Super typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013. It was the fourth strongest typhoon in recorded history. On Sicogon Island, Iloilo Province, one of the areas hardest hit by the typhoon, around 1000 farmers’ and fishers’ homes were damaged or destroyed by Yolanda. The devastation that prevailed was aggravated by internal displacement and loss of livelihoods due to land grabbing permitted by the government’s probusiness approach to reconstruction.  Private companies laid claim to the land previously occupied by farmers and fisher people to develop tourism infrastructure along the coast. As the residents of the island began to rebuild their lives, they had to first reclaim their land rights.

Tourism trumps farmers

After the typhoon, President Aquino declared a 40-meter-nobuild-zone policy along the coastal zones of the country, including where people used to live.  This created confusion and outrage among local governments, civil society groups, and communities affected by Yolanda who wanted to move back onto their land. On the other hand, it was the moment that Sicogon Development Corporation (SIDECO) had been waiting for, to turn Sicogon into a tourism destination.

In 2014, SIDECO entered into a joint venture partnership with the private company Ayala Land to undertake a ‘Sicogon Island Redevelopment Project’. The project was a long-standing initiative that had been accompanied by an equally long-standing land struggle for the local communities – spanning almost four decades. Before the typhoon hit, the communities’ campaign for land brought them national and international allies, including national senators, NGOs and church and human rights advocates. The Department of Agrarian Reform’s confirmation that 335 hectares of land on the island would be placed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was a huge feat for the communities. But the typhoon changed the balance of power  in this struggle once more.

Amelia dela Cruz, a farmer leader from Sicogon Island explained how the owner of SIDECO made an opportunistic move to permanently displace people from their lands and their livelihoods. Amelia said: “SIDECO took advantage of this tragedy. Yolanda has been their ally. They gave us three options: first, they would give us Php 150,000 (approximately US$ 3000) if we would leave; second, they would relocate us to another island with free housing, water, and electricity; third, if we wouldn’t agree with any of the options, they would demolish our communities.” Some families were relocated but Amelia is amongst those who decided to stay.

Farmers and fishers stand their ground

Five months after being left homeless by Yolanda, on April 12, 2014, members of the Federation of Sicogon Island Farmers and Fisherfolk Association (FESIFFA) protested the living conditions on Sicogon Island through a camp-out in front of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. More than 200 Sicogon families had settled in a portion of a 282-hectare public forest land area in  Buaya, Sicogon as a last ditch effort to rebuild their homes and lives. FESIFFA President Raul Ramos explained: “With no options left to rebuild our communities, we were being forced by the government and by SIDECO to occupy public forest lands as a resettlement site, even without support and approval from official authorities.” Both SIDECO and its allied officials in the local Department of Environment and Natural Resources filed cases against FESIFFA farmers for their occupation of the public forest lands.

Climate justice and land grabs  
 
The case described in this article is, unfortunately, not an unusual one. Stories of land dispossession and displacement have been repeated in the wake of many disasters caused by extreme weather events, geophysical hazards, and manmade conflicts: many New Orleans residents were displaced after Hurricane Katrina and Rita; extensive drought in Northern Sudan in the mid-1980s was the excuse to force the Hawaweer nomadic group off of their lands; after an earthquake in Pakistan and India in 2005, tenants in rural and urban areas were prohibited by landowners from re-establishing their rental rights.
 
These are cases of injustice in which disaster capitalism dispossesses the people living on the land. Social movements such as the one described here are crucial for reclaiming rights and livelihoods.
 
Source: Uson, Maria Angelina. Natural disasters and land the Hawaweer nomadic group off of their lands; grabs: the politics of their intersection in the Philippines after an earthquake in Pakistan and India in 2005, following super typhoon Haiyan.  2017.  Canadian Journal tenants in rural and urban areas were prohibited of Development Studies.

Seeking support

The residents engaged in dialogues with government agencies and gathered significant public, media, and social movement support for their cause. The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), in particular, stepped in to assist in the dialogues, and provided housing for the residents. International groups, such as ICCO Cooperation, a Dutch NGO, also provided support to FESIFFA members for rebuilding their livelihoods.

Months after their camp-out, threats against them still lingered in various forms: orders to vacate the island, prohibition to repair and rebuild their houses, legal cases against them by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for forest occupation, and legal cases against their leaders. At some point, Ayala Land stepped in and offered various packages that were unacceptable to FESIFFA.

This is not a story of defeat; Sicogon’s farmers have stayed on the island to rebuild their livelihoods

One year after Yolanda, FESIFFA members  were ‘put on the spot’ to sign an alleged ‘win-win’ solution. FESIFFA, the residents of Sicogon, SIDECO, and Ayala Land signed a compromise agreement, which would allow the development of Sicogon into an eco-tourism area, on one hand, and on the other, would allow the farmers and fisher folk to continue living on the island without further harassments and intimidations by the developers. The compromise stated that FESIFFA members would be granted ‘collective titles’ to land upon forming a homeowners association. The land would be donated by SIDECO and Ayala, which meant that, in practice, the farmers with claims under the agrarian reform programme would have to withdraw them.

This compromise was perceived to be an unjust resolution by many and divided FESIFFA. It was perceived that SIDECO and Ayala Land ended up with most of the land that they wanted. And, those who had to withdraw their land claims under the agrarian reform programme would lose the rights that they had previously fought for.

Resisting and rebuilding

Nevertheless, this is not a story of defeat. Sicogon’s farmers have stayed on the island to rebuild their fishing and farming livelihoods, albeit in a limited way. None of the land reforms favouring the farmers that were agreed on in the compromise have been delivered yet, and this has motivated FESIFFA to resume its advocacy work for their land rights. In April 2017, yet again leaders went to the capital and organised a camp-out and protest in front of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. They plan to intensify their campaign this year with renewed resolve to seek justice and secure rights to land and resources for their farming and fishing livelihoods.

Mary Ann Manahan (mbmanahan@focusweb.org) is a Senior Program Officer at Focus on the Global South.

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Five years ago agroecology was barely recognised within official circles, but today it is centre stage in policy discourse on food and farming. This growing international recognition is good news for proponents of agroecology. But, agroecology means different things to different people. As has happened before with words such as ‘sustainability’, the meanings of agroecology are now increasingly contested and re-interpreted by different people and interest groups.

Simply put, the term ‘agroecology’ is now being used by different actors as part of their vision of the future that either seeks to conform to the dominant industrial food and farming system, or to radically transform it. An example of the former is the concept of Climate-smart Agriculture (CSA) in which ‘agroecology’ is presented as an important component, as developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Orgnization (FAO , 2010) and promoted by the Global Alliance for Climate-smart Agriculture (GACSA). In sharp contrast, agroecology developed within the paradigm of food sovereignty has a more transformative content, theory and practice (see box).

Climate-smart Agriculture and agroecology: overlaps

The proponents of CSA have selectively incorporated some agroecological practices and combined them with more mainstream technologies of industrial farming.

At one level there does appear to be overlaps and possible convergences between CSA and the traditions of agroecology presented in the box. For example, FAO’s general definition of CSA describes attributes that are also claimed by agroecology: “CSA sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes greenhouse gases (GHGs) (mitigation), while enhancing the achievement of national food security and development goals” (FAO, 2010).

Moreover, proponents of CSA realise that approaches that focus exclusively on agricultural production without taking into account environmental sustainability are likely to have negative, and possibly, irreversible consequences. Indeed, CSA advocates emphasise the need to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes.

A brief history of agroecology
 
At the heart of agroecology is the idea that agroecosystems should mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of natural ecosystems. Since the term was coined in 1928 by Bensin, agroecology’s transformative content, theory and practice has evolved:
 
– Increasing awareness about the environmental impacts of, and pollution caused by, industrial farming really set the stage for closer links between agronomy and ecology in search for more sustainable agriculture(s). – Initially there was a strong focus on ecological science as the basis for design of sustainable agriculture.
 
– The importance of farmers’ knowledge for agroecological innovation became increasingly recognised and championed by the pioneers of agroecology. Agroecological approaches consciously seek to combine the experiential knowledge of farmers and indigenous peoples with the latest insights from the science of ecology.
 
– In the 1990s, agroecology moved from the agroecosystems scales towards a focus on the whole food system. This broader perspective encouraged closer links with farmer organisations, consumer-citizen groups and social movements.
 
– For many farmers’ organisations and social movements today, agroecology is explicitly linked with food sovereignty.

Climate-smart Agriculture and agroecology: divergences

Despite these broad similarities, agroecology and CSA are fundamentally different in other important regards. For example, CSA does not exclude practices and technologies that can undermine, or are incompatible with, agroecological approaches. Along with environmentally friendly agroforestry and intercropping practices, CSA also embraces and promotes an eclectic mix of herbicide-tolerant crops, toxic insecticides and fungicides, genetically modified seeds and genetically engineered livestock and fish, proprietary technologies and patents on seeds, as well as energyintensive livestock factory farming, large scale industrial monocultures and biofuel plantations. Influential actors backing CSA also support finance and investments for market-based approaches to climate adaptation and mitigation as well as the funding of CSA projects by carbon-offset schemes. The commodification of carbon and the creation of private carbon rights in the name of ‘green growth’ is part of CSA’s agenda.

A clear definition of what CSA is – and what it is not – is absent. This allows the concept to be co-opted by some of the world’s biggest industrial contributors to climate change. Agrichemical corporations and their lobby groups are strongly represented in the major alliances and initiatives promoting CSA today. For example, CSA is one of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Low Carbon Technology Partnerships Initiative’s (LCTPi) eight main priority areas, and involves major corporations in the food and agriculture-related sectors. The programme is co-chaired by Monsanto and also includes Yara, DuPont, Dow, Olam, Walmart, Tyson Foods, PepsiCo, Diageo, Starbucks, Kellogg’s, Jain Irrigation, ITC, Uniphos, Coca-Cola and Unilever. In today’s competitive world capitalism, the chief executives of all these companies involved in CSA are obliged to prioritise profits over equity and sustainability.

Agroecology in the context of food sovereignty goes much further than Climatesmart Agriculture’s focus on agricultural production alone

CSA – and the corporate version of CSA in particular– thus represents a continuation of business-as-usualal industrial agriculture in which farmers are increasingly dependent on agrichemical corporations for external inputs and global commodity markets for the sale of their farm produce. Moreover, the corporate drive to expand CSA markets for nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, as well as genetically uniform seeds, is likely to further destabilise the earth system and its capacity to support contemporary human societies. As such, CSA’s practices are not at all compatible with the more transformative visions of agroecology.

Four dimensions of agroecology for food sovereignty make it radically different from the vision of CSA and conventional development.

A new modernity and peasant identity

The 2.5 billion small scale farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers and artisanal fisherfolk  that still provide most of the world’s food through localised food systems, are largely ignored, neglected or actively undermined by governments and corporations. First, the dominant development paradigm envisions having less people living in rural areas, farming and depending on localised food systems. Many development policies are indeed based on the belief that those subsistence producers should ‘modernise’ as quickly as possible. They should become fully commercial producers by applying industrial food and agricultural technologies that allow for economies of scale. Second, the global restructuring of agri-food systems threatens local food systems, with a few transnational corporations gaining monopoly control over different links in the food chain. This modernisation agenda is seen as desirable and inevitable by most corporations and governments.

However, the idea that small scale producers and indigenous peoples as a group are bound to disappear reflects just one vision of the future – it is a political choice that is disputed and rejected by social movements working for agroecology and food sovereignty. A process of ‘re-peasantisation’ is slowly unfolding as more national and regional organisations proudly embrace the term ‘peasant’ to describe themselves, projecting an alternative identity and modernity rich in meaning and hope for the future. Embraced by a growing number of youth, this vision of modernity rejects the idea of development as a process of commodification of nature and social relations and looks to other definitions of ‘the good life’ – including Buen Vivir or Sumak Kausai in Latin America, Degrowth in Europe and Ecological Swaraj in India.

From linear to circular food systems

Agroecology in the context of food sovereignty goes much further than CSA’s focus on agricultural production alone: it questions the structure of the entire food system. From field to plate, the globalised supply chains that feed the world rely on the intensive use of fossil fuels for fertilizers, agrochemicals,  production, transport, processing, refrigeration and retailing. Together, these are a major contributor to climate change and air pollution. Worldwide, food and agriculture may be responsible for up to 50% of global GHG emissions. Modern industrial food, energy and water systems are fundamentally unsustainable. The imperative is now for transformation rather than reforms that leave the basic structure of modern food systems unchanged.

An alternative to the conventional development model is to shift from linear systems to circular ones that mimic natural cycles. This can be done by adopting two ecological principles. The first is that nature is based on nested and interacting cycles – for example, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and water. The second is that ‘waste’ is converted into a useful form by natural processes and cycles, ensuring that waste from one species becomes food for other species in the ecosystem. In circular production systems,  specialised and centralised supply chains are replaced with resilient and decentralised webs of food and energy systems that are integrated with sustainable water and waste management systems. Circular systems can be developed at different scales, from individual farm plots to entire cities.

Well-designed circular systems based on cooperative, communal and collective tenure over land, water, seeds, knowledge and other means of livelihood can: reduce fossil fuel use and emissions; increase food, water and energy security; create jobs; boost incomes; and, promote resilient and self-reliant communities that are inclusive of gender, race, class, disability, ethnicity and difference.

Rethinking economics, trade and market

In sharp contrast to CSA and conventional development, a transformative agroecology and food sovereignty seeks to reduce dependence on corporate suppliers of external inputs and distant global commodity markets. This vision for the transformation of the dominant agri-food regime translates into an approach that emphasises forms of economic organisation and regeneration based on five changes:

• Re-embedding agriculture in nature, relying on functional biodiversity and internal resources for production of food, fibre and other benefits
• Farmers distancing themselves from markets supplying inputs (seeds, fertilizers, growth hormones, pesticides, credit, etc.)
• Farmers diversifying outputs and market outlets
• A rediscovery of forgotten resources
• Trade rules that protect local economies and ecologies

At a deeper level, it is also becoming clear that a fundamentally different kind of economics is needed for a widespread shift to agroecology and food sovereignty.

Deepening democracy

One of the clearest demands of the agroecology and food sovereignty movement is for citizens to exercise their fundamental human right to decide their own food and agricultural policies (Nyéléni, 2007). Food sovereignty is indeed perhaps best understood as a process that seeks to expand the realm of democracy and freedom by regenerating a diversity of locally autonomous food systems. Democratising food system governance means enabling farmers and other citizens, both men and women, to directly participate in the choice and design of policies and institutions, decide on strategic research priorities and investments, and assess the risks of new technologies. This can be best done through an expansion of direct democracy in decision making in order to complement, or replace, models of representative democracy that prevail in conventional development.

The struggle to democratise agricultural research for agroecology and food sovereignty is emblematic in this regard. Social movements and activist scholars acknowledge that technological fixes are not enough and view science as part of a bottom-up, participatory development process in which farmers and citizens take centre stage. In this approach, instead of being passive beneficiaries of ‘trickle down’ development or technology transfer, food producers and citizens participate as knowledgeable and active social agents, including in setting upstream strategic priorities for national research and its funding.

Climate-smart Agriculture and agroecology are not interchangeable concepts nor practices that can easily coexist

A truly transformative agroecology

CSA and agroecology are no interchangeable concepts nor practices that can easily coexist. They represent two fundamentally different visions of development and well-being. CSA is mainly designed to serve the interests of agribusiness and the financial industry. Its powerful supporters and lobby groups are committed to conventional development based on uniformity, centralisation, control and the expansion of global markets – including new carbon markets. In contrast, a truly transformative agroecology aims to rebuild a diversity of decentralised, just and sustainable food systems that enhance community and social-ecological resilience to climate change. Its supporters seek to deepen economic and political democracy while inventing a new modernity based on conviviality and plural definitions of well-being.

Michel Pimbert (michel.pimbert@coventry.ac.uk) is the executive director of the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, United Kingdom.

This article is based on the author’s original article: Agroecology as an Alternative Vision to Conventional Development and Climate-smart Agriculture, Development (2015), 58(2-3): 286-298.

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What does the term ‘climate justice’ actually mean?

For us at Focus (Focus on the Global South) we see climate justice as intrinsically linked with other forms of justice – social justice, economic justice, political justice, justice between genders, and definitely environmental justice. So, climate justice is not about securing rights that are alienated or separated from other struggles for rights. The struggles of local communities against forced evictions, industrial agriculture, extractive industry and large dams, and to protect their lands, territories, seeds and breeds are all struggles for climate justice.

One of the most important tenets of climate justice is that those who have done the least to bring us to this point of the climate crisis continue to suffer the worst burdens of the crisis. And, they also have to take the most drastic actions in response to the crisis, with the fewest resources and the least amount of ‘official’ support. Ethically and morally this is one of the biggest failures of our society and economy. Any solution to the climate crisis must address these injustices appropriately.

In terms of climate justice, what is at stake for small scale food producers?

Small scale food producers are literally at the frontline when the big waves come crashing down, during droughts and floods, when crops fail and fish and livestock die, and when prices of food are manipulated and there are shortages. They are tremendously vulnerable to both, environmental and economic shock. And the climate crisis, as we’ve seen, has created huge economic shocks. For example, natural disasters – floods, landslides earthquakes, droughts, tornadoes, cyclones, increased variability and unpredictability in weather, etc. –  have huge economic impacts, including destruction of homes, entire communities, water supplies and other infrastructure, and destruction of the fields and crops that farmers earn their living from.

The types of food production that small scale food producers are engaged in have the smallest climate footprint

At the same time, the types of food production and the kinds of food provision that small scale food producers and providers are engaged in have the smallest climate footprint. From an environmental, economic and social perspective, this is some of the most sustainable food that’s produced. It’s seasonal and the food miles are few. Many small scale food producers provide food that directly supports communities in rural areas in terms of actually feeding them, as well as providing employment, purchasing goods and services, etc. This type of production is also extremely important in terms of preserving local food cultures and food systems that are resilient to shocks. Besides keeping the planet cool, small scale food producers make significant positive contributions to tackling hunger and malnutrition.

What is the role of today’s development paradigm in  exacerbating climate change and inequalities for small scale food producers?

The development paradigm that’s dominant across Asia is obsessed with economic growth. In this paradigm anything goes as long as it results in financial benefit for ruling elites. People’s rights, nature, dignity, public health, employment, etc., do not matter; everything is sacrificed at the altar of economic growth. Over the past two decades, the main strategies to achieve this kind of development have been enabling large scale private investment, especially in physical infrastructure, and privatisation of just about everything. Governments, international financial institutions and corporations have colluded in allowing corporations to gain control over different aspects of our lives, and nature.

Many communities across Asia say that that they do not want this type of development because whenever there is ‘development’, their resources are extracted, nature is destroyed, and they are displaced. Before this so-called ‘development’, their territories were managed through customary tenure and law. Communities of food producers and providers shared rights and responsibilities to use and to protect local land and water resources. They were able to find ways to adapt to environmental, social and economic changes. But ‘development’ brings the language of property rights, alienable titles and trading rights for elements of nature such as soil, land, water and carbon. As a result, almost anything is up for grabs and is put onto the market in order to generate profits for whoever is able to invest. In the end, there is no value left in the local area because it is extracted and sold in another market far away.

Inequalities and inequity are deepening for small scale producers

Look at the results. What benefits have the economic growth development model yielded for local communities? Forests, lands and water sources are sold to corporations that invest in industrial agriculture, mega infrastructure projects, build dams and extract natural resources. These corporations are supposed to provide, or at least contribute to jobs, social services and local infrastructure in rural areas. Where are those jobs and services? Inequalities and inequity are in fact deepening for small scale producers and rural peoples. They have no safety nets, they have nothing but the territories that they protect and that is what is being extracted and expropriated.

What are some of the tricky arguments you face when challenging this economic growth-obsessed development?

Today, the role that industrialisation, deforestation and excessive use of fossil fuels plays in causing climate change is widely accepted. But in many parts of Asia now, there’s a push to industrialise and ‘modernise’ in the same way, and to catch up with the west’s high-consumption lifestyles. The fact that the planet just cannot bear any more of this doesn’t hold as an argument because if the richer countries enjoy high-consumption lifestyles, why shouldn’t Asian and African countries be able to? For us (i.e., Focus), this presents a huge dilemma because on one hand, there are huge global inequalities and inequities in the distribution of so-called benefits of development. Those most responsible for the climate crisis—wealthy, industrialised nations—must take proportionate responsibility for reparations. At the same time, at the national level in much of Asia, economic growth and development are not delivering benefits for the majority of the people. The elites and a small proportion of middle classes are getting richer at the cost of the working class, peasants, small scale producers and the poor.

Also, when small scale food producers say, “we cannot survive like this!” and demand fair prices which cover the costs of production, their efforts are countered with arguments from policy makers and corporations about the need for ‘cheap food’ for the poor. This is very unfortunate because, rural and urban ‘poor’, small scale producers and workers, are all being oppressed by the same forces of capital. By dividing these people, their potential to organise and demand regulation that benefits urban and rural citizens, food producers and workers equally are weakened.

Why do activists from different movements need to work  together when talking about food and climate change?

We have no choice but to work together because the issues are too huge, too complex and they are interconnected. The case of the aftermath of the Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines in January 2014 illustrates this well (see page 42). The typhoon itself is a climate issue. Yolanda victims had their land taken away from them in the post typhoon reconstruction – this is land grabbing. Those who had been displaced became refugees, creating a social protection issue. Many of the victims don’t have access, even today, to adequate food and nutrition – this is a food and nutrition issue. Moreover, in Cambodia, large scale investment projects result in deforestation, destruction of water bodies and displacement of rural communities. The list of issues in one case include: food and nutrition, land grabbing, climate, environmental and social protection.  On top of this, whether it’s in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand or India, when small scale farming, fishing, herding and indigenous communities defend their lands and fight against predatory capital, the military and police are called in, they are beaten up, they are arrested and jailed. These are human rights and justice issues. So, with all these aspects coming up simultaneously, I can’t actually see how we could not work together.

I think if we work separately from one another, we are dividing and weakening ourselves.  This is a time for us to come together and pool our resources, strengths and capacities. Big companies and big capital always come together to get what they want. We should not give them additional power through our fragmentation. This doesn’t mean that we don’t focus on sectoral priorities, but that we must make connections across sectors, constituencies, spaces and levels.

Can you talk about a few  heartening initiatives that are advancing climate justice?

I think La Via Campesina is brilliant. I’ve known them for many years and when you’ve accompanied, worked and allied with a movement for 20 years you see a lot of change. I’m just so heartened when I see members from La Via Campesina hold their own in national policy debates and international policy spaces. They articulate the links between small scale food production, peasant agroecology, cooling down the planet and building food sovereignty so well. They do this through their own practice, through federating, through making alliances with other movements, and also reaching out to the public. So, for me this is a very inspirational movement.

Another movement that is becoming stronger, at least in Asia, is the World Forum of Fisher Peoples. The risks that they face, including their vulnerabilities because of climate change and the development model we talked about, are huge. And they also are holding their own by articulating the issues, doing their own research, and mobilising and reaching out to people.

Another movement that I see growing across Asia, especially in India, Thailand and the Philippines, is amongst small scale vendors who practice what they call a low circuit economy. They source food from marginal producers, either urban gardeners or peri-urban gardeners and local fish mongers. They process and sell this food locally. In this way, they are really building bridges between producers and consumers, and between producers and processors. These types of urban/rural movements are powerful because they bring people together, they reduce alienation in urban environments and they show how interconnected we are. The National Hawkers Federation in India is a very good example.

What I don’t understand is why governments, financial institutions and large foundations aren’t learning from these examples. This is a crucial question: why is the enormous potential of these and other similar movements in addressing climate change and related issues such as hunger, poverty, malnutrition, not being recognised? Instead, governments, financiers, multilateral institutions and many large NGOs continue to promote false solutions that are very dangerous because: a) they do not address the root causes of the climate crisis; b) they create opportunities for corporations and wealthy people to profit from the crisis; c) they undermine genuine resilience of communities to disasters/shocks and the potential to build such resilience; and d) they give the illusion that the climate crisis is being appropriately addressed when in fact it is not, and the crisis is actually worsening.

Interview by Madeleine Florin

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Haitians are used to navigating the intersections that occur where nature meets politics, and the small Caribbean country’s landscape shows the scars of that process. Bare mountains that were once green loom over makeshift, seaside cities where the rural majority once farmed and fished. Every now and then, Haiti, paradoxically isolated from and dependent on the rest of the world, makes the news: a state coup, a massive earthquake, or yet another hurricane. And today, while receiving a lesser degree of international attention than these monumental moments, the increasing impacts of climate change are threatening to break Haiti’s already weakened agricultural backbone.

Climate disruptions

In October 2016, the country was hit by Hurricane Matthew, a category 4 storm which completely flooded large swaths of the country, and devastated Southern Haiti. Hurricane Matthew hit just weeks before harvest, and the country has not recovered since. As a matter of fact, farmers in Haiti are now dealing with periodic flooding. Without respite, they have gone from one extreme to another: in the 2014/15 season, the county’s agricultural production fell by more than 80% due to drought.

Most of Haiti’s trees have been cleared: between 1804 and 2015, forest cover plummeted from 80% to just 1.25% of the land surface. The resulting erosion has severely compromised soil fertility and access to drinking water. Degraded soil and water resources, combined with an extended drought, have left about 70% of the population without adequate food and water. When natural disasters hit the ground, the lack of forest causes severe amounts of runoff, exacerbating the effects of flooding associated with the hurricane season.

The Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) is the largest peasant movement in Haiti, located in the Central Plateau. The Central Plateau mirrors the interconnected trends of deforestation and climate disruptions observed elsewhere across Haiti. Gislaine St. Fleur, the coordinator of MPP’s women’s programmes sees climate change as one of the biggest challenges facing Haitian people. “The majority of families live off the land. With climate change, people can’t produce enough food to feed themselves and take care of their children,” she explains.  The rainfall patterns in Haiti have become increasingly unreliable, with more frequent droughts on the one hand, and more powerful hurricanes on the other. This situation has strengthened MPP’s resolve to engage with soil and water conservation, as well as reforestation, to adapt and build resilience to climate change.

Grounded solutions

“Any meaningful solution to climate change starts from the ground,” says Ginette Hilaire, a member of MPP. Depleted soil means less nitrogen is absorbed, more carbon is released into the air (producing more greenhouse gases), and the ground itself cannot handle the rainy season, let alone the storms and hurricanes that are occurring with more frequency. What’s more, any real solution also starts from the grassroots. The best chance to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of ecosystems, combat desertification, maintain biodiversity and halt and reverse land degradation come from those most affected by land grabs, ecological disaster and deforestation.

With a clear analysis of the climate crisis and the consequences it brings for Haiti, which is already environmentally devastated, MPP works to recover the environment to a degree that peasant farmers can produce enough healthy food to feed the nation. Solutions to, and consequences of, this kind of climate disruption are tied to land rights, food sovereignty and ecological resilience. The same is true around the world. The United Nations agrees, agroecologists agree, small farmers agree, and even a growing number of economists and politicians agree.

The MPP has planted more than 30 million trees over  the past 40 years

The fight against climate change in Haiti is thus a political one. For Haitian social movements, agroecology fills the gaps left by a fragile state and aggressive external intervention. It is the point at which food sovereignty meets climate justice.

Building the movement for agroecology

The MPP is at the forefront of building alternatives that will make a real difference for people in Haiti. Formed in 1973, the movement has 61,000 members divided into 4,179 gwoupman, a traditional form of organising. Within the gwoupmans peasants share land, engage in economic projects, and save money through collective savings accounts and livestock. Public services have, for decades, failed those living in rural areas, with an increasingly centralised Haitian government. Agribusiness and other profit-driven activities in the countryside have only magnified the isolation of the peasantry. Social movements like the MPP have taken on the challenge of providing much needed services to rural working people, including education, health care, and maintenance of roads.

For the MPP, whether working for climate, economic, or other forms of justice, it all starts with securing natural resources, which in turn starts with agroecology. As Juslene Tyresias, an MPP leader explained, “We plant a lot of trees. We conserve water in the soil. We build cisterns and wells so that people can have water.” The MPP has planted more than 30 million trees around Papaye over the past 40 years, while maintaining a wide variety of other services for those living there. But perhaps even more importantly, they are working to replicate their efforts across scales.

MPP recognises that bringing agroecology to the national dialogue would require sustained pressure from the grassroots, and that it would have to extend far beyond Papaye or the Central Plateau. The National Congress of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPNKP) was conceived by MPP in order to replicate agroecology and related projects in all ten Haitian departments. Their work is similarly rooted in popular education and organising. MPP and MPNKP are both members of the transnational agrarian movement La Vía Campesina that has worked with a variety of stakeholders – from national governments to international intergovernmental organisations – to incorporate food sovereignty, agroecology, and climate justice into regulatory frameworks.

In the Americas, MPP has hosted and participated in several key learning exchanges. At the invitation of Haitian social movements, and under the banner of La Vía Campesina, Brazilian social movements travelled to Haiti over multiple years to work with their Haitian counterparts in the field of agroecology. This was politically significant in that Brazil has been heavily involved in MINUSTAH, the UN stabilisation mission that Haitian social movements regard as an occupational force in their country. MPP activist, Juslene Tyresias, travelled to New Orleans as part of the Climate Justice Alliance delegation to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The event was organised by Gulf South Rising, a movement created to highlight the impact of the global climate crisis on the Gulf South region of the US.

Visions for the future

The MPP has made great progress in planting trees and building infrastructure—as well as building a multi-level social and environmental justice movement. The group aims to intensify its outreach and educational capacity this year back home in Papaye. Specifically, that will include a training for women in agroecology and home gardening, a training for peasants in soil conservation techniques that will be replicated throughout the community by the trainees, a training on seed selection and conservation, and yet another training on production techniques and fertilizer application with natural insecticide. Even more specifically to climate change, MPP is conducting radio broadcasts to develop rural communities’ awareness of early planting methods that are adapted to climate change. They will then hold a conference and climate change debate for some 100 people. In their network of nurseries, MPP is set to produce 100,000 fruit and forest seedlings. At the same time, they will expand alternative energy and solar panel production for electricity, including alternatives to charcoal for cooking. Water will continue to be a focus of the overall 2017 working plan, especially through the construction of cisterns and wells.

But the peasant movement continues to face many obstacles, from land grabs and climate change to the continued acceleration of deforestation. MPP recognises that these challenges are not unique to Haiti, and is therefore committed to working hand in hand with social justice networks at the national, regional, and transnational levels. For these social and environmental justice movements, agroecology is a response to the politicised and unequal impacts of climate change.

Mina Remy (mremy@grassrootsonline.org) is the Program Coordinator at Grassroots International, a partner and supporter of the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP).

Salena Tramel (salentramel@gmail.com) is a Grassroots International consultant, journalist, and PhD researcher. www.grassrootsonline.org

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Our global food system is one of the biggest drivers of climate change. It accounts for over one third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, according to latest estimates from the Meridian Institute. Livestock represent the biggest portion of this. Research done by GRAIN  shows that it is the industrial meat and dairy complex that produces this tremendous damage, not traditional livestock reared by smallholders. Deforestation, industrial feed crops, use of chemical fertilizers, manure lagoons, transport and refrigeration, and massive waste are all central elements of the industrial meat and dairy complex responsible for huge amounts of climate gases. The FAO calculated that, today, meat production alone – especially that of the industrial type – generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transport combined.

Yet, meat consumption is soaring in many places of the world. If current trends continue global meat consumption will grow a further 76% from current levels by 2050, according to the latest studies, pushing us deeper into the  climate crisis. If, on the other hand, heavy eaters of industrial meat reduced their unhealthy levels of consumption to the World Health Organization’s recommended amounts, the world could eliminate 40% of all current greenhouse gas emissions.

So, why is meat consumption increasing so much beyond sustainable and healthy levels? The most common narrative is that the growing middle class in many newly industrialising countries can now afford to eat more meat, and thus jump on the opportunity. Indeed, the projected growth of meat consumption is especially stark in countries like China, Brazil, India and other countries in their regions. But that is only part of the story.

Meat-free Thursdays
 
The city of Ghent, Belgium, became the first city in the world to officially stimulate its citizens to have a weekly vegetarian day. The structural government support and involvement in this initiative sets it apart from other campaigns promoting reduced meat consumption. In partnership with the NGO, EVA (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative), the city of Ghent launched ‘Thursday Veggie Day’ in 2009. Response among local citizens and local public institutions has generally been very positive. People’s awareness of the issues concerning meat (and especially the global warming impact) is rising. Two years after its launch, 60,000 people indicated that they participate several times a month and, 94% of public school students were choosing the vegetarian meal on Thursdays. Beyond the city, from Cape Town to São Paulo, cities are launching similar campaigns that were inspired by Ghent.
 
Source: Leenaert, T (2016). Meat moderation: a challenge for government and civil society. In: Sustainable Food Planning: evolving theory and practice (Viljoen, A and Wiskerke, J. S. C Eds.).

The other side of the story is that the industrial meat industry actually facilitates the growth in consumption rates. It produces cheap meat surpluses which are traded as global commodities and pushed onto markets everywhere. As a consequence, industrial meat is the most rapidly growing segment of meat and dairy production, accounting for 80% of the global growth in recent years.

Propping up the corporate meat market

So, why can industrial meat be produced so cheaply and expand so fast across the globe? Confinement of animals at a high stocking density is one part of a systematic effort to produce the highest output at the lowest cost. Yet, at least three key structural factors are at play here: corporations are fighting off any regulation of their sector, industrial meat is highly subsidised, and trade deals are signed to get it to expand massively into markets across the globe.

Meat production alone generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transport combined

Attempts by governments to regulate meat consumption is met with resistance by the industry. When Germany drafted guidelines to reduce meat consumption, demonstrating that a 50% cut by 2030 would be “crucial to climate protection,” the industry lobbied hard. By the November 2016 launch date, the country’s climate change plan had been stripped of any reference at all to greenhouse gases in the agriculture sector. Similar stories can be told of the meat lobby in the United States (US), Brazil and other countries where industrial meat is strong.

Furthermore, the industry receives subsidies in many countries. For example, in 2013, the European Union paid US$ 731 million to its cattle industry alone. The same year, the US Department of Agriculture paid more than US 300 million US dollars to just six huge meat companies in order to get industrial meat and dairy on school meal trays, compared to just a fraction of that to fruit and vegetable suppliers.

But, the big guns in the industry’s arsenal are ‘free trade’ agreements. These corporate trade deals artificially prop up production and consumption by promoting the dumping of cheap meat and dairy into low income countries. They include clauses that eliminate protection for local farmers from foreign competitors, that make it illegal to grant preference to local suppliers or products, and that allow foreign companies to sue governments that adopt social or environmental legislation that they think could undermine their profits.

Small scale meat and dairy production is well tailored to local food systems that support the moderate meat and dairy consumption levels needed to mitigate climate change

Without permissive regulations, subsidies and ‘free trade’ agreements, industrial meat would simply be too expensive to buy. These structural factors give priority to profits for an elite few and dismiss the massive environmental and social costs incurred by the corporations.

Support smallholders, agroecology and local markets

Corporate lobby groups, scientists and development agencies often paint small scale livestock holders in poor countries as the climate culprits because of their animals’ low efficiency in converting calories to meat or milk on a per capita basis. Yet, a narrow focus on efficiency and emissions intensity ignores the multiple benefits of mixed, multi-functional and biodiverse small scale livestock production systems. These include providing local livelihoods, improving soil health, greater climatic resilience and other positive environmental and public health benefits. Small scale meat and dairy production is already well tailored to local food systems that support the moderate meat and dairy consumption levels needed to mitigate climate change (see figure).

Shrinking the water and carbon footprint of school food
 
Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in the state of California reduced animal protein on school menus by 30% while increasing fruit, vegetables, and legumes. When kids ate meat, it came from local organic producers. The result: a 14% reduction in the school’s food carbon footprint. This translates into 600,000 kg of CO₂-equivalents saved per year – the same as driving 2.4 million kilometres less per year or covering all of OUSD’s roofs with solar panels with no additional cost. They also reduced their water footprint by 6%, from 428 to 401 litres per meal served, saving a total of 159 million litres of water per school year and US$ 42,000 in the cost of the meals. Perhaps most remarkable: the children reported increased satisfaction with the healthy, regionally sourced meals.
 
Source: Hamerschlag, K. and Kraus-Polk, J. Shrinking the Carbon and Water Footprint of School Food. A recipe for combating climate change. 2017.

We can only solve the climate crisis if we take meaningful steps towards agroecology and food sovereignty. To achieve this, we need bold moves to disincentivise the production and consumption of cheap industrial meat and dairy. We also need to stop trade deals that prop up the massive international trade in meat and dairy products. Instead, small scale, local and agroecological meat and dairy production and marketing should be supported.

In this process, livestock will once again become integrated into diversified farming systems, while meat and dairy regain their proper place in peoples’ diets. This is the approach that is needed to keep the world liveable for future generations. The task is daunting, but the stakes have never been higher.

GRAIN (grain@grain.org) is an international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. This article is based on a series of publications produced by GRAIN. Full references and sources for the figures quoted in this article can be found at www.grain.org.

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My name is Wendy Bowman. I farm in Camberwell, a small village in NSW, Australia, surrounded on three sides by coal mines. In 2010, Chinese-owned Yancoal proposed to extend an existing open cut mine onto my grazing lands and to the banks of one of Hunter River’s most important tributaries. I am determined to stay on my land and protect the community’s health, land, and water from further destruction.

Water is life. Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Many hundreds of farmers rely entirely on underground water from wells and bore holes for their animals and irrigation. However, over the last few decades, coal mining has destroyed many of the underground aquifers in the Hunter Valley. As a result, during droughts, which we appear to be facing more and more often because of climate change, farmers have to rely on stored dam water. Unfortunately, during droughts, the dams do not get replenished as they used to. It can potentially become a dire situation for livestock and for crops.

In 1991, I first met with some like-minded people and started the organisation called Mine Watch. Our aim was simply to find out what our rights were as land owners, and then try to decipher the mine speak in the very large Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). We had to read them to prepare our submissions to the planning authority when we opposed the mine proposition, but some of the EISs were as thick as three encyclopedias. It was a monumental effort to make sense of them, but it was worth it. Now, Mine Watch has grown in political and social importance. It has a substantial media presence, and a significant impact on government policy.

I still farm on my land, albeit surrounded by mines, but the work is far from over. Our underground water supply is now particularly threatened by the mining companies’ desire for profits and the government’s desire for royalties. Money still speaks louder than the need to protect our environment. This must change. We must all work together in our efforts to leave a viable land for future generations.

Wendy Bowman won the 2017 Goldman Environmental prize. This is an extract from her acceptance speech.

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Every Monday our collective makes a list of vegetables available from local farmers, sets fair prices, and collects orders from our members. We also talk about the most urgent developments concerning the vegetable gardens, which are under constant threat from urban transformation projects. On Thursdays, we bring the produce to a central district of Istanbul where members can pick up their orders and socialise amongst themselves.

DÜRTÜK is the acronym for Producers and Consumers in Resistance (Direnen Üretici Tüketici Kolektifi in Turkish). It also means the poke or the poked, which we consider a modest and fun expression for motivating each other to take action. The DÜRTÜK collective was born in 2015 as common ground between the struggle for urban spaces and the emerging food sovereignty movement in Istanbul.

Finding common ground

In 2013, protests erupted all over Turkey in response to the violent dismantling of demonstrations against development plans that would destroy the Taksim Gezi Park, one of the few green places in the city. The protests brought together a rich multiplicity of people and groups opposing the enclosure of public spaces, destructive urban transformation projects, the ecological devastation, as well as ongoing state oppression and violence.

After the ‘Gezi Resistance’, the emerging movement continued to be active in neighbourhoods in the form of discussions, protests, solidarity events, open markets, workshops, community gardens and informal food coops. DÜRTÜK was born in this process, bringing together different experiences, actors and desires.

A violent, paralysing atmosphere

It is very difficult, and in fact painful, to look back now and reflect on the expectations, emotions and desires that we had at that time. It is painful, because over the past two years oppression and violence in Turkey has grown beyond our imagination.

The war in Syria, the bombings by ISIS (Daesh), the termination of the peace process in the Kurdish region of the country by the Turkish state, and the attempted coup in 2016 have generated political polarisation all over the country. Journalists, academics, teachers and politicians are being imprisoned, cities and neigbourhoods burnt, and many lives lost. Schools, streets and public squares lost their liveliness. Our hopes, our imaginations, and even our mobility, have shrunk.

Persevering with the seemingly modest activities of DÜRTÜK has been significant in overcoming this paralysis. It not only supported the producers but also kept us going, as activists, consumers and citizens in trying to create spaces of solidarity.

Bostans – an edible heritage

DÜRTÜK cooperates with the small scale orchards and vegetable gardens situated in central Istanbul known as bostans that are run by professional farmers. They grow green, leafy vegetables and herbs that can be harvested various times a week. The farmers sell to (and at) open markets, restaurants and grocery stores, as well as through DÜRTÜK, and directly from the bostan. Their cultivation methods are a combination of those inherited from generations of gardeners before them and other techniques.

While today only a few remain active, historically the bostans of Istanbul helped feeding the city. In fact, people depended on these gardens for survival during wars and famines. Today they are considered a nostalgic memory that is irrelevant to urban life. But nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years, bostans have convened people in defence of cultural heritage, the right to the city and urban food production.

The Land Walls: Defending and feeding the city

One of the producers we currently work with is Özkan Ökten. He works in a bostan in the moats of the ancient fort of Byzantium, called the Theodosian Land Walls of Constantinople, recognised as UNESCO World Heritage. Özkan, in his 40s, is also the head of a non-profit that aims to sustain the old and new bostans of Istanbul and supports the working conditions of its farmers.

Özkan and around 20 other families make a living by cultivating the moats of the Walls. They are the second or third generation of farmers who have migrated to Istanbul to earn a living. This history of agricultural activity around the Land Walls is deeply tied to the history of the Walls, which dates back to the fifth century.  As such, the Walls and the bostans together represent great urban know-how about both defending and feeding the city.

Gardening continues to be the most consistent activity in the moats and around the walled zone. Although this is keeping the area lively and productive, it is neglected both as a means to conserve the area and as cultural heritage. In recent years some of the very old and active bostans in the same area, known as Yedikule Bostanları, were destroyed by the municipality to make way for a park that will serve the surrounding gentrifying neighbourhoods.

The Mosque Garden: Threats and resistance

One active but endangered bostan of Istanbul is Piyalepaşa Camii Bostanı (Piyalepaşa Mosque Garden), which was supposed to become a car park in 2013. Mehmet and Cemile, acouple in their 60s, struggle to keep the bostan going in the middle of the rapidly transforming centre of Istanbul. The bostan’s history is closely related to that of the mosque, having been a source of income for the mosque since the 16th century. An unlikely alliance of activists, lawyers, archeologists and historians stood up for its protection, and with success. Not only was Piyalepaşa Camii Bostanı saved from becoming a car park, it was also registered as a historical heritage landmark in 2015.

This has been an exemplary case in Istanbul of how agricultural land can be recognised as cultural heritage. But the municipality and associated construction companies are continuing to put pressure on Mehmet and Cemile to move somewhere else. The latest rumour is that the bostan will be turned into a hobby garden for the municipality so that they can make a profit from it.

The near future of this bostan is uncertain for other reasons as well. Mehmet and Cemile are old and they do not have enough strength to cultivate all their land. Because of the low prices of agricultural produce, and the equally low social status of farming in Turkey, their children do not have an interest in keeping the business going.

No recognition, no security

Urban development speculators breathing down their necks is not the only worry for farmers like Mehmet and Cemile. Although the bostans are quite central in the city and are surrounded by residential areas, the farmers struggle to get fair prices for their produce. The problem is that they cannot compete with the prices of imported, industrialised food.

Moreover, despite the fact that the farmers have been cultivating their land for generations, their land tenure is insecure and they can be evicted at any moment. The land they cultivate is not considered agricultural land so they cannot formally register asfarmers. This means that they are not recognised in agricultural policies and don’t get access to public social security programmes. Combined, all these precarious conditions make the farmers in bostans hesitant to make long term investments in the soil.

Cultivating hope

Taksim, where we have our base, has been the scene of many political demonstrations and marches. It is a historically loaded place. Demonstrations are banned now, and a state of emergency has been in place since the attempted coup in 2016. Police are everywhere and constantly present. This has made many people afraid of coming to Taksim, which limits the growth of our orders. We haven’t been able to hold big meetings in the past year, and we are also having difficulty finding volunteers to invest time in DÜRTÜK‘s operations and activities.

But even if there are not many weekly orders, we are continuing. We are trying to organise events and keep the discussion alive on how to continue and develop the organisation. We discuss food sovereignty in an international context, and talk about themes such as Community Supported Agriculture models in different countries and alternative economies. We organise picnics and participate in solidarity markets to find new members. We come together with other organisations to discuss issues and to gather strength.

The weekly routine of DÜRTÜK’s meetings represents hopeful, common ground for gardeners, farmers, consumers, activists and other citizens to exchange experiences about how they cope in their precarious situations, and to support each other. At DÜRTÜK, the urgent need to save and to defend agricultural spaces meets the humble labour of cultivating and reproducing everyday life.

Sevgi Ortaç (durtukgirdibostana@gmail.com/ sevgiortac@ gmail.com) is a member of DÜRTÜK and a visual artist and researcher, born and living in Istanbul. https://www.facebook.com/durtuk/

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Ibrahim Diabaté, an author of this story, came to Italy from the Ivory Coast nine years ago as a legal migrant, to study agriculture. His plan failed, so he worked in factories, moved to different cities, and eventually ended up in Calabria, harvesting mandarins and oranges. Similarly, many other migrants, both legal and illegal, have moved to the area to find work. Most of them live in terrible conditions, in the cold, enclosed in ghettos and earning very little money.

Meanwhile, citrus growers are receiving eight cents per kilo for their oranges. Even small scale producers can’t afford to pay for labour with the price theyreceive for their produce. Sadly, exploiting their workers has become a default solution for many.

Joining forces

At the beginning of 2010 the immigrant population in the city of Rosarno, an important agricultural centre in Calabria, rose up after two migrants were injured and to protest the shameful conditions in which they were forced to live. Ibrahim was involved in an anti-racism committee at the time.

He moved to Rosarno where he got in touch with some locals who were helping migrants by providing food and basic goods. From this point, a synergy emerged between the two groups that resulted in the creation of SOS Rosarno, first as a project, then as an association. SOS Rosarno brings together land labourers and small producers suffocated by the prices imposed by large retailers. The association includes 15 small producers that work with citrus, olive oil and honey, as well as artisans, and people working in the cultural sector, and 30 to 35 migrant workers. These migrants used to be engineers, electricians, drivers, or accountants in their homelands.

Ethical agriculture is diversified and with fair prices

Together, they aim to achieve adequate and ethical wages, for farm workers and producers alike, that respects the minimum standards. To do this they have created a direct relationship between farmers and citizens (not ‘consumers’) through about 400 existing ethical-purchase groups across the country. An important feature of the groups is the ‘transparent price’ that is available for everyone online. That way everyone can see which fractions of the money pay goes to who and covers which costs.

Ethical agriculture

Out of SOS Rosarno, a social cooperative was created, Cooperativa Mani e Terra (hands and land), by five Italians and seven migrant workers, each with equal rights when it comes to decision making. The cooperative has been renting five hectares of land for the last two years for winter and summer production. They sell their produce on the spot, either to the ethical-purchase groups or to restaurants in the area. This way they provide an alternative to the big retailers.

Through their farming they are making a political statement: ‘ethical agriculture’ is diversified, organic, and with fair prices. They define this as caring for the land and practicing human-based agriculture that is not for profit. Foremost they farm to sustain themselves and then to provide a good product for those who consume it. Wealthy people should not be the only ones eating good food.

The cooperative works for diversification and they want to fight the new racism that’s been emerging in Europe. They are proving that it is possible to break the linguistic and cultural walls established between locals and migrants.

A drop in the ocean

Also, there is not enough demand for organic products in the area. This is especially the case for oranges that require more labour for harvest. This creates additional costs and prices that neither small scale producers or less wealthy citizens can afford. So still today, most of the organic oranges are pulped and sold at a loss to big organic retailers, or thrown away.

There are about 3000 immigrants in the Gioia Tauro plain of Calabria with no home, no job and no food. Employing seven or 30 of them is not a big change. But it sets an example. SOS Rosarno is collaborating with different networks in the country, such as the Italian Rural Association (ARI) and Fuorimercato, which works with direct distribution of agricultural produce to cities all over Italy, with a focus on workers’ rights and the environment. We are only a drop in the ocean now, but there is an existing web of people building a solidarity-based economy that could grow stronger.

Ibrahim Diabate (ibrahimfxo@live.it) and Nino Quaranta (ninoquaranta@gmail.com) are both members of SOS Rosarno and Cooperativa Mani e Terra.

Workers team up with consumers in defence of their rights in Spain
 
In Almeria, Spain, more than 40,000 hectares of fruit and vegetables are cultivated to supply the markets of northern and central Europe. More than 130,000 workers, most of them migrants, produce and process these products under precarious conditions.
 
Since 2008, various conflicts have erupted in which the organic produce company, Biosol, violated workers’ rights. In a sociocultural context in which labour organisation is extremely complicated and laws, for the most part, work against them, workers have gained strength, organisational capacity and support for their struggle, and have managed to gain recognition and respect for their rights. This breakthrough has been the result of combined pressure put on the company between workers, the SOC-SAT union in Spain, and consumers in northern Europe. Specifically, German and Swiss consumers pressured supermarkets (Rewe, Coop and Migros) to paralyze purchases from Biosol. This coordinated action has made it possible to overturn dismissals and achieve fair compensation for workers who have had to leave the company.
 
During the most recent conflict, six workers, members of SOC-SAT, with permanent contracts were fired from their job at BIOSOL for participating in a German documentary about organic agriculture. For 14 months these women fought for their rights through protests, public statements and a hunger strike. In this case, the campaign, supported by activists and consumers in northern Europe, managed to get the organic certification, issued by Biosuisse, suspended until workers’ rights were respected. Two civil courts in Spain ruled in favour of the women declaring that they cannot be fired for free expression of their ideas, criticisms or opinions.
 
Now, the SOC-SAT union activity by members of Biosol has been recognised by the company as legitimate. The women hold their union meetings at the workplace and openly carry out the actions necessary to continue to protect their rights and those of other workers.
 
Federico Pacheco (pachecofederico@yahoo.es) is a member of SOC-SAT.

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What is the Nyéléni movement?

Nyéléni is the name of a Malian woman. She was a legendary peasant who farmed, fed and cared for her people. Her actions embodied food sovereignty and inspired the world. And so we celebrate her heritage in the food sovereignty movement through her namesake.

The movement’s first gathering was organised in 2007 in Sélingué, Mali, Africa. Besides strengthening the movements’ political power, the forum’s participants sought to further develop the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative policy framework for food and agriculture. Their vision was articulated in the final declaration of the Nyéléni forum on food sovereignty (see box). This declaration served as inspiration for other regions and continents to organise around food sovereignty. Nyéléni forums are important events that unite the food sovereignty movement. At these gatherings we create plans and strategies for actions to counteract problems that we find and define together. Moreover, we strengthen networks to support each other in what works.

The forums are not just one-off events, they are part of a process that builds on previous forums. In 2011 for example, the first European food sovereignty forum was held in Krems, Austria. It gathered all the constituencies that had been working on food sovereignty in the region. There were food producers, peasants, pastoralists, fisher folk, indigenous people, urban gardeners, researchers, organised consumers, and generally people that have knowledge and interest in building a better future for food and agriculture. A European declaration of food sovereignty was created, and based on that declaration we started planning actions together. Five years later, civil society and peasants from La Via Campesina decided to organise another forum. This latest Nyéléni forum took place in 2016 in Romania. More than 40 organisations, including Eco Ruralis, were involved in preparations for the gathering.

What is the importance of the food sovereignty movement for peasants?

Food sovereignty is a concept that refers to peasant and human rights to food, to choose their food, to produce food, and to shape policies that govern food and agriculture in their regions.

At the moment we feel that decision makers are very far from the reality, problems and difficulties that peasants are confronted with. Peasants are on the frontline of climate change issues and are the first ones to come up with solutions. They are the biggest investors in agriculture, yet nobody recognises this. They are producing and maintaining common goods by administrating land and natural resources in sustainable ways. They are the backbone of society and they deserve to be put in the centre of decision-making.

“Peasants are the backbone of society and they deserve to be put in the centre of decision-making”

This is why peasants all around the world needed to create a common strategy and common political framework. We defined it as food sovereignty. It’s not a concept that refers to borders and stipulates that we should produce food only for our own region or country. It´s not a nationalistic concept, it´s something broader and more profound. It truly refers to human, and particularly peasant rights.

What are some of the campaigns that you have been involved in at Eco Ruralis?

Eco Ruralis was founded in 2009 by a group of peasants from around the country who felt the need to have political representation. We couldn’t find any allies in the unions, or in other organisations. Our first campaign was on protecting our seeds. This is the most practical and inspirational activity that we have. It is the campaign that really brought us together. We still have a lot of genetic resources in the field, and we wanted to act before it’s too late. So we focused on keeping our seeds alive by using, multiplying and redistributing them. We are best known for the seeds which we produce and distribute across the entire country.

Over time we crystalised our vision. We started cooperating with La Via Campesina, and this exposed us to other models of action and organisation with other countries. And so we created two more campaigns. One addresses land issues and the rights to land, and the other is on the rights to markets. Through the land campaign we mostly expose the phenomenon of land grabbing, promote ideas of sustainable rural livelihoods and the rights of people to keep their land in their communities for future generations. Our campaign on markets is just emerging now.

In what way are your campaigns linked to the issue of migration and migrant labour rights?

Many, if not most, of the workers in agriculture in the Western Europe come from Eastern Europe. Cheap labour provided by refugees and migrants is one of the reasons our food can be so cheap. EU agricultural and food processing practice is to large extent based on migrant and refugee labour as well. For example, many Romanian peasants end up in Germany, France, Czech republic, etc. These people very often have their rights violated and they work in absolutely terrible and unfair working conditions.

Land grabbing and the lack of vision from our governments to support peasant farming pose serious threats to the peasant way of life. This, in turn, has many far-reaching implications for society. In contrast to Western Europe, much of the land is still in the hands of family farmers in Eastern Europe. But, Eastern European governments, Romania’s included, have an agenda to attract foreign investors and consolidate land. They spend a lot of public money on this and are blatantly pushing peasants to sell or lease their land. In Romania, subsidies taken from the second pillar of the CAP for rural development are used to entice peasants to part with their land. The land value is still relatively low, so it’s attracting a lot of investors such as multinational companies, investment funds and banks that only use the land in a destructive and speculative way.

As a result, peasants lose connection with their land. When they are looking for ways to feed their children, with few employment opportunities at home and little hope, they feel they have to go to Western Europe. And because we are a country of peasants, most of the people that go abroad work in agriculture. When doing so, peasants lose even more connection with their home and land. This continues to perpetuate the process of farmers giving their land away to companies.

What is the role of women in the food sovereignty movement?

It´s essential, and we can never do enough work making the role of women for food sovereignty visible. Unfortunately, in the 21st century we still have the essential problem that women´s roles and work are always undervalued. Yet, in this movement women are not left behind, on the contrary, the food sovereignty movement honours women. For example, women have a central role in the Nyéléni forums and we impose equal quotas of participation by women and men. This is a fundamental part of our struggle, as we believe that we can only achieve our goals when men and women first, side by side, solve women´s rights issues.

Rural feminism is, I would say, an emerging struggle that is gaining shape. I feel that women increasingly come together to share their awareness and insight. With every international meeting women organise special gatherings with impressive participation. Women are putting peasant women in the centre, and others, such as women researchers, are supporting these actions.

In Romania, the word peasant was used in a derogatory way for a long time

Lastly, can you talk about the public comeback of the word ’peasant’ in Romania?

Let me tell you a story. In Romania, the word peasant was used in a derogatory way for a long time. A few years ago, the national radio asked a representative from Eco Ruralis to give an interview on a farming issue. When they asked how to present her, we mentioned her name and said, ͞’peasant spokesperson’. The radio apologised and told us that pronouncing the word peasant in public spaces is forbidden. ‘Peasant͛’ was associated with negativity, with somebody that is poor, uneducated, rude, etc. These negative connotations came from misunderstanding, from a lack of connection with people that work on the land.

Nonetheless, we have continued to use the word because we know that there are peasants in our fields. Romania is a country where peasant farming is still alive, we have 4.7 million active peasants representing almost half of the peasants in the European Union. It͛s an undeniable reality, they produce our food, even though they are not recognised on the market, nor are they recognised and protected by the social laws.

But recently this word has made a public comeback. It͛s now on the TV, radio and in newspapers –it͛s almost fashionable now. People have remembered what it means to be a peasant. A recent national opinion poll concluded that people associate the word peasant with honesty, hard work and beautiful people. In Eastern Europe we are in the region of peasants. We are in the region of people that know how to produce food. This is very unique and important. Peasants not only know how to make food, peasants know how to fix things, how to build things, how to take care of animals. They are creators of life and this is essential for the future of society at large.

Interview by Tomáš Uhnák

The Nyéléni Declaration on food sovereignty (2007)
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The Nyéléni declaration has proven to be a critical statement in shaping food sovereignty as a policy framework. After La Via Campesina coined the term ͚food sovereignty͛ in 1996, there have been numerous gatherings to come up with a shared vision. For this, the first Nyéléni forum has been particularly significant. This was in no small part due to the broad participation of about 600 activists from over 80 countries. The collective understanding of food sovereignty that they achieved is still drawn upon widely today. Key points include:
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• The right of all individuals to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food is at the centre of all food and agriculture policies
• Peasants, farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, forest dwellers and agricultural workers are valued, recognised and respected for their contribution to food provision.
• Local and national economies and markets are prioritised
• Food production, distribution and consumption is based on environmental, social and economic sustainability
• The rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those who produce food
• Food providers and consumers are brought closer together to determine food, farming, fishery and pastoral systems.

See: https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290

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South Korea’s food sovereignty movement is facing a colossal fight. The country is emerging as one of the world’s biggest importers of edible genetically modified (GM) crops. On top of this, the current government aims to produce and sell GM crops, including one of the Korean people’s most important staples: rice. Rapid industrialisation, combined with pressure from global food markets, has taken its toll on South Korean farming. The percentage of the total population that farm has reduced from 50% to less than 7% today, and a quarter of the country’s farmland has dis-appeared since the 1970’s, when Green Revolution technologies were first promoted. Remaining farmers have been forced to join ‘development projects’ and take part in modernisation efforts that disregard their indigenous knowledge and skills in favour of input-intensive farming techniques.

Grandmother’s knowledge

Women have been disproportionately affected by these changes in Korea’s agriculture. As a consequence of the country’s patriarchal society, many women lack access to capital and land resources. This has led to exclusion of women from the government’s push to ‘modernise’ their farms. Many women have remained small scale producers active in the informal economy, but struggling to access markets for their products. Moreover, they have been marginalised in shaping formal economic and social policies.

Yet, every dark cloud has a silver lining: these women continued their indigenous farming practices. Most of these women are now over 60 years of age and known as hal-mo-ni (grandmothers). These grandmothers know how to produce, process and conserve food, as well as make clothing and shelter. They have kept the knowledge and skills needed to save and breed their indigenous seeds. Their practices are rooted in biodiversity and they manage their agroecosystem to maintain complex polycultures (see box).

Activist farmers

Recently, some younger women farmers, members of KWPA, who had learnt to farm in the industrial farming system, started to actively question the need to constantly purchase inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers. These activist farmers also identified the need to make the valuable role of women peasants more visible in Korean society. They decided to focus their work on using women’s knowledge of seeds and breeding to revive traditional varieties of crops through collecting and multiplying indigenous seeds. Moreover, peasants’ seeds symbolically represent traditional knowledge, safe food, and safekeeping of genetic resources as well as cultural heritage.

Women peasants don’t have degrees but they are experts

Sowing seeds

The first indigenous seeds that Hoengsoeng Women’s Peasant Association, a member of KWPA, decided to cultivate were beans. Beans have played an important role throughout Korean history. Despite their importance, it was difficult to find indigenous seeds. Finally they obtained seeds from an activist from the Anti-GMO Korea network whose acquaintances had access to the seedbank of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation. Each member of the association was given three types of bean to cultivate. The idea was to meet a year later to exchange experiences and seeds. All but one woman failed to cultivate their beans. The successful peasant happened to be one of the grandmothers. She was the only one with the necessary knowledge and skills to grow the beans. This was an important moment for the KWPA activists. They realised that the exchange of knowledge and skills between old and young generations of women is key to building an indigenous seed movement. “Women peasants don’t have degrees in seed breeding, but they are experts,” said Yoon Keum Soon, a KWPA activist from Seong-Ju.

Since then, the KWPA activists have been building an indigenous seed movement. They started by collecting seeds and recording indigenous knowledge from the grandmothers in their communities. Their activities reach across the country and have been steadily expanding. KWPA women now are active in more than 15 cities and eight provinces nationwide. Besides organising seed festivals and publishing and distributing information on peasant’s rights to seeds, two notable activities are their communal seed farms and a farmer-owned cooperative.

Communal seed farms

Ae-gi Jeong, 83 year old grandmother:
 
“Hoengsong is in the mountains so we try to use small plots of land effectively. No matter how small the plot might be, we always try to plant various crops. In the garden plots we plant soybean and sesame seedlings between corn. After the corn is harvested, the plot gradually turns into a soybean and sesame field. The corn stalks are fed to cows. We also plant soybean and sesame around the paddy fields, and intercrop local lettuces and chillies.”

Since 2009, KWPA has started more than 20 indigenous seed production farms. Only three of these receive governmental support and most are managed by groups of women, each with their own plot of land, who share the work collectively. Urban citizens also help managing a number of these farms, which, in turn have become venues where children and adults can learn about the importance of indigenous seeds.

For many reasons, putting indigenous seed farming into practice has not been easy. Even with years of farming experience, there is still a lot to learn. Each crop requires different methods of cultivation, selection and preservation. For example, Han Young Mee, a peasant from Hoengseong with more than 20 years’ experience with industrial farming, explains that when she tried to preserve seeds she was unsuccessful because animals ate them or she had forgotten where she had stored them. Moreover, when some indigenous pink potato seedlings that she got from another locality failed it became evident that caring for seeds also requires understanding of the local climate and soil.

To overcome these problems, KWPA developed a mentorship programme with grandmothers. This was rather easy because most villages have a good number of both young and elderly female farmers. When they come together, these farmers share their knowledge of farming and cooking, thereby learning from each other. With the help of KWPA, many of these women document their lessons so that more farmers can put indigenous seed farming into practice. For example, a KWPA group on Jeju Island published a book about grandmothers’ way of farming and how to grow and keep various indigenous seeds.

Seeds passed through all the community members’ hands

Communal resources

In Haman, a county in the south of the country, a group of peasant women communally manage 30 different crops on 0.2 hectares of land. One practical challenge they have been facing is the amount of time needed to tend to the seed farm. Farmer Han Swoung Ah explains how difficult it is to combine childcare, work on her own farm and on the communal plot: “I quarrelled with my husband many times about working on the communal field. He hates that I neglect our family farm.”

Despite the challenges, the importance and value of community has become clear through the women’s experience on the seed farms. For instance, without community support, a bad harvest of a seed crop makes it almost impossible to find planting material for the next year’s crops. In the past, peasants sustained their farming through local communities by sharing their seeds, labour, knowledge and skills. In this way, seeds passed through all the community members’ hands and had a character of public property. The communal seed farms are reviving this type of sharing.

Farmers’ cooperative

The members of KWPA realised the importance of building solidarity not only among peasants but also between peasants and consumers. Therefore, they set up the Sister’s Garden CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box scheme. It started in 2009 as a social enterprise with support from the government to pay two staff members. Recently, they transformed the organisation into a cooperative such that each of the 200 participating peasant women became members. The CSA’s success has been such that in seven years it has grown from one community providing weekly boxes to 100 families to 15 communities across South Korea reaching more than 2000 families. In contrast to the industrial food system, consumers are in direct communication with producers and learn about their planting decisions and seasonal limitations. Besides accessing affordable seasonal products, consumers are more involved with the work of the KWPA through voluntary work at the indigenous seeds farms or by joining indigenous food cooking courses held monthly in Seoul.

The cooperative is also seen as a success in terms of economic empowerment for the peasant women. This is particularly the case for the grandmothers who otherwise have difficulty accessing markets for their produce. In this sense, the approach that connects producers and consumers is useful for ensuring fair compensation to peasants for their work.

Moving forward

A long term goal is to produce and sell more indigenous crops through the Sisters’ Garden Cooperative and to set up an agroecology school that will further support this intergenerational exchange. KWPA’s ambition to better connect the seed movement with the cooperative is not only an opportunity to continue strengthening the relationship between the older and younger generations of women peasants, but also to forge links with other like-minded organisations in East Asia. The first steps in this direction have been taken between 2015 and 2016, when KWPA women farmers visited and exchanged knowledge with members of CAEF (Community Agroecology Fund) in Surin, Thailand and the Agroecology School of La Via Campesina member organisation Serikat Petani Indonesia. In this way, more people will be able to gain the knowledge and skills needed to successfully work with indigenous crops. In 2012 the KWPA was awarded the food sovereignty prize for their work.

Hyo Jeong Kim (sheenkimm@gmail.com) is a feminist researcher at the Ewha Womans University working on transnational activism, social economy, food sovereignty and agroecology in Asia.

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