As a culmination of actions for the International Day of Action for Food Sovereignty and against Transnational Corporations, La Vía Campesina launches a new publication: “We feed the world”, an illustrated book that defends peasant agriculture against aggression and agribusiness appropriation transnational companies.
Transnational agribusiness has long violated the rights of peasants and others working in rural areas with impunity. Supported by the capital accumulated from the exploitation of agricultural producers, these companies work in complicity with local authorities, governments and sometimes even mercenaries. They forcibly evict people from their land, push for business-friendly reforms at the expense of the public welfare, and appropriate and control natural assets and peasant heritage such as seeds.
All these violations, often unpunished in most countries, have a direct and devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of urban and rural communities.
The communities fought and say “we feed the world”. The sustained and organized resistance of peasants, fishermen, migrants and indigenous communities exposed these companies and their crimes in many cases. However, the lack of a legally binding international treaty to control violations by Transnational Corporations (TNCs) has meant that these partial victories achieved by communities often go unnoticed. At the same time, corporate violations of human rights and impunity continue across the world.
Corporations were also denounced and sanctioned in many countries. But instead of mending their ways, they try to “groom their crimes” by occupying positions in those spaces of international governance designed to regulate them, often with the implicit approval of the highest officials of the United Nations and its affiliated bodies.
Corporations don’t feed the world
Social movements and civil society organizations are facing the growing influence of corporations in the arena of national and international food and nutrition policy. The strong civil society resistance against the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit is one of the recent examples of this resistance. Despite this clear and united opposition from global civil society, the influence of transnational corporations continues to grow in international, regional and national political arenas.
This growing influence of corporations and their “sustainability discourse” in international forums hides the reality on the ground: the increase in world prices of food and agricultural inputs aggravated by the speculation of raw materials, the deterioration of soil health, the destruction of biodiversity , the criminal levels of greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial food chain and the shameful attempts to privatize and patent native seeds that are the heritage of peoples. Today, transnational corporations are behind the main threats and violence suffered by peasants and rural workers along the food production chain.
However, not all is lost.
This relentless drive to corporatize our food systems has met with strong resistance from peasants, wage workers and indigenous peoples. La Vía Campesina is an expression of that resistance. For nearly three decades, the global peasant movement has held an opposing view on how to feed the world.
In this vision based on the principles of Food Sovereignty, local populations and communities are the main actors in the fight against poverty and hunger. It demands autonomy and objective conditions for the use of local resources and demands a Popular Agrarian Reform. It defends the right of peasant communities to use, conserve and exchange seeds. It defends people’s right to healthy and nutritious food. It promotes agroecological production cycles, respecting the climatic and cultural diversity of each community. Defends the rights of peasants, indigenous peoples, wage workers and migrants at all levels of the global food system.
Peace with social justice, gender justice and solidary economies are essential preconditions to make Food Sovereignty a reality. La Via Campesina calls for an international trade order based on cooperation and compassion rather than competition and coercion.
The book “We feed the world”
In this illustrated book “We feed the world”, La Vía Campesina, with the support of artist and activist Annelise Verdier, shows the contrast between the visions of production, distribution and consumption of food led by agribusiness and that historically practiced by peasants. It captures the attempt to embody agriculture and food production and expresses the courageous resistance of peasants, workers and indigenous peoples in favor of the Food Sovereignty of the peoples.
La Vía Campesina advocates for a food system that focuses on the interests of people and the planet. He denounces the industrial food system, which exploits cheap labor and encourages fierce competition for profit. La Via Campesina asserts that a legally binding global treaty consistent with the articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas is urgently needed. These instruments, along with other international conventions and treaties, will curb corporate control and its undue influence on food systems.