Food Sovereignty

NFFC’s Progressive Farm Bill Platform – Placing Family Farmers First

April 18, 2023 Jordan Treakle and Antonio Tovar, National Family Farm Coalition. Educate! Congress, Farm Bill, Farmers, Food Sovereignty, Worker Rights and Jobs

The National Family Farm Coalition released its 2023 Farm Bill Platform urging lawmakers to pass a suite of policy proposals that prioritize consumers, family farmers and ranchers, and rural communities over the profits of corporate agribusinesses. Big Ag and structurally problematic farm policy continue to undermine family farms and ranches, leading to the drastic loss of generational wealth, depressed rural communities, and a highly concentrated food and farm system vulnerable to disruption—problems largely ignored by Congress and government agencies. The Farm Bill opens an important opportunity to reverse these trends and ensure good food for all, prosperous local economies, and healthy ecosystems.

We Can Move Beyond Food Access To Food Sovereignty

April 2, 2023 Rae Gomes and Tim Duschenes, Next City. Create! Cities, COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Mutual Aid

Baker Yolfer Pabade arrived at the Hot Bread Kitchen Incubator each day at 4 p.m. He had already worked a nine-hour shift in another bakery, but would work on testing and improving his recipes for another six hours. He was dreaming of launching his own bakery business based on his Colombian-Venezuelan roots and worked this schedule—with no days off—to make it a reality. After three years, he was finally ready to leave his day job and focus on his own business. One month later, in March 2020, all of New York’s food businesses ground to a halt. Yolfer took a week to make a plan of action.

How Nicaragua Tackles Climate Change And Hunger

February 19, 2023 Katya Beltran, Friends of the ATC. Create! climate crisis, Food Sovereignty, Latin America, Nicaragua

Managua - A group of ten students and two faculty members from the University of Maryland met with the Marlen Sanchez, Director of the Latin American Institute of Agroecology (IALA Ixim Ulew), and Erika Takeo, Coordinator of the Friends of ATC in a conference room at the Francisco Morazán School in Managua. Sanchez spoke about climate change and its impact on Nicaragua. There have been more droughts, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes damaging Nicaragua making it 1 of the 10 countries of the world most affected by climate change.

Free Summit Explores The Latest In Seed Sharing, Libraries And More

January 23, 2023 Seed Library Network, Resilience. Create! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Seed Library

Are you new to seeding and interested in establishing a seed bank in your neighborhood? Immersed in the seeding world and looking to connect with other folks and deepen your networks? Perhaps you’re an agriculturist interested in the intersection of seed lending and food sovereignty. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you won’t want to miss Seeding the Future: The 11th Annual Seed Library Summit. If you’re new to seeding, you’re in luck! Seeding the Future will host a variety of sessions to get you acquainted with the basics. Our “How to Start a Seed Library” session is a great introductory conversation that will map out the time, resources, and people-power needed to start your own seed library. “Ask a Seed Librarian” is an expert-hosted panel that can act as a great follow-up. If you’re more acquainted with seeding, other sessions that might pique your interest include “Seed Saving Basics”, “School Seed Libraries”, and “Seed Exchanges”.

In Indianapolis, Building A Community Food Ecosystem In An ‘Apartheid Zone’

January 11, 2023 Frances Nguyen, Next City. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Indianapolis

In Indianapolis’ Northeast Corridor, a predominantly Black area with a growing Latinx population, more than half of residents live in a food desert. One community-led initiative seeks to build a local food ecosystem, one that will not only feed them in times of crisis but will sustain their health, wealth and wellbeing for generations to come. In 2021, in the climate of the ongoing pandemic, the Equitable Food Access Initiative (EFAI) was created to address these dueling public health crises, in one of the top five cities in the country with the most people living in “food deserts,” or areas where low-income people don’t have ready access to fresh food retailers within reasonable traveling distance from their homes.

Sri Lanka’s Untold Story Of Resilience

October 16, 2022 Richard Flyer, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community organizing, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Sri Lanka

Over the past six months, Sri Lanka has been in the news. You have likely read accounts or seen videos of a civil revolution sparked by government corruption and shortages of both food and fuel. Amidst this uprising — involving all religions, ethnicities, and classes of the population with a call for systems change — thousands of protestors stormed and occupied the presidential palace, forcing the president to flee in July. In a world beset by supply chain issues, where the war in Ukraine is one of the multiple factors compromising the world’s food supply, it seems that Sri Lanka is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.” It’s the first domino to fall, as a worldwide globalized economy based on large-scale, corporate monoculture and shipping food halfway across the planet wobbles toward collapse.

Nicaragua: Tomabu Community Builds Agroecology And Food Sovereignty

August 18, 2022 Friends of the ATC. Create! Agroecology, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Nicaragua

This past week, I visited the community of Tomabu in the department of Estelí. It is a small campo community with an incredibly curvy and uneven dirt road that leads to the top. Upon arrival, we were warmly greeted by Dolores and Bernardino in their home, where they shared with us that Dolores was born in the community and they have been campesinos/campesinas their entire lives, currently working with 4 manzanas of land, and that the community’s main crops are corn and beans Dolores and Bernardino have one of the ATC’s projects behind their home – cama profundas, as they are called in Spanish – a deep bed system for reproducing pigs that will either be sold within the community or consumed by community members. During our visit, we got to see the first piglets from the mother pig in the deep bed system.

‘World’s First Library Farm:’ Home To Gardens And Community Innovations

July 15, 2022 Chad Small, Resilience. Create! Community, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Inflation, Innovation, Library

With food costs at near-record prices, the idea of growing your own food has never been so attractive. But food production requires space, and space can be a precious commodity — even a rarity — for people who live in urban areas. For decades, communities in cities around the U.S. have created urban farms and gardens. These spaces make use of empty lots to grow low-cost produce or flowers for communities. These urban farms are not always in high-profile or easily accessible places, however. But, what if your urban farm was in a central location? Perhaps your local library? The Cicero Branch of the Northern Onondaga Public Library (NOPL) in Upstate New York has explored precisely this question. In 2011, they created the Library Farm — partly the brainchild of Meg Backus, then the adult programming director and public relations coordinator.

Achieving Self-Funding Local Sovereignty As Food Systems Collapse

July 9, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Local Currency, Local Economy

“Deglobalizing” and “dedollarizing” have been much in the news. Reducing dependence on the global supply chain and the U.S. dollar are trends that are happening not just internationally but locally. In the United States, we have seen movements both for local food independence and to divest from Wall Street banks. The burgeoning cryptocurrency movement is another push to “dedollarize” and escape the international bankers’ control grid. This article is a sequel to one discussing home gardens and community food co-ops as local counter-measures to an impending food crisis.

Food Insecurity Increases In The US While It Declines In Nicaragua

June 27, 2022 Nan McCurdy, New Cold War. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Insecurity, Food Sovereignty, Nicaragua

In 2018, 48% of U.S.-based churches had their own food-distribution ministry or supported efforts run by other churches or organizations such as food pantries or food banks. These faith-based ministries, unlike government programs, provide immediate help to hungry people with no requirements. And more than two million people volunteer at a food pantry, soup kitchen, emergency shelter or after-school programs in the U.S., working more than 100 million volunteer hours a year—according to Hunger in America 2014, a study conducted by Feeding America. This wave of charity recognizes a serious problem in the United States: Despite being a wealthy nation, food insecurity remains high.

Food Sovereignty As A Path To Liberation And Justice

May 27, 2022 Adalah Justice Project and The American Friends Service Committee, Mondoweiss. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Liberation, Palestine

As apartheid Israel’s brutal siege of Gaza enters its 15th year this June, food sovereignty and climate activists Mohammed AbuJayyab and Asmaa Abu Mezied emphasized the centrality of the agricultural space in building resistance, autonomy and community in the greater fight for justice and Palestinian liberation in a recent public conversation hosted by Adalah Justice Project (AJP) and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). “To talk about agriculture in Gaza particularly, the first thing that comes to mind is the systematic challenges that face farmers in Gaza,” related to climate change and daily worries of production, yield and market prices, says Abu Mezeid, an economic development and social inclusion specialist .“Diving deep into them, you will understand how political and politicized these challenges are.”

Bolivian Agricultural Production Company Created For Food Sovereignty

April 22, 2022 Kawsachun News. Create! Bolivia, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Socialism

According to Minister of Rural Development and Lands Remmy Gonzales, the company will be in charge of producing different crops and covering the deficit in food production, with aims to ensure food sovereignty for Bolivians. The authority clarified that the government doesn’t intend to compete with entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector, but to establish actions to support and promote food production. The MAS government is also taking measures to encourage wheat production. Minister Gonzales said that actions are being implemented through the National Wheat Program and that the purchase of wheat grain production from the winter agricultural campaign will be guaranteed.

Yakama Nation Acquires Inaba Produce Farms

November 2, 2021 Indian Country Today. Create! Farming, Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Rights, Yakama

On Monday, November 1, 2021, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (“Yakama Nation”), acting through its agricultural enterprise Yakama Nation Farms, purchased Inaba Produce Farms, Inc. from the Inaba family. “When the Inaba family began farming here on the Yakama Reservation in the early 1900’s, Yakama tribal members supported their efforts, leasing land to them when the laws of the United States did not permit Japanese immigrants to be landowners. Today, the Inaba family honors our historic relationship by selling Inaba Produce Farms to the Yakama Nation to support our sovereignty and food security,” said Virgil Lewis, Sr., the Yakama Tribal Council Vice Chairman and Yakama Nation Farms Board Chair.

Nicaragua Is The Exception: Letter To A Cynic

October 21, 2021 Becca Mohally Renk, Counter Punch. Create! Finance and the Economy, Food Sovereignty, Infrastructure, Nicaragua

“That’s unbelievable,” my father-in-law wrote me from Ireland after watching me give a statistic-heavy webinar on the advances for the poor in Nicaragua since 2007. “I know, right?” I replied. “No, I mean it’s actually unbelievable,” he wrote back. “For cynical people like me, our faith in humanity has been undermined. The story of a government really looking after ordinary people is too good to be true.” I understand what he means. If I hadn’t been living in Nicaragua for the last 20 years and hadn’t seen with my own eyes the changes since the Sandinista government came back in to power with a pro poor strategy 14 years ago, I know that I would also dismiss the statistics as nothing but propaganda.

Food Sovereignty, A Manifesto For The Future Of Our Planet

October 16, 2021 La Via Campesina. Create! Collective Liberation, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, La Via Campesina

It offers a vision for our collective future, and defines the principles around which we organize our daily living and co-exist with Mother Earth. It is a celebration of life and all the diversity around us. It embraces every element of our cosmos; the sky above our heads, the land beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the forests, the mountains, valleys, farms, oceans, rivers and ponds. It recognizes and protects the inter-dependency between eight million species that share this home with us. We inherited this collective wisdom from our ancestors, who ploughed the land and waded the waters for 10,000 years, a period in which we evolved into an agrarian society. Food Sovereignty promotes justice, equality, dignity, fraternity and solidarity.

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