THE NYÉLÉNI NEWSLETTER: DIGITALIZATION OF THE FOOD SYSTEM
Today, more than 820 million people suffer from hunger while obesity
also continues to increase across the world . Biodiversity in food and
agriculture is being eroded at an alarming rate by the destruction of
eco-systems. Climate change is accelerating: temperatures this July were
the highest ever recorded; glaciers are melting much faster than
predicted; and millions of young people are demanding urgent action to
address the climate crisis.
Meanwhile governments are showing little initiative to change the
industrial, fossil-fuel driven food and agricultural system. Instead, a
new "silver bullet" is being presented by corporations, governments and
international institutions to tackle hunger, malnutrition and climate
change: digitalization, which refers to the adoption of
information-communication technologies (ICT) and artificial intelligence
(AI) into everyday life and across societal activities.
Digital technologies have the potential to be beneficial or harmful
depending on the context. Small-scale food producers have their own
technologies, innovations and knowledge. However, so do corporations,
who seek monopoly controls on technology. Also, digitalization is
happening in an era of increasing inequalities, authoritarianism and
oppression.
This newsletter presents a synopsis of the digitalization of food, and
contains examples of how digitalization affects and is used by
communities in different parts of the world. We hope that these articles
help social movements to engage in a collective discussion about digital
technologies - and particularly how to benefit from them and prevent
them doing harm.
> DOWNLOAD THE NEWSLETTER [1]
Links:
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[1] http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=136
LA VIA CAMPESINA ISSUES CALL TO MOBILISE AGAINST WTO AND FREE TRADE
AGREEMENTS
02 SEPTEMBER, HARARE:
Two decades after coming into being, the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
- one of the flag bearers of globalisation and neo-liberalism - is
facing an existential crisis that is precipitated by the same group of
people who created it. This is also happening at a time when peasants
and indigenous people are several degrees worse off than they were two
decades ago; with their land, rivers, oceans and forests having
undergone massive erosion and forced evictions are inflicted upon them
by profit hungry corporations. Local peasant markets and food systems in
several countries have been decimated by an order of international trade
that only looks at commodification of everything, including the food
that people eat.
For an organisation that inscribed among its founding objectives, its
aim _"to help developing countries benefit fully from the global trading
system"_, WTO's greatest indictment has indeed come from the following
realities confronting the developing world today; rising rural
unemployment, rising hunger, staggering levels of inequality that exists
between countries and within countries, and rising per capita world
debt.
La Via Campesina has long been warning the world of the risks of
deregulation and unbridled expansion of global capital. As people
working in the field to feed 70% of the world's population, we were the
first to face the brunt of free trade agreements that were pushed forth
by WTO and other multilateral institutions. WTO led the pack in seducing
and coercing our governments to sign up to the grand plans of a few rich
countries. The devastation caused by this top down model of global
governance was first felt in our territories when it crashed the prices
of our produce, destroyed local peasant markets, wiped away the rich
biodiversity that existed in our fields, took away our autonomy over
seeds and evicted millions of our sisters and brothers from their
territories.
It is this destruction of the country side that forced one of our own,
Lee Kyung Hae from South Korea, to take his life outside the venue of
the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in 2003. On the 10th of
September that year when he committed this tragic act, he had a banner
that hung around his neck which read _"WTO Kills Farmers"_. Once a
self-sufficient rice farmer in rural Korea, Lee had lost everything to
cheap dumping of imported rice and meat, the result of free trade
agreements pushed through WTO. He took such an extreme step because the
rich and few who ran these institutions or lobbied around them, were too
far away from the lived realities of the countryside. His act of
sacrifice brought the depressing account of the rural world right
outside their gates, even as in his last moments he bravely echoed the
demands of peasants and rural communities worldwide; "to keep
agriculture out of WTO's free trade negotiations".
SINCE THEN, LA VIA CAMPESINA MARKS 10TH OF SEPTEMBER EVERY YEAR AS THE
_INTERNATIONAL DAY OF STRUGGLE AGAINST WTO AND FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS_ –
TO KEEP THE MEMORY OF LEE KYUNG HAE ALIVE AND ALSO TO NOT REMAIN MUTE TO
THE CALAMITOUS CONSEQUENCES OF INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE.
16 years hence that tragic incident, what has changed? Nothing, except
that the hands that feed WTO is now refusing to continue. It is ironical
when the rich captains of capitalism claim that they got a bad deal from
WTO. It begs the question, _"then who got the good deal?"_ .
But let us not be fooled by this charade of false threats made by rich
western countries to withdraw from WTO. What we have been seeing over
the past one decade is the establishment of several bilateral and
regional mega-free trade agreements and creation of newer unified trade
blocks.
So while WTO may eventually be weakened or be dead, capitalism wants to
continue to thrive through other means. It goes by different names in
different continents.
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) comprising ASEAN
nations, India, Australia and New Zealand is one among this new age
trade agreements that wants to create a unified market in the region,
being negotiated 'outside of WTO'. Peasant organisations here have been
pointing out how it could severely impact their livelihoods,
particularly those of small scale dairy farmers, how it could impose
restrictive seeds laws and more. Yet these negotiations continue behind
closed doors in the most opaque ways possible led by a few who have
never held a plough in their hands!
The EU - MERCOSUR deal between Europe and the economic and political
bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela,
under negotiations for 17 years and finally signed onto by the European
Commission in July this year, is another case in point. _European
Coordination of Via Campesina_ (ECVC) had warned that the deal with
MERCOSUR threatens to undermine standards on health, the environment and
animal welfare in the European Union, in addition to lacking any policy
coherence with the tall promises made at COP 23. Peasant organisations
in the MERCOSUR block calls it a neocolonial model that will result in a
capital concentration for the few and poverty for the majority.
In Africa, the creation of African Continental Free Trade Agreement, a
mega regional free trade agreement, is '_premised on the notion that
trade liberalisation, through both tariff and non-tariff barrier
reduction, will drastically increase intra-continental trade, and that
this increased trade will be beneficial for all_.' [CADTM [1], 2019].
Nothing can be farther from the truth.
Farmers organisations in Canada have also called out U.S.-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA, earlier known as NAFTA) for failing to address the
concerns of grain farmers and dairy farmers in the country.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific
Partnership (CPTPP) between Australia,Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,Singapore, and Vietnam. has sown the
fears of corporate capture of seed systems, dilution in the regulation
for GMOs and serious worries for small-scale food producers.
Many, if not all, of these trade agreements carry within it the
controversial provision of _Investor-State Dispute Settlement" (ISDS)_,
which in all instances invariably allow private corporations to override
sovereign national laws and sue the national governments for threatening
their profitability. A system that allows multinational private
corporations to take a sovereign nation to trial in front of an opaquely
set up international tribunal, for the 'crime' of choosing people's
welfare over profit is indeed a dangerous one and must be fiercely
opposed.
REJECT WTO AND FTAS! MOBILISE FOR A PEASANT-LED ALTERNATIVE!
It is in this vein that La Via Campesina is calling upon its members and
allies to not be misled by the smokescreen of a 'weakening WTO' and be
aware of the new age mega and bilateral free trade agreements are
equally if not more harmful.
As we remember Lee Kyung Hae this September, let us also agitate,
educate and organise the rural members of our movement and our allies
about the lurking dangers of these closed room trade negotiations. It is
important that we reject all kinds of free trade agreements and work
towards the complete dismantling of WTO as it prepares to meet for the
next Ministerial in Kazakhstan.
It is important to inform the people of peasant-led-alternatives that
exist, which can feed the people and also save the planet. _The UN
Declaration on Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural
Areas_(UNDROP), which our movement won through 17 years of hard fought
negotiations, are an instrument to protect the rights of our people and
our efforts must be to have it implemented in our countries.
It is vital for our movements to promote and strengthen the local
peasant markets selling locally produced food using agroecological
methods to local customers, and that which represents and respects the
diversity of local food systems. We demand for national policies that
strengthen these peasant market systems and reject free trade agreements
that pose an existential threat to it.
It is important that our movements on the ground also support the Global
Campaign for a UN Binding Treaty for Transnational Corporations on Human
Rights that aims to end the impunity of transnational corporations and
work to strike out the controversial provisions of ISDS from all free
trade agreements.
Starting 10 September, we are exhorting the 182 peasant organisations of
La Via Campesina in 81 countries, all our allied social movements,
academic institutions, political schools of training and NGOs to
organise direct actions, public events, study sessions and
demonstrations to expose the dangers of these free trade agreements in
your own region and countries and also to present an alternative that is
rooted in local cultures, context and biodiversity.
> Let the rallying call for our global actions once again be
>
> "WTO, FTAS OUT OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD!"
>
> "PEASANT TRADE SYSTEMS OVER FREE TRADE"
>
> "FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, NOT FREE TRADE!"
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Send the details of your planned actions to lvcweb(a)viacampesina.org or
share it on social media with the hashtags #WTOKILLSPEASANTS
#FOODSOVEREIGNTYNOW. Follow our Facebook Page [2] and Twitter Page [3]
for cartoons and official posters for 2019 that will be launched during
the week. To download posters from our archives, click here [4] and to
make your own posters, try this link. [5]
Links:
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[1]
http://www.cadtm.org/The-African-Continental-Free-Trade-Agreement-Loss-of-S…
[2] https://www.facebook.com/viacampesinaOFFICIAL/
[3] https://twitter.com/via_campesina
[4] https://cloud.viacampesina.org/s/mCxyKsGXJnLiEw5
[5] https://cloud.viacampesina.org/s/HTGkSZZCipGmLxn
