Food Sovereignty Now! ( 20-minute video, August, 2011) The international peasant’s movement La Via Campesina is launching a new video presenting its struggle for small farmer and peasant agriculture and food sovereignty all around the world.
Shashe Declaration 12-20 June 2011 Africa Region 1 of La Via Campesina, Masvingo, Zimbawe We are 47 people from 22 organizations in 18 countries (Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Angola, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Central African Republic, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Portugal, USA, France, and Germany). We are farmers and staff [...]
by John Vidal and Claire Provost, Guardian.co.uk(, June 8, 2011) US universities are reportedly using endowment funds to make deals that may force thousands from their land in Africa. Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in [...]
Stand up for family farmers and ranchers, the environment, and access to healthy food for consumers by participating in a GIPSA national call-in day to President Obama on June 22, 2011!!!!!! Major US meatpacking companies routinely underpay family farms for their animals to show favoritism to factory farms. GIPSA (the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards [...]
Food Ark (by Charles Siebert, National Geographic, July, 2011) This is worth a read — “A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily [...]
Please Act on this Alert from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Save USDA Conservation Programs - Act Now! Protect the Water You Drink, Water You Need – Make a Call Washington Congressman Norm Dicks sits on the House subcommittee that decides agriculture funding levels. It’s important that you let him know you oppose cuts to farm [...]
From Food and Water Watch: We’re Going to Have to Get Our Hands Dirty to Create a Better Food System! You can help build the momentum for fair food by signing the Fair Farm Bill Vision! This weekend hundreds of people will be involved in their local communities as part of our national day of [...]
The move by Monsanto and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to forcibly introduce GMO agriculture into Africa in the name of food security has profound implications for malnutrition and hunger, the future of Africa, and ecological resilience everywhere. I have been curious about the mindset, the thinking behind this radical endorsement of an inherently [...]
We don’t have a firm count of how many farmers are serving in the current Congress, but we do know, based on a recent analysis of the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, that 23 of them, or their family members, signed up for taxpayer-funded farm subsidy payments between 1995 and 2009. This would be [...]
BREAKING: A Budget deal reached as soon as Monday will shape the future of conservation programs and credit for beginning and minority farmers into the next decade! This is a critical moment. The White House and House Republican leadership are negotiating a budget deal that would effectively rewrite the next Farm Bill now by taking [...]
