2007-05-30
Via Campesina Call, 11 May, 2007
The heads of state and government of the world’s eight wealthiest and most powerful countries will meet from June 6-8 in Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea in Northeastern Germany. These eight governments decide and implement neo-liberal policies that increase the number of hungry people in the world, that bring war in most of the regions, that deepen the environmental crisis and that create social unrest worldwide. Small-scale farmers, peasant and landless workers worldwide are among the first victims of these policies. The trade liberalization and privatisation policies they impose steal our resources and our knowledges and make it increasingly difficult for us to make a living from agriculture. Their environmental irresponsibility destroys the biodiversity and the natural wealth we depend on for our livelihoods. Among the 854 millions of hungry people in the world, three-quarters are rural people. The millions of migrants who are denied their basic rights and of unemployed urban poor living in shanty towns are our brothers and sisters who have been chased away from their land.
We believe that the current agricultural crisis, that goes along with a huge environmental, social and cultural crisis, is not a fatality. Food sovereignty, agrarian reform, re-localization of the food production and sustainable peasant-based agriculture are genuine alternatives to the neo-liberal impasse.
End Corporate control over our food!
Access to land and agriculture for the Youth !
For more information: Morgan Ody, +32 22 17 31 12; morganody@yahoo.fr
[http://www.viacampesina.org]