Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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72 agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty 1 For more information, see Bloque Popular Centroamericano, Alliance for Responsible Trade and Heispheric Social Alliance (2004), “Why We Say No to CAFTA,” available at www.artus.org/docs/cafta304.pdf The panelists also discussed the need for policy change within nations. Sinclair argued for the reform of subsidy policies that currently promote industrial agriculture, in order to make subsidies serve the needs of small farmers and also serve environmental aims. Dawkins called for support for farmers’ rights to land, water, seeds, and self-determination as critical foundations of food sovereignty. Flores argued that food sovereignty must become the focus of policy on all levels – international, national, and rural. In the case of his own country, he argued for land reform to prohibit communally held ejido lands, created by Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, from being privatized and sold to corporations, a process that began under NAFTA. He also called for respect for the rights of Mexico’s 12 million indigenous people, and for laws to conserve soil and prohibit the privatization of water resources. Silvia Rodríguez. Photographer: Steve Taylor. “[Under US-CAFTA] we can see that the seed industry is the one that is going to gain, and not the seed industry in our countries, but the transnational corporations; that intellectual property rights will bring only an exclusive monopoly to the plant breeders or the enterprises that can pay for the investigation… Current world seed sales of $30 billion a year should jump to $90 billion soon, especially if farmers are obliged by law to stop producing their own seed. This has been an ancient right of farmers, which is now turned illegal.” – Silvia Rodríguez New Free Trade Agendas: The Case of CAFTA Silvia Rodríguez, President of the Board for Genetic Resources Action International and member of the Coordinating Network on Biodiversity in San José, Costa Rica, presented a call for opposition to one of the newest trade developments, the United States-Central America Free Trade Agreement (US-CAFTA). 1 In 2003, trade ministers from the U.S. and Central American countries from Guatemala to Costa Rica, plus the Dominican Republic, negotiated a regional free trade agreement which is now awaiting ratification in the legislative chambers of the various countries. The legislators can approve or disapprove the agreement, but “not amend a single comma,” Rodríguez said, charging that its negotiation by executive-branch ministers circumvented the normal democratic law-making process. US-CAFTA’s status as a “treaty” would put it on a level above all other laws in the Central American countries, superseded only by the national constitutions. Rodríguez explained how US-CAFTA will threaten Central American food sovereignty in two ways: US-CAFTA will not only increase dumping of subsidized U.S. agricultural products onto Central American markets, but will also restrict farmers’ rights through its intellectual property provisions pertaining to seeds. Under US-CAFTA, countries would have to abide by the Convention of the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 91), a protocol which requires participating countries to grant patents on plants, giving the patent holder exclusive intellectual property rights over the seed patented. UPOV 91 would go even further than the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property requirements for intellectual property rights to plants, and if CAFTA took effect, even WTO negotiations could not overturn UPOV in Central America. Under UPOV 91, farmers could save seed for their own use, but would be prohibited from improving, selling, or producing seeds without permission. As a result, Rodríguez said, “farmers will lose the control of one of the most important means of production: the seed, and at least for Costa Rica and for Central America, you’ll see that food sovereignty will become a myth.” yale school of forestry & environmental studies
farming, forests, and biodiversity 73 Farming, Forests, and Biodiversity Summary by Avery Cohn Panelists: Ivette Perfecto Associate Professor of Natural Resources, University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Ronaldo Lec Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura (IMAP), San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala Robin Sears Research Scientist at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) at Columbia University, and The New York Botanical Garden, New York, New York, USA John Tuxill Doctoral Candidate, Program in Ethnobotany, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the New York Botanical Garden Moderator: Liz Shapiro University of California at Berkeley, California, USA With a budget of over $45 billion per year, conservation is a significant industry unto itself. As the global conservation budget grows, it translates into ever-expanding conservation units of chosen protected areas. Participants on the “Farming, Forests, and Biodiversity” panel emphatically critiqued the classical protected area model of strictly protected reserves enclosing uninhabited wilderness as inadequate at conserving biodiversity and forests at the landscape level today, and unnecessarily incompatible with traditional farming systems. Through their presentations on the relationship between alternative, traditional, and small-scale farming and the environment, they demonstrated how conservation policy could become functional by embracing the production landscape as an important site of conservation. yale school of forestry & environmental studies
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Report Number 4 Agroecology and the
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Agroecology and the Struggle for Fo
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eakout session reports Food Soverei
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2 agroecology and the struggle for
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mcafee 9 Sustainability and Social
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mcafee 11 organizations or depicted
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mcafee 13 industrial agriculture, n
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mcafee 15 Producing Food or Produci
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mcafee 17 ● Major international d
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mcafee 19 Agroecology is not a mono
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Page 37 and 38: zimmerer 31 An Expanding Interface
Page 39 and 40: zimmerer 33 The Mesoamerican Biolog
Page 41 and 42: zimmerer 35 constellation of areas
Page 43 and 44: levins 37 A Whole-System View of Ag
Page 45 and 46: levins 39 Equity Versus Sustainabil
Page 47 and 48: levins 41 ● Small-scale to large-
Page 49 and 50: levins 43 commodities. The more fav
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Page 53 and 54: levins 47 rather, they would like t
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practicing agroecology, using local
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practicing agroecology, using local
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128 agroecology and the struggle fo
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iodiversity, conservation, and ecos
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interview: gómez 133 Interview: Al
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iographies of editors 161 Biographi
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participants 163 Workshop Participa
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participants 165 Jean Marc von der
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esources 167 Resources Farmer-to-Fa
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esources 169 ATTRA - www.attra.org
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esources 171 Just Food - www.justfo
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esources 173 International Institut
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cover photo captions 175 Cover Phot
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This report originated in an intern
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