Box 2-14. Via Campesina's food sovereignty principles.
- Food: A Basic Human Right: Everyone must have access
to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient
quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full
human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to
food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development
of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization
of this fundamental right
- Agrarian Reform: A genuine agrarian reform is necessary
which gives landless and farming people-especially
women-ownership and control of the land they work and
returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land
must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion,
race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to
those who work it.
- Protecting Natural Resources: Food Sovereignty entails
the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially
land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who
work the land must have the right to practice sustainable
management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity
free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can
only be done from a sound economic basis with security of
tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agrochemicals.
- Reorganizing Food Trade: Food is first and foremost a
source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade.
Food imports must not displace local production nor depress
prices.
- Ending the Globalization of Hunger: The growing influence
of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has
been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral
organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF.
Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly
enforced Code of Conduct for Trans-National-Corporations
is therefore needed.
- Social Peace: Everyone has the right to be free from violence.
Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing
levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside,
along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and
indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice
and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization,
repression and increasing incidence of racism
of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
- Democratic control: Small-scale farmers must have direct
input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The
United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo
a process of democratization to enable this to become
a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate
information and open and democratic decision-making.
These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability
and equal participation in economic, political
and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural
women, in particular, must be granted direct and active
decision making on food and rural issues.
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Box 2-15.Definitions of organic agriculture.
- IFOAM: Organic agriculture includes all agricultural systems
that promote the environmentally socially and economically
sound production of food and fibers. These
systems take local soil fertility as a key to successful
production. By respecting the natural capacity of plants,
animals and the landscape, it aims to optimize quality in
all aspects of agriculture and the environment. Organic
agriculture dramatically reduces external inputs by refraining
from the use of chemo-synthetic fertilizers, pesticides
and pharmaceuticals. Instead it allows the powerful laws
of nature to increase both agricultural yields and disease
resistance.
- FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission: Organic agriculture
is a holistic production management system that
promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health, including
biodiversity cycles and soil biological activity. It emphasizes
the use of management practices in preference to
the use of off-farm inputs. This is accomplished by using
where possible, agronomic, biological, and mechanical
methods as opposed to using synthetic materials to fulfill
any specific function within the system.
your-own operations and farm stands that supported a slow
growth in alternative marketing channels for farm goods on
which organically certified food capitalized (Roth, 1999).
Consumer demand for "healthy" foods has begun to encourage
large distributors and retailers also to integrate local
and regional products into their offerings (Tracy, 1993;
LaBelle, 2005).
Emerging evidence (Bavec and Bavec, 2006) indicates
that organic farmers are able to sustain their livelihoods
and increase employment in local processing and marketing,
thereby increasing community economic activity and
incomes (FAO, 1999b; Parrot and Marsden, 2002; Halberg
et al., 2007; Kilcher, 2007; Scialabba, 2007). OA systems
rely on biological processes to improve soil fertility and
manage pests and are often high in crop biodiversity (Roth,
1999). The resulting increased food variety and overall perarea
productivity has led to diversified and increased nutrient
intake and improved food safety and food security,
particularly for indigenous and resource-poor people (Roth,
1999; Scialabba, 2007; Sligh and Christman, 2007). Some
studies, however, suggest that crop yields in organic farming
are too low to sustain farmers' livelihoods and to produce
quantities sufficient to meet growing and rapidly diversifying
market needs (LaBelle, 2005) leading to concerns that
more land would be needed if OA were to become widespread
(Crosson and Anderson, 2002). These claims have
been challenged by recent findings (Halweil, 2006; Badgley
et al., 2007).
Technical challenges facing certified OA revolve around
sourcing organically produced seed and fodder; consistent
product quantity and quality; traceability; liability insurance
of growers and processors; appropriate product attributes
and pack size (LaBelle, 2005). More research is needed
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