La Via Campesina : International Peasant Movement

Call to the Ministers who meet in the Agricultural Council

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Press release: European Coordination Via Campesina

We, milk producers, men and women, of the European Union can no longer support the situation we are facing because of the totally wrong decisions in favour of the dairy industry and supermarkets.

The result of the decreases of the average milk price paid to the farmers in the EU is that in many countries many farms are already selling milk at prices below the real production costs. A gradual increase of the quotas, unnecessary to cover the EU demand, only pushes these prices more downwards. This situation is not sustainable and it will only lead more sustainable milk family farms to disappear.

Wednesday, 12 November 2008
We, peasants of the world demand our own convention! The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turns 60 on the 10th of December 2008. As the declaration represents the worldwide expression of the rights which all human beings are inherently entitled to, it is important for the peasants to also commemorate this occasion. Peassants represent almost half of the population on earth and we are the basis of the world's food system. We are working hard to fill people's plates every day—but we face the hard reality of the food, energy, climate and financial crises. Thoses crises also create massive and systematic violations of the rights of the peasants.
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Open Letter from Maputo: V International Conference of La Vía Campesina

Sunday, 26 October 2008
Peasant Agriculture and Food Sovereignty are Solutions to the Global Crisis Maputo, Mozambique, October 19-22, 2008 The entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions. There is a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial crisis. The solutions put forth by Power – more free trade, more GMOs, etc. – purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the capitalist system and of neoliberalism, and they will only worsen its impacts. To find real solutions we need to look toward Food Sovereignty as put forth by La Via Campesina. How did we get to this state of crisis? In recent decades we have witnessed the advance of finance capital and transnational corporations (TNCs) across all aspects of agriculture and the global food system. From the privatization of seeds and the sale of pesticides, to buying the harvests, processing the food, transporting and distributing it, all the way to retail sale to consumers, everything is controlled by a handful of corporations. Food has gone from being a right of all people, to being just another commodity. Our diets are being homogenized, with food that is bad for you, is priced out of the reach of most people, and makes us lose the culinary traditions of our peoples.
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Family and cooperative horticulture in Marracuene

Friday, 24 October 2008
Interview with Joao Carlos Palate coordinator of the Union of Cooperatives UCAM and Pedro Jorge Livinga, head the department of rural development of UCAM “We need more training in ecological farming and control on imports.” The food the participants eat at the fifth conference that is now being celebrated in Matola, 10 km from the capitol Maputo, comes from a nearby rural area. In particular, the vegetables are the main produce these farmers have organized around. There are 4,500 peasants in 40 cooperatives that are grouped in the UCAM, linked to the agrarian union UNAC.
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Declaration of Maputo: V International Conference of La Via Campesina

Thursday, 23 October 2008
Maputo, Mozambique, October 19-22, 2008 Food Sovereignty now! Unity and struggle of the people!  We are men and women of the earth, we are those who produce food for the world. We have the right to continue being peasants and family farmers, and to shoulder the responsibility of continuing to feed our peoples. We care for seeds, which are life, and for us the act of producing food is an act of love. Humanity depends on us, and we refuse to disappear. We, La Via Campesina, are a worldwide movement of rural women, peasants and family farmers, farm workers, indigenous peoples, rural youth and afro-descendents from Asia, Europe, America and Africa, gathered together in Maputo, Mozambique from October 19 to 22, 2008, for our V International Conference. We were received in a warm and fraternal fashion by our hosts, the National Union of Peasants (União Nacional de Camponeses/UNAC) of Mozambique.
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