17th of April: International Day of Peasant's Struggle
Farmers mobilize around the world and propose solutions to the food price
crisis
(Jakarta, 17 April 1008)
Small farmer's organizations and their allies are celebrating today the International Day of Peasant's Struggle commemorating the massacre of 19 landless workers, women and men struggling for land in Brazil 12 years ago. Today dozens of groups, communities and organizations in about 20 countries around the world are organizing farmer's markets, conferences, direct actions, cultural activities, demonstrations... to defend their right to food and to feed their communities.
When Renewable isn’t Sustainable: Agrofuels’ and the Inconvenient Truths behind U.S. Energy Independence
Contact: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First Executive Director
510.654.4400 ext. 227
Cell 202-288-8699
eholtgim@foodfirst.org
March 20, 2008
FOOD FIRST RELEASES POLICY BRIEF ON AGROFUELS AND THE 2007 US ENERGY BILL
Report highlights growing hunger, energy dependency on Global South, corporate control
Environmental and Human Rights Groups call for a Biofuels (Agrofuels) Moratorium
For Immediate Release Contact: Cameron Scott of RAN 415.659.0541
Contact: Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First 510-654-4400 ext 227.
January 29, 2008
U.S.-based coalition calls for a moratorium on U.S. incentives for biofuels
December 17, 2007
Contact: Eric Holt-Gimenez
510-654-4400 ext 227
Spanish and Portuguese translations below.
A coalition of U.S organizations is calling for an Immediate Moratorium on U.S. incentives for agrofuels, U.S. agroenergy monocultures and global trade in agrofuels. The Coalition is asking your organization to help strengthen the Call by signing on.
NEW REPORT QUESTIONS FAIR TRADE COFFEE’S CORPORATE SUCCESS
Contact: Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
e-mail: eholtgim (at) foodfirst.org
Phone: 510-654-4400 ext 227
http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1794
Oakland, Ca -- 14 November 2007 – Fair Trade Certified coffee is selling better than ever: in 2005, more than $500 million in fair trade coffee was sold, up exponentially from $50 million in 2000. Most of this growth comes from big corporate players like Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunk’n Doughnuts, Costco, and Nestle entering the Fair Trade market. An explosion in Fair Trade sales is great for the world’s poverty-stricken coffee farmers, right? In a new investigative report entitled Fair To The Last Drop: Corporate Challenges to Fair Trade, Food First takes a deeper look at what Fair Trade’s corporate success means for coffee farmers.
World Food Day 2007: The Right to Food is Food Sovereignty
Bonn, Germany, October 16th 2007 — On this World Food Day 2007, with the theme of the Right to Food, which was recognized as a universal human right in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, over 850 million people around the world, particularly in least developed countries, suffer from hunger and malnutrition. For IFOAM, the Right to Food is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity and to produce healthy and culturally appropriate food through ecologically, socially and economically sound methods, defining one’s own food systems, rather than the right to be fed. This counts for each and every individual, as well as for communities and regions.
Congress Urged to Ditch Energy Bill Renewable Fuel Standard
October 10, 2007
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Nick Berning, 202-222-0748
Coalition of groups sends letter to Pelosi, Reid prior to meeting of energy bill conference committee
WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders are being urged by environmental, family farmer, and social justice organizations to ensure that a radical biofuels provision passed by the Senate be left out of final energy legislation under consideration this fall.
November 27-28, 2007 Conference on African Agroecological Alternatives to the Green Revolution
Contact: Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
e-mail: eholtgim (at) foodfirst.org
Phone: 510-654-4400 ext 227
Mobile: 202-288-8699
African farmer organizations will meet in Selingué, Mali on November 27-28, 2007 to discuss ecological alternatives to the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations' proposal for a new Green Revolution in Africa.
The Gates/Rockefeller Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will use a combined $150 million over five years to promote higher yields through hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and western-style crop management. Farmer advocacy groups, including Via Campesina-Africa, the African Center for Bio-Safety, and IRPAD--Mali, Food First do not think that Gates and Rockefeller have adequately considered the negative consequences of this strategy that include farmer indebtedness, environmental degradation, vulnerability to climate change, reduction of agricultural biodiversity and the undermining of farmers' food sovereignty. (See: http://www.foodfirst.org/issues/africanfoodsovereignty and http://www.foodfirst.org/issues/greenrevolution.) Equally important, while international seed, fertilizer and genetic engineering industries have been extensively consulted, African farmers were not. Further, there are no mechanisms in the Green Revolution institutions to ensure project transparency, accountability, or a substantive role for farmers in decision making processes.
Biofuels: Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 24th, 2007
Hamza Hasan
Oakland, CA USA
Agro-fuels are being promoted as a green renewable solution to the world’s growing energy needs. Additionally, they are presented as environmentally green, harbingers of rural development and independent of the food system. A new report by Food First, titled Biofuels: Myths of the Agro-fuels transition argues that, in contrast to the above description, agro-fuels are destructive to the environment, cause deforestation, do not propagate rural development and lead to hunger.
“Industrialized countries have unleashed an ‘agro-fuels boom’ by mandating ambitious renewable fuel targets,” writes Eric Holt-Gimenez, director of Food First and author of the report. “These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70% of its farmland to fuel. The U.S.’s entire corn and soy harvest would need to be processed as ethanol and bio-diesel. Northern Countries expect the Global South to meet their fuel needs, and southern governments appear eager to oblige.”
Chilpancingo Declaration for Food Sovereignty in Mexico issued 1-26-2007
The united organizations of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Campesino Organizations (UNORCA), collaborating at the national summit, “Corn, Tortillas and Food Sovereignty” on January 26th in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Mexico declare that:
We oppose the rise in prices resulting from the speculative and monopolistic practices of the big commercial businesses that control the Mexican corn market. We demand that the government implement a policy that encourages domestic production, as well as adequately regulate both supply and prices of staple crops and staple foods.