The 2007 Farm Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, July 27th with a vote of 231 to 191, after surprisingly little debate.

The bill now moves to the U.S. Senate where the pressure is on to adopt commodity limits that might finally break the agricultural subsidies deadlock that has gripped the Doha round of WTO negotiations since the dramatic collapse of negotiations in Cancun in 2003. President Bush’s threat to veto the farm bill, unless subsidies per farm are capped at a level lower than the House limit of one million dollars per farm, may move the Senate in that direction. Farmer’s groups and farm state leaders have been vocal in their disapproval of the direct payments system, a form of subsidies in which farmers are given yearly payouts – with an estimated $26 billion in taxpayer money over the next five years.1

ACTION ALERT—Call or write your congressional representative requesting removal of recently added Sec. 123 in the 2007 Farm Bill draft that would prevent states and counties from determining whether genetically modified crops can be grown.

Please forward this action alert to friends who share your concern about food safety.

The biotech industry and agribusiness have been pushing similar state bills, but now they are trying to hide it in the very lengthy Farm Bill. Please write to the Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Collin C. Peterson, MN and other members of that committee. You can view the list of committee members at: http://agriculture.house.gov/inside/members.html

The Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally campaign asks farm organizations and other civil society groups around the world to sign on to the following call in support of agriculture, trade and food policies that support a sustainable livelihood for farmers and assure food for all. To add your organization to this call, please email Patty Kupfer, pkupfer@ruralco.org. For further information, contact us at www.globalfarmer.org

Building Sustainable Futures For Farmers Globally

A Call for Action

Mexico City, 29 November 2006
Compañeras and compañeros:

Oaxaca, Mexico, is currently the target of massive state-led repression, in
an attempt to exterminate the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca
(APPO), which is a legitimate movement composed of social organizations,
peasants, indigenous people, trade unions, neighborhood organizations, and
teachers, which demands the removal of Oaxaca state governor Ulises Ruiz, as
well as a profound political reform and public policies that would favor
sectors of society who have traditionally been excluded.

Oaxaca is one of the poorer states in Mexico, with the highest proportion of

Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform    

EMERGENCY NETWORK

Honduras: Criminalization of agrarian reform activists in Bajo Aguan

Since August 23rd 2005, 11 peasant leaders of the region Bajo Aguan, North of Honduras, are under arrest warrant and in danger of being arrested by the public security force. These leaders, together with other 151 women and men peasants from eight different groups, have been processed and accused of criminal actions, even though their struggle was for the promotion of Agrarian Reform and for the realization of their right to food.

There is an urgent need to inform the President of
Honduras about the international concern regarding the criminalization of the peasants' struggle in Bajo Aguan. Please, send a copy of the letter to the Minister-Director of the National Agrarian Institute and to the office of La Via Campesina in
Honduras.

On the morning of September 18, 2005, at approximately 9:00AM, Indonesian police forces violently dispersed a peaceful gathering of about 1000 peasants in Tanah Awuk village in central Lombok, Indonesia. The peasants had gathered together to launch a week-long series of activities to commemorate Indonesia’s National Peasants’ Day on September 24th. More than 300 invited guests, including students, members of Serikat Tani NTB (the local peasants’ union) and peasant farmers from 12 other provinces were expected at the meeting. Also invited to this meeting was an international delegation composed of peasant leaders from La Via Campesina, human rights specialists, and researchers from the Land Research Action Network (LRAN), who were in Lombok to attend a National Symposium on Agrarian Reform organized by the Indonesian Federation of Peasant Unions (FSPI).

At present, more than 4732 families in the south and southeast of the state of Pará are threatened with eviction. As yet, 140 families have already been evicted from their houses. In total, an estimated number of 20 thousand people could be evicted from their lands in a soon future in the municipalities of Marabá, Rondon do Pará, São João Araguaia, Itupiranga, Paraupebas, Curionópolis, Abel Figueiredo, Eldorado de Carajás, Canaã de Carajás, Tucuruí and Breu Branco.

The US House of Representatives passed the Central American Free Trade agreement just after midnight on July 28th by an extremely narrow vote of 217 to 216, including one opposing vote that initially went uncounted. Due to the immense organizing effort of a wide array of citizen organizations opposing the agreement, the White House had to pull out the stops in strategic timing, arm twisting, and backroom dealing to squeak this deal through. The outcome of this vote shows the strength of our movement as we continue onward.

On the 24th of May 2005, the peasant leader Edickson Roberto Lemus Calderón, regional General Secretary of the National Office of Rural Workers (Central Nacional de Trabajadores del Campo CNTC) in El Progreso, Yoro, was murdered. He was traveling by bus in El Progreso, when an unknown armed person forced the bus to stop, entered the bus and shot Sr. Lemus Calderón four times into the head.

In the night of the 7th to the 8th of May 2005, the central office of the National Coordination of Peasants’ Organizations (Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, CNOC) was raided.