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world food day
On World Food Day, Celebrating the Power of Regenerative Organic Farming
'Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform structures of power in society.'
Oct 16, 2015
As environmentalists, humanitarians, and farmers from around the globe celebrate the 35th annual World Food Day on Friday, sustainability advocates are heralding the capacity of organic regenerative agriculture and agroecology to address wide-ranging challenges from climate change to public health to hunger.
"On this World Food Day, we face two interlinked planetary challenges: to produce enough food for all people and to sequester enough carbon in the soil to reverse climate change," said Tom Newmark, co-founder of The Carbon Underground, on Friday.
"Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform societal power structures. We need to control seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture, and the commons in the hands of the peoples who feed the world."
--Report of the International Forum of Agroecology at the Nyeleni Center, Mali.
Newmark made his statements at a Washington, D.C. press conference hosted by the nonprofit organization Regeneration International and featuring a panel of 10 international experts on organic agriculture, carbon sequestration, and world hunger.
"There is one solution for those challenges: regenerative organic agriculture," he continued. "We can no longer afford to rely on chemical farming, as synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides have destroyed soils worldwide and rendered them unable to rebuild soil organic matter."
What's more, as author, activist, and panel participant Vandana Shiva wrote in an op-ed on Friday, "For all the destruction it causes, the industrial food system produces only 30% of the food eaten by people. If we continue, we will soon have a dead planet and no food."
However, she pointed to "another road to food security. The road that research institutes and governments abandoned under the influence of giant chemical corporations (now seed and Biotechnology Corporations). This is the road of agroecology and small-scale farming, which still produce 70% of the food."
Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association, stated that regenerative practices and land use, "scaled up globally on billions of acres of farmland, grassland, and forests," can feed the world and reverse global warming and deteriorating public health.
"An international alliance of small farmers, ranchers, and indigenous communities, allied with conscious consumers, can literally cool the planet, restore soil health and biodiversity, and move us away from climate catastrophe and societal degeneration," Cummins said.
In an op-ed on Thursday, Marcia DeLonge of the Union of Concerned Scientists outlined the top tenets of agroecology. These include animal-crop integration, the use of locally adapted seeds and breeds, crop rotation, and agroforestry—the mixing of trees or shrubs into farm operations to provide additional income and shade, shelter, and protect plants, animals, or water resources.
"Farming systems are only truly sustainable if the food they grow winds up on the forks of consumers," DeLonge noted. "This means that transitioning to an agroecological farming system at a large scale means more than just picking and choosing from the above practices. Instead, thinking big about agroecology means developing the science, business models, and policies to support healthier relationships between agroecosystems, producers, and consumers, and building from there to produce real transformative change."
To that end, a report from small-scale food producers publicized by Friends of the Earth International was presented this week to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security in Rome, hoping policymakers will embrace agroecological processes "rather than support forces that destroy them."
"Agroecology practiced by small-scale producers generates local knowledge, promotes social justice, nurtures identity and culture, and strengthens the economic viability of rural areas," states the report (pdf) developed at the International Forum of Agroecology in Mali this year. "Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform societal power structures. We need to control seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture, and the commons in the hands of the peoples who feed the world."
This 17-minute documentary from the Fair World Project further delves into how small farmers are helping "cool the planet":
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Small Scale Food Producers are the Solution to the Global Food Crisis
Oct 16, 2014
ROME, Italy - Today, World Food Day, we are confronted with the failure of our global food system: 805 million people are going hungry while obesity affects over 2 billion of us.
The hungry are mostly the rural poor living in developing countries, predominantly peasants and other small-scale food producers, from Africa, Asia Nearly one of every nine people go to bed hungry every night, but not Adolfo and his family, despite the fact that he is from an area devastated by the effects of climate change and flooding, the Lempe Valley in El Salvador.
"The solution to global hunger is within our grasp, but it requires a fundamental reform of the global food system: a wholesale shift from industrial farming to agroecology and food sovereignty."
Adolfo knows from first hand experience that agricultural diversity and saving traditional seeds are essential to the livelihoods of small scale food producers, who, in turn, play a vital role in feeding local people.
Governments around the world have sidelined small-scale food producers for decades, pushing millions of them into hunger. Yet, even today, most of the world's food is still grown by them, using traditional seed varieties and without the use of industrial inputs.
Peasants like Adolfo are the primary food producers feeding the world today. And we desperately need them, not more industrial farming, if we are to feed the planet in the context of climate change and widespread degradation of natural resources.
In Africa, peasants grow almost all locally consumed food. In Latin America, 60 per cent of farming, including meat, comes from small-scale family farms. In Asia, the global rice powerhouse, almost all rice is grown on farms of less than 2 hectares.
Yet industrial farming - based on monocultures, hybrid seeds, and chemical pesticides and fertilizers - is still promoted heavily by agribusinesses and some governments as the best way to provide food for the planet.
Yet, evidence shows that industrial farming is destroying the resources we rely on to produce our food. Desertification of soils, a diminishing genetic pool, and dead-sea zones from fertilizer runoff are just some of the effects of industrial farming. Climate change is another huge challenge that could bring down agricultural productivity significantly by 2050, especially in developing countries. Ironically, industrial farming is itself a major contributor to climate change because of its reliance on fossil fuels and fertilizers.
Despite this, backers of industrial agriculture point to our growing population and the need to produce more food as a justification for ignoring its real environmental consequences.
But we know that producing more food and increasing yields are not the sole challenges. In fact, we already produce enough food to feed our population today and in the future.
The problem is not lack of food, rather its unbalanced distribution. Access to food is dictated by wealth and profit rather than need, when "free trade" is promoted over the Right to Food.
As a result, half the world's grain now feeds factory-farmed animals and a huge proportion of food crops are turned into agrofuels to fuel cars, taking food from the hungry and diverting it to wealthy consumers.
El Salvador: Adolfo and his seed bankThis testimony shows how, by saving and exchanging his seeds, a small farmer in El Salvador preserves biodiversity and ...
Our real hunger challenge today is to raise incomes and sustain the livelihoods of small-scale food producers, enabling them to feed themselves and local people sustainably. Facing this challenge, the 'food sovereignty' movement has emerged as an incredibly effective alternative to the industrial food system.
The movement for food sovereignty is backed by more than 300 million small- scale food producers as well as consumers, environmentalists and human rights Food sovereignty is fundamentally different from food security. A country focused on achieving food security does not distinguish where food comes from, or the conditions under which it is produced and distributed. National food security targets are often met by sourcing food produced under environmentally destructive and socially exploitative conditions that destroy local food producers but benefit agribusiness corporations.
On the other hand, food sovereignty promotes community control of resources and access to land for small-scale producers. It prioritizes peoples' ownership of their food policies. Importantly, it demands the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through agroecology - the application of ecological principles to farming.
In the past few years, new evidence from several United Nations agencies has recognized agroecology as the most effective way to tackle the multiple crises of hunger, environmental damage and poverty. A 2011 analysis of agro-ecology (pdf) found that it has the potential to double small farmers' food production in 10 years.
Even a fraction of such a gain would go a very long way to substantially decrease world hunger.
The evidence is clear but changing the food system is difficult.
The power of seed and pesticide companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta, of gigantic supermarkets such as Wal-Mart, and of grain traders such as Cargill has grown so strong that they exert a massive influence over national food policies. This ensures that agribusinesses still receive billions of dollars in subsidies and policy support.
The solution to global hunger is within our grasp, but it requires a fundamental reform of the global food system: a wholesale shift from industrial farming to agroecology and food sovereignty.
It is Adolfo's knowledge, and that of millions of peasants like him that we want to celebrate today with the motto of World Food Day 2014: 'Family farming: feeding the world, caring for the Earth.'
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March Against Monsanto Kicks Off Second Round Worldwide
Mass demonstrations against the biotech industry kicked off worldwide Saturday in the second "March Against Monsanto" in 6 months.
Oct 12, 2013
Mass demonstrations against the biotech industry kicked off worldwide Saturday in the second "March Against Monsanto" in 6 months.
Marches are scheduled in 52 countries and over 500 cities to call for a boycott of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), harmful agro-chemicals, and a return to food sovereignty for small scale and independent food producers and consumers.
Photos, live-streams and tweets are pouring in across the social media sphere from rallies across the world.
The first "March Against Monsanto" took place last May and drew up to two million people.
See below for live twitter updates as they happen throughout the day.
Tweets about "#MAM OR #MarchOct12"
Food justice expert and activist Vandana Shiva, who is marching with protesters today in London in correlation with her "Food Freedom Fornight" series of food justice actions, published a video message for March Against Monsanto marchers:
Vandana Shiva: March Against Monsanto for FreedomSpanish subtitles available - see viewing instructions below Subtítulos en español disponibles - ver instrucciones de visualización ...
\u201cMT @soit_goes: #Chicago march against #Monsanto stretching two city blocks. #MAM #mamo12\u201d— Kevin Gosztola (@Kevin Gosztola) 1381604926
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