STATEMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S CARAVAN FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY 2004

Assert Our Rights to Land and Food!

The People’s Caravan moved from community to community, from village to the cities, of 16 countries in Asia and Europe sharing the struggles, the devastating impact of globalised corporate agriculture through the WTO leading to increased starvation and death. Local communities’ dependent on agriculture, forests, pasture lands and fishing for their livelihood are losing control over these resources. The governments are facilitating and protecting corporate control and interest and increasing the power of the landlords over land and productive resources. Though there are UN and other international conventions and instruments on protecting rights of agricultural communities, these are not implemented through national laws.

This is leading to agricultural communities being denied access to food and resources where their livelihoods and their very survival are threatened. With the existing power relations in our societies, women and children are the most adversely affected. This has resulted in forced migration nationally and internationally where migrant workers are extremely exploited and placed in very vulnerable situations with little or no protection.

In each country visited by the People’s Caravan, the communities condemned corporate agriculture, which emphasises food grown for export and not for communities. They further condemned the dumping of highly subsidized food and agricultural products from North America and the European Union, which is wiping out local food producers and increasing food insecurity.

The emphasis on corporate agriculture not only promotes heavy use of agrochemicals at every stage of production but also the monopoly control of seeds and chemical inputs by agrochemical TNCs. This has resulted in severe health problems, soil infertility and the contamination of the environment, particularly water. Throughout the journey of the Caravan, farmers and agricultural workers testified about the harm that pesticides have caused to their health, the environment and the lives of communities, particularly those of women.

The Caravan experience also showed that our struggle and resistance has to be consolidated given that three companies control almost 80 percent of the global market in agrochemicals and the same three companies control 100 percent of the genetically engineered seeds market. These agrochemical transnational corporations promote their products even knowing the horrendous situation of pesticide use in the South where workers and farmers use pesticides without any protection or precaution. For far too long government policies have protected these TNCs without making them accountable for these irreversible effects.

Even in the face of growing resistance and the emergence of evidence of environmental contamination and human health problems of genetically engineered seeds, countries in Asia are continuing to commercialize these seeds.

One year after the self-immolation of the Korean farmer leader Lee Kyung Hae in Cancun , the widespread protests in Korea and during the People’s Caravan dramatize the widespread protests around the world against the WTO and the TNC control over agriculture.

The resistance is increasing daily as thousands of peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk and indigenous communities are getting organised and mobilised. However, communities were concerned about increased militarization to repress the growing strength of the people’s movements. Furthermore, States are criminalising and imprisoning, even killing peasant leaders who are genuinely struggling for Food Sovereignty and rights of people. The People’s Caravan condemns these forms of repression of the people.

It is very clear that unless and until the root causes of these realities are dealt with, there would be no true liberation of the people from hunger and the corporate control of our resources.

Therefore, the People’s Caravan calls for WTO out of food and agriculture, the elimination of pesticides and commercialisation of genetically engineered seeds and crops and the resistance against agrochemical TNCs.

Simultaneously, the People’s Caravan is defining the aspirations of the small food producers in Asia and reflects the current demand for Food Sovereignty. The People’s Caravan is demanding for Food Sovereignty in response to widespread poverty and hunger.

Food Sovereignty is the inalienable RIGHT of peoples, communities, and countries to define, decide and implement their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food producing resources and technologies and the ability to sustain themselves, their resources and their societies.

The People’s Caravan is calling for an International Convention on Food Sovereignty in order to enshrine the principles of food sovereignty in international law and institute food sovereignty as the principal policy framework for addressing food and agriculture.