Food Sovereignty of Peasants Essential to Sustaining Agricultural Biodiversity

A new paper written by Patrick Mulvany, traces the roots of agricultural biodiversity, threats, benefits and how to sustain it. Agricultural biodiversity is the product of the dynamic management of species and ecosystems, especially by smaller-scale food providers, their families and communities, who have co-evolved with these species over millennia in all regions of the world. It encompasses the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms which are necessary to sustain key functions of the agro-ecosystem, its structure and processes for, and in support of, food production and food security.

Through land use change, destructive and unsustainable management of ecosystems and ‘downstream’ pollution, industrial production systems are the main cause of the loss of biodiversity. Their impacts in rural territories across the world include the rapid spread not only of monocultures, but also massive increases in the use of associated pesticides and herbicides, resource consolidation and the exodus of producers.

On the other hand, biodiverse agroecological approaches bring multiple benefits, simultaneously building resilience in ecosystems and farming communities, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from food production and drawing carbon from the atmosphere. Biodiverse and complex food webs provide food to more than 70% of the world’s peoples.

The author stresses that benefits to people and the planet can only be properly realised if the dynamic management of agricultural biodiversity within productive agroecosystems, above and below ground and in waters, and the resultant food provision, is developed within the framework of food sovereignty. Through the efforts of peasants and indigenous peoples in all regions of the world, agricultural biodiversity is given life. They use their biodiverse and ecological models of production, and harvest and process food locally for localised markets, which connect those who grow with those who eat, wherever they are.

The challenge is not only to support and protect the rights of the world’s peasants who dynamically manage agricultural biodiversity in the framework of food sovereignty, it is also to bust the myth of the dominant but misleading ‘Feed the World’ narrative about food security being realised by biodiversity-eroding industrial commodity production.

The full paper “Agricultural biodiversity is sustained in the framework of food sovereignty” can be downloaded at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14888386.2017.1366872

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More and Better: Sign on to the letter about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and agriculture

o the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) and all governments in the world

More support for small-scale agroecological and other forms of sustainable agriculture is the key to reach many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The organizations which have signed on to this letter urge all governments, the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), other UN- and financial institutions to increase the support for agroecology and other forms of sustainable agriculture for small-scale farmers, and to underline the importance of such support to be able to reach several of the SDGs.

Increased support to small-scale sustainable farming is a key to reach:
SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
SDG 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

The World Bank World Development Report 2008, Agriculture for Development, states that “…GDP growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as GDP growth originating outside agriculture… For China, aggregate growth originating in agriculture is estimated to have been 3.5 times more effective in reducing poverty than growth outside agriculture – and for Latin-America 2.7 times more.”
FAO also states the importance and efficiency of investments in agriculture: “Agriculture plays a vital role for economic growth and sustainable development. The evidence suggests that agriculture gross domestic product (GDP) growth in developing countries is on average 2.9 times more effective in reducing poverty relative to non-agriculture GDP growth…”

Support for small-scale sustainable agriculture is also a key to eradicate hunger, create jobs, improve the situation of women, to reduce climate change, and to make agriculture sustainable. Despite this, support for sustainable agriculture in developing countries has a low priority both in most developing countries and in development support from the OECD countries.
In 2003, Heads of State and Government of the members of the African Union (AU) agreed on the Maputo Declaration to adopt sound policies for agricultural and rural development, and committed themselves to allocating at least 10% of national budgetary resources for their implementation within five years. However, ten years later, only nine countries had reached to goal of 10%. 45 countries had not. In 2014, the members of the African Union re-committed to the 10% in the Malabo Declaration.
Support for agriculture is also low in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the OECD countries; only about 7,5% of the total ODA goes to agriculture.

The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, in its report Investing in Smallholder Agriculture for Food Security (2013), stated that “Public investments in and for agriculture have fallen considerably since the 1980s. It is now widely recognized that agriculture has been neglected at both the national and international levels. Many agricultural banks (mostly linked to, and supported by, the state) have disappeared, and extension services, applied research and investment in infrastructure projects have declined since the mid-1980s.”

The small-scale farmers are the most important investors in their own farms, but they do not have sufficient access to the finances they need. Less than a quarter of the financial needs of small-scale farmers in developing countries are met, leaving an annual financing gap of more than US$ 150 billion according to Blending4AG – an initiative by CTA Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation which is a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU).

A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems

In The state of Food and Agriculture (2016), FAO underline the need for “a profound transformation of food and agriculture systems worldwide.” The report from the International panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) has some of the same message, and it points out a way forward. One of the key messages in the report is:

“What is required is a fundamentally different model of agriculture based on diversifying farms and farming landscapes, replacing chemical inputs, optimizing biodiversity and stimulating interactions between different species, as part of holistic strategies to build long-term fertility, healthy agro-ecosystems and secure livelihoods, i.e. ‘diversified agroecological systems’.”

We, the organizations that have signed on to this letter, agree on the need for a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems. Such a shift combined with drastically increase of the support to small-scale agroecological and other forms of sustainable agriculture are necessary to reach many of the SDGs. We ask the governments in all countries to spend at least 10% of the national budgets for support of sustainable agriculture, primarily for small-scale farmers.

June/July 2017

To sign on the letter, please write us at [email protected]
The letter is available in English, Spanish and French.

Signatory Organizations (updated on 13th June 2017)

1. More and Better Network, Cameroun/International
2. Food Tank, USA / Global
3. Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience at Coventry University, UK
4. Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum (KESSFF), Kenya
5. Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN) Uganda
6. La Fédération Nationale pour l’Agriculture Biologique (FENAB), Sénégal
7. L’Association Sénégalaise pour la Promotion de l’Agriculture Biologique (ASPAB)
8. IFOAM Organic International
9. Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly, Nigeria ( EBAFOSA)
10. Manavodaya, Institute of Participatory Development, India
11. Voice of Wilderness Developmental Organization, Ethiopia
12. Church Aid Inc. Church Aid, Liberia
13. North East Chilli Producers Association, Uganda
14. Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, USA / Global
15. Maendeleo Endelevu Action Program (MEAP)
16. S-PTA (Agroecology and Family Farming), Brazil
17. ANA (National Agroecological Network), Brazil
18. Local Matters, USA
19. Pesticide Action Network, International
20. Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA).
21. School and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE) Kenya
22. Le Centre d’Actions pour la Sécurité Alimentaire et le Développement Durable (CASAD) Bénin
23. SIANI, Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative
24. North East Chilli Producers Association (NECPA) LTD , Uganda
25. Société coopérative multifonctionnelle Alternatives de Développement Pour la Vie sur Terre, Mali
26. NGO SOL, Alternative agroecologiques et solidaires
27. ActionAid International
28. Kikandwa Environmental Association, Uganda
29. Asociación de Instituciones de Promoción y Educación, AIPE, red de ONG, Bolivia
30. USC Canada
31. The Oakland Institute, USA
32. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), USA / Global

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Nyeleni Newsletter March 2017: Agriculture and Free Trade Agreements

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) hurt food sovereignty because they:
– Erase the possibility of public strategies supporting local markets.
– Lower or remove tariffs on imported goods, hurting local small-scale food producers who cannot compete with large subsidised agribusiness imports.
– Harmonise standards on food safety, pesticides, GMOs and animal welfare benefitting corporations: the imposed lowest standards protect their profit
margins.
– Rewrite patent laws, requiring countries to privatise plants and animals; criminalise peasants who save and exchange seeds and breeds thus damaging biodiverse food systems.
– Require that foreign investors be treated better than domestic ones, gaining more access to land and water, and powerful rights to defend themselves
through investor-state arbitration that is fundamentally anti-democratic

Download the rest of the newsletter here: https://nyeleni.org/DOWNLOADS/newsletters/Nyeleni_Newsletter_Num_29_EN.pdf

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The 1st Online conference on Agroecology

Agroweb launched the 1st Online International Congress of Agroecology, from 27 June to 03 July 2016. This is an unprecedented initiative in the Brazilian world. The program of the 1st AgroecoWeb consists of lectures addressing highly relevant issues, as well as a special course that will be offered in video lessons during the event, with experts in Agroecology from different countries and continents. Anyone interested in the subject can sign up and participate in the 1st AgroecoWeb for free. Click here for subscribing and see the list of experts.
Do not miss this unique opportunity!

 

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Agroecology – the bold future of Africa

A press release from AFSA – The African Alliance for Food Sovereignty

21 Oct. 2015. It’s time for us to recognize that agroecology is the future of farming in Africa! Industrial agriculture is a dead end. It claims to have raised yields in places but it has done so at great cost, with extensive soil damage, huge biodiversity loss and negative impacts on nutrition, food sovereignty and natural resources. Read more

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A Small Village in Mali Is Farming Toward a Viable Food Future

In a far flung village called Sélingué in Mali, near the Guinean border, something of great global significance happened recently. It’s not related to Ebola, ethnic conflict, or natural disasters. It’s a good news story — and good news stories don’t seem to travel very far from this region. Sélingué recently hosted the International Forum on Agroecology which attracted more than 300 people from 45 countries. Sélingué has a name far bigger than its size, for those who follow global agriculture and food issues. There in 2007, more than 500 food movement leaders gathered at the landmark Nyéléni conference to coin the “six pillars of food sovereignty.” They gave name to the idea that farmers can and should make choices, grow their own food and work with their communities and ecosystems to feed their families, and sustain their food systems for generations to come.

Eight years later — in February 2015 — hundreds of farmers, pastoralists, fishers, agricultural workers and food movement leaders came back to the same place to put forward a bold new vision for agroecology — a vast body of science and knowledge that for them, holds answers to the major problems facing the world’s food system, among them persistent and growing rates of hunger and malnutrition, a huge ecological footprint, alarming climate change, and the increasing disenfranchisement of farmers.

One of those farmers is Fanta Traoré, from the village of Sorokoro near Mali’s capital, Bamako. Fanta grows sorghum, millet and niébé for her family and for the local market. Every season, she “test plants” a range of her crop varieties in her field, and decides what to select, based on which ones perform best under which conditions. She knows about climate change from firsthand experience: the Sahel region is one of the most vulnerable to erratic rainfall patterns, changing growing seasons, and harsh droughts. Generations of farmers have had to dig deep into their experience and creativity to find ways to adapt.

Agroecology is a way of life for farmers like Fanta. They use their ingenuity and time-tested knowledge to work with ecosystems, soils, seeds, water, and biodiversity, while producing food for communities and sustaining farm families on the land. Crop rotation and diversification, integrating animals, crops and trees, recycling and composting nutrients, natural insect and weed control, and water conservation are among the many techniques farmers use to build natural resilience in their food system.

Yet while agroecology holds much promise and is spreading around the world, it has many challenges. Those who prefer the linear, industrial model of agriculture claim that this way of farming may be good at a very local level, but it can never feed the world. Agroecology can feed the world — and it already does. In 2012, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 500 million small farms in the developing world provide livelihood to two billion people and produce 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. For millions of these small farmers, peasants and indigenous peoples around the world, agroecology is what feeds them, and provides them with a range of ecological, social and economic benefits.

Other critics dismiss this vast body of science as primitive, rather than modern. In fact, the rainbow of practices within agroecology, applied differently to each ecological and social context, are a tremendous source of innovation. Leading edge research in agriculture today comes from the agroecological practices of small farmers. In addition, valuing farmer knowledge helps them retain control over their natural resources, seeds and lands.

These are among the many questions addressed by the Declaration from the Agroecology Forum. For Fanta and members of the Dunka Fa Cooperative — supported by USC Canada partner organization Cab Demeso — the Forum was an opportunity to share knowledge and seeds. It was also a moment of pride — to be part of a bigger movement that is changing how we grow our food.

The ideas that Fanta and others planted in Sélingué didn’t make headlines, but will undoubtedly deepen our understanding, influence food movements, researchers, and policy makers across the globe for the years to come. A basket of ideas and hope, to be harvested around the world by future generations.

by Faris Ahmed, USC Canada’s Policy Director.

This article was published in the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/development-unplugged/viable-food-future_b_7188258.html​

 

 

 

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Declaration of the Forum for Agroecology

We are delegates representing diverse organizations and international movements of small-scale food producers and consumers, including peasants, indigenous peoples and communities (including hunters and gatherers), family farmers, rural workers, herders and pastoralists, fisherfolk and urban people. Together, the diverse constituencies our organizations represent produce some 70% of the food consumed by humanity. They are the primary global investors in agriculture, as well as the primary providers of jobs and livelihoods in the world.

We gathered here at the Nyéléni Center in Sélingué, Mali from 24 to 27 of February, 2015, to come to a common understanding of agroecology as a key element in the construction of Food Sovereignty, and to develop joint strategies to promote Agroecology and defend it from co-optation. We are grateful to the people of Mali who have welcomed us in this beautiful land. They have taught us through their example, that the dialogue of our various forms of knowledge is based on respectful listening and on the collective construction of shared decisions. We stand in solidarity with our Malian sisters and brothers who struggle – sometimes sacrificing their lives – to defend their territories from the latest wave of land grabbing that affects so many of our countries. Agroecology means that we stand together in the circle of life, and this implies that we must also stand together in the circle of struggle against land grabbing and the criminalization of our movements.


BUILDING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Our peoples, constituencies, organizations and communities have already come very far in defining Food Sovereignty as a banner of joint struggle for justice, and as the larger framework for Agroecology. Our ancestral production systems have been developed over millennia, and during the past 30 to 40 years this has come to be called agroecology. Our agroecology includes successful practices and production, involves farmer-to-farmer and territorial processes, training schools, and we have developed sophisticated theoretical, technical and political constructions.

In 2007 many of us gathered here at Nyéléni, at the Forum for Food Sovereignty, to strengthen our alliances and to expand and deepen our understanding of Food Sovereignty, through a collective construction between our diverse constituencies. Similarly, we gather here at the Agroecology Forum 2015 to enrich Agroecology through dialogue between diverse food producing peoples, as well as with consumers, urban communities, women, youth, and others. Today our movements, organized globally and regionally in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), have taken a new and historic step.

Our diverse forms of smallholder food production based on agroecology generate local knowledge, promote social justice, nurture identity and culture, and strengthen the economic viability of rural areas. Smallholders defend our dignity when we choose to produce in an agroecological way.


OVERCOMING MULTIPLE CRISES

Agroecology is the answer to how to transform and repair our material reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue Revolutions.  We see agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life.

The corporate model over-produces food that poisons us, destroys soil fertility, is responsible for the deforestation of rural areas, the contamination of water and the acidification of oceans and killing of fisheries. Essential natural resources have been commodified, and rising production costs are driving us off the land. Farmers’ seeds are being stolen and sold back to us at exorbitant prices, bred as varieties that depend on costly, contaminating agrochemicals.  The industrial food system is a key driver of the multiple crises of climate, food, environmental, public health and others. Free trade and corporate investment agreements, investor-state dispute settlement agreements, and false solutions such as carbon markets, and the growing financialization of land and food, etc., all further aggravate these crises. Agroecology within a food sovereignty framework offers us a collective path forward from these crises.


AGROECOLOGY AT A CROSSROADS

The industrial food system is beginning to exhaust it’s productive and profit potential because of its internal contradictions – such as soil degradation, herbicide-tolerant weeds, depleted fisheries, pest- and diseaseravaged monocultural plantations – and it’s increasingly obvious negative consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, and the health crisis of malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, colon disease and cancer caused by diets heavy in industrial and junk food.

Popular pressure has caused many multilateral institutions, governments, universities and research centers, some NGOs, corporations and others, to finally recognize  “agroecology”.  However, they have tried to redefine it as a narrow set of technologies, to offer some tools that appear to ease the sustainability crisis of industrial food production, while the existing structures of power remain unchallenged.  This co-optation of agroecology to fine-tune the industrial food system, while paying lip service to the environmental discourse, has various names, including “climate smart agriculture”, “sustainable-” or “ecologicalintensification”, industrial monoculture production of “organic” food, etc.  For us, these are not agroecology: we reject them, and we will fight to expose and block this insidious appropriation of agroecology.

The real solutions to the crises of the climate, malnutrition, etc., will not come from conforming to the industrial model. We must transform it and build our own local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on truly agroecological food production by peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban farmers, etc.  We cannot allow agroecology to be a tool of the industrial food production model: we see it as the essential alternative to that model, and as the means of transforming how we produce and consume food into something better for humanity and our Mother Earth.

OUR COMMON PILLARS AND PRINCIPLES OF AGROECOLOGY

Agroecology is a way of life and the language of Nature, that we learn as her children. It is not a mere set of technologies or production practices.  It cannot be implemented the same way in all territories.  Rather it is based on principles that, while they may be similar across the diversity of our territories, can and are practiced in many different ways, with each sector contributing their own colors of their local reality and culture, while always respecting Mother Earth and our common, shared values.

The production practices of agroecology (such as intercropping, traditional fishing and mobile pastoralism, integrating crops, trees, livestock and fish, manuring, compost, local seeds and animal breeds, etc.) are based on ecological principles like building life in the soil, recycling nutrients, the dynamic management of biodiversity and energy conservation at all scales.  Agroecology drastically reduces our use of externally-purchased inputs that must be bought from industry.  There is no use of agrotoxics, artificial hormones, GMOs or other dangerous new technologies in agroecology.
Territories are a fundamental pillar of agroecology. Peoples and communities have the right to maintain their own spiritual and material relationships to their lands. They are entitled to secure, develop, control, and reconstruct their customary social structures and to administer their lands and territories, including fishing grounds, both politically and socially. This implies the full recognition of their laws, traditions, customs, tenure systems, and institutions, and constitutes the recognition of the self-determination and autonomy of peoples.

Collective rights and access to the commons are fundamental pillar of agroecology. We share access to territories that are the home to many different peer groups, and we have sophisticated customary systems for regulating access and avoiding conflicts that we want to preserve and to strengthen.

The diverse knowledges and ways of knowing of our peoples are fundamental to agroecology.  We develop our ways of knowing through dialogue among them (diálogo de saberes). Our learning processes are horizontal and peer-to-peer, based on popular education. They take place in our own training centers and territories (farmers teach farmers, fishers teach fishers, etc.), and are also intergenerational, with exchange of knowledge between youth and elders. Agroecology is developed through our own innovation, research, and crop and livestock selection and breeding.

The core of our cosmovisions is the necessary equilibrium between nature, the cosmos and human beings. We recognize that as humans we are but a part of nature and the cosmos  We share a spiritual connection with our lands and with the web of life. We love our lands and our peoples, and without that, we cannot defend our agroecology, fight for our rights, or feed the world. We reject the commodification of all forms of life.

Families, communities, collectives, organizations and movements are the fertile soil in which agroecology flourishes. Collective self-organization and action are what make it possible to scale-up agroecology, build local food systems, and challenge corporate control of our food system. Solidarity between peoples, between rural and urban populations, is a critical ingredient.

The autonomy of agroecology displaces the control of global markets and generates self-governance by communities. It means we minimize the use of purchased inputs that come from outside. It requires the reshaping of markets so that they are based on the principles of solidarity economy and the ethics of responsible production and consumption. It promotes direct and fair short distribution chains. It implies a transparent relationship between producers and consumers, and is based on the solidarity of shared risks and benefits.

Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform structures of power in society. We need to put the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the commons in the hands of the peoples who feed the world.

Women and their knowledge, values, vision and leadership are critical for moving forward. Migration and globalization mean that women’s work is increasing, yet women have far less access to resources than men. All to often, their work is neither recognized nor valued. For agroecology to achieve its full potential, there must be equal distribution of power, tasks, decision-making and remuneration.

Youth, together with women, provide one of the two principle social bases for the evolution of agroecology. Agroecology can provide a radical space for young people to contribute to the social and ecological transformation that is underway in many of our societies.  Youth bear the responsibility to carry forward the collective knowledge learned from their parents, elders and ancestors into the future. They are the stewards of agroecology for future generations. Agroecology must create a territorial and social dynamic that creates opportunities for rural youth and values women’s leadership.

STRATEGIES

I.Promote agroecological production through policies that…

1.Are territorial and holistic in their approach to social, economic and natural resources issues.
2.Secure access to land and resources in order to encourage long term investment by small-scale food producers.
3.Ensure an inclusive and accountable approach to the stewardship of resources, food production, public procurement policies, urban and rural infrastructure, and urban planning.
4.Promote decentralized and truly democratized planning processes in conjunction with relevant local governments and authorities.
5.Promote appropriate health and sanitation regulations that do not discriminate against smallscale food producers and processors who practice agroecology.
6.Promote policy to integrate the health and nutrition aspects of agroecology and of traditional medicines.
7.Ensure pastoralists’ access to pastures, migration routes and sources of water as well as mobile services such as health, education and veterinary services that are based on and compatible with traditional practice.
8.Ensure customary rights to the commons. Ensure seed policies that guarantee the collective rights of peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ to use, exchange, breed, select and sell their own seeds.
9.Attract and support young people to join agroecological food production through strengthening access to land and natural resources, ensuring fair income, knowledge exchange and transmission.
10.Support urban and peri-urban agroecological production.
11.Protect the rights of communities that practice wild capture, hunting and gathering in their traditional areas – and encourage the ecological and cultural restoration of territories to their former abundance.
12.Implement policies that ensure the rights of fishing communities.
13.Implement the Tenure Guidelines of the Committee on World Food Security and the Smallscale Fisheries Guidelines of the FAO.
14.Develop and implement policies and programs that guarantee the right to a dignified life for rural workers, including true agrarian reform, and agroecology training.


II.Knowledge sharing

1.Horizontal exchanges (peasant-to-peasant, fisher-to-fisher, pastoralist-to-pastoralist, consumer-and-producer, etc.) and intergenerational exchanges between generations and across different traditions, including new ideas. Women and youth must be prioritised.
2.Peoples’ control of the research agenda, objectives and methodology.
3.Systemize experience to learn from and build on historical memory.

III.Recognition of the central role of women

1.Fight for equal women’s’ rights in every sphere of agroecology, including workers’ and labour rights, access to the Commons, direct access to markets, and control of income
2.Programs and projects must fully include women at all stages, from the earliest formulation through planning and application, with decision-making roles.

IV.Build local economies

1.Promote local markets for local products.
2.Support the development of alternative financial infrastructure, institutions and mechanisms to support both producers and consumers.
3.Reshape food markets through new relationships of solidarity between producers and consumers.
4.Develop links with the experience of solidarity economy and participatory guarantee systems, when appropriate.

V.Further develop and disseminate our vision of agroecology

1.Develop a communications plan for our vision of agroecology
2.Promote the health care and nutritional aspects of agroecology
3.Promote the territorial approach of agroecology
4.Promote practices that allows youth to carry forward the permanent regeneration of our agroecological vision
5.Promote agroecology as a key tool to reduce food waste and loss across the food system


VI.Build alliances

1.Consolidate and strengthen existing alliances such as with the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC)
2.Expand our alliance to other social movements and public research organizations and institutions

VII.Protect biodiversity and genetic resources

1.Protect, respect and ensure the stewardship of biodiversity
2.Take back control of seeds and reproductive material and implement producers’ rights to use, sell and exchange their own seeds and animal breeds
3.Ensure that fishing communities play the most central role in controlling marine and inland waterways


VIII.Cool the planet and adapt to climate change

1.Ensure international institutions and governments recognize agroecology as defined in this document as a primary solution for tackling and adapting to climate change, and not “climate smart agriculture” or other false versions of agroecology
2.Identify, document and share good experiences of local initiatives on agroecology that address climate change.

IX.Denounce and fight corporate and institutional capture of agroecology

1.Fight corporate and institutional attempts to grab agroecology as a means to promote GMOs and other false solutions and dangerous new technologies.
2.Expose the corporate vested interests behind technical fixes such as climate-smart agriculture, sustainable intensification and “fine-tuning” of industrial aquaculture.
3.Fight the commodification and financialization of the ecological benefits of agroecology.

We have built agroecology through many initiatives and struggles. We have the legitimacy to lead it into the future. Policy makers cannot move forward on agroecology without us. They must respect and support our agroecological processes rather than continuing to support the forces that destroy us.  We call on our fellow peoples to join us in the collective task of collectively constructing agroecology as part of our popular struggles to build a better world, a world based on mutual respect, social justice, equity, solidarity and harmony with our Mother Earth.

Nyéléni, Mali,  27 February 2015

Source: More and Better (MaB) Network

Declaración del Foro Internacional sobre Agroecología [ES]

 

The International Forum on Agroecology was organized at the Nyeleni Center in Mali, from 24 to 27 February 2015 by the following organisations: Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes du Mali (CNOP Mali) as chair; La Via Campesina (LVC), Movimiento Agroecológico de América Latina y el Caribe (MAELA), Réseau des organisations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA) , World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF), World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP), More and Better (MaB)

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The future role of agroecology in the world

June 2014: The growing support for agroecology on the international political agenda was discussed on May 18th in Juazeiro, Brazil. Experts shared the various challenges they face in their respective countries when promoting agroecology.

The panel was part of the Third National Encounter on Agroecology (III ENA). It opened with a video message by Olivier De Schutter, former special UN rapporteur for the human right to food. He emphasised that we are already beyond the question whether or not agroecology is an option for the future of agriculture. In his opinion, facing the worsening of the food crisis, this question no longer makes sense: “The questions to be answered are “when” and “how” the international community will promote agroecology as an alternative to the dominant patterns of production and consumption. We cannot let the crisis get even worse. We need to prepare a transition, and the time to act is now.

De Schutter stressed the important role that Brazil has to play when it comes to the institutionalisation of agroecology. He thinks that the debate about the Sustainable Development Goals, which are to be adopted in September 2015 to replace the Millennium Development Goals, is a unique opportunity to include agroecology clearly in the political agenda of countries all over the world.

According to Paulo Petersen, executive director of AS-PTA and moderator of the panel, the growing international recognition of agroecology is a sign that people are now more aware of the unsustainability of the dominant agro-food systems: “The agroecological approach is being increasingly recognised for its compelling answers to the global systemic crisis that threatens the foundations of our societies today.

Voices from Latin America, Africa and Europe

After the video message, representatives of civil society organisations from Latin America, Africa and Europe talked about the challenges they face when promoting agroecology in their countries and regions. Like Olivier De Schutter, they stressed the importance of the Brazilian agroecology movement as a basis for building a more sustainable agriculture in the future.

Germán Alonso Vélez from the Seeds Network in Colombia said: “In Brazil, the government recognises and supports the agroecological movement. In Colombia, many peasant families are persecuted because they keep native seeds. It is considered to be a crime.” He explained how free trade and other dynamics of globalisation are destroying family farming in Colombia. “Therefore, we all look very carefully at the experiences and lessons of the agroecological movement in Brazil.

Karen Read of Biowatch South Africa described how many years of colonisation and the influence of outside cultures mark agriculture in her country, where social movements are also fighting for the creation of a national policy on agroecology. “But we are still working on a draft proposal and nothing has been made official yet.” She said that she will take home the slogan of the women participating in the Encounter on Agroecology: No feminism, no agroecology. “Women in agriculture need to be empowered. After all, they are the ones that protect seeds and biodiversity”, said Karen Read.

Complementing this contribution, Zayaan Khan from the organisation Surplus People Project in South Africa said that by supporting agribusiness, the South African government marginalises the majority of the population. “Big companies access water for a very low price while people are thirsty. In addition, all food products based on maize and soybean are contaminated with GMOs. But for us, access to land is the main problem.

Edith van Walsum, director of ILEIA in the Netherlands, recalled that her country is the second largest importer of soybeans from Brazil. “China, while being 100 times larger than the Netherlands, is the only country that imports more. What do we do with that much soybean in such a small country? We feed it to animals, we produce milk and pork meat and have become the largest exporter of dairy products in the world.” Van Walsum called for a global agroecological movement that is able to radically transform the dominant food system, which conceives food as another global commodity. In her opinion, “a global movement will strongly depend on strong national and local movements, just as in Brazil. It is important to be ‘globally connected, locally rooted’, which is the motto of the AgriCultures Network.” In Brazil, AS-PTA is the organisation that supports the connection between the Brazilian agroecological movement and the AgriCultures Network worldwide. Brazilian experiences are published in magazines in English, Spanish, French, Chinese and local Indian languages to an audience of over one million people from 150 countries. Edith van Walsum concluded: “We consider the Brazilian agroecology movement a source of inspiration. And this meeting is an example of the strength of this bottom-up movement.

Agroecology in the International Year of Family Farming

Petersen made reference to the 2014 International Year of Family Farming (IYFF). “We have to celebrate the IYFF. After all, the decision of the UN to give visibility to family farming was an achievement from civil society. But we must not only point out why family farming has to be recognised, but we must also discuss the ways in which we expect it to be promoted and developed. There are already several countries such as Brazil that have established specific policies for family farming. But the Brazilian experience has shown that broad and general support from the state is not enough. If we continue to shape agricultural policies using the productivist bias of agricultural modernisation, we end up increasing the dependence of family farms on global agribusiness chains and the financial markets. That way, family farming will become nothing but a a subordinate link to agribusiness.

In closing the panel, Onaur Ruano from the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian Development stressed the importance of civil society mobilisation during processes of change. He recalled that both the International Year of Family Farming and the Brazilian government’s National Policy on Agroecology and Organic Production are the result of pressure by civil society organisations. Ruano said: “The implementation of the specific proposals that come out of the Encounter on Agroecology will depend strongly on the continuous coordination and collaboration of social movements both inside and outside of Brazil.

Posted by AgriCultures Network

Click here to watch the video message by Olivier De Schutter

 

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Democracy and diversity can mend broken food systems, final diagnosis from UN right to food expert

[10 March 2014] GENEVA – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, today called for the world’s food systems to be radically and democratically redesigned to ensure the human right to adequate food and freedom from hunger. “The eradication of hunger and malnutrition is an achievable goal. However, it will not be enough to refine the logic of our food systems – it must instead be reversed,” Mr. De Schutter stressed during the presentation of his final report* to the UN Human Rights Council after a six-year term as Special Rapporteur.

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