The Future is Now--The story of one young Canadian farmer
As Kalissa admits, her story is different than that of the typical farm family. Growing up in rural Saskatchewan, she has seen many farms disappear and never dreamt of becoming a farmer herself. Like many other farmers, Kalissa’s parents encouraged their children to keep their options open, get a university education and leave the farm. Kalissa’s older siblings all became engineers and she ended up in British Columbia, first studying horticulture, and later, jazz. It was on campus, and not on the farm, that Kalissa started to really think about food for the first time.
U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis-Washington D.C. August 2009 meeting
To view more photos of the US Working Group on the Food Crisis meeting of August 2009, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodfirst/
You can read the minutes of that August meeting below.
About Us
Cuba Undertakes Reforms in Midst of Economic Crisis
By Roger Burbach
for New America Media
Mini [WTO] ministerial in Delhi: Letter to the trade ministers from Via Campesina
To all Ministers invited to the next mini•ministerial in New Delhi,
copy To Mr Pascal Lamy – General Director of WTO
copy to Ambassador David Walker, Chairman of the Special Session of Committee on Agriculture.
Statement by Guatemalan Organizations and Communities to National and International Public Opinion
We Declare:
1. The expansion of plantations for agrofuels is advancing quickly in Guatemala. Over the last five years national and international agribusinesses have been increasing their control over land to plant sugarcane and African palm for this purpose. This is leading to a decrease in the land planted for food, putting the population’s food security at risk. It is also contributing to the weakening of many rural communities, undermining the basic elements of indigenous communities’ cohesion and identity.
Farm to Hospital—A movement that is long overdue
By Christine White
For decades, hospital food has lacked variety, nutrients, and edibility. In recent years large cafeteria vendors and fast and processed foods have dominated hospital cafeterias, limiting patients and employees to very few, nutrient-enriched meal options. However, six years ago a healthy hospital makeover started, and it’s catching on fast.
Accelerating into disaster – when banks manage the food crisis
Declaration of High Level Meeting on Food Security
--Madrid, January 26-27, 2009
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.
La Via Campesina Leads Struggle for Food Sovereignty at the European Social Forum
The big international peasant network, Via Campesina, with presence in all the continents, has had a strong participation at the European Social Forum in Malmö, Sweden, as it has so far done in all the international meetings where it has coordinated with other social networks as part of their struggle for justice and food sovereignty.
Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil under attack
The Lula government has unleashed a wave of repression against the MST, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement. The MST is the largest non-violent social movement in the Americas. Renown Brazilian author-activist and Dominican friar, Frei Betto, calls for a return to the rule of law, and denounces Lula’s criminalization of the social movements that once swept the former unionist into the Brazilian presidency.
| Download | Size | |
|---|---|---|
 | MST Under Attack - Spanish.pdf | 17.66 KB |
by Frei Betto, writer, author of “Calendário do Poder” (Calendar of Power) (Rocco).*
One of the great attributes of Lula’s government is the non-criminalizing of social movements which were repressed during Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government even by calling in army troops. If Lula were to treat them as a police matter and not as a political one, he would be condemning his own past.