[E-rundbrief] Info 1540 - LVC on Trade, Markets and Development

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1540 - La Via Campesina (LVC): LVC Declaration on 
Trade, Markets and Development in the context of UNCTAD 2016, Nairobi, 
Kenya.

Bad Ischl, 19.7.2016

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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LVC Declaration on Trade, Markets and Development in the context of 
UNCTAD 2016, Nairobi, Kenya

La Via Campesina

19.7.2016

"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." — Nyeleni 
Declaration on Food Sovereignty (Mali, 2007)

(Nairobi, July 19, 2016) In the context of the Fourteenth Session of 
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 
scheduled for 17–22 July 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya, we of La Vía 
Campesina reiterate our commitment to Food Sovereignty and the Right 
to Food as well as our resolve to put an end to neoliberalism's 
so-called "free trade paradigm" and "market-driven development" 
schemes that serve only to consolidate corporate control over our food 
systems. As a UN body, we expect UNCTAD and its member states to 
prioritize democratic and participatory processes aimed at policies 
that successfully promote food sovereignty. UNCTAD should not be used 
to promote the very same Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), including the 
European Union's Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in Africa, 
that one after another have resulted in more hunger, poverty, and 
exclusion for people around the world.

La Vía Campesina is an international movement which brings together 
millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, 
women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers 
from around the world. We defend peasant-based agroecological food 
systems as a way to promote social justice and dignity and we strongly 
oppose corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that 
are destroying our food systems, our communities, and the environment. 
We are made up of 164 local and national organizations in 73 countries 
from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Altogether, we represent 
about 200 million farmers. We are an autonomous, pluralist and 
multicultural movement, independent from any political, economic or 
other type of affiliation.

On UNCTAD

We of La Via Campesina very much welcomed the 2015 publication of the 
UNCTAD Report titled "Smallholder Farmers and Sustainable Commodity 
Development" and its recognition of our vital role in food production 
and markets, as well as the need for governments and multilateral 
institutions to work directly with us in order to achieve the UN 
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, we strongly oppose the 
report's numerous recommendations, most of which support the 
commodification of our agricultural production. We firmly reject the 
report's underlying premise that only as successful profit seekers, or 
"business enterprises", are we a viable long-term source of food and 
nutrition for our people. We also denounce ongoing attempts to 
commodify food and nutrition, and remind all those gathered at UNCTAD 
14 that food is a Human Right.

The UNCTAD we are seeing in motion presents a free market driven 
neoliberal trade paradigm which stands in stark contrast to the food 
sovereignty paradigm where smallholder farmers are social, cultural, 
and historical actors that make decisions based on a diversity of 
personal, ethical, and cultural factors and not just based on profit, 
business and markets. Instead of corporate-backed trade promotion 
schemes, we want an UNCTAD that protects us from the destructive and 
secretive FTAs promoted by the undemocratic World Trade Organization 
(WTO) such as the TTIP, TPP, CETA, TiSA, EPAs, and their so-called 
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). We, the peasants of the 
world, currently feed the global majority, and we do so in spite of 
the numerous Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) aimed at displacing peasant 
production and trade worldwide.

Peasant-Based Production and Local Markets

Globally, more than 80% of smallholders operate in local and domestic 
food markets, with the majority trading through informal means. These 
highly diverse markets are the ones through which most of the food 
consumed in the world transits. They operate within territorial spaces 
that can range from local to transboundary to regional and may be 
located in rural, peri-urban or urban contexts.

These markets are directly linked to local, national and/or regional 
food systems: the food concerned is produced, processed, traded and 
consumed within a given space and the value added is retained and 
shared there, helping to create employment. They can take place in 
structured arrangements or in more ad hoc or informal ways which 
provide greater flexibility for smallholders and fewer barriers to 
entry and more control over prices and market conditions. They perform 
multiple functions beyond commodity exchange, acting as space for 
social interaction and exchange of knowledge. These are the most 
important markets, especially for rural women, when it comes to 
inclusion and access, contributing significantly to our fulfilment of 
our right to food and nutrition.

Despite their importance, informal markets are often overlooked in 
data collection systems which impacts negatively on the evidence base 
for informing public policies. As women smallholders mostly operate in 
informal markets, their essential contribution to food systems, 
including food distribution, and economic growth remains largely 
invisible in trade and development policy-making processes and, they 
face particular socio-economic barriers in accessing resources and 
marketing opportunities resulting in further marginalization and 
violation of their rights. Given their importance for food security 
and smallholder livelihoods, public policies and investments should be 
oriented towards strengthening, expanding and protecting local and 
domestic peasant-fed markets.

We call on the UNCTAD and its member states to support the collection 
of comprehensive data on local, domestic and informal–both rural and 
urban–markets linked to territories to improve the evidence base for 
policies, including sex-disaggregated data, and incorporating this as 
a regular aspect of national and international data collection systems.

We recommend transparent and fair pricing of all agricultural products 
that provides full remuneration for smallholders' work and their own 
investments, including rural women. Pricing policies should give 
smallholders access to timely and affordable market information to 
enable them to make informed decisions on what, when and where to 
sell, guarding against the abuse of buyer power, particularly in 
concentrated markets.

We demand public and institutional procurement programs that allow 
smallholders to rely on regular and stable demand for agricultural 
products at fair prices and for consumers to access healthy, 
nutritious, diverse, fresh and locally produced food, including during 
crises and conflicts. We want these procurement programs to service 
public institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons, homes for the 
elderly and public servants' canteens, by providing food produced by 
smallholders through participatory mechanisms involving them in the 
process. We reiterate our calls for a permanent solution to the public 
stockholding issue – considering the imbalances in the domestic 
support allowances accorded to developed countries – and our 
commitment to building these robust public and institutional 
procurement programs.

For these to succeed, we remind national governments that they must 
guarantee fair and equitable access to land, water, territory, and 
biodiversity, referring them to the Voluntary Guidelines on the 
Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the 
Context of National Food Security.

Food is a human right and must not be treated like a simple commodity. 
We call on the 2016 UNCTAD Conference to rethink how it addresses the 
issue of food and its relationship to trade and development. Peasants 
are at the heart of food production and what we urgently need is Food 
Sovereignty – requiring the protection and renationalization of 
national food markets, the promotion of local circuits of production 
and consumption, the struggle for land, the defense of the territories 
of indigenous peoples, and comprehensive agrarian reform — not the 
false promises of Green Revolution driven input- and capital-intensive 
and dependent production systems that operate under the false premise 
of competitiveness that only works when it undermines the livelihoods 
of farmers elsewhere.

We remind governments that they have obligations to meet when it comes 
to providing quality public services required for a dignified life in 
the countryside (health, education, etc.), and that these obligations 
cannot be met without fair prices that protect local farmers from 
profit-hungry transnational corporations (TNCs) and an international 
trade system that currently only serves the interests of agribusiness 
and other corporate elites. As a UN body, UNCTAD should strive to be 
coherent with its other ongoing efforts, including but not limited to 
the effective realization of the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights. Together with allies in Nairobi, and throughout the world, we 
invite all to join us in the struggle for Food Sovereignty and an end 
to corporate-led "free trade" promoted through undemocratic 
institutions such as the WTO.

FOOD IS A RIGHT, NOT A COMMODITY!

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY NOW!

GLOBALIZE STRUGGLE!

GLOBALIZE HOPE!

Via-info-en [at] viacampesina.org
http://viacampesina.org/Via-info-en/


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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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