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December
2006 |
Food Sovereignty
E-Newsletter |
Volume 1 Issue 2 |
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Food Sovereignty in the HolidaysAt this delightful time of year when friends and family come together around glorious festive food, what better time to celebrate food sovereignty? We seek to achieve food sovereignty through everyday actions to reclaim control of our food system. Join us in working towards a fair food system that ensures health, justice, and dignity for all. Please share this resource to empower others to celebrate food sovereignty with every forkful! The National Family Farm Coalition wishes everyone a safe and wonderful
Holiday Season. Eat well! Click here to subscribe to the Food Sovereignty E-Newsletter. |
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What’s
on the Table in this Issue: Defining Food
Sovereignty La Via on the Basic Principles of Food Sovereignty Take Action Legislation Impacting Food
Sovereignty Resources: Food Sovereignty Brochure
and Books Upcoming Food Sovereignty Events: February 17-20 Food Justice: NFFC Winter Meeting,
Washington, DC February 22-27 Via Campesina Nyeleni Food
Sovereignty Conference, Mali Share your food sovereignty
events! E-mail Deb 7 Basic Principles of Food Sovereignty: 1. Food: A Basic Human Right 2. Agrarian Reform 3. Protecting Natural Resources 4. Fair Trade 5. Ending Global Hunger 6. Peace 7. Democratic Control For More Information on Food Sovereignty: National Family Farm Coalition Looking for a Gift that Lasts? Donate $5
to $10 per month to directly improve our food
system! You can fund projects like sending dairy farmers to DC to defend the
integrity of the definition of milk. Click here to make
your contribution! |
New Year’s Resolutions
By John Peck, Family Farm Defenders Wonder what you can do to champion food
sovereignty in 2007? It can be as easy as buying local apples or at least fruit not shipped in from China. Or
you can challenge yourself…inform one
new person a week about how the 2007 Farm Bill with a billion dollar
tax-payer price tag affects what they eat and feed their families through
government subsidies instead of fair prices to farmers. To
celebrate food sovereignty this holiday season, John Peck shares a dozen
ideas with successful examples to put on one’s to do list of New Year’s
Resolutions: READ ON… |
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Where Food Choices Lead
By Jim Goodman, Organic Dairy Farmer Self-reliance
is not a bad thing. Granted, not everyone can or wants to raise his or her
own food. I guess as a farmer, that's good for my business, but I do want
them to care, to
take part in the decision of what they eat and how it is grown. Just as it is wrong for the corporate media to
only offer part of the news, it is also wrong for the corporate food industry
to basically say, “shut up and eat.” |
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La Via on the Basic Principles of Food Sovereignty
By Via Campesina North American Region We, the farmer organizations of the North
American Region that participate in la Via Campesina, are committed to
supporting the principle of food sovereignty as an alternative to the
principle of “free trade” which currently undermines the world’s agriculture
and trade policy, and which endangers our survival as family farmers and
peasants. Food Sovereignty places emphasis on who produces,
and where food comes from, going beyond the idea of food security, which only
takes into consideration having the resources to buy food on the
international market, and the sufficient availability of food regardless of
where it comes from. |
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Legislation Impacting Food Sovereignty
Local Food
Safety Laws—Safe for Now National Uniformity for
Food Act –No Senate action in 109th Congress With E.coli 0157:H7 outbreaks in spinach, then in
green onions at Taco Bell, and now a yet to be determined source at an
Indianapolis Olive Garden, consumer confidence in food safety is faltering.
Consumers deserve reliable food regulation from farm to table, but it won’t
happen by taking away state and local agencies ability to enforce food
protection programs, which is what the National Uniformity for Food Act would
have done. In March the House of Representatives passed a
resolution (HR 4167) to take away state food safety programs. The National Uniformity for Food Act would
nullify state and local food safety or labeling requirements, unless the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants a waiver to a state. The Senate did
not take a vote on the bill before the Holiday recess, which means it will
need to be reintroduced in the new Congress. Inform your Members of
Congress that you do not approve of this bill. Click here to Take Action! All of the thousands of pieces of legislation that were left undone
when Congress left town in December will either be reintroduced or rewritten.
The policy proposals developed by farmers and advocates post-Katrina and Rita
that address the real needs of family farmers and farm workers will be
delivered to the new Congress in an effort to rebuild the food security and
infrastructure that is necessary for there to be food sovereignty in the
region. Hearings in the House and Senate Agriculture Committees will provide
an opportunity for real input and debate on the need for fair prices, equity,
and diversity in the farm and food system. |
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Resources!
Food Sovereignty
Brochure
National Family Farm Coalition and Grassroots International
developed a food sovereignty brochure to empower family farmers across the
world. Click
here to view. (It is
a large file and takes quite some time to download, even with a fast
connection, so give it a minute.) NEW Food Sovereignty Books Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian
Reform edited by
Peter Rosset, Raj Patel, and Michael Courville Forward by
Carmen Diana Deere Agrarian
reform is back at the center of the national and rural development debate, a
debate of vital importance to the future of the Global South and genuine
economic democracy. The World Bank as well as a number of national
governments and local land owning elites has weighed in with a series of
controversial policy changes. In response, peasants, landless, and indigenous
people’s organizations around the world have intensified their struggle to
redistribute land from the underutilized holdings of a wealthy few to the
productive hands of the many. The essays in this volume critically analyze a
wide range of competing visions of land reform. “Written from
the perspective of civil society actors themselves, Promised Land is a
powerful argument for the need to develop food sovereignty, strengthen local
communities, and build transnational connections in the fight against
inequality, poverty, and rural violence.” --Wendy Wolford, coauthor of To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil. To Order: http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1587 Food is Different: Why the WTO Should Get Out of Agriculture by Peter Rosset Forward by
George Naylor, President of NFFC Peter Rosset
argues that what is at stake is the very future of our global food system, of
each country’s unique agricultural and farming systems, and the livelihoods
of rural people in both the rich industrial countries and the South. He
unravels the complex ways in which agriculture in the North is supported,
subsidized, etc. and argues for the future of agriculture to be taken
completely out of the WTO’s ambit since food is not just another commodity,
but something which goes to the heart of human livelihood, local cultures and
national security. |
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The National Family Farm Coalition is building support for a growing
international food sovereignty movement—one which seeks to guarantee the
basic right of communities to choose where and how their food is produced and
what food they consume. Fighting for a fair price, farmers are leading the
way to change the food system. A simplified definition of Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples,
countries, and nations to decide their own food and agricultural policies,
the right to produce food for their own domestic markets, and the right to
protect those markets from being destroyed by the dumping of cheap imports
sold below the cost of production in the country where they were grown. If you want your e-mail address removed from our list or new
addresses added, please contact Deb Eschmeyer. |
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Tel: 202-543-5675 |
Fax: 202-543-0978 |
E-mail: nffc@nffc.net |
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110 Maryland Ave. N.E., Suite 307, Washington, DC 20002 |
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