Civil Eats "promotes critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities. In our efforts, we support the development of a dialog among local and national leaders about the American food system, and its effects abroad. Civil Eats style of conversation is as diverse as its 40+ contributors."
What I did find were recent stories on Food Sovereignty ( the video connected to this very much) which is what I have posted on today. Thank you Robyn for sharing something important to find out more about... and for prompting me to consider
sovereignty |ˈsäv(ə)rəntē|noun ( pl. -ties)supreme power or authority : how can we hope to wrest sovereignty away from the oligarchy and back to the people?• the authority of a state to govern itself or another state : national sovereignty.See note at jurisdiction .• a self-governing state.ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French sovereinete, from soverain (see sovereign ).
The more I read about the world's traded seeds the less control ordinary people may have now over the right to access the seed heritage of the land they live in .... this is indeed a serious issue in some parts of the world and is worth being vigilant about. There are places it has become illegal to save seeds. If you have not been aware of this shift in circumstance over the last decade or so then it might well seem impossible to believe.
With thoughts of s o v e r e i g n i t y in mind consider these stories below if you have time to read them...
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| 2009, Paraguay |
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| from the Women Seed Forum in South Korea |
Content: This booklet is the compilation of the pepers and experiences of the women peasants from peasant organizations members of La Via Campesina in the region. The booklet explained about the role of the women peasant in conserve the seed and in another hand we are loosing the native seed we have. This booklet also given example how women peasant save the seed and exchange the seed among the peasant.
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Rome, 14th October, 2010
U.N. COMMITTEE ON WORLD FOOD SECURITY |
Farmers from the international peasant movement La Via Campesina participating in the the plenary session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the UN in Rome (October 11-16) will present their evaluation of the discussion during a press conference tomorrow. - 15th of October – 10h30: Press Conference by La Via Campesina FAO, Via delle Terme di Caracalla) |
| READ MORE... |
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| WEDNESDAY, 28 JULY 2010 17:01 |
(July 2010) Four years after the moratorium on Terminator technology was reaffirmed by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), proposals to develop and commercialize ‘genetic-use restriction technologies’ (GURTs) are back on the agenda for policymakers and the biotechnology industry. Terminator is a threat to food sovereignty and agrobiodiversity: ending the moratorium on Terminator will increase control of seed by transnational corporations (TNCs) and restrictions on farmers’ rights to save and plant harvested seed. Additionally, pollen from genetically-modified (GM) crops with Terminator will contaminate non-GM and organic crops, and native plant species. GURTs (herein referred to as ‘Terminator’) are genetic engineering technologies that seek to control plant fertility. First-generation Terminator (also called ‘suicide seed’) was developedjointly by the US Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land Company in the 1990s to protect the intellectual property of US agricultural biotechnology TNCs. GM crops produce sterile seeds to prevent farmers from replanting harvested seed with patented DNA. Due to international public outcry from farmers and civil society worldwide, Terminator has never been commercialized anywhere, and Brazil and India have national moratoriums prohibiting it. In 2000, the CBD recommended a de facto moratorium on field-testing and commercial sale of Terminator seeds. In 2006, pressure from La Via Campesina and its allies helped to strengthen this moratorium in Curitiba, Brazil. That year, US-based TNC Monsanto Company, the largest seed company in the world, acquired Delta and Pine Land, along with the intellectual property rights to Terminator. Since then industry, the US and European governments and ultra-rich philanthro-capitalists have ramped up rhetoric on the need for Terminator and other biotechnologies to adapt to the climate, energy and food crises. Various false solutions are being proposed to sell the lie that techno-fixes allow rich countries to continue consuming resources and emitting carbon dioxide, unabated: GM crops for cellulosic and second-generation agrofuels; geoengineering ‘climate ready’ GM crops and trees with increased albedo (reflectivity) and resistance to drought, heat and salt; monoculture plantation forests of GM trees to industrially produce biochar for carbon sequestration; and GM algae and marine microbes for carbon dioxide sequestration. Monsanto is proposing that monoculture plantations of its Roundup Ready soybeans qualify for carbon credits under so-called “no-till” agriculture. All of these false solutions create new markets for agricultural biotechnology and ‘extreme genetic engineering’. With financing by the US government and British Petroleum (BP), in May, Synthetic Genomics, the company founded J. Craig Venter (which helped to sequence the human genome)announced that it had created the first-ever synthetic, self-reproducing microbe with synthetic biology. Venter’s team claims that the microbe can be used to produce clean, green algal biofuels; however, what will happen if this microbe escapes into the wild and contaminates non-synthetic algae with its DNA? Similarly, what will happen when a GM maize variety engineered to have a high amount of stover (the stalks, husks, etc. of maize) for cellulosic agrofuels contaminates food maize varieties? The implications are frightening. Industry is now claiming that Terminator is needed to contain genetic contamination (transgene flow) of food crops and other natural life forms from genetically-engineered DNA in non-food crops; in essence, as a precautionary, environmental necessity. Venter recently told the New York Times that Terminator should be employed to contain transgenic contamination. Genetic contamination of non-GM and organic food crops from GM crops, which occurs through the spread of GM pollen by wind and bees, is gaining recognition as a growing ecological and economic problem. On June 21st the US Supreme Court ruled on Monsanto Co vs. Geertson Seed Farms, and recognized that transgenic contamination is “harmful and onerous to organic and conventional farmers,” and grounds for litigation against biotechnology TNCs. Thus a new generation of Terminator research is focused on biological containment to prevent engineered genetic traits (transgenes) from spreading to non-GM food plants and wild relatives. It is highly unlikely that the industry that created the problem of genetic pollution will solve it with more biotechnology. Given BP’s difficulty to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, why would the US government entrust it to contain trangene flow from the world’s first synthetic life form? Yet that is what is taking place. Europe has funded the Transcontainer Project with billions of euros, and there are proposals from right-wing Brazilian politicians to overturn the country’s national ban on Terminator. While application and commercialization of Terminator technologies can’t promise fail-safe containment of transgenes, they can function to control farmers’ access to seeds and germplasm. Under the guise of environmental security for GM crops, industry will use the new generation of Terminator technologies to tighten its grasp on proprietary germplasm, and restrict the rights of farmers to re-plant harvested seeds. Further, the likely prospect of contamination of food crops by GM crops engineered with Terminator places the entire global food supply at imminent risk, and it therefore poses unacceptable threats to food and seed sovereignty and agro-biodiversity. TNCs are expanding and consolidating control over the world’s croplands, rangelands, peat bogs and last remaining forests, while simultaneously consolidating control of the genetic commons at cellular and molecular levels. Terminator technologies for synthetic biology, GM crops for agrofuels, geoengineering and all of the other false solutions to the energy, climate and food crises enclose vast genetic resources and agrobiodiversity, taking them out of the public realm and into the control of TNCs, especially the US Big Biotech giants Monsanto, Dupont and Arborgen. |
READ FULL ARTICLE from above HERE!
| THURSDAY, 25 MARCH 2010 16:53 |
European coordination via campesina Public resistance - The long struggle against GMOS in Europe In spite of the repeated rejections of European farmers and consumers who have consistently iterated their opposition to the introduction of GMOs in European fields and markets, the EU is still pushing them against European Food Soveriegnty, and GMO crops and foods are in our fields and shops. The struggle against GMOs continues.
It is clear that the push for GM technology in Europe is caused by the commitments made by the EU Commission to biotechnology industries and their political representatives in order to introduce GM crops in Europe. GM seeds represent the last step in reducing the role of farmers from independent food producers to simple labourers, ignoring the these impacts...should send warning “The “domino effect” nature of many of of bells ringing in European Institutions” value traditional knowledge, the role of farmers in biodiversity and environmental protection and locking farmers into a system based on seed, fertiliser, agrochemical and energy inputs entirely dependent on and controlled by transnational corporations and a logic of profit.
The farmers of the European Coordination Via Campesina reject GM agriculture on all grounds, and most urgently for the threat it poses to the very model of agricultural and food production which is now urgently needed in order to protect the environment, biodiversity, European food sovereignty and rural livelihoods.
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Small Farmers’ Solutions to the biodiversity crisis
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| TUESDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2010 15:45 |
Press Release- La Via Campesina(Nagoya, 26 October 2010) Small farmer delegates from different parts of the world who are members of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina are attending the Convention of Biodiversity conference in Nagoya, Japan. They represent hundreds of millions of small farmers and family farmers in the world. Colleen Ross from the National Farmers Union of Canada following the process said “We are disappointed in many of the initiatives discussed in the working groups of the conference, such as “sustainable biofuels”. What we call “agrofuels” are actually not sustainable and do not constitute a renewable source of energy. It is really no solution to climate change, or of any benefit to farmers, indigenous people or local communities, but just a way for agribusiness to make more money”. Many small farmers in the Global South are facing exclusion and bankruptcy due to the expansion of agrofuel plantations. They loose their biodiversity due to monoculture plantations and they lose their land and territories. Hunger and poverty is everywhere in the rural areas. Worse, agroethanol and agrodiesel do not even solve the climate crisis, they actually increase it. History has shown that it is small farmers and indigenous people that have defended their territories and protected biodiversity through ecological farming. Therefore the Convention of Parties (COP) of the CBD should not just recognize the importance of sustainable family farming agriculture but actively support it. Such a support would be a major achievement of the CBD for the protection of biodiversity. In this COP10 - CBD La Via Campesina farmers demand : - An end to the expansion of agroefuel plantations, and the reduction of consumption of agrofuel. There is no “sustainable biofuel”.
- Mandatory information on the origin of biological resources used for each commercialization of all products.
- A moratorium on Genetically Used Restriction Technologies such as “terminator” and transgenic seeds.
- No patents or breeding rights on living organisms, their parts and derivatives and the cancellation of all existing property rights on these.
- Access and use of biological resources and knowledge should be conditioned on the prior consent of indigenous and local communities.
- No market mechanisms on biodiversity and climate change solutions.
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