Posts Tagged: campesina

Food sovereignty for us dummies

If you have heard the term – FOOD SOVEREIGNTY – and not known what they heck it is, take heart because you are not alone. But our friends at Grassroots International and the National Family Farm Coalition have come to the rescue. Now you can hear U.S. and international family farmers talk about what food sovereignty is to them – simply! And you if you can read it in your mother tongue, if that happens to be English, Spanish or Portugese. (French is coming soon)

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“Welcome to the Nightmare, Welcome to the Hope” (Cancún # 2)

Traveling through Cancun has been a profound and empowering experience. It was ironic, as I spent more time in Cancun, the reality of the United States became clearer. Here in the states we’re told that consumption and growth are the keys to progress. In the Global South they are told that you must work for a corporation’s workshop, and your land is no longer yours but a tool for exploitation. The chasm between reckless consumption and consumerism, and social and environmental degradation is vast and creates the actual reality in which we all live: the climate is warming at an alarming rate, world food supplies are dwindling, and the natural world is being eroded beyond the possibility of being healed.

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Transgenic contamination of maize: crime against humanity?

Faced with the international “technical” conference of the FAO in Guadalajara, “Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries,” which is little more than just the promotion of GM crops – today we inaugurated the “First public hearing to prepare the presentation of the GM Maize case before international courts,” organized by La Via Campesina North America Region, Red en Defensa del Maíz (Network in Defense of Maize, Mexico), and Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales (Assembly of People Displaced by Environmental Impacts, Mexico), with the participation of 276 people, mostly members and leaders of peasant, family farm , and indigenous peoples’ organizations from 19 Mexican states, the USA, and Canada.

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