12. Positions of Via Campesina

Photo: Maria Luisa Mendonça

Via Campesina is an international movement that groups together organizations of family farmers, peasants, farm workers, rural women, indigenous people, and afro-descendent people in the Americas, (North, South, Central and Caribbean) Asia, Europe and Africa.

Food Sovereignty

One the principal positions of Via Campesina is the defense of Food Sovereignty. We can define food sovereignty as the right of all peoples to define their own food and agricultures policies. This includes:
Giving priority to production of healthy, safe and nutritious food - that is culturally appropriate - for the domestic market. This production should come from diversified family farms that conserve biodiversity, take care of the soil, maintain cultural values, and exercise good stewardship of natural resources.

Farmers must receive fair prices, which means that domestic markets must be protected against the effects of cheap, dumped imports. Supply management system are needed in those countries that over-produce and dump their surplus abroad at cheap prices, driving farmers out of business in the countries where these products are dumped. Real, genuine agrarian reform must be carried out to create a sustainable small farmer production model. All direct and indirect export subsidies must be eliminated.

Food sovereignty requires equitable access to land and public sector credit so that farmers can produce, as well as fair prices for the products they sell. Via Campesina does not oppose trade, especially of products that can only be grown in certain climates - as long as the conditions enumerated above are respected.

The domestic food and farm policy of nations cannot be defined and imposed by financial institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which represent the interests of multinational corporations. It must be the society and governments in each country that determine national policies, whether for agriculture or anything else, and not the agents of the market. These decisions must respect human rights and international treaties and conventions, and be subject to independent international jurisdiction in case of disputes. In a true democracy, the active participation of farmer and peasant movements in the formulation of food and farm policies is indispensable, just as are transparency, freedom of expression and the right to organize.

In today's world, issues that affect everyday life, especially but not only of farmers, and our health, the economy, and the environment, are being discussed and negotiated at international forums and summits. These issues include the regulation and use of biodiversity, the use and conservation of genetic resources, the liberation of genetically-engineered organisms, and the economics of farming. The international bodies that are responsible for these topics confront a great dilemma, between choosing a path that helps us to construct a respectful relationship between nature and society, or the path of free trade marked by the imposition of international finance capital and the abandonment of food sovereignty.

For Via Campesina, conserving biodiversity begins with respect for the diversity of human cultures, accepting that we are different, and that each person and each people has the right and the freedom to think, to be and to decide for themselves. Seen this way, biodiversity is not just flora and fauna, soil life, water and ecosystems, but carries with it cultural traditions, production systems, human and economic relationships, even forms of government. In essence, freedom and equality.

Diversity is our way of life. Plant diversity provides us with food, medicine and fiber, while human diversity gives us a variety of lifestyles, religions, ideologies and cultural richness. If this tells us anything it is that we should avoid at all costs rigid formulas that impose a single recipe, a single way of life, or a single model of development.

Via Campesina opposes privatization and patents on life, which restrict the ability of peasants and indigenous people to make a living. Our genes belong to life itself. Peasant communities have protected and conserved genetic resources and their accompanying knowledge from generation to generation, with profound respect for nature. For millennia is has been peasant communities that selected, crossed and improved crop genetic resources, domesticating and improving every important species. Peasants, women and men, small farmers, together with fisherfolk and artisans, indigenous peoples and descended-communities, are the ones who conserve, take care of, and improve the agricultural biodiversity which is what makes agriculture itself possible.

Agrarian Reform

In every country which has not yet had a thorough agrarian reform, inequality remains a principal obstacle to development, with a small of number of large landowners concentrating the majority of farmland in their hands. This is the underlying cause of high levels of poverty, enormous social inequalities, terrible living conditions, chronic underdevelopment, economic dependence, political domination and the absence of hope for the poor majorities.

Things have only gotten worse in the last decade, as the majority of our governments have acceded to neoliberal policies. These policy prescriptions, supported by the World Bank, subordinate farm economies to the interests of the largest landowners, the wealthy and foreign capital. These are the policies that open markets to multinational corporations, raise interest rates and dismantle public sector institutions that provide services to farmers (research, extension, price supports, credit, marketing and crop insurance).

The result has been ever more landless families, and the desperation of small and medium sized farmers who now find it impossible to make a living from farming. In the past few years we have seen an accelerated destruction of family farms, provoking a new rural exodus, especially of young people.

Faced with the historical legacy of exploitation of peripheral, rural-based economies, of deepening social and regional inequalities driven by the neoliberal model, the tightening squeeze on family farmers, in both the Third and First Worlds, farmer organizations defend, more than ever, the need for broad based policies of agrarian reform. These are the instruments that can eliminate poverty and social inequality, and promote the true development of our societies.

Agrarian reform cannot be seen as a simple process of distributing land. Rather it must be accompanied by profound changes in the economic, social and political model of development.

Access to land for the poor must be understood as a guarantee that their culture is valued, that communities have the right to autonomy, and that we have a new vision of how to conserve natural resources, for the good of humanity and for future generations. The land is given to us by nature and must be at the service of all. Land is not, and should never be, a mere commodity.

It is the responsibility of governments to enact policies that stimulate family farm economies and farmer cooperatives, via prices, credit, and crop insurance. Monopolies over the processing of farm products must be broken up, democratizing control over and access to agroindustrial processes. Agrarian reform must be seen within a larger policy of food sovereignty, and must be accompanied by universal access to formal education - at all levels - for peasant families. Knowledge is a common heritage of humanity, and must be placed at the disposition of the entire population, especially working people.

Principles and Commitments of Farmers and Peasants

All families that want to live and work on the land have the right to love and conserve the land and nature for the benefit of all.
Preserve forests and reforest degraded areas.

Conserve water, springs, rivers, aquifers and lakes, and struggle against the privatization of water.

Avoid predatory monoculture and the use of farm chemicals and toxics. Adequately treat wastes and fight against contamination of the environment.

Fight against overly large landholdings and reject the land reform policies implemented by the World Bank and the transnational corporations.

Struggle against the companies that monopolize technology, that exploit us, and the international agencies (like the IMF, WTO and G-7) that only articulate the interests of large capital.

We can always further perfect our knowledge of nature and agriculture, and transmit that knowledge to young people, motivating them to remain in rural areas.

Practice solidarity and express indignation against all forms of injustice, aggression, and exploitation of any person, community or of nature, anywhere in the world.

Fight for and defend equality among men and women. Fight all kinds racial and sexual discrimination. Create real opportunities so that nobody is ever discriminated against or excluded because of their gender or race.

Beautify our rural communities, caring for and planting trees, flowers, medicinal plants and vegetables.

Never sell the land we have won. The land is a greater good that guarantees the survival of future generations.

Speak out against the payment of the foreign debt, so that critical resources can de redirected to cover the unpayable debts that family farmers and peasants have with the banking sector.

13. Bibliography

14. Table of Contents