A farmer cultivating traditional olive varieties in the south of Tunisia.

Food

The global food system is broken. Although there is enough fertile land in the world to grow food for everyone, industrial agriculture feeds corporate profits instead of people.

Around the world, billions of people face hunger and malnutrition. The majority live in rural areas. Small-scale, local farmers grow food for the majority of the world, but the power to decide what to grow and how it is distributed has been taken away from them. Big business, financial institutions and policymakers in rich countries dominate the food industry, buying up land and controlling which crops are grown for the biggest profit. The consequences have been devastating for people in rural communities around the world – many cannot afford to eat the food they grow on their own land.

Local farmer communities are leading a movement to put power over agriculture back in the hands of people: food sovereignty. Local farmers know how to grow food sustainably for their own societies and for the planet. Food sovereignty enables communities to grow food that is appropriate for their lands and culture, and guarantees democratic control over how it is distributed and traded. Food sovereignty is a practical solution that puts power in the hands of people, not corporations.

We stand with our partners in peasants’ movements around the world who are fighting for a better food system and for the rights of rural communities. We support their efforts to restore the control of land and the food grown on it to local communities, to farm and live sustainably and free from exploitation and poverty.

 

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Partners

ATTAC/CADTM Maroc, Morocco

ATTAC/CADTM Maroc is an action-oriented popular education movement, committed to the struggles in Morocco against capitalist globalisation and the domination of the International Financial Institutions. ATTAC Maroc strives to be a space for critical reflection to understand the neoliberal assault on Moroccan people. ATTAC fights for another globalisation, far from any logic of isolationism, that is grounded in solidarity between peoples and based on social justice, democracy, dignity and sustainable development in a world that is not equated to a market. Most of its work is focused on debt, microcredit, extractivism, workers’ rights, trade justice, climate justice and as food sovereignty. ATTAC Maroc is a founding member of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty.

Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), Kenya

The Kenyan Peasants League (KPL) is a social movement of Kenyan Peasant farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and consumers, whose main aim is to promote smallholder farmer agroecology and resist neo-liberal policies that kill local agriculture. KPL promotes indigenous seeds, livestock and plant varieties and the creation of an alternative economy that is driven by provision for livelihoods. KPL was founded in 2016 and has been part of La Via Campesina network since 2018.

Networks

La Via Campesina

Resources

Food Sovereignty report

The report contrasts the UK government’s preferred approach of ‘food security’, based on free markets supplemented by aid, with the positive alternative of food sovereignty, which returns control over the food system to farmers.  
Land workers gathering against WTO and free trade agreements

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