People Putting Food First #125

New at Food First
www.foodfirst.org

"Next Generation Biofuels": Bursting The New "Green" Bubble Letter challenges unrealistic promises from an unsustainable industry. http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2341

New Study Shows GE Corn Causes Infertility and Abnormal Gene Expression.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2336

President-elect Obama presented with urgent “Call to Action” to end food crisis.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2331

The Latest Land Grab – American Businessman Seals a Deal with Sudanese Warlord for Nearly 1 Million Acres.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2340

This issue:
1. Vermont Farmers Unite to Save their Community
2. New book by Vandana Shiva
3. One victory is not enough for the indigenous people of Brazil

Vermont Farmers Unite to Save their Community
by Kurt Eulau

Localized, sustainable food systems are being brought center stage after decades of domination by corporate agriculture. A recent New York Times story highlights the community of Hardwick, Vermont as an example of an emerging localized and organic food system. The farmers and processors of Hardwick have rediscovered a very old way to raise money that could be replicated by other communities searching to keep money and trade local—to improve the vibrancy, innovation, and fiscal health of their town.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2342

This relatively small group of farmers has financed their operations by lending to each other. Hardwick’s inter-farmer lending operates on honesty and trust totally outside formal credit markets with over $300,000 lent at below market rates to help develop their businesses. As commercial credit markets have constricted, even with capital injections amounting to billions of taxpayer dollars, farmer-to-farmer credit could prove to be a powerful alternative. This local credit movement in Hardwick certainly brings hope that Americans can shed the food production practices of the past, and perhaps do so outside the unregulated commercial financial system.

Burros, M., Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town in New York Times. 2008: New York, New York.
Hardwick Area Eco-Industrial Park. Accessed 17 October 2008; Available from: http://www.hardwickagriculture.org/industrialpark.html
Steven Carden, O.D. (2004) A Halo for Angel Investors. The McKinsey Quartley.

New book by Vandana Shiva

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
by South End Press, Cambridge, Mass. www.southendpress.org

“Work is energy. Two crises of our times are intimately connected — the climate crisis and the unemployment crisis. As long as we address these crises separately, we will not solve either. The climate crisis is normally addressed scientifically in diagnosis and economically in terms of solutions. However, economic solutions are offered only within the global market and commodification paradigm. The most recent example of this is the Stern report [a 700-page report by economist Lord Stern of Brentford for the British government on the effect of climate change on the world economy]. In it, people do not figure anywhere. However, substituting the work of people with work done by machines running on fossilized carbon is a major contributor to the pollution of the atmosphere and the climate crisis. Bringing work to people and people to work can be a significant solution of the crisis of human disposability and the crisis of climate disruption.”

“The mechanistic worldview and the industrialization process have promoted the overextraction and overconsumption of resources, and yet it externalizes the energy and resources it uses, as well as the waste and pollution it generates, from the calculus of productivity and profit. This has led to three interrelated effects: the exhaustion of natural resources; the build-up of pollution; and the destruction of people, communities, and cultures.”

One victory is not enough for the indigenous people of Brazil
By Karla Peña

On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2008, the indigenous people of Raposa Serra do Sol in the Brazilian state of Roraima celebrated a victory against encroaching farmers, cattle ranchers and local politicians who are attempting to overturn the constitutional right for indigenous land democratization. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva granted territorial protection of the land in 2005, but was quickly challenged by the non-native economic beneficiaries of the land.

The Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) in Brazil reports there are about 735,000 indigenous people in the nation, including isolated communities and those living in urban centers. Indigenous areas are 11% of the national territory, with the majority in the Amazon.

Local indigenous communities have been marginalized to small plots of unfertile land by developers planting soybeans and sugar cane and raising cattle. For example, in Mato Grosso do Sur, the Gurani/Kaiowa children suffer malnutrition and high death rates as a result of the inequitable access of land, clean water and food.

The United Nations Declaration of Indigenous People accepted by the General Assembly in 2007 recognizes the right of indigenous people to determine their culture, identity, language and tradition, along with practice of prior consent before land concessions. This non-binding document was ratified to generate voluntary compliance—a slow trajectory for the thousands of indigenous people of the world.

Stronger cooperative networks could result in more recognition of indigenous rights like this victory in Brazil. Allies mobilizing for human rights in Brazil include the Indigenous Missionary Council (Conselho Indigenista Missionario - CIMI), Brazil Landless Workers Movement ( Moviemiento dos Trablhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST), Via Campesina, and Coordinator of Indigenous Organization of the Amazon (Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica COICA).

http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/guarani
http://www.survival-international.org/news/4021
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html
http://www.brazilink.org/tiki-index.php?page=Indigenous%20People
http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&eid=364
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2320
www.amazonwatch.org
www.amnesty.org