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LVC brings UNDROP as a tool to implement the UNDFF to address the concerns on the main pillars of the global food system


Several delegates from La Via Campesina organizations participated in the Global Forum on Family Farming Midterm Event in Rome from 14 to 18 October. Zainal Arifin Fuat from La Via Campesina Asia participated in the Roundtable on “Sowing Rights: Uptake of global policy instruments” on the 16th of October. Below is the adapted
intervention of Zainal.

(Rome: October 17, 2024) La Via Campesina is international peasant movement. Last year, we defined a slogan for the 8th conference held in Bogota, Colombia: “Faced Global Crisis, we build food sovereignty to ensure the future for humanity. Both Food Sovereignty and Humanity are linked to Human rights based approach which is advanced in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in the Rural Areas (UNDROP)which adopted by UN General Assembly on the 17th of December 2018. Following this, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a resolution to establish the UN Working Group on the rights of Peasant and other people in rural areas on the 11th of October 2023. This resolution mentioned the important role of Family Farmers in feeding people in their territory instead of producing food for other territories, which is export orientation.

Yesterday, we heard from Dr. Graziano at the High Level Panel held during the official opening celebration of the world food day saying that there were some international organizations such as La Via Campesina which because of the high number of people in hunger globally in 1990s, demanded favourable public policy for Family Farming. La Via Campesina together these organisations proposed the concept of food sovereignty in the world food summit in 1996 to overcome hunger and poverty.

Besides addressing the alarming levels of hungry people, UNDROP broadly seeks to address the many agrarian conflicts which affect peasants and indigenous people who in such cases face repression, criminalization and eviction from their territories. There are many land grabbing incidences linked to production of mostly export food, feed, forest, biofuel and climate change initiatives related carbon markets by big corporations, the Transnational Corporations (TNCs). Because of these many challenges facing the peasants, La Via Campesina in the 1990s in Taxala, Mexico discussed and agreed to propose the creation of an instrument to protect the rights of peasants at the international level. And in 2001 Indonesian Peasant Union with other social movement conducted a conference on agrarian reform and the right of peasant. The Indonesian government and the Indonesian National Committee of Human rights supported this conference and its initiatives. This culminated in drafting and tabling by La Via Campesina and its allies a document on the right of peasants to the UN Human Rights Council.

Today, we celebrate the world food day in the situation which is not good. According to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition (SOFI) report of 2024, there are still 733 million hungry people. Today. And one of the driving factors of the high number of hungry people is war and conflict. Now, we see thousands upon thousands of people have been killed, some dying of hunger, and a famine looming in Gaza, Palestine. We are seeing the same pattern now emerging in Lebanon as the war spreads regionally. We have to stop the war on humanity. Maria Arvelo – Chair of International Steering Committee of UNDFF- spoke at the official opening celebration of the world food day about this issue and the importance of respecting and recognising access to food as a basic need and a human right.

I refer again to what Dr. Graziano said about green revolution, mechanization, digitalization and large scale farming on which there is relationship with farm size. But here again, my concern is that the large-scale agriculture and industrial agriculture is a part of the free market which seeks production on a large-scale for export. The same players, the corporations control the international markets, speculate on trade which in most instances cause high food prices, which lead to inflation and ultimately economic downturn and high income inequality. Both of them are driving factors of why the number people in hunger has continued to rise as reported in the SOFI 2024.

Therefore, the high number of hungry and poor people indicates the failure of the neoliberal food system. In addition, the large scale agriculture is based on monoculture model heavily dependent on chemical inputs in agriculture (fertilizer and pesticides). It is linked to digitalization in agriculture and high agriculture technology, about which Prof. Raj Patel in his video message on 15 October – the first day of the global midterm of UNDFF said that in the near future, two models of agriculture are likely, namely the agriculture without farmers which using high technology (for example using robots) and another, agroecology which is rich of biodiversity, polycultures, and with many opportunities for women, in particular, in the agroecology field.

Therefore, LVC brings UNDROP as a tool to implement the UNDFF in which the international peasant movement seeks to address the concerns on the main pillars of the Global Food System:

  1. Means of Production: Agrarian Reform and Rights to Land, Rights to Access and control land and natural resources. Here LVC demands CFS to propose and decide to conduct the International conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development ( ICARRD) after the previous ICARRD held in 2006
  2. Distribution – LVC promotes the International trade Framework based on Food Sovereignty – to replace the neoliberal food system which implement free market under World Trade Organisation and Free Trade Agreements.
  3. Peasant Agroecology as model of production to replace chemical agriculture and large scale farming with GMO seeds, gene editing and gene drive. The crisis of biodiversity facing us today started when all those so-called solutions such as green revolution, Climate Smart Agriculture etc were implemented in food production. In addition, Peasant Agroecology can adapt to climate change on which LVC has slogan “Peasants and small scale food producers cool the Planet”. Now, we have a threat, such as nature based solutions and even regenerative agriculture to replace politically Peasant Agroecology. Both of them are captured by the corporates.

This post is also available in Français.

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