of the Malian Convergence Against Land Grabbing.

The post Opinion: Peasants embody food sovereignty appeared first on Ileia.

Trees in flower with brilliant red, white and yellow canopies shade a group of farmers picking coffee beans. Four oxen peacefully pull a wagon filled with coffee, potatoes and beans over the hilly slopes. On the veranda of a house, two women scrape the peel from the cassava tubers that they just harvested and toss it aside for the goats to feast on. These sounds softly echo in the green valley, giving a sensation of remote, isolated tranquillity. It seems as if time has stood still and people’s lives have gone unchanged for generations. This is far from the truth. This place, in the Zona da Mata in Minas Gerais, Brazil, is marked by a continuous fight against soil degradation, dependencies on external inputs, and exploitation by landlords, multinational traders and chemical manufacturers. It is a struggle for autonomy. By establishing control over land and re-designing food and farming systems farmers are moving towards food sovereignty.

Land sovereignty

One of the villages in the Zona da Mata that moved towards food sovereign-ty is Araponga. In the past, many farmers in Araponga had no land and worked in sharecropping arrange-ments to produce coffee. They did all the work for only part of the harvest, at the whim of the landlord. They had no say over what to cultivate or how to cultivate the land. From the 1970s onwards, landlords began to implement many of the principles and technologies of the Green Revolution. As a result, sharecroppers were obliged to use agro-toxins, forbidden to grow food crops, and had to weed the land until it was bare.

Things changed in the 1980s when neighbouring families organised themselves in small dynamic groups, each composed of five to 20 families called the Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (CEBs, Basic Ecclesial Communities). These families would meet to pray and sing, and engage in politically-oriented readings of the Bible. The CEBs were linked to the broader Liberation Theology movement that was occurring within the Catholic Church throughout Latin America at that time.

So, we were on our land; we had all the freedom but no harvest

During these discussions, sharecrop farmers began to challenge the status quo. They founded the Arapongan Rural Workers Union to protect the rights of sharecroppers and rural workers. At the same time, farmers affirmed that autonomy could not be attained in a sharecropping arrangement, but only as landowners. This marked the beginning of the Arapongan Joint Land Conquest Movement. Mediated by the union, farmers formed groups and pooled their resources to collectively buy land. They set up lending schemes through which group members could borrow money from other members. Between 1989 and 2010 more than 700 hectares were purchased by more than 150 families. This also led to the return of Arapongans who had migrated to the slums of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Drawn by the movement’s successes, they came back to Araponga to purchase land and make a living as farmers.

The movement for Alternative Agriculture

Nevertheless, while having control over land, the settlers soon found that this did not bring the autonomy they had envisaged. Green Revolution practices had become the default mode of farming in the region. Such practices, including mono-cropping, specialisation in coffee and plough-ing, were leading to land degradation and resulting in yield declines. “So, we were on our own land. We had all the freedom but no harvest,” says João, one of the farmers in the region. The increasing prices of chemical fertilizers on one hand, and of the food in stores on the other squeezed farmers’ income even further. Farmers knew they had to free themselves from the chains of the Green Revolution. But how?

At the time, the Green Revolution started to meet resistance from other sides. Brazil was undergoing a process of re-democratisation. Now that self-organisation was no longer banned, a new generation of civil society organisations was flourishing, including the growing movement for Alternative Agriculture, later coined agroecology.

At the Federal University of Viçosa, located near Araponga, alternative agriculture was also gaining ground. A group of recent graduates approached farmers about working together, and in 1988, the Centre of Alternative Technologies of the Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM) was founded, together with 13 rural worker unions in the region. This moment also marked the birth of new partnership in the Zona da Mata: between the CTA-ZM, the Federal University of Viçosa and numerous peasant organisations, including the Arapongan farmers’ union. The alliance proved important in terms of acquiring support, obtaining legitimacy, fostering experimentation and learning, and stimulating innovation.

Farmers began to cultivate a higher diversity of food crops and fruits

Nested markets

At the Federal University of Viçosa, located near Araponga, alternative agriculture was also gaining ground. A group of recent graduates approached farmers about working together, and in 1988, the Centre of Alternative Technologies of the Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM) was founded, together with 13 rural worker unions in the region. This moment also marked the birth of new partnership in the Zona da Mata: between the CTA-ZM, the Federal University of Viçosa and numerous peasant organisations, including the Arapongan farmers’ union. The alliance proved important in terms of acquiring support, obtaining legitimacy, fostering experimentation and learning, and stimulating innovation.

And there were more experiments. Farmers began to cultivate more and a higher diversity of food crops (e.g. cassava, maize, beans and vegetables) and fruits (e.g. mango, avocado, banana and papaya). Some of these were cultivated as part of an agroforestry system. Soon, food processing started. For example, sugar cane was processed into raw sugar, avocado into soap, milk into cheese and maize and cassava into flour. Farmers’ diets gradually improved and they became much less dependent on purchased food. As one farmer said: “In the time of my father’s generation we experienced no hunger, but we did not have the variety of food that we have now.”

Many of these farmers nowadays produce a surplus of food. Together with CTA and UFV, they created so called ‘nested markets’. These are local markets that are governed by farmers’ and citizens’ own values, where farmers can sell their surplus. A farmer shop was established in the centre of the town of Araponga and an open farmers’ market is now organised every week. Market networks where farmers could sell directly to citizens in the larger city of Viçosa were also set up. Urban people value these markets because products are fresh, free from pesticides, and inexpensive. One farmer said, “we did not know that the people in Araponga ate so many bananas.” Urban citizens in Araponga used to buy bananas from external markets.

A way of life

Today, the agroecology alliance continues to struggle against corporate control over production and consumption by strengthening and creating nested markets, and by fostering innovation and exchange between farmers, researchers and activists. They work in Araponga and many other municipalities in the Zona da Mata. Together with other movements, united under the National Agro-ecology Articulation (ANA), they run awareness raising campaigns. They also advocate for public policies that reward farmers who produce environmental or social benefits for society and call for regulations that put limits on agro-industry and their destructive effects on public health, the environment and the farming community.

In Araponga, moving towards food sovereignty was a two-pronged process of gaining control over land and redesigning farming to be independent from dominant markets and technologies. It was through self-organisation, the pooling of resources, forging partnerships with other organisations and (re)connecting with nature that, a seemingly powerless group of sharecroppers took the food and farming system into their own hands.

They gained the capacity to re-establish control over, and re-design these systems. Crucial in this process was the establishment of an institutional environment that protected farmers from external interests, that enabled them to experiment and innovate with agroecology and that guarded the peace, nature, and ways of life that flourish in the Arapongan countryside.

Leonardo van den Berg (Leonardo.vandenberg@gmail.com), Magriet Goris, and Heitor Mancini Teixeira are PhD candidates at the Federal University of Viçosa conducting action research embedded in the agroecology movement. Irene Cardoso and Izabel Maria Botelho are professors at the same university. Irene is also chair of the Brazilian Agroecology Association and a board member of ILEIA.

The post Agroecology for food sovereignty appeared first on Ileia.

Introduction

Agriculture in Europe has long been characterised by a predominance of small scale family farms practicing different forms of peasant agriculture. This model is based on principles of community, diversity, and direct connections with consumers. The current context of land and market concentration has put European agriculture under severe financial and political pressure, but also gives rise to powerful initiatives for food sovereignty.

Squeezing out small scale producers

Europe’s small scale farms have shaped many of its characteristic landscapes, provided employment in rural areas, and developed the foods that inspired Europe’s culinary diversity. But Europe’s farmers are disappearing. Between 2003 and 2013 the European Union lost four million small farms, one third of its total, whilst in most member states, the number of farms of over 100 hectares doubled or even tripled. Although they represent only 3% of European farms, these large farms control 52% of agricultural land. The power of supermarkets is also growing. For example, in 2011 four retailers controlled 85% of the national food market in Germany and three retailers controlled 90% of the food market in Portugal (Nicholson and Young, 2012). National and European policy continue to favour these trends.

These recent trends have major impacts on food producers (including farmers, processors and vendors), consumers and the environment as small scale farmers and fishers are driven from the land and seas. Moreover, Europe is experiencing a massive reduction in agricultural diversity, an increase in labour exploitation in industrial food production and processing, and alarming losses to nature. These shifts are also coupled with unhealthy diets and the associated weight / obesity problems.

Emerging alternatives

The growing interest in food sovereignty around Europe can be understood in light of these social and structural changes. New awareness amongst European citizens of the power they have to drive change is expressed in emerging, innovative initiatives of producers and consumers. This awareness also takes the form of policy proposals, such as the recent European declaration on Community Supported Agriculture, promoted by Urgenci and the referendum in Switzerland to establish food sovereignty policy at a national level. Furthermore, the European movement for food sovereignty is growing.

A European movement

Inspired by the international Nyéléni movement for food sovereignty, a number of European social movements organised a similar process in Europe, seeking space to define actions and strategies to challenge the dominant forces of production and consumption. A major Nyéléni Europe forum took place in October 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania with the presence of 500 delegates from more than 40 countries and 290 organisations. Participants included farmers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous people, consumers, trade unions, environmental, justice, solidarity, human rights organisations, community-based food movements, journalists and researchers. They shared experiences, built a common understanding of food sovereignty, developed joint actions, and prepared to influence key policies in Europe. Some of the most inspiring food sovereignty experiences in Europe are presented on the following pages.

Read the food sovereignty stories from Europe:

• Food versus the big city of Istanbul
• Resisting land grabbing in Germany
• Regaining trust: alternative food systems in the Czech Republic
• Human-centred agriculture fighting exploitation and racism

This section of the magazine was produced in collaboration with the Nyeleni Europe movement, with generous support from Friends of the Earth Europe and Misereor.

The post Special section – Food sovereignty: stories from Europe appeared first on Ileia.

Until 2016, KTG-Agrar was the biggest agribusiness land owner in Germany, controlling over 38,000 ha in the country. When KTG-Agrar filed for bankruptcy, the young peasant association (Bündnis junge Landwirtschaft, BjL) together with young, mostly landless, members from La Via Campesina’s member organisation in Germany (Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft, AbL) gathered on the fields of KTG-Agrar. We peacefully expressed our desire to establish sustainable agriculture in the area, and we asked for support from the government for this. Nevertheless, the land was sold, via a dubious structure of shareholding companies, to a transnational insurance company from southern Germany and to a private foundation from Lichtenstein (Münchener Rück and Gustav-Zech-Stiftung).

This is an example of what we call land grabbing in our territory. In Germany, increasing land concentration is creating a situation of inequitable access to land. This is driving family farmers out of business and blocks the entrance of aspiring young farmers. In 2010, the largest 7% of the farms controlled 37% of the farm land. This trend is ongoing and is accompanied by an increase in agro-industrial agriculture; it is undermining peasant agriculture, ecological resilience and food sovereignty. Moreover, these changes are eroding culture and social life in rural Germany.

Land grabbing in Europe?

Land grabbing has been described by the European Coordination of La Via Campesina (ECVC) as: the legal or illegal control of ‘larger than locally-typical’ amounts of land by any persons or entities for purposes of speculation, extraction, resource control or commodification at the expense of peasant farmers, agroecology, land stewardship, food sovereignty and human rights. This challenges the notion that Europe is a showcase of good land governance with well-regulated land markets.

Land grabbing, as defined by the ECVC, exists in Europe and is exacerbated by the unequal distribution of subsidies from the European Union. For example, 28.4% of CAP (Common Agriculture Policy) payments in Germany are given to 1.2% of the beneficiaries. Furthermore, factors such as skyrocketing land prices help to explain why the remaining small and medium scale farms are being forced out of agriculture. These farmers, as well as aspiring young peas-ants, simply don’t have the capital to compete with investors – many of which are non-agricultural – to either keep, or access land.

Tenure Guidelines at home

As young peasants, we are trying to turn the tide. Together with allies from civil society organisations, we are making use of the United Nation’s Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT, see box). We are asking the government to implement the VGGTs in our country, and to bring coherence to local and national policy. Currently, the German government supports the implementation of the VGGTs in partner states in the south.

In September 2016, a coalition of German peasants and allied NGOs participated in the first national ex-ercise to monitor the implementation of the VGGTs not only abroad, but also at home. This event was organised by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

The event gathered around 60 participants from the government, development agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs), academia and the private sector. They aimed to highlight achievements, challenges and recommendations for the implementation of the VGGTs based on the past four years of experience with them. Through testimonies and working group discussions we jointly identified some key challenges and next steps.

In the German context, the event highlighted the urgent need to increase awareness about the VGGTs in Germany. CSOs and academics especially, ex-pressed the need for more transparency and higher public participation in land acquisition processes and land use decisions. We recommended the translation of the ‘People’s Manual’, a version of the guidelines in easy-to-understand language, into German, and the development of a legal assessment on the compliance of the German land law with the VGGTs. Jointly we agreed on the need of increased use, application and implementation of the VGGTs by Germany, also at home, and that for this, more policy coherence is needed. Therefore we recommended the creation of a multi-stakeholder process to accompany the implementation of the VGGTs in Germany. This marks the beginning of an important policy reform process.

With this event and the related process, Germany, together with France, were the first European countries to start a monitoring of the implementation of the VGGTs. Besides the fact that an important process has been triggered in Germany, our experience can be useful for actors in other countries dealing with similar land struggles.

Paula Gioia (paula.gioia@eurovia.org) is a beekeeper and small-scale farmer in Eastern Germany. She is a founding member of the Bündnis junge Landwirtschaft, member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft and member of the coordination committee of the European Coordination Via Campesina.

More information on land issues in Europe:

Infographics: The state of land concentration in Europe

Land grabbing, land concentration and people’s struggles in Europe (PDF)

Land grabbing and land concentration in Europe – A research brief (PDF)

People’s Manual on the Guidelines on Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests (PDF)

The VGGTs
 
The VGGTs (Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests) are the first international governance instrument to apply a human rights framework to land tenure and the governance of natural resource. They represent a valuable tool for peasants – worldwide. They were developed by the UN Committee on World Food Security through an inclusive and legitimate consultative process involving those most affected by tenure insecurity and a lack of access to land. The VGGTs were endorsed in 2012 by 130 countries, including Germany. The document contains a number of important provisions for tackling land grabbing and associated problems that peasant communities face regarding access to, and control of land, territory, and natural resources.

The post Resisting land grabbing in Germany appeared first on Ileia.

Historically, Czech society was characterised by strong cooperative structures. Cooperatives (co-ops) helped small and middle scale peasants and autonomous traders attain economic emancipation from the Austrian Empire. Starting in 1847, with the establishment of consumer / savings co-ops in Prague, the Czechs quickly developed a culture of co-ops, inspired by the British Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. For example, villages received electricity due to co-ops; the Prague Zoo and National theatre were founded as co-ops, and of course there were very important agricultural and consumer co-ops.

The rise and fall of co-ops

However, with the introduction of communism in 1948, the culture of co-ops lost its positive aspects of bottom-up engagement. The centralised, state-dictated way of decision making was detached from the day-to-day reality of the consumers and peasants and many people stopped farming and left the rural areas.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, which ended 41 years of one party rule in Czechoslovakia, the state introduced a new law on co-ops, enabling them to function independently again. However, embracing the competitive ideology of the free market rendered many of the remaining co-ops obsolete or a relic of the communist past.

Since 1991, when the very first international supermarket opened in the Czech Republic, the country has witnessed an ‘invasion’ of international retailers and supermarkets with their aggressive and predatory politics of unfair trading practices. This led to the disappearance of hundreds of small and middle scale food producers, and to the concentration of distribution channels and food production in the hands of a few industrial companies. Today, initiatives providing alternatives to this model of production and distribution are needed more than ever.

Community Supported Agriculture

The CSA movement is currently the strongest alternative food movement in the Czech Republic. The very first communal project that was built on the values and principles of the CSA model in the Czech republic is KomPot (www.kom-pot.cz). KomPot (translated as ‘Communal Foods’) was established in 2011 by a group of organic farming activists, environmentalists and local people from the peri-urban area of Prague. The aim was to feed at least 50 families with organically grown fruits and vegetables from a community-led market garden based on solidarity between producers and consumers.

This CSA was a challenge to get started because there was very little infrastructure, support, and awareness about alternative food systems. The country’s recent history has led to skepticism and distrust around collective action and consensus-based decision making. And, operating without subsidies made it difficult to make investments in materials such as water wells and polytunnels. But, Jan Valeška, one of the founders of KomPot, explained how CSAs are becoming more popular in Czech: “Every year there are newcomers starting their CSA systems. Today, there are up to five dozen CSAs across the country, with several thousand members.” The CSAs in the Czech Republic are an example of an alternative model for food production and distribution based on building community, trust and direct contact between consumers and producers. Equally, it is about restoring a lost connection with the land and food.

A reflection on Eastern Europe

Many other Eastern European countries still harbour a live rural, peasant culture. Unfortunately, due to land grabbing, intense pressure that food producers experience from the international retailers, and the dominance of industrial agriculture, small scale farming is disappearing.

Czech fruit and vegetable growers, for example, rely mainly on migrant labour from the Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. Czech apples are often being picked by Romanian hands, those same hands that used to grow fruits and vegetables in Romania (see interview). On the other hand, every year Czech workers are leaving for Britain, France or other western countries to pick wine grapes or to work on farms.

Completely unprepared, Eastern European countries adopted economic models and neoliberal strategies that are still difficult to digest and cope with, especially for the smallest farmers, and for consumers whose options are restricted. But, while our countries share common challenges, we also share a common vision of possible solutions. These solutions are being recognised by more and more people. The CSA model is one way of providing stability, not only for small scale producers, but also for consumers. Producers and consumers are becoming co-actors in the whole process, from production to processing and distribution of food. The result is a transition towards localised, sustainable practice and dignified living conditions. That is the message from CSA communities in the Czech Republic that sprouted from KomPot.

Tomáš Uhnák (t.uhnak@gmail.com) is a freelance journalist and food sovereignty activist working in Czech republic.

We would like to thank Jan Valeška for his input to this story.

The post Regaining trust: alternative food systems in the Czech Republic appeared first on Ileia.

We are faced with incredible challenges that are being intensified by the false solutions of seed and biotech companies. With their ‘experts’ and ‘scientists’, in connivance with government agencies, they all claim to be ‘saving’ farmers and improving the quality of their seeds and livelihoods.

Why are these companies creating imaginary problems and providing false solutions to make profits from our food and agricultural systems? There are countless examples of false solutions that undermine food sovereignty in Africa: from biosynthesising the active ingredients in our medicinal plants, to biofortification. Most of us were outraged earlier this year when we learned about Tanzania’s new law that criminalises peasant seed exchange.

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The food and farming system practiced by the majority of small scale farmers is not broken. They have the knowledge, skill and experience to grow food for nourishment, taste, quality and resilience. Big corporations look down on them and call their seeds inferior and archaic. But time and again, grounded evidence shows that small scale producers are feeding the people and meeting the basic needs of their communities.

As I have done, you only need to learn from farmers themselves. Our farmers are working with nature, the soil, plants and animals. They have the knowledge and the right to choose what they want to grow, how they want to grow it and what is culturally appropriate and healthy. That is what food sovereignty is all about.

Food sovereignty is built on the inalienable rights of peoples to maintain their cultural as well as seed diversities. Cultural diversity permits peoples to maintain and enlarge their stock of local knowledge; produce, save, exchange, use, and reuse their seeds and have control over farming practices developed over centuries of experimentation and experience. Food sovereignty ensures that farmers stay in business and that people are not forced to alter their diets.

Our governments and (future) researchers must take the indigenous and local knowledge of small scale farmers and producers into account. Lost knowledge must be recovered and research must be identified by the people and not defined by corporations who are only interested in making profits, or by laboratory experts.

Africa can no longer afford to be a testing ground for all kinds of unwholesome food and toxic technologies, in which her people are being used as guinea pigs in the so called fight against hunger, malnutrition or disease. Our nutrition is not found in the laboratory, it is found in farmers’ fields and knowledge.

Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje (mariann@eraction.org) is the Chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and is programme manager for Environmental Rights Action / Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

The post Opinion: Nutrition grows in farmers’ fields appeared first on Ileia.

Scroll down to read stories from Algeria, Australia, Switzerland and Colombia. 

Algeria

Innovation keeps tradition alive

Food sovereignty in marginal areas of the Maghreb has always depended on the conservation of tree diversity such as the fig tree in the Atlas chain and the date palm in the Sahara. For centuries, maintaining high agrobiodiversity has allowed peasants to adapt to their environment, extend the maturation period of their crops, and to develop a wide variety of flavours and uses for these crops (construction, crafts, medicine, etc.). However, this diversity is becoming increasingly threatened, as traditional crops lose ground to new eating habits. To tackle this situation, peasants in M’zab, a territory in the northern Sahara Desert and fig growers in Kabyle mountains in Algeria teamed up with scientists in a partnership facilitated by BEDE (Biodiversity Exchange and Dissemination of Experiences). Together, peasants and scientists are experimenting with technological and social innovations that range from expanding uses of traditional products (for example, new uses for fig vinegar) to experimenting with biological pest control agents. These efforts don’t just pay off for peasants and researchers. By revaluing their agricultural and food heritage, people in the oases of the Maghreb not only reclaim their food sovereignty but are also at the forefront of climate change adaptation.

For more information contact BEDE (bede@bede-asso.org)

Australia

Defending small scale farms

The rise of a movement of small scale farmers selling directly to consumers in Australia (and elsewhere) is being seriously challenged, and even hampered by national policy. Scale-inappropriate and outdated regulations and planning schemes discriminate against small scale farmers. For example, policy defines small, pastured pig and poultry farms as ‘intensive’ and they are subjected to the same requirements as giant sheds full of thousands of confined animals. In response to the need to defend small scale farmers, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance has established a Legal Defence Fund, and crowdfunded nearly AUD$70,000 over the past year. More than AUD$7,000 has already been distributed to three farms in critical need of support as regulators forced them to stop farming. For example Happy Valley Free Range received support with her forced move to a property in another shire. A legal hotline that will provide urgent help to farmers is in the planning. The next step is to collate the known regulatory and planning barriers and commence writing and lobbying for reformed, scale-appropriate legislation to support a food sovereign future where growers of ethical and ecologically-sound produce can thrive.

For more information contact Mathias Stalder (tammois@gmail.com)

Switzerland

A popular vote on food sovereignty

It’s official! Swiss people will have the opportunity to decide whether food sovereignty is to be included in their constitution. Swiss direct democracy allows every citizen to initiate a popular citizens initiative. In 2014, Uniterre formed an alliance with 70 like-minded organisations to do this. Two years later the first two hurdles were passed. The process began with drafting a new constitutional article. The decision was made to ensure that the text was detailed enough to avoid misinterpretation that could accommodate existing laws. Ten points are proposed and these include banning GMOs, the right to cultivate and commercialise peasants seeds and, of particular importance for the milk sector, quantity and price regulation. After the text was accepted by the Federal Chancellery, hard-working and creative volunteers collected 109,000 valid signatures within 18 months to complete the submission. The path ahead is one of building more popular support. None of the major political parties dare support our vision of alternative production and trade. As the initiative committee member Fernand Chuche proclaimed during the handover of the signatures: “Discussions about production and consumption of foods have reached a turning point. And the absence of a credible message from the government leads to engagement of the people. This is a warning and a chance at the same time.”

For more information contact Mathias Stalder (m.stalder@uniterre.ch) or www.ernaehrungssouveraenitaet.ch.

Colombia

Farming for peace

The Agricultural Workers Union of Sumapaz is leading a process to constitute a Peasant Reserve Area (ZRC) in Sumapaz, part of greater Bogotá, Colombia. Aiming to build peace at the territorial level, this was born as an agricultural initiative to protect the world’s largest ‘páramo’ wilderness area and ensure a dignified life for peasants.

The community’s development plan for the Peasant Reserve Area seeks to protect and strengthen the peasant economy through agroecological production, phasing out the use of chemicals, monocultures and extensive cattle-raising. The plan also aims to enhance local collective action, and to forge links with the urban area of Bogotá as a way to ensure food sovereignty. These strategies are based on principles of endogenous development, legal access to land and the recognition of the importance of a thriving rural economy. Importantly, it stipulates that peasant organisations should be able to take decisions autono-mously in their territory.

After a public hearing in August 2016, attended by over 850 farmers, academics and government repre-sentatives, adjustments are currently being made to the plan. Although the process has met with resistance on the part of State authorities, the peasants of Sumapaz consider the Peasant Reserve Area a crucial way to implement the peace agreements and to “transform our negative realities into a culture of peace.”

For more information read Revista Cultural Sumapaceña “El Fogón”, Edición N°4 2017, Fundación Parcela Cultural Campesina. (parcelaculturalcampesina@gmail.com)

The post Locally rooted: ideas and intiatives from the field appeared first on Ileia.

Priscilla Claeys. 2015. Routledge. 210 pages. ISBN: 978-1138793019
While the negative impacts from land grabbing, speculation with agricultural commodities, agrofuels and climate change become increasingly evident, the policies that have created these problems have not faltered in their march. At the same time, social movements that challenge policies and practice that undermine food sovereignty are on the rise. This book enriches our understanding of the relevance of the transnational agrarian movement, La Via Campesina. She takes stock of the achievements, such as mobilising a human rights discourse in the struggle against neoliberalism. This is a useful read for anyone engaged in the debate around the ‘right to food’.

Fertile Ground: Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up

Brescia, Steve (Ed). 2017. Food First.

Agroecology is our best option for transitioning to food and farming systems capable of nurturing people, societies, and the planet. Yet how do we amplify and spread agroecology to achieve that goal? Fertile Ground: Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up, a new book edited by Groundswell International Executive Director Steve Brescia and published by Food First, addresses that question. It offers nine case studies, authored by practitioners from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe, that demonstrate how agroecological innovation can be deepened, spread to ever growing numbers of farmers, and integrated into social movements and policy.

DOWNLOAD

“Getting into a bind” how the trade and investment regime blocks the development of agroecology and access to land

Natalia Carrau and Martin Drago, Friends of the Earth International. 2016. 20 pages

The notion that trade and investment agreements are designed to generate profits for the agroindustry has long been denied by its proponents. This report reveals how current strategies to raise investment in agriculture are likely to hinder the amplification of agroecology as a means of achieving food sovereignty. By contrasting a food system based on agribusiness with one based on agroecology, this publication highlights the different impacts of these two models. This report also offers several practical recommendations about how to get around detrimental trade and investment and to support the consolidation of agroecology as a viable alternative to agribusiness.

DOWNLOAD

Connecting smallholders to markets: An analytical guide

Civil Society Mechanism. 2016. 46 pages.

Territorial markets benefit society at large. Not only are they more profitable for small scale producers and for local economies than global agrivalue chains, but they also foster sustainability and strengthen social cohesion and culture rooted in tradition. This publication is the fruit of two years of collective efforts by the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) working group. This analytical guide examines how small scale farmers and civil society organisations can advocate for the implementation of national and regional policies and programmes that support territorial markets. This e-book is also available in Spanish and French.

DOWNLOAD

Food, Agriculture and Social Change: The Everyday Vitality of Latin America.

Stephen Sherwood, Alberto Arce, Myriam Paredes (Eds). 2017. Routledge,
256 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1138214989

In recent years, food studies has tended to focus on a number of increasingly abstract, largely unquestioned concepts with regard to how capital, markets and states organise and operate. This has led to a gap between public policy and people’s realities with food as experienced in homes and on the streets. Through grounded case studies in seven Latin American countries, this book explores how development and social change in food and agriculture are fundamentally experiential, contingent and unpredictable. In viewing development in food as a socio-political material experience, the authors reveal a multiplicity of processes and creativity found in households, neighbourhoods and social networks. People diversely meet their food needs and passions while confronting the region’s most pressing social, health and environmental concerns. Read also the article ‘The vitality of everyday food‘ (Farming Matters, April 2017).

More on food sovereignty

Towards Food sovereignty: reclaiming autonomous food systems by Michel Pimbert (2009), filled with photos, video and audio clips, makes the case for locally-controlled and diverse food systems, and highlights different examples of how people are promoting food sovereignty. Another comprehensive overview that balances problems and solutions is the edited book, Food and democracy: Introduction to food sovereignty (2011). Land grabbing and land concentration by Sylvia Kay (2016) discusses how young and aspiring farmers in Europe face barriers to entry into the farming sector. She also outlines the implications for food sovereignty of the steep decline in the number of small farms in Europe. Cultivating Gender Justice by Food First (2017) explores why dismantling sexism and patriarchy in the food system, in the food movement, in our organizations, and among ourselves is fundamental to transforming the food system.

Besides books, there are also a number of web-based and multimedia resources on food sovereignty. The Nyéléni Newsletter is the voice of the international food sovereignty movement and provides space for individuals and organisations to exchange and share information. Food for thought serves a similar purpose for the European movement. Food for thought and action: A food sovereignty curriculum (PDF) (2009) is an educational tool for activists seeking to strengthen the food sovereignty movement.

In film, The Land for our food (2016) is a documentary that shows how accessing land has proved to be a barrier to improving our food system in Europe and provides a range of practical experiences in the quest for land for agroecological farming. The short clip, Towards a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (2016) describes the main issues and the process behind working towards the declaration on the rights of peasants in the UN. This film can be viewed in seven different languages. ‘Anachasho’ Food of the wilds (2014) provides a peak into collective harvesting of uncultivated forest foods in India and what this means for food sovereignty. Food sovereignty football (2013) makes for a good laugh while exposing the uneven playing field between family farmers and transnational corporations in Britain. Also in Europe, the animated film The Missing Option: Food Sovereignty (2011) portrays the fight of countless individuals and organisations for a Common Agricultural Policy reform based on the principles of food sovereignty. And, Seeds of Sovereignty (2013) tells an inspiring story of African farming communities and organisations reviving traditional seed diversity across the continent and taking back control over their food systems. This short film is the second instalment in the Seeds of Freedom trilogy.

There are more resources than we are able to mention here. A longer list of books, reports and websites can be found on the Agroecology Land Trust website

The post Mind! > Books and films appeared first on Ileia.

In the face of climate change and chronic malnutrition in Zimbabwe, the schoolyards of 107 schools across the country are being transformed into green landscapes of edible food forests. Schools and Colleges Permaculture (SCOPE) is a practical education programme of the Zimbabwe Institute of Permaculture. Working in partnership with the Ministry of Education in Zimbabwe, SCOPE has been implementing projects with young people in schools throughout the country. We use climate friendly agriculture and youth empowerment activities to address school-based supplementary feeding and household level food sovereignty. Educational centres and schools are developing integrated land use designs aimed at transforming schoolyards into healthy, productive agroecosystems. In addition, SCOPE works to facilitate and influence a school curriculum that is centred on building an understanding and application of the ecological principles on which sound land use practices and food production systems are based.

Children are working on practical solutions to address and meet their needs at their schools using locally available resources

Children are working on practical solutions to address and meet their needs at their schools using locally available resources and inspired by permaculture. Permaculture is a system of ecological design that demonstrates how the relationship and co-existence with nature can model how to meet human needs. At the same time permaculture designs aim to regenerate the environment around us in the face of a changing climate. Permaculture lies, not in any single technique, but in looking at how multiple techniques can be woven together into systems that are more than the sum.

How it works

The schoolyard is transformed into a local school food system. The land is divided into food forest zones that protect it from erosion. The school lawn zone and flower beds are transformed into productive food gardens where cereals and vegetables are produced. The food forest zones are where multipurpose trees, mostly indigenous species that are well adapted to the environments, and fast growing fruit trees are planted. This has allowed most of the schools to enjoy diverse fruits throughout the year.

One fifth of the schools have integrated fish farming into their systems, where the water from the fish ponds is used to water vegetable gardens. The fish waste fertilises the plants, and the plants clean the water. These systems use 70-90 % less water than conventional farming and can produce large amounts of food within the small school spaces.

Nurturing the water, soil and fauna

Children learn how to value water, and to be in control of their own water systems. In a world where water is becoming ever more scarce and precious due to climate change, children are taught how to engage and practice water harvesting earthworks such as swales, ponds and keyline systems. The most common feature in all of the schools practicing permaculture is infield rainwater harvesting, coupled with planting of banana and paw paw around the school buildings to harvest roof water.

Another common practice coupled with food production is the use of greywater from the school. Water from hand washing points is captured, filtered with simple systems and used to grow trees, shrubs, and herbs.

As a way of working with the soils and rebuilding them as carbon sinks, the young people are taught to feed the soils through continuous mulching, composting, and use of green manures. Where possible, schools have managed to restore significant numbers of predators and keystone species needed for food productivity. For example, lizards and chameleons have come back to their environments to feed on the pests. Unlike massive geo-engineering schemes, these are practical solutions that are affordable and teach learners to observe and work with nature to produce food.

Not too young to be involved

SCOPE’s work is an attempt to encourage generations of system thinkers by bringing the ethics and principles of permaculture design and regenerative systems into the classroom. It is an attempt to empower the young people of Zimbabwe to determine and create a future of their choice. At the centre of each schools’ work is the demonstration of good practices. Children create safe green spaces abundant in food and water, using locally available resources. In addition, SCOPE works with children to create awareness of climate change action. An important success factor has been the acknowledgement that children and youth can actively support initiatives that lead to building resilient and sustainable communities.

Challenging the status quo

Applying permaculture has been difficult because practices such as mulching and intercropping have been perceived as dirty and less systematic than monocropping and maintaining bare soil. This led to limited support and somewhat negative attitudes from school administrators. Making more creative use of resources at hand, rather than doing what everyone else is doing also challenges the status quo.

Grow your own, cook your own, eat your own
 
Under the ongoing SCOPE campaign, “grow your own, cook your own, eat your own,” we facilitated the participation of the schools’ children and youth in the national food and seed festival. This gave them an opportunity to share, with other youth and elders, the inspiring work that they are doing on seed saving and food production. This was also an opportunity for young people to demonstrate cooking of local dishes.

We cultivate a large diversity of plants in the schools. In some places there was inadequate knowledge of local and indigenous plants. Although the design process brings parents and elders back into the school to share their knowledge and seeds, in some cases, local communities no longer have diverse seeds for sharing.

SCOPE continues to support more sharing of lessons learnt for implementation of good practices. The schools that are able to maintain their production independently act as learning and demonstration centres for the other schools. Besides this, different schools are connecting with and learning from each other through social media such as WhatsApp.

Students have learnt to think holistically about their landscape and their food

Youth as agents of change

In the past year, half of the schools were able to provide food to supplement the Government’s school feeding programme through the produce from their schools’ gardens. But beyond producing food, students have learnt to think holistically about their landscape and their food. This will be useful for self-reliance in their future careers, and in their lives, and it is also the first step towards building food sovereignty in our society.

Linda Kabaira (Linda.kabaira@gmail.com) is the national coordinator for Schools and Colleges Permaculture (SCOPE ) Zimbabwe.

The post We are not too young appeared first on Ileia.