[via-info-en] (EN) 2009 Food Sovereignty Prize for La Vía Campesina

 

Food Sovereignty rightfully should be in the hands of the tillers of the world!
 

2009 Food Sovereignty Prize for La Vía Campesina

Within the framework of the annual Conference of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) held in Des Moines, Iowa, October 10th to 13^th, La Via Campesina received the 2009 Food Sovereignty Prize for its relentless struggle for Food Sovereignty for people of the world and against the disastrous neoliberal system of industrial agriculture.

In front of hundreds of delegates from the United States and other countries, Dena Hoff from the North American region and Edgardo García from the Central American region were awarded the prize. Introducing the prize, Molly Anderson President of CFSC, highlighted the international leadership of La Via Campesina in the movement that aims at creating a more democratic food system to solve the growing problem of hunger in the planet.

Dena Hoff, farmer from Montana and head of the National Family Farmers Coalition (NFFC), speaking on behalf of the millions of peasants, women, indigenous people, migrant rural workers and young people, accepted the prize and the distinction bestowed upon them, repeating the engagement of La Via Campesina to keep working for Food Sovereignty in all corners of the world.

Edgardo García, leader of the Rural Worker Association (ATC) from Nicaragua, thanked all present for their solidarity and called for the implementation of the deep-seated changes required for Food Sovereignty. Nobody should suffer hunger and the food needed by the people should not be in the hands of greedy corporations whose only goal is for maximum profit. We should all strive for a democratic and fair society with universal dignity. The spirits of all at the conference were raised when Edgardo read a message from Rafael Alegría, leader of La Via Campesina in Honduras and also the National Front of Resistance against the Coup, calling for concrete solidarity from The North American people with the heroic struggle of the Honduras people. "This prize, said Edgardo García, will accompany the peasant and popular struggle in Honduras"

It is symbolic that this prize awarded to La Via Campesina, should be given only days before the opening of another event in the same town: the World Prize for Food awarded to individuals for their notable contribution to biotechnology in agriculture. This prize was first established by the Nobel prize laureate Norman Borlaug also known as "Father of the Green Revolution"

It is also symbolic that the conference and the 2009 prize for Food Sovereignty was awarded in Iowa with its large plantations of maize and Soya, home to the corporation Pioneer Hibred International, and the state who likes to be called "the state who feed the world"

This prize is the first one awarded by CFSC during an annual conference. The decision to call it a prize for Food Sovereignty and to give it to La Via Campesina recognize the fact that La Via Campesina was the first to present the concept of Food sovereignty as an alternative to the neoliberal model of food system – a system which increases hunger, destroys peasant ways of life and displaces indigenous peoples, and which has allowed the food distribution and production to be controlled by a handful of multinational corporations which is currently leading to a crisis which threatens the whole world.

Carlos Marentes
Vía Campesina North America

--  International Operational Secretariat ----------------------------------------------------------------------- La Via Campesina - International Secretariat: Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790  Indonesia Phone : +62-21-7991890, Fax : +62-21-7993426 E-mail: viacampesina@viacampesina.org, Website: http://www.viacampesina.org +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Subscribe to Via Campesina News Updates! (Go to www.viacampesina.org and subscribe on line) ¡Suscribe a la lista de información de La Vía Campesina! (Suscribe en línea en http://viacampesina.org/main_sp/) Inscrivez-vous à la liste d'information de Via Campesina! (Inscrivez-vous en ligne sur http://viacampesina.org/main_fr/) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WG: [via-info-en] Peasants Worldwide Rise up Against Monsanto

Peasants Worldwide Rise up Against Monsanto, GMOs

La Via Campesina carries out Global Day of Action against Monsanto

(Mexico, 16 October 2009) Today, International World Food Day, as declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, La Via Campesina is mobilizing globally along with allies in an overwhelming expression of outright rejection of Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in the name of food sovereignty.

In the United States today, protests and teach-ins against Monsanto are taking place in Maine and Wisconsin.  In Brazil, Via Campesina members are carrying out actions in the headquarters of Monsanto and Syngenta. In Europe, where nine countries have prohibited GMOs, Via Campesina organized an anti-Monsanto brigade traveling throughout the region.  In India, thousands of farmers and allies are carrying out hunger strikes and occupying lands. Actions are being carried out in at least 20 countries and all nine regions where La Via Campesina is present.

Meanwhile, world leaders are preparing to meet at the FAO World Food Summit in Rome in November, where the powers of global governance and agribusiness will utilize the desperation of starving nations to accelerate the expansion of GMO-based agriculture throughout the world.  The Obama administration's proposal to dedicate over a billion dollars of emergency funding to developing countries for agriculture, and the U.S. government's Global Food Security Initiative are thinly veiled efforts to this end.   

Peasants, landless workers, migrants, indigenous peoples and consumers, identified transnational corporations, especially Monsanto, which, together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer control over half of the world's seeds, and are thus the principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples. La Via Campesina is in a daily struggle to protect native seeds, patrimony of humanity, from corporations and patents.  Today, October 16, the strength of the movement is pushing the public opinion to reject Monsanto's take-over of the food system.

"It's time for all civil society to recognize the gravity of this situation, global capital should not control our food, nor make decisions behind closed doors. The future of our food, the protection of our resources and especially our seeds, are the right of the people," said Dena Hoff, coordinator of Via Campesina North America.

Globalize Hope!! Globalize the Struggle!!

 

Interviews and information: 

• Dena Hof, United States +  1 406-939-1839 (in English)
  
  
• Alberto Gomez, Mexico + 525541777846 (en español)

 

 

 

 

 

 

--

Isabelle Delforge

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Communication assistant

La Via Campesina - International Secretariat:

Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790  Indonesia

Phone : +62-21-7991890, Fax : +62-21-7993426 , mobile phone: +62 81513224565

E-mail: idelforge@viacampesina.org, Website: http://www.viacampesina.org

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Subscribe to Via Campesina News Updates! (Go to www.viacampesina.org and subscribe on line)
¡Suscribe a la lista de información de La Vía Campesina! (Suscribe en línea en http://viacampesina.org/main_sp/)
Inscrivez-vous à la liste d'information de Via Campesina! (Inscrivez-vous en ligne sur http://viacampesina.org/main_fr/)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

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In the end, the Lady will surely win by

THERE are two questions to be asked about the dreary news from dreary Myanmar. One is whether this group of generals will bend under pressure. The other is whether the international icon, Nobel Peace Prize winner and indisputable winner of the only valid elections in a generation is tough enough to take it. To many observers last year, it looked like an end game, with Buddhist monks burning themselves and thousands marching in the streets. This was it, so many said.

My friend Jose Almonte, Asean strategist par excellence and the formernational security adviser in Manila, visited the junta several times and tried to find a window of opportunity for reform and eventualdemocratisation there. “No, these aren’t like generals anywhere else,”he said. “They’re not going anywhere and they’re not going to give in.” Alas, he was proved right.

They all look ridiculous, out of step with the rest of the world (except maybe to their North Korean friends). But as long as China wants their resources and their air and landspace for passage to the sea, and as long as India refuses to push them to reform, why should they care? They have presided over the step-by-step creation of a failed state, a basket case. It used to be on the make; now it’s down at the bottom of the barrel and they’re still digging. It’s in a category with Somalia and Congo, the poorest in the world. What that means for the ordinary citizen is the loss of what most of the region takes as a right -- job creation, education, medical accessand lots of other amenities. The junta has blockaded themselves in a new secure capital and don’t read the International Herald Tribune, let alone the Economist. They don’t care about international sanctions, which mainly help the poor get poorer, and they don’t care how stupid they look. Receipts from their natural resources pour right into their coffers and keepthem living in high style.

I have a friend named Zarni, an American PhD who created the Free Burma Coalition and advanced the cause of democratisation in his home country for over a decade. Last year he gave up, realising international pressure was going nowhere. He now fosters a dialogue that at least might lighten the load on his countrymen and women. Heestimates that the total cost of the junta’s policies has roughly equalled those of the Khmer Rouge on Cambodia -- a few million, if at a slower rate of death. But where is the Western leverage to force a transition, however gradual, to democracy? Unlike South Africa, where there was a substantial minority that wanted good relations with the outside world, in Myanmar there’s only the military -- enshrined in a constitutionally superior position in the new constitution passed at the time of last year’s typhoon -- and the increasingly poor peasantry. The military is taught that soldiers are the only ones standing up for an independent Myanmar, the only force working against ethnic minority warfare and consequent national disintegration. And they are rewardedaccordingly; they are the national elite living above the rest of their fellow citizens.

So what’s the solution? Nothing since the 1988 repression has worked. The military is as strongly ensconced as ever. But it is useful to consider where “engagement”, as now proposed by many activists, has worked. In Timor L’este, most of the leadership agrees that had engagement not been attempted, their country would have never won its independence; Indonesia could have just maintained its hard line. “Engagement” hasn’t overturned the North Korean leadership, but it’s brought some relief to millions of starved peasants and opens a window at least a little bit for exchanges with the outside world; even a few exchanges of long-divided family members. But is this enough? Zarni now makes a critical distinction betweenconstructive and “strategic” engagement. It’s not “dialogue” with the regime; that’s a waste of time.

What is needed is “strategic engagement with civil society and potentially reformist elements within the state bureaucracy and even within the military’s commandstructure”.“It is this type of strategic and targeted engagement that will lead to the gradual emergence of alternative centres of power -- economic,societal, intellectual, and eventually political -- which will change the political regime and the state it runs. ”The idea is to see that humanitarian assistance is “put at the disposal of local communities and their allied international organisations”, and let them chip away at the controlling power of the military regime, “patiently, strategically and under the radar”.

“For aid in this context potentially serves as a counter to the callous generals’ attempt to keep people malnourished, impoverished and downtrodden. The regime doesn’t need a healthy and vibrant people,only their acquiescence, but long-term freedom struggle needs the people to remain healthy in spirit and body.”It’s interesting to note that the Obama administration seems to be considering a shift in policy; it is ironic that about the only place in the world where the Bush administration was in sync with the rest of the world was on Myanmar, in maintaining sanctions. But, as usual,the Bush administration was wrong. The policy achieved nothing.

UN and Asean emissaries came and went, achieving nothing. Usually they weren’t even allowed to talk to Aung San Suu Kyi .Why hasn’t she been more successful? Isn’t she the perfect parallel to Nelson Mandela? Well, he had someone -- eventually -- to talk to: the South African president with whom he came to share a Nobel. “TheLady”, as she is somewhat derisively referred to in diplomatic circles, is sometimes not considered to have what it takes to lead her fractured country. International pressure perhaps ensures that an “accident” doesn’t befall her, but not much more. But what’s the alternative? Icons are not warriors, but her patience and dignity in the face of overwhelming force, and now a farcical trial, will surely win in the end.

Idiot regimes just don’t last forever.

W. Scott Thompson 20 May 200

The writer was emeritus professor at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University

Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Burma

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Yesterday and Today the people of Burma are gathering slowly near Insein Jail where Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy is being held prisoner. This is a protest againt the Military Junta's trump up case against her to keep her away from the national Election due in 2010. The trump up case can mean 3 to 5 years incarceration for her. Let us not allow this to happen! Support the people's struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma!

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