“I feel that the Continental School, and maybe other schools that have been carried out across the continent, are going to empower women, especially peasant women, who do a lot.” This was a reflection by Susan Owiti about the initiatives conducted by peasant women who have, in 2024, held for the first time a coordinated series of Continental Schools of…
Amid bombings, war crimes, mass killings of civilians, most of whom are women and children, missing persons, famine and the devastation of entire cities, environmental justice seems like a minor issue. But it is not. The link between the environmental destruction of a territory and that of its original people is inseparable. Chemical residues in the soil, water and air,…
A week into 2023, Jairo Bonilla and Alí Domínguez were murdered while working in Concepción, Colón Department, in Honduras, a few kilometres from their community, Guapinol. Both were defenders of the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, and the Botaderos National Park, also called Carlos Escaleras, the source of 34 bodies of water. 10 days later in the same region, Omar…
Starting on Monday 10 October through to Thursday, the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will hold its 50th session, in Rome, Italy. This year, it faces the challenge of the third massive hunger crisis to hit the world in the past 15 years. But, will it be able to put in motion the structural changes needed to…
Before the Green Revolution came to Sri Lanka in the 1960s, with the imposition of modernised machinery, high yielding varieties, increased use of fertilisers and other agrochemical inputs, the country had an ecologically sustainable agricultural system. Farmers used mixed farming techniques and cultivated in a manner that protected the natural environment and human health. They maintained soil fertility through the…
Farming in Europe is increasingly dominated by monocultures and factory farms. So what does it mean to be a young small-scale farmer in this context? How can they get the power and resources to produce and distribute food sustainably? Three young farmers from Denmark, Malta and Sweden have shared with us their story: why they became farmers, the agricultural situation…
The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) has launched their new annual report, entitled 'Conflicts in the Countryside - Brazil 2021'. Since 1985, the CPT has been recording the violence inflicted on peoples and communities in the Brazilian countryside, by landowners, mining and forestry companies, land speculators and businessmen. It also shows the negligence and complicity of the State. From 1985 to 2020,…
At least 600,000 people in Chile face hunger, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s latest report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world (2021). This is significant in a population of 19.4 million people, and represents an increase of 57,000 people since 2006. Beyond hunger, between 2018-2020, 3.4 million Chilean people faced difficulties accessing…
Last year, between December 16 and December 21, various social and peasant organizations denounced the violent evictions that thousands of peasants were suffering in Aguán, Honduras. The situation was repeated a week later against members of the Cooperativa Remolino cooperative, who were evicted by private security guards and the COBRA squad who shot them with firearms, leaving at least 7…
“Today, peasants and farmers are facing extreme threats from the privatisation of seeds by intellectual property laws. In addition, seed marketing laws ban local and indigenous varieties which don’t fit the industrial model, restricting access and circulation. One institution is at the heart of this: the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).” Hence the call…
