Thursday 27 October 2011

Feed the world without destroying the planet - A talk on agrarian reform and rural development

The Red/Green Forum is pleased to welcome
A TALK WITH: MARIA NERI FROM CONZARRD, AN NGO FOCUSING ON AGRARIAN REFORM AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES. To Cambridge to speak about sustainable farming, permaculture and land reform.
Maria will be speaking at
7:15PM THURSDAY 17TH OF NOVEMBER
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, JESUS LANE, CAMBRIDGE.
OPEN TO ALL – FREE FOR ALL. 

Rapidly rising food prices are one of the most immediate ways
that the economic crisis hits the poorest people. It led to riots
in many parts of the world in 2010 and was a significant factor
in igniting the Arab Spring.

Millions are dying of starvation in Africa and it’s easy to assume
that this is because we aren’t producing enough food to feed
everyone. In fact food production has become increasingly
globalised and distorted since the 1970s with the result that a
handful of countries now dominate the trade in staple foods.
This leaves the most vulnerable countries at the mercy of those
who dominate the trade. Global warming compounds the
problem through drought, desertification and water shortage.
The rich countries of the north have imposed so called
“liberalisation” on poorer countries – often through institutions
like the International Monetary Fund – and subsidising
agribusiness at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Agribusiness and GM crops have pushed up yields in a way that
destroys the environment and denies food to hungry people.
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez hit the nail on the head when he said
that the food crisis is “the greatest demonstration of the
historical failure of the capitalist model.

War on Want runs a campaign against the power of the
supermarkets to make the lives of growers increasingly
intolerable. With the global food system in crisis it is organising
a day of action on food sovereignty on October 18.
Oxfam has produced a report into the growing phenomena of
land grab, produced by a drive to produce food for export, to
meet bio-fuels targets and speculate on land to make an easy
profit. Land grabs ignore the rights of people living on the land,
leaving them homeless and without land to grow enough food
to eat and make a living.

Socialist Resistance and Green Left argue for an ecosocialist
approach to the problem where the people who produce food
have the right to determine their own agricultural policies, free
from interference from the multinationals or international
institutions with their neo-liberal policies such as the IMF and
the World Bank.


2 comments:

  1. I have created a Facebook event for this meeting by copying and pasting text from here. Health permitting I will be there! Facebook event is at:

    https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=779004514#!/event.php?eid=271071466270493

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Sam,
    Do forward the flier to friends, comrades etc.
    Cheers James

    ReplyDelete