6/12 Food crisis, food sovereignty, peasant movements : Marijke Colle

Summary : food crisis, food sovereignty, peasant movements.

- What is the meaning of the actual global food crisis? The numbers of people suffering from hunger, undernourishment or malnutrition amounts to 1 billion, the majority of which are peasants producing food. Is the earth capable of proving food for 7 billion people and more ( perhaps 9 billion in 2050 …)? How has traditional agriculture been transformed in the second part of the 20th Century? (agribusiness, agrochemicals, monocultures, pesticides, GMO,…)?
- What is the meaning of the concept of food sovereignty? Which type of agriculture, of commerce of food stuffs, which relations between the local and the global, between cities and countryside? Who decides on production, on trade and on consumption of our food?
- What is the potential role of the new peasants organisations like La Via Campesina? What is the link between farmers struggles, the fight of indigenous people and an agriculture respectful of nature, of the climate and of humans? What possible alliances between farmers and workers?

Reading materials

• Esther Vivas , The food crisis strikes again
• Esther Vivas , The whys of Hunger
• La Via Campesina , Shashe declaration: Africans! We can feed ourselves with agroecology and food sovereignty
• Media:Grain-93-seized-the-2008-landgrab-for-food-and-financial-security.pdf‎