March 2007 Enews


March 2007		Food Sovereignty E-Newsletter				Volume 2 Issue 3
Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Forum The first global Forum for Food Sovereignty in Selingue, Mali from February 23-27 took place in a specially constructed village, named after a powerful symbol of womanhood and farming among Malian communities. This woman, Nyeleni, was determined amidst a society which discouraged her to maintain her sense of self, to work and live from the land, and to provide for her family. Local organizers chose her to honor and inspire our on-going struggle for food sovereignty. Mali, a country ridden with conflict over land and resources, as well as imposed trade and food aid policies undermining food sovereignty, recently became one of the first nations to make food sovereignty a legal right for the people. Thus, stepping in this new direction, Nyeleni hosted social movement representatives from 98 different countries (over 500 delegates in all), where each brought with him or her the spirit of their struggles and the tools to coordinate their work on food sovereignty into an international movement. Delegations, consisting of farmers, fishers, workers, indigenous peoples and consumers, were all organized regionally, where they return after the forum to scale-up works in progress, empowered by Nyeleni’s global orientation. In this issue get insight on Mali from a forum organizer, on-the-ground reactions from a North American delegate, and one report of Nyeleni’s fighting spirit manifested by 900 women in Brazil. 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: The Global Food Sovereignty Fight Growing Momentum for Food Sovereignty Mali: A country in search of Food Sovereignty Food Sovereignty: A Vision of Inclusion Nyeleni 2007 Declaration 900 LVC Women Occupy Cargill Ethanol Plant Take Action Legislation Impacting Food Sovereignty Resources: Food Sovereignty Publications Tune In KPFA Pacifica Radio California 94.1 Wholesome food, sustainably grown and affordably priced. Is that so difficult? Are agribusiness firms, backed by federal policy and international dictates, preventing an ideal from becoming reality? The NFFC's George Naylor and Food First's Eric Holt-Gimenez discuss the 2007 Farm Bill, food sovereignty, the fate of family farms, and much more. “The Morning Show” and “Against the Grain” Upcoming Food Sovereignty Events *April 5* Tufts University FOOD Symposium: Power in the Global Food System Boston, MA *April 13-15* Family Farm Defenders Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH 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 La Via Campesina National Family Farm Coalition Grassroots International Food & Water Watch Food First Family Farm Defenders Nyeleni 2007 Official Site 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!	Mali: A Country in Search of Food Sovereignty An interview with local forum organizer Mamadou Goita “Africa is also peace and social organization.” In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Brasil de Fato, one of the Malian organizers of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, Mamadou Goïta, a member of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Development Alternatives (Irpad, in French), speaks on his country’s agriculture production. Goïta exposes an organized Africa in search of its own democracy, countering an image built by the corporate media of a continent not mobilized and forever involved in conflicts and civil wars. *READ ON…*
	Food Sovereignty: A Vision of Inclusion Christina Schiavoni, International Coordinator of World Hunger Year reports from Nyéléni 2007 Greetings from Sélingué, Mali, where the Forum on Food Sovereignty, Nyéléni 2007, is going strong. As I write, djembe music is pulsing through the air, and I catch fragments of conversations interspersed with French, English, Spanish, and the local Bambara, among other languages unfamiliar to my ears. The energy here is palpable, and well it should be. Today has been intense yet energizing, as each of the 500+ participants worked by thematic group (seven in total--mine was "Trade and Local Markets") on the drafting of an action agenda for achieving food sovereignty. The idea is to leave this forum as a more coordinated movement equipped with a framework for actions from the local to global levels, and I believe that we will accomplish this *READ ON…*
	Declaration of Nyéléni February 27,2007, Nyeleni Village, Selingue, Mali We, more than 500 representatives from more than 80 countries, of organizations of peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisher-folk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers, environmental and urban movements have gathered together in the village of Nyéléni in Sélingué, Mali to strengthen a global movement for food sovereignty. We are doing this, brick by brick, have been living in huts constructed by hand in the local tradition, and eating food that is being produced and prepared by the Sélingué community. We give our collective endeavour the name “Nyéléni” as a tribute to and inspiration from a legendary Malian peasant woman who farmed and fed her peoples well… *READ ON…*
	Via Campesina Women Occupy Cargill Ethanol Plant Friday, March 9, 2007, São Paulo, Brazil More than 900 women from Via Campesina occupied the Cevasa sugarmill in the region of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo state. Cevasa is the largest sugarcane company in Brazil, and was recently sold to Cargill, one of the largest agricultural transnational corporations in the world. The protest is part of a national "week of struggle", under the slogan "Women in defense of food sovereignty"…. *READ ON...*
	Legislation Impacting Food Sovereignty Disaster Assistance, MILC, & the 2007 Farm Bill On March 22^nd, the Senate Appropriations Committee included emergency disaster assistance and extended the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program in the committee's Supplemental Appropriations bill. The House Appropriations committee approved similar language the following day. The full Senate will likely vote this week. Why does this wonk talk matter? Devastating weather conditions—droughts, floods, hurricanes, snowstorms and wildfires—have placed significant burden on our nation’s farmers and ranchers. The above is the first step to getting the much needed money into the hands of those that need it most to provide food and fiber for our tables. All farmers and consumers should contact their Senators and urge their support. For more information, contact us. 2007 Farm Bill Every five years or so, the President signs an obscure piece of omnibus legislation that determines what we eat, how much it costs, and as a result, the health of our population. The American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by Congress, typically with virtually no input from anyone beyond a handful of farm-state legislators. Nothing could do more to reform the American food system—and by doing so improve the condition of America's environment and public health—than if all of us were to start paying attention to the farm bill. Learn about the 2007 Farm Bill by reading NFFC’s Spring newsletter and listening to the webcast of Food Fight: A Teach In on the 2007 Farm Bill at Berkeley, CA on March 21^st. Resources! Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally While inequitable agricultural subsidies are one of the factors that contribute to the crisis in agriculture by indirectly depressing commodity prices, the elimination of subsidies alone will not solve the crisis. Indeed, unless new farm policies are first put in place that provide fair prices to farmers from the market and curtail overproduction, eliminating U.S. farm subsidies could in fact harm many smaller-scale family farmers in the United States and lead to further market concentration. As a result, the Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally campaign advocates a broad platform to address the overproduction and low prices that are harming small farmers in the U.S. and abroad. We pledge our support for alternative agriculture and trade policies that will provide sustainable livelihoods for farmers in the United States and around the globe, by helping to ensure that global food corporations pay family farmers a fair price for their products in the marketplace and promote socially and environmentally sustainable farming. Click here to view the policy document, and click here for the sign-on statement. For more information, visit www.globalfarmer.org. 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.
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, the right to a fair price, 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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