[E-rundbrief] Info 745 - Via Campesina Congress Mozambique

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 745 - Luis Hernández Navarro (Enviado) - La Jornada 
(Mexico): Family farmers of the entire world meet in Mozambique in 
defense of rural life.

Bad Ischl, 18.10.2008

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Family farmers of the entire world meet in Mozambique in defense of 
rural life

Luis Hernández Navarro (Enviado) - La Jornada, Mexico

(Maputo, October 16)  They number almost 650, those who arrived in 
Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, from 86 countries on five continents. 
They are delegates, translators, technical support team members and 
special guests of the V International Congress of the Via Campesina.

To reach there, most of the delegates have made a considerable economic 
and human effort. Maputo is not a city you get to easily. The hosts, the 
farmers of the National Union of Mozambique Farmers (UNAC in 
Portuguese), have organically grown the food that will be served to 
guests. But that is just how this international movement behaves. >From 
its birthing, 18 years ago, they have taken initiatives in defense of 
the rural world and small farmers that simultaneously defy the laws of 
gravity and the parameters of reason, but which, with the passage of 
time, demonstrate not only that they are viable, but absolutely necessary.

At a moment when the world economy has yet come up for air, in which the 
credit, environmental, food, trade and finance crises bump up against 
each other in the international economic architecture, farmer leaders of 
all the regions of the planet have arrived at this corner of Africa to 
reflect on the future of agriculture and family farmers and come to 
agreement on the actions to take.

The headquarters for the job is the central school of Frelimo, the party 
that successfully lead the struggle for national liberation and against 
Portuguese colonialism and which, already transformed, governs 
Mozambique today. It is an austere and semi-arid place that still 
conserves some of its original nature.

Via Campesina emerged formally in 1993, in a conference that took place 
in Mons, Belgium. Annette Aurélie Desmarais, who for various years was a 
small organic farmer in Canada and who now has become a kind of 
historian of the organization, insists that those who brought it 
together had known each other and struggled together. Their common 
objectives were an explicit rejection of the neoliberal model for rural 
development.

The conference is taking place at a very peculiar moment for Mozambique. 
The big projects of political transformation that followed the 
proclamation of independence in June of 1975, that nationalized private 
property and the exercise of popular power, have been severely weakened, 
such that in 1987 the country received a loan from the World Bank. The 
US is today the principal direct foreign investor.

Nevertheless, the situation is changing. The president of Brazil, Luiz 
Inacio Lula da Silva, arrived today at the invitation of his counterpart 
Armando Guebuza, another step in the Brazilian diplomatic offensive to 
form relations with South Africa and the ex-Portuguese colonies of 
Africa. A chess move that shows the potential Brazil has on the 
international stage, to a nation who played a key role in the Movement 
of Non-Aligned Nations born out of the conference of Bandung.

Lula has taken advantage of his tour to try to un-block the Doha Round 
on international trade, stuck over serious disagreements between the US 
and India on agricultural questions. Via Campesina will look at this 
issue to update their historic position on this matter: that agriculture 
must remain outside of international trade agreements and the nations 
ought to have the right to determine their food policies.

Henry Saragih, current general secretary of the Via Campesina, summed up 
in a prepared document for the conference the changes in the 
international context that will be touched in this gathering. Among 
these are the reality that, in addition to the failure of trade 
liberalization, the conflict between rich and poor over climate change, 
the instability in the production of foods, the use of land to produce 
agrofuels, changes in the geopolitical balance, the relative weakness of 
the multilateral financial organisms, the crisis of the Food and 
Agriculture Organization (FAO), the growing concentration of 
multinationals, is the decision made by various governments to seriously 
consider some of the proposals of the Via Campesina as public policy.

The Via Campesina Congress is, among many other things, an invaluable 
x-ray to diagnose the situation in which the family farmers of the world 
are living across the entire planet. All of this in the midst of the 
worst food crisis in many years.

More pictures and articles on www.viacampesina.org

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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