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	AGRA Fact Sheet 9-09 by Tanya Kerssen.pdf	1.73 MB

By Tanya Kerssen

Although AGRA claims to be a farmer-led, African initiative, all of its institutional structures and decision-making processes were developed without consulting even with Africa’s largest farmer organizations and federations. AGRA’s definition of participation is highly limited. prompting one farm leader to confront AGRA saying, "“You come. You buy the land. You make a plan. You build a house. Now you ask me, what color do I want to paint the kitchen? This is not participation!”

Read more in the attached pdf file.

Hamza Hasan
Food First

The Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, is a proposed trade agreement between the U.S. government and five Central American countries: Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. CAFTA has been met by mass protests in Central America, and the Bush administration is having trouble garnering even Republican votes in the US Congress. Ratifying CAFTA promises to be a highly symbolic legislative struggle, with the potential to significantly stall the free trade agenda. Citizen pressure is working and needs to continue! Tell your Representative to publicly oppose CAFTA: see the action steps below.

In 1990 the U.S.

By Karla Peña

The Food Sovereignty Organic Law in Ecuador was approved by the National Assembly with President Rafael Correa’s Partial Veto in March of this year.

Please download the PDF and distribute widely.

Fact Sheet: Food Aid in the New Millenium

Genetically Engineered Food and Foreign Assistance

Disturbing evidence has come to light which suggests that US taxpayer dollars are being used through foreign assistance programs to subsidize the export of genetically engineered (GE) foods to the Third World and to finance GE research. This raises very serious ethical questions about our foreign aid dollars.

By any measure, the United States is a nation of wealth and abundance. Yet even in this most agriculturally productive of all countries, increasing numbers of people suffer the debilitation of hunger. We at Food First consider this to be an outrage.

As Democrats and Republicans debate war and terrorism, a war has been waged against the poor at home. The numbers of Americans suffering from hunger, poverty, homelessness and lack of healthcare have dramatically increased since 2000. The latest U.S. Census found that several million more slipped into poverty and lost their healthcare insurance last year. Yet these vital issues of human security--food, housing, health care--are missing from the presidential debates, buried under headlines of war and threats of terrorism.

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	Labor Fact Sheet2.pdf	1022.6 KB

By Zoe Brent

Throughout its value chain, the US Food System employs approximately 18% of all US workers. Yet, food workers are being exploited - many are even going hungry!

This undermines the sustainability of the entire food system.

Jobs in the food sector are bad and getting worse!
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2008 Economic Report, food preparation and serving related occupations are the lowest paid of
all occupational categories, followed by farming, fishing and forestry occupations. real wages of meatpacking workers have fallen.