[E-rundbrief] Info 671 - Day of Peasant Struggle

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 671 - La Via Campesina: Internationaler Tag der
Kleinbauern und Landlosen/ April 17th of The International Day of
Peasant Struggle, 17.4.2008. Agribusiness Transnational Corporations
(TNCs) Create World Food Crisis. Peasants Seize Back Their Rights.

Bad Ischl, 15.4.2008

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Internationaler Tag der Kleinbauern und Landlosen

Agribusiness Transnational Corporations (TNCs) Create World Food Crisis.

Peasants Seize Back Their Rights.

Call of La Via Campesina for April 17th of The International Day of
Peasant Struggle.

The world food crisis is starting to appear in its real picture this
year. During the last decades hunger was "hiding" in rural or slump
areas. Now the number is increasing and many more people cannot stand it
anymore. Food riots appear and queues of hungry people are back in many
part of the world.

Africa and Asia are worst affected by hunger, misery and poverty in the
rural areas and the increasing effects of climate change. Economic
development and growth only benefits minority of the population and
create environmental damage and does not resolve the extremely
precarious situation of the large majority. In India an economic boom
benefits only a minor part of the population. At the same time peasant
based agriculture is being destroyed and thousands of peasant end their
life through suicide because of despair and poverty. Young peasants from
Indonesia, Philippine, Thailand, Bangladesh have to leave their family
and village for other countries because there is no possibility to gain
a living. In Latin America region similar developments take place. Farm
land do not anymore belong to rural people. They have to work as cheap
labor on the land they owned before. Some flee to the city trying to
improve their lives but unfortunately every night they have to go to bed
with an empty belly.

Big transnational agribusiness corporations (TNCs) want to increase
control over world food and agricultural economy. Liberalization of
trade and investment in agriculture has made this happen. International
arrangements have been made for this through the World Trade
Organization (WTO), Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Economic
Partnership Agreements (EPAs). It is assisted through the programs of
the World Bank and the IMF that promote agribusiness as the priority in
food and agricultural policies in many countries.

Government subsidies that go to agribusiness TNCs in the north are aimed
to industrialize farming, eliminating farms in the North and in the
South through low price dumping. Through green revolution, agribusiness
TNCs exclude local wisdom and knowledge on agriculture and impose new
technologies and agricultural inputs that farmers have to buy and depend
on. Today the greediness of agribusiness TNCs is even more dangerous
because they want much more land to convert into agro fuel
mono-cultures, harvesting food for cars.

Clearly, agribusiness TNCs want to stop family farmers and peasants to
feed people in the world because their objective is to control the world
food market and to convert peasant based production into industrialized
production. After expropriating many small farmers and peasants they
exploit consumers increasing world food prices.

The operation of agribusiness TNCs are really against human beings and
the sustainability of the earth, we should not allow them to continue
their operations. We should stop them and seize back the rights of
people for farming, the right to produce good food for all people.

For the commemoration this year of the 17th of April, the International
Day of Peasant Struggle, La Via Campesina calls upon their members and
other social movements to do activities and actions against TNCs:

1. To send before the 17th of April reports and information on the
impacts of agribusiness TNCs that create hunger, poverty for family
farmers and peasants. We will collect your information and publish the
list on www.viacampesina.org during the April 17th. You could send any
information like incidents of hunger, violation of human rights,
negative impacts on the culture and values of people, indebtedness,
health problems, expropriation of farm land, natural disasters and other
incidents impacted by the operations of agribusiness TNCs in your
village, local and country.

2. To organize on or around the 17th of April activities (seminars,
public discussions, actions, mobilizations, press conferences, etc.) to
expose the impacts of agribusiness TNCs and to delegitimize their role
in the food sector. These activities could also show what has been
proposed by the peasant organizations and other social movements as the
alternatives to the neo-liberal model.

www.viacampesina.org

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
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