Washington D.C. (June 9, 2008) - The National Family Farm Coalition today denounced the
declaration coming out of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization conference
in Rome last week that continues to blindly advocate the same free trade model that is
responsible for much of the current global food crisis. Instead of implementing food
sovereignty principles that benefit the livelihoods of farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples
and pastoralists around the world and help protect each country's right to food, the UN FAO
conference sided overwhelmingly with corporate agribusiness's agenda to continue to
dominate our food system and ecological commons.

Dena Hoff, NFFC Vice President and Montana farmer, who represented Via Campesina as
part of the civil society presence at the UN FAO conference, said: "It is outrageous for
political leaders to continue pushing trade liberalization and a new Doha round as the
solutions to our food crisis. Farmers in countries from Haiti to Indonesia to Mexico have been
driven off their land thanks to dumping by corporate agribusinesses and the push for export-oriented agriculture. Thanks to advice from the World Bank, IMF and WTO, countries are
now at the mercy of global speculators and foreign imports for their food security instead of
relying on local markets and domestic farm production."

Bill Christison, NFFC Executive Board member and a Missouri corn and soybean farmer,
criticized the United States for pushing genetic engineering and biotechnology as ways to
solve the food crisis and said, "A panel of 4,000 scientific and social science experts from
around the world released a report through the International Assessment of Agricultural
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) that showed chemical-intensive
biotechnology would not solve the food crisis. We need to be emphasizing sustainable,
ecologically-sensitive agriculture that respects our planet's biodiversity. We do not need to be
pushing solutions that only fatten the pocketbooks of Monsanto and Syngenta."

NFFC notes that transnational corporations had more presence and influence at the FAO
conference than the voices of farmers and those who produce food. Agribusiness corporations
are profiting tremendously while millions around the world suffer from increased hunger and
deprivation. Profits for Monsanto in the first quarter of 2008 have risen by 108% while grain
traders Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland had an 86% profit increase and 42% increase
respectively. Mosaic, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its profits rise by an
astounding 1,134%.

NFFC believes the real solutions to the global food crisis should center on food sovereignty
and the right of countries to determine their domestic food policies. These policies would
include:
o Combating financial speculation and futures trading on food
o Examining corporate profiteering
o Emphasizing local food production instead of imports
o Asserting the rights of governments to protect their agriculture sectors and rejecting
the dismantling of state tariffs and domestic intervention as called for in free trade
agreements
o Building buffer stocks and food and grain reserves to stabilize commodity prices