La Via Campesina carries out Global Day of Action against Monsanto

(Mexico, 16 October 2009) Today, International World Food Day, as declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, La Via Campesina is mobilizing globally along with allies in an overwhelming expression of outright rejection of Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in the name of food sovereignty.

In the United States today, protests and teach-ins against Monsanto are taking place in Maine and Wisconsin.  In Brazil, Via Campesina members are carrying out actions in the headquarters of Monsanto and Syngenta. In Europe, where nine countries have prohibited GMOs, Via Campesina organized an anti-Monsanto brigade traveling throughout the region.  In India, thousands of farmers and allies are carrying out hunger strikes and occupying lands. Actions are being carried out in at least 20 countries and all nine regions where La Via Campesina is present.

Meanwhile, world leaders are preparing to meet at the FAO World Food Summit in Rome in November, where the powers of global governance and agribusiness will utilize the desperation of starving nations to accelerate the expansion of GMO-based agriculture throughout the world.  The Obama administration’s proposal to dedicate over a billion dollars of emergency funding to developing countries for agriculture, and the U.S. government’s Global Food Security Initiative are thinly veiled efforts to this end.   

Peasants, landless workers, migrants, indigenous peoples and consumers, identified transnational corporations, especially Monsanto, which, together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer control over half of the world’s seeds, and are thus the principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples. La Via Campesina is in a daily struggle to protect native seeds, patrimony of humanity, from corporations and patents.  Today, October 16, the strength of the movement is pushing the public opinion to reject Monsanto’s take-over of the food system.

“It’s time for all civil society to recognize the gravity of this situation, global capital should not control our food, nor make decisions behind closed doors. The future of our food, the protection of our resources and especially our seeds, are the right of the people,” said Dena Hoff, coordinator of Via Campesina North America.

Globalize Hope!! Globalize the Struggle!!

Interviews and information: 

• Dena Hof, United States +  1 406-939-1839 (in English)
• Alberto Gomez, Mexico + 525541777846 (en español)

Related posts:

For an answer to global hunger, look to peasants, not multinational corporations: NFFC, USA 8th Session of Binding Treaty Negotiations on TNCs: Statement by the Global Campaign ECVC and allies’ public petition against European Commission’s proposal to deregulate new GMOs: Sign Now! Switzerland: Uniterre warns against Syngenta’s proposal to abandon organic farming