This new material includes issues such as the involvement of large transnational corporations in industrial agriculture, agribusiness, persecution and murder of peasant leaders, and the struggle by farmers for food sovereignty and an agrarian reform.

The video goes through the origins of La Via Campesina in the 90s. This organization is made up by over 200 million people, belonging to 150 peasant organizations from 70 countries around the world. Food Sovereignty is their focus since 1996.

The 20-minute video includes tens of peasant voices from the different continents, with the diversity that characterizes each country and region.

But there are elements shared by all countries: the transnational interests in the countryside, financial speculation with food and land, the failure of agriculture led by companies, hunger and poverty, the peasant struggle for land, the food sovereignty alternative, organic and agroecological production, to name a few of the common aspects.

Real World Radio reviews below some of the voices present in the new material by La Via Campesina International.

The leader Paul Nicholson, from the EHNE Confederation in the Basque Country said from an official intergovernmental summit that “transnational companies are here trying to earn money from the misery and hunger of the small farmers of the world”.

Meanwhile, Carlos Marentes, from the Border Agricultural Workers Project, from El Paso, Texas, in the border between the US and Mexico, said that “according to the FAO (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) 800 million people suffered from hunger in 1976”. “Nowadays, that figure exceeds 1000 million. Why? Because the system does not want to solve the issue of hunger”, he added.

The Colombian leader Bibiana Royero from the Caribbean and Latin American Confederation of Agronomy Students (CONCLAEA), said that “multinational companies are thinking in increasing wealth, they see everything in terms of efficiency and making profit.
Farmer Angel Strapazzón, from the Argentinian Santiago del Estero Peasant Movement (MOCASE), considers that the prevailing industrial agricultural model “has turned food into finance, into financial speculation, and has turned land into financial speculation”. “The green or the GM revolution don’t aim to eradicate the hunger of thousands of millions of human beings. They want profits for the few owners of these large companies”, he concluded.
Also with reference to industrial agriculture led by companies, farmer Itelvina Masioli, from the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), said that industrial agriculture “is an agriculture without people. It’s an agriculture that doesn’t accommodate nature and human beings”.

Meanwhile, Nettie Wiebe, from the National Farmers Union from Canada (NFU) said that “the World Food Summit and the direction agriculture is taking has in fact increased hunger, and we need to change direction.” “We are offering real solutions through our whole concept of food sovereignty, which focuses on food production that is local, that is small-scale, appropriate to the ecological and cultural areas”, she added. Via Campesina promotes, according to Wiebe “a peasant production and agriculture which will not only feed the world but will feed it better”.
Leader Maguiorina Balbuena, from the National Coordination of Rural and Indigenous Women from Paraguay (CONAMURI) said “we want to regain control of our territories that are being occupied by transnationals”. “We are fighting for a healthy agricultural production, and to maintain the culture of indigenous and farming families”, she concluded.

Below, you’ll find La Via Campesina’s complete documentary.

Photo: http://seminarioantoniogarcia.blogspot.com