February 2007		Food Sovereignty E-Newsletter	Volume 2 Issue 2
Get Fresh with a Family Farmer! Happy Valentine’s! 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! Click here to subscribe to the Food Sovereignty E-Newsletter.
What’s on the Table in this Issue: Love Your Farmer Defining Food Sovereignty Love Your Farmer Sweet Justice Nyeleni for Food Sovereignty Take Action Legislation Impacting Food Sovereignty Resources: Food Sovereignty Publications Upcoming Food Sovereignty Events February 17-20 Food Justice: NFFC Winter Meeting, Washington, DC February 22-27 Via Campesina Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Conference, Mali Mali Farmer Story Share your food sovereignty events! E-mail Deb Tune In La Voz Latina will showcase the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum on Saturday, Feb. 17, 4-5pm (ET) on 99.5 FM WBAI. 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 Via Campesina National Family Farm Coalition Grassroots International Food & Water Watch Food First Family Farm Defenders What You Can Do 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!	Love Your Farmer By Debra Eschmeyer, National Family Farm Coalition So you may think it is absurd to know who drove the combine to harvest the corn that fed the chickens that laid the eggs in your omelet, but that just goes to show how disconnected we are to where our food comes from in the 21st Century. For millions of years we foraged or raised our food and knew exactly where every tasty morsel came from. But where is the relationship to our food now? Our reliance on processed food is not only victimizing our health, but also destroying the all but forgotten relationship factor to food and those who grow it. You’ll find food with a face is a relationship you won’t want to cheat on. READ ON…
	Sweet Justice By Organic Consumers Association FACT: One-third of Nestle's chocolate is from West Africa, where over 286,000 children are working in slave-like conditions on cocoa (chocolate) farms. FACT: Dole is the largest distributor of cut-flowers in the world, the majority of which are imported from Columbia and Ecuador, where farmers and flower workers (often adolescent girls) are exposed to 127 different chemicals, including neurotoxins and carcinogens. FACT: The three private owners of M&M/Mars Inc. are each "worth" $10.4 billion, while the West African farmers growing the cocoa for M&Ms chocolate are paid an average of $108 annually. FACT: Despite record profits in 2006, Hershey's has been accused of buying from contractors who utilize child labor and child slavery on cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast. TAKE ACTION: Send a message to the chocolate and flower giants to stop child labor, illegal toxic chemical use, union busting, and to pay their farmers a living wage. Support Fair Trade Chocolate Sweet justice for cocoa farmers!  Buy fair trade certified chocolate for that special someone this Valentine's Day: Divine Chocolate USA (http://www.divinechocolateusa.com/) Equal Exchange (http://www.equalexchange.com/) Global Exchange Online Store (http://www.gxonlinestore.org/chocolate.html) Sweet Earth Organic Chocolate (http://www.sweetearthchocolates.com/)
	Nyéléni —for Food Sovereignty By Grain: The Seedling Two leading activists share strategies that are being adopted in different parts of the world in the fight for food sovereignty. “In Mali we realized that the food we were eating was starting to come from all over the world – from western countries, from India, and so on. We realized that we were being hoodwinked, that we were being told that, just because we had enough food to eat, we had food security. But this was not the case. Corporations might even make food cheaper, but this did not mean that we had real food security.” Mamadou Goita, Mali “To deny people their food is a political act. Very recently they have started doing what we call “hunger mapping,” and found out who are the really destitute in their communities and have started food kitchens for them. It’s not rich people who are doing this, but people with very low cash incomes who have gained enormous confidence through the food sovereignty process.” P.V. Satheesh, India READ ON…
	Legislation Impacting Food Sovereignty Cloning Action Alert Chiclone nuggets, milcloneshakes, porclone chops…you won’t see those labels even though you could be digesting cloned products unless you act now. The mission of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to protect the public’s health through assuring the safety of our nation’s food supply. The FDA’s purpose is NOT to facilitate the dumping of dubious food products onto people’s dinner plates for the sake of corporate profit. That is why it is so disturbing to hear about the FDA’s Dec. 28, 2006 determination that cloned livestock byproducts are indeed safe for human consumption. Do you want to know where your food comes from? Read on and Act now! Civil Society Declaration U.S. Civil Society Declaration on the KOR-US FTA United States civil society organizations express deep concerns over the proposed U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). No free trade agreement should prevent countries from establishing their own domestic agricultural policies that promote food sovereignty, appropriate for their particular economic conditions, geographic characteristics and cultural practices and beliefs. Trade agreements must not interfere with the ability of countries to prohibit dumping of agricultural products that undermine the well being of family farmers and rural communities. Read on and Act now!