Food sovereignty and resistance to GM seeds in South America

" ... As genetically modified soybeans take over vast tracts in Brazil and all over South America and reports flow in of genetic contamination of local corn in Mesoamerica, grassroots resistance to biotech crops has also grown.

The protests form part of people's movements across the hemisphere that tie together a rejection of neoliberalism and agribusiness, and call for land reform, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture.

[ ... ]

Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute, and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral, and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users.

Food sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution, and consumption based on environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock, and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes, and generations.

[ ... ]

 

Brazil's Landless People's Movement, the world's biggest land squatters' movement, is in the vanguard of GM-free ecological agriculture in the Americas. Its Bionatur seeds network develops and distributes diverse GM-free seeds and runs community seed banks that preserve agricultural biodiversity and keep germplasm out of the hands of agribusiness corporations. In the words of MST spokesman João Pedro Stédile, "If we lose our seed heritage, conquering land and capital will not serve us in any way."

 

[ ... ]

The network was born in 1997 as an outgrowth of COOPERAL, one of the MST's many farming co-operatives, which was seeking alternatives to the corporate-controlled and environmentally unsound industrial agriculture model favored by large "latifundista" landowners.

In its two decades of existence, the MST has provided over 22 million hectares of land to two million poor Brazilians. There they have established 5,000 settlements. The movement's land seizures cannot be properly termed civil disobedience or law-breaking, since Brazil's constitution obligates the government to distribute land to the poor. There are currently approximately 150,000 landless Brazilians affiliated with the MST that are living in temporary roadside barracks waiting to get land. ... "

~ From GM Soy in Brazil Will Kill the Amazon and Boost Global Warming by 50% ~