Saskatoon, SK – On September 10th 2024, the National Farmers Union (NFU) joins our allies in the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina, to commemorate the sacrifice of Korean peasant leader, Lee Kyung Hae. Twenty-one years ago on this day at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, Mr. Lee took his life in protest against the WTO wearing a sign that read “WTO Kills Farmers.” Today, farmers, farm workers, peasants and Indigenous peoples organized in La Via Campesina honour Mr. Lee and continue to fight in the Global Day of Action Against the WTO and Free Trade Agreements.
The NFU is a founding member of La Via Campesina, the global movement that unites more than 200 million diverse food producers in their steadfast opposition to the WTO’s role in undermining people’s food sovereignty. The WTO and Free Trade Agreements shift critical decision-making power away from farmers, local communities and national governments to a small number of increasingly wealthy, self-interested multinational corporations.
We see this power grab most evidently today in the acceleration of attacks on farmer’s seed rights, farmland grabs, rural depopulation, farm income crisis, worker exploitation, forced migration, environmental degradation, climate crisis and on-going patriarchy, colonization, war and imperialism that fundamentally violate human rights and the rights of nature. We especially denounce the inhumane free market logic that is enabling the on-going genocide in Gaza, as arms continue to be supplied and food continues to be used as a weapon of war.
We also see how this unjust trade regime is being used by the United States government, under the Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), with support from Canada, to challenge Mexico’s restrictions on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn (maize)— a staple of the Mexican diet that is central to Mexican culture, history and identity, and integral to Indigenous food sovereignty and spirituality. The measures by the Mexican government to restrict GM corn were the result of decades of struggle by farmers and grassroots communities in Mexico. The NFU continues to take action in solidarity with the people of Mexico to steward life-giving corn and defend their cultures and livelihoods from corporate plunder.
On this Day of Action against the WTO and Free Trade Agreements, we call on the Canadian government to enact public policies that bring greater transparency and justice to the national and international trade system, that guarantee food sovereignty and ecological wellbeing for all species, and that ensure fair livelihoods for farmers, farm workers and Indigenous peoples. We again call on the Canadian government to to do everything in its power to stop the genocide and end the blockade of humanitarian aid and access to basic necessities, including food, in Gaza.