Very interesting note
from Anna Lappe in
susan
By Anna Lappé
Published: Sunday February 25th,
2007
I am
sitting in the “media headquarters” – a squat concrete building in the middle of
a dusty compound – at the first gathering of social movements around the world
fighting for “food sovereignty.” I’m staying here with more than 500 other
delegates from five continents and eighty countries about two hours outside of
When I told
people I was coming to this forum not many people in the States seemed to know
what I meant by food sovereignty. Many of the organizers of this week’s events
think maybe that’s not such a bad thing. “Not knowing what the words mean, gets
people asking questions about what we stand for, not automatically assuming they
know,” Eric Holt-Gimenez said to me on our 24-hour journey here from Washington
DC. (Eric is the Executive Director of the Institute for Food and Development
Policy, better known as Food First , the “people’s think tank” my mother,
Frances Moore Lappé, co-founded in the early
1970s.)
Fundamentally, food sovereignty means that everyone
should have the right to access wholesome food, that producers should have the
right to fair wages for their work, and that communities the world over should
have the right over their natural and genetic resources, like
seeds.
As the
organizers of the conference put it, on a painted banner draped along the
open-air walls of the forum’s amphitheater, they’re fighting for: agriculture by
and for peasants and small farmers; fishing by fisherfolk not multinational
companies or on industrialized fish farms; livestock by pastoralists; indigenous
people with rights over their own territories; wholesome food for all consumers;
labor with workers rights at the center; a healthy environment for all; and a
future with youth in the countryside
For the
next five days, more than 500 delegates representing social movements from the
mountains of
On the Air
France flight from
As I sit
here reflecting on the day and a half of discussion I’ve heard so far—from a
Palestinian farmer, a Thai indigenous fisherman, a shrimper from Louisiana, an
African leader in the African Youth Coalition Against Hunger, among many, many
others—I reflect differently on this piece of news from Kraft. For a key theme,
throughout all these conversations, has been the impact of transnational
companies on the ability for all of those gathered here, from such diverse
places and cultures, to be able to continue to farm, to feed themselves, and to
provide food for their own communities. They’re facing the onslaught of
corporate food in their markets, the impact of trade policies which have forced
the opening of their borders to the subsidized food from the industrialized
north, the introduction of genetically modified seeds, and more. So far, I’ve
made out at least two dozen languages, but in the struggle to translate the
complex ideas being discussed, names like Coke, WTO, and Kraft have needed
little translation.
As Ahmad
Taheri from a farmers association in
While many
of the delegates share similar struggles, they also share a similar ambition.
The concept of the Forum itself was ambitious: The organizers, the international
network Via Campesina among other groups, has created a village with huts
housing more than 500 people, with food to feed us all, and with official
translation in four languages (albeit on sometimes spotty radio transmitters).
They started building just two months ago, and though the water, electricity,
housing, food, and Internet was all a work-in-progress when we arrived, it’s
been amazing to see the Forum come together.
Now, as I
dust off my computer keyboard, or wipe the sand from my eyes, or sit on the
ground with delegates while we eat our handmade lunches, I think about the $400
million budget Kraft has to export and promote its vision of what food should
look and taste like and where it should come from. I’ve never before felt the clear sense of the people
power of grassroots movements around the world who are fighting for food
sovereignty, in many cases fighting for their lives. Yes, the vision to create a
village out of nothing in two months might have been crazily ambitious, but the
dream of the people gathered here is even bigger. As one organizer put it, “We
want nothing less than to change the
world.”
GNN
contributing editor Anna Lappé is the co-author of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic
Kitchen and Hope’s Edge:
The Next Diet for a Small Planet and the co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet
Fund.
I’ve begun
to post pictures here.
I’ll add more soon.