International Archives - Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Declaration of the IPC on the draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

March 11, 2020 by Amida

In late February, governments and civil society organisations, along with NGO and private sector representatives convened in Rome to discuss the Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The Framework will set the targets and directions for addressing an urgent problem - the ongoing loss of biodiversity that is crucial to the landscape functions that we rely on for food, fibre, fuel, and clean water.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas joined these discussions as part of the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty. The IPC has called for more ambitious and transformative targets to be set for the post-2020 framework, noting that while many governments and civil society organisations support a more transformative agenda, this has yet to be included in the draft Framework. AFSA, along with the IPC and many grassroots movements, urges the parties to adopt targets that will lead significant, widespread, and transformative action to halt biodiversity loss and crucially, to recognise the major contribution of agroecology and ecologically-sound farming to maintaining global biodiversity.

See the full statement of the IPC below

(AFSA members' participation in these events is funded by the IPC via U.N. funding mechanisms)

Declaration of the IPC on the Zero Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) is an autonomous platform representing 6000 grassroots organizations and social movements of Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers involved in the conservation, sustainable use, development and governance of agricultural biodiversity, which is the basis for food sovereignty.

Agricultural biodiversity is guaranteed by the women and men of the world who are peasants, small-scale farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, forest dwellers, indigenous peoples and other small-scale food producers who feed the world. The targets of the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework cannot be achieved unless the role and the individual and collective rights of the Indigenous peoples, who have distinct rights guaranteed in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale producers, who have distinct rights recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, with particular regard for women and youth, are recognized and protected. People must be allowed to live in rural areas in harmony with nature, as indigenous peoples and local communities do while enhancing the world’s biodiversity.

Our first comment on the Zero Draft is that while our people grapple with the worst impacts of the climate crisis induced primarily by industrial agriculture and extractive industries, this draft strategy to protect & conserve biodiversity in perpetuity is worryingly lacking in ambition. While the draft itself acknowledges the need for transformative change, it fails to deliver the ambitious goals and targets needed to achieve this.

One example of the lack of ambition in the draft is the reference to ‘no net losses’ – at a time when we are losing the very biodiversity on which our lives depend, this draft proposes that industries may still choose to wipe out biodiversity in one forest so long as somewhere else somebody is planting trees. We call on parties to reject this weak approach to securing the aims of the Convention to conserve biological diversity, and instead to set targets for no losses. We further note that this is emblematic of the growing movement to put a price on nature – such as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’, with the attendant damaging practices of speculating within new markets around carbon and soon perhaps, biodiversity, to its detriment.

Moreover, the zero draft fails to address issues of land tenure in an adequate way. The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework should set targets to strengthen the legal recognition and protection of peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ tenure rights and systems, in particular those currently not protected by law.

We call upon parties to ensure that the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework reaffirms the precautionary principle and contains concrete guidance to parties about how to protect biodiversity and peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ rights in the context of technologies, in particular biotechnologies and digital technologies. This should include to implement effective measures at national level to identify, prevent and manage any potential or real adverse impacts effects of biotechnology and new and emerging technologies on biodiversity, taking also into account risks to human health. We were disappointed to hear parties with powerful biotechnology interests assert that the Framework should recognize the alleged positive benefits of biotechnology, when the only demonstrated benefit of biotechnology has been to create profit for a select few.

We note that small-scale food producers, also called ‘peasants’, are defined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas as any person engaged in artisanal or small- scale agriculture. However, neither the CBD nor the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework specifically acknowledge the rights of peasants, in spite of the fact that they produce 70% of the world’s food on 30% of its land, therefore having a critical role in preserving biodiversity.

The industrial food system, from production to consumption, is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss and the destruction of ecosystems. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production is therefore urgent. Through agroecological production and management, peasants, fishing communities, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples preserve and enhance biodiversity. Agroecology is based on the rights of small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples and communities, in particular rights to seeds and biodiversity, as well as rights on knowledge, innovation and practices. We question what special interests have made it so difficult to include explicit recognition of the critical role of agroecology in the zero draft of the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework.

At the recent meetings in Rome, we have had renewed hope, having heard many Parties recognize the role of agroeocology as the most sustainable means of providing biodiverse, nutritious, and culturally-determined food to millions of people and communities around the world. It is also urgent to recognize the unique role of small-scale food producers in the management and sustainable use of biodiverse ecosystems.

The industrial food system and extractive industries are the primary causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the destruction of ecosystems, as witnessed in the recent devastation of over 16 million hectares of Australian forests and farmlands. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production and a rapid transition away from unsustainable energy, manufacturing, and transport industries is therefore urgent. Setting targets that increase the areas controlled and managed by Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers is one sure way to reverse the biodiversity losses the world is currently suffering, and we are relying on the governments of the world to show the vision needed to deliver a biodiverse and sustainable future for all.

Finally, we sadly must highlight how difficult it was for non-English speaking peoples to actively participate in the second Open-Ended Working Group for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework processes, where the future of their land, rivers, and seas was addressed without interpretation.

We ask that Parties to this Convention who have been similarly excluded from the work of the Contact Groups to join us in demanding interpretation at all future meetings to ensure full participation of all countries and civil society in this critical work.

Advocating for food sovereignty and agroecology in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

February 27, 2020 by Amida

Intervention of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty at the working group on the post-2020 Global Biodversity Framework.

AFSA President Tammi Jonas is at the meetings of the working group of the Convention of Biodiversity, where civil society orgs, governments and others are working to develop the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. AFSA participates in the working group as part of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, to represent small-scale and agroecological producers in major policy forums.

What we do now to halt the loss of biodiversity is critical to keeping landscapes functioning, to our future food security, and for adaptation to a changing climate. Small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, peasants and Indigenous peoples are all already playing a huge role in conserving biodiversity and the knowledge needed to manage landscapes to support it.

Yesterday, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty called on the working group to push for more ambitious and transformative change to halt the loss of biodiversity and hold those driving biodiversity loss to account - with this to be underpinned by better support for agroecological systems, stronger work to uphold the the rights of Indigenous peoples' and small-scale producers, and better efforts to listen to their knowledge about how to create and sustain ecologically sound systems. Read the full 1st intervention below.

I am a small-scale farmer, here with the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) a global alliance made up of organizations of small-scale farmers, small-scale fishers and fish workers, and indigenous peoples. While our people grapple with the worst impacts of the climate crisis induced primarily by industrial agriculture and extractive industries, this draft strategy to protect & conserve biodiversity in perpetuity is seriously lacking in ambition.

While the draft itself acknowledges the need for transformative change, it fails to deliver the ambitious goals and targets needed to achieve this. We note a concerning silence on the issue of human rights, andask the parties to apply a human rights lens to your deliberations over thecoming week, acknowledging and recognising the individual and collectiverights of all peoples, but especially Indigenous peoples, who have distinct rights guaranteed in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale producers, who have distinct rights recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, with particular regard for women and youth.

One example of the lack of ambition in the draft is the reference to ‘no net losses’ – at a time when we are losing the very biodiversity on which our lives depend, this draft proposes that industries may still choose to wipe out biodiversity in one forest so long as somewhere else somebody is planting trees. We call on parties to reject this weak approach to securing the aims of the Convention to conserve biological diversity, and instead toset targets for no losses. We further note that this is emblematic of the growing movement to put a price on nature – such as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’, with the attendant damaging practices of speculating within new markets around carbon and soon perhaps, biodiversity, to its detriment.

The world’s indigenous peoples and small-scale producers are the enduring and best custodians of biological diversity, and our control over our territories and right to land have been disappearing in parallel with the global decline in biodiversity. This is no coincidence. The zero draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework fails to address issues of land tenure in an adequate way. The Framework should set a target to strengthen the legal recognition and protection of local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ tenure rights and systems, in particular those currently not protected by law.

The draft purports to address the drivers of biodiversity loss, yet fails to name the most significant actors – industrial agriculture and extractive industries – and in failing to name them, many of the targets float aimlessly without clarity of who must be responsible for truly transformative systems change. We note that the Global North is disproportionately responsible for the destructive practices directly causing both the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis we are in – the impacts of which are disproportionately borne by the Global South – and urge all parties to stand more boldly and support the radical changes needed. We recall that governments are duty-bearers under the CBD as well as the international human rights framework, which are accountable to the rights-holders. This includes to put in place public policies that regulate non-state actors.

We call upon parties to ensure that the GBF reaffirms the precautionary principle and contains concrete guidance to parties about how to protect biodiversity and IPLC’s rights in the context of technologies, in particular biotechnologies and digital technologies. This should include, in particular, implementing effective measures at national level to identify, prevent and manage any potential or real adverse impacts effects of biotechnology and new and emerging technologies on biodiversity, taking also into account risks to human health.

The industrial food system is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss and the destruction of ecosystems. A transition to more diversified and sustainable systems of food production is therefore urgent. Through agroecological production and management, peasants, fishing communities, livestock farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples preserve and enhance biodiversity. In a recent decision, the FAO Council acknowledged the importance of agroecology to preserve and enhance biodiversity and social justice, based on many years of concentrated thematic work.

In this context, we would like to remind delegates that agroecology is based on our rights as small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples and communities, in particular our rights to seeds and biodiversity, as well as our knowledge, innovation and practices. Agroecological systems feed three-quarters of the world with just one third of the land already, so we cannot help but question what vested interests make it so difficult to include agroecology inn the world’s strategy to preserve biodiversity.

We ask parties to ask some hard questions and act in the genuine interest of a sustainable and prosperous future for all. We small-scale producers and indigenous peoples here this week have concrete proposals to help parties enact truly transformative change – just ask us.

2019 President’s Report

October 23, 2019 by Tammi Jonas

What a delicious year of growing and eating and winning and celebrating it’s been for AFSA! And yet while the food sovereignty movement has had many successes, I’d like to acknowledge the very real struggles farmers across Australia, especially in the east, are facing in the worst climate-change-affected areas. The past year has seen the loss of countless farms as the rains simply haven’t come, dams and water allocations have dried up, and grain stores run out. Australian dairy farms are in crisis, as are pig and poultry farms reliant on grain inputs that have had astronomical price rises, and horticulture farms reliant on rain that hasn’t fallen or water stolen further upstream by big irrigators with the support of corrupt government policies. AFSA is committed to supporting farmers in climate-proofing their farms and business models with agroecological and degrowth practices to ensure a future of radical abundance is possible for all.

This time last year we saw the introduction of simplified guidelines for pastured pig and poultry farms in Victoria. It was a hard-won result after three years of working closely with the Victorian government to achieve acknowledgement of the low risk small-scale pastured pig and poultry farms pose to community amenity and ecosystems.

Meanwhile, we were also working hard on AFSA’s second book Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up – launched in March 2019. Farming Democracy is the story of eight diverse and fascinating small-scale regenerative farmers from around Australia. In telling their stories each farm identifies and illustrates many of the issues they have faced in their quest to establish a fair, democratic, sustainable and resilient food system on their farm.

The farms in the book are as diverse as the food they produce, some with full or partial control of their supply chains, with varying levels of diversity and integration in their models, and at different places in their thinking about the role of growth in their businesses, all thoughtful in their approaches. They opened their hearts, their farms, and even their books to show what it costs (and earns) to grow and distribute food in ethical and ecologically-sound ways.

We launched the book at Farm Day Out at Jonai Farms in the central highlands of Victoria, a region that is an epicentre of the small-scale regenerative and agroecological farming movement. While the event itself was not a successful fundraiser for AFSA as intended, it was a joyful day of like-minded people working towards a food sovereign future fuelled by good tunes, great vibes, and excellent food. Important lessons about the way we try to fundraise for the food sovereignty movement were learned.

In April, we welcomed the visit by the UN’s High Level Panel of Experts to Canberra, where they explained their newest report on agroecology and ‘other innovations’ for sustainable agriculture, and noted with dismay the stark difference in the CSIRO’s understanding of and demonstrable lack of support for agroecology, a position we’ve witnessed regularly in the Australian government’s participation in international meetings of various governing bodies of the UN.

AFSA happily accepted an invitation to become a member of the newly constituted Regenerative Agriculture Alliance established at Southern Cross University (SCU). Together with new and old comrades from across all scales of the regenerative farming movement, we’re working to influence policy at all levels to support the management of healthy soils to repair Australia’s degraded landscapes and assure a prosperous and long future for Australian agriculture.

Many AFSA members and Committee members attended the fifth annual Deep Winter Agrarian gathering at Willunga in South Australia, renewing and striking new friendships and camaraderie with the movement of small-scale regenerative and agroecological farmers and our allies. We issued a declaration calling for recognition of the long experience and deep traditional knowledge of the Traditional Owners’ food production and care for land, increased attention to our critically endangered soils using holistic management and regenerative practices in agriculture, and for increased farmer and community control of the means of production – supply chain infrastructure such as abattoirs, boning rooms, grain mills, and the like.

AFSA are part of a global movement opposing the introduction of GMOs into the food chain without adequate regulation and scant consideration for human health. In solidarity with other organisations and individuals working to stop the de-regulation of GMO in Australia and globally, we have written to politicians and attended meetings advocating for safe regulation and labelling of GMO. New moves to de-regulate ‘new breeding techniques’ put all of us at risk of eating untested, unlabelled genetically modified (GM) foods – including animals. Powerful scientific evidence shows that new GM techniques such as CRISPR pose risks that require expert assessment and management. It’s vital that gene edited organisms are assessed for safety before being released into our environment and supermarkets.

While we reluctantly farewelled the exuberant Sarah de Wit, our excellent inaugural AFSA Legal Defence Fund paralegal, it was with great pleasure that we hired Airlie Morris, a lawyer with 20 years’ experience, to build on Sarah’s foundational work supporting and advocating for small-scale farmers, food producers, and eaters in Australia.

It was another busy year writing government submissions advocating for small-scale farmers and everyone’s right to nutritious and delicious food. Amongst a number of other submissions around the regulation of veterinary and agri-chemicals, protection of valuable agricultural land around Melbourne, animal welfare standards, and the impact of animal rights activists on livestock farmers, we put a strong case against FSANZ’s proposal to require a licence to sell lettuce, which we cautiously believe looks unlikely to proceed.

Our international work (funded by the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN) has remained strong, with participation at the UN Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) as sub-regional members of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), where the first Report on the State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food & Agriculture was launched. The world is losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, and the UN is under no illusions that industrial agriculture is playing a significant part in the problem, while agroecology can play a major part in the solutions. We were honoured to be part of seed sovereignty meetings in northern Italy and learn some of the ways communities of farmers are wresting back control of seeds from the handful of multinational corporations who control the global seed supply.

Two of our farmer members of the National Committee attended the annual regional conference of La Via Campesina in Japan, and another the regional women’s conference in Thailand, working with our comrades from across South East and East Asia to shine the light on the negative impacts of multinational corporations controlling the food system and promoting the rights of peasants and Indigenous Peoples to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems.

AFSA Secretary Ruth Gaha-Morris was selected for the sub-regional role on the Coordinating Committee of the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM), which articulates to the UN World Committee for Food Security (CFS), and joins us at this year’s Food Sovereignty Convergence directly from meetings in Rome.

Scanning the horizon, AFSA have our sights set on legalising sales of raw milk from the farm gate as one means of saving Australia’s dying dairy industry while giving people the choice to consume unprocessed foods from a safely regulated industry. We’re also closely monitoring the rise of false solutions to the problems of industrial agriculture such as the corporate-controlled rise of mass-produced vegetable-based protein patties and lab meat. We reject all ‘solutions’ that simply maintain corporate control of the food system in an undemocratic capitalist economy.

I’d like to thank the 2019 National Committee and staff for your work and commitment to the food sovereignty movement locally and globally, as well as your camaraderie and many shared feasts over the year. To those who are leaving us to focus on fertile grounds at home and in your local communities – Anna Treasure, Fraser Bayley, Kat Munksgaard, and Jess Brugmans – a special thank you and fare thee well!

We fight for what we eat, we eat what we fight for!

Viva la revolución!

Tammi Jonas, President

22 October 2019

Agroecology and ‘Other Innovations’ – Australia on the wrong side of history

June 28, 2019 by Tammi Jonas

In April, AFSA attended a seminar hosted by the CSIRO in Canberra, giving the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) a chance to share their current work on Agroecology and Other Innovations for Sustainable Food Systems with the Australian public and policymakers. The HLPE is an expert panel created within the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to facilitate policy debates and inform policy making with independent research.

What is the CFS HLPE report?

The UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will launch its High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) report on "Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition” on July 3 in Rome. This report is the outcome of a consultation process where participants in the Civil Society and Indigenous People's Mechanism (CSM) have fought hard to distinguish agroecology as a practice, science, and politics from other "industrial" innovations such as so-called "sustainable intensification", biotechnology, and biofortification.

The next step - already agreed-upon by governments - is to use the report to guide a policy negotiation process at the CFS Plenary 46 in October 2019. The work ahead is to advocate for governments to commit to developing and implementing policies needed to address the root causes of hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. The CFS policy process, despite its many challenges, is a political tool we can use to push governments to realise the right to food for all, respect and protect local regenerative agriculture and indigenous food systems and strengthen biodiversity through an inclusive, bottom-up political process.

Read on for AFSA president Tammi Jonas' assessment of the Canberra seminar, put together by the CFS HLPE and CSIRO...and the challenges still to come.

Find out more about the CFS and CSM: www.csm4cfs.org

Read about our involvement in the Agroecology policy process and read the HLPE summary: http://www.csm4cfs.org/working-groups/agroecology/

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The seminar was not particularly well advertised amongst farmers and their representative bodies, and I believe AFSA was the only representative organisation for farmers who attended. In fact, I learned about the seminar from activists and FAO staff in Rome – not through any local channels. Conversely, Bayer was there – the world’s largest supplier of seed and agri-chemicals after last year’s merger with Monsanto – they now control about 25% of the seed & pesticide market globally.

The event started out promisingly enough, with assertions that it used to be ‘agriculture versus the environment’ but that ‘that time is over,’ and repeated assurances that we are beyond the time for business-as-usual approaches given the urgency of the need for radically different agricultural practices in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

The Chair of the HLPE Steering Committee Patrick Caron gave an insightful overview of the context of the report on agroecology and ‘other innovations’, in which he pointed out that ‘when people talk about agroecology, sustainable intensification, precision agriculture – they have very different things in mind…’. Caron explained that this report’s role is to understand disagreements and to shape the international agenda.

He was followed by Fergus Lloyd Sinclair of the Agroforestry Institute in Nairobi, the HLPE Project Team Leader, who presented a very encouraging update on their work on the report to date. He first candidly shared what a ‘schizophrenic terms of reference’ the HLPE was given by the CFS, pointing out that ‘agroecology’ and ‘other innovations’ can be distinguished on the basis of principles. Sinclair asserted that ‘agroecology is a dynamic space, with many actors… not prescribed… locally defined in different ways by the people who are practicing it…’ and that there is a ‘strong connection between indigenous knowledge, traditional agriculture systems, and science.’

He went on to explain that agroecology as an innovation is easily distinguished from other approaches such as ‘sustainable intensification’ (and ‘climate smart agriculture’, ‘nutrient sensitive agriculture’, because agroecology (which may broadly include aspects of organic agriculture, agroforestry, silvopastoralism, and permaculture) is labour intensive rather than capital intensive. It relies on the humans in its system for knowledge and labour rather than capital intensive technological innovations that seek to largely replace human labour and often even knowledge.

Sinclair also explained the HLPE’s pitch to include ‘agency’ as a fifth pillar of food security – a concept already fundamental to food sovereignty, which asserts everyone’s right to collectively participate in food and agriculture systems.

After this rousing start, we watched as the CSIRO took to the podium. After thanking her colleagues from the HLPE and agreeing that we cannot continue with ‘business as usual’ approaches, the Acting Deputy Director of Food and Agriculture gave a 20-minute presentation on business as usual. She started with some stats:

Australia is 6^th largest land size country in world and 55^th largest population
Major exports: wheat, beef, wool, dairy, wine – mostly to China, USA, and Japan
Farmers are 2.5% of total workforce
90% of our population lives on .2% of our land
Australian ag workforce: 82% live in regional areas, 73% work full time, 32% female (more likely to try non business as usual approaches, more likely to earn off farm income), 1% indigenous
Change areas for Australian ag: increasing competition, Asia’s growth, evolving consumer, biosecurity & provenance, resource scarcity, climate change, digital ag, energy disruption

She then asserted that ongoing innovations are needed to protect our natural resources as well as agriculture, requiring new forms of surveillance. Wait, what? Next, regarding upcoming innovations, she said, ‘I aspire for a future where Australian ag is a price-setter in the global market.’ Okay, but what about agroecology?

Here’s a list of some of the non-business-as-usual innovations cited by the CSIRO at this seminar on agroeocology and other innovations:

yield maps
canola yield based on average rainfall
nitrogen application impact
virtual fencing (‘quite happy cows with their lovely collars on’)
genetic engineering for broad-spectrum disease resistance, novel oils, nitrogen fixing plants, fixing heterosis through apomixes, pest-resistant legumes, boosting photosynthesis, and biofortified foods
New grains for human health – engineering health outcomes into food people eat such as barley and wheat. High amylose wheat, BARLEYmax, novel fibre wheat, gluten-free cereals, thick aleurone cereals
Leaf oils – ‘game changer for global oil production’ – a seed output as well as a leaf output

I guess the CSIRO is more in the ‘other innovations’ camp. (In fact when a like-minded colleague asked the CSIRO speaker between sessions why she didn’t speak about agroecology, she responded that she was ‘instructed not to.’ Let that sink in for a minute.)

Our mates from Bayer were the first question off the rank after the opening speakers, revisiting a point Sinclair made about an ‘increasing moralisation around food.’ The Bayer rep asked Sinclair how he believes the ‘moralisation of food’ impacts on equity. It is a tried and true rhetorical trick from industrial ag proponents, who often seek to establish their own moral position with appeals to equal access and the role of (presumed but not always proven) cheap technologies (that they own) to ‘feed the masses.’ They may as well exclaim, ‘Let them eat cake!’ and be done with it. Whether posed as a question or an assertion, this device always wilfully ignores earlier expert points that hunger is not caused by scarcity of food, but rather by failures in governance and distribution.

During the break I was introduced to another CSIRO senior staffer as the president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance. His response was to raise his eyebrows and yelp, ‘Food sovereignty? That raises alarm bells with policy people!’ To which I calmly responded, ‘Really? Policymakers are alarmed by peoples’ right to democratically participate in the food and agriculture system?’ ‘Yes!’ he intoned, ‘Internationally it impedes trade!’

I think that rather than bore you with the rest of what we heard from the CSIRO at the seminar, all of which is in line with what’s cited above and demonstrates their slavish devotion to free trade in capitalist global markets to the detriment of most farmers and eaters everywhere, I’ll leave you with some more interesting input from the HLPE.

Agroecology and Other Innovations - Summary of the HLPE Draft Report

Caron gave a summation of the status of the current report on agroecology and ‘other innovations’, which has passed Version 0 and a period of public consultation, with draft Version 1 due to be released soon.

Part one of the report asks: What has changed in past 20 years regarding food security & nutrition (FSN)?

Acknowledgement through different definitions of FSN of the right to food. FSN until creation of FAO in 1945 was a national issue, became a global issue in second half of the century. Increasingly realised that sufficient supply doesn’t ensure FSN.
In 80s and 90s we were talking about starvation, and now we talk about 800mil suffering hunger & starvation – mostly rural poor.
We are mainly focusing on yield improvement when we are wasting a third of production.
Hunger is not decreasing quickly enough and overweight & obesity are increasing rapidly – well beyond infectious diseases – and are the number one problem in public health.

Part two of the report examines the ways in which food systems are changing, and reminds us that the question is not how to feed 9 billion people, it’s how to feed them in a sustainable way while providing decent livelihoods for producers. We can use the food system as a lever to address all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ‘We thought that improving supply and access to markets would help everyone but we were wrong.’

The third part of the draft report has the much-anticipated draft recommendations - what’s needed to make food systems sustainable? The answers warm a food sovereignty activist’s heart. How to improve food supply? It could be through investing in knowledge and technology, reducing food waste, internalizing externalities – they’re all possibilities. It must be through strengthening resilience – investing in small-scale ag, securing land and tenure rights, securing social equity and responsibility with social protection systems, supporting women and youth, creating decent jobs in agriculture, through investing in education for all.

The HLPE reminds us we can’t forget the need to change consumption habits, and that to do so we need to change the food environment – advertisements, subsidies, and banning some types of food like we have with alcohol and tobacco. The CFS is supposed to draft voluntary guidelines to be agreed in 2020.

Caron insists that we must improve governance of food systems and the capacity of stakeholders to participate. He says that the changes will be knowledge intensive and we have to invest in knowledge – the answers are not the ones already on the shelves. We must design new governance of food systems at all levels – including national levels.

Before closing we had a final opportunity for questions or comments, so I took the opportunity to express concern at the CSIRO’s focus over the course of the day on exports, growth, and increasing yield in spite of the obvious environmental degradation witnessed up Australia’s eastern coast over the past two years due to extreme levels of drought in a changing climate, and also in spite of the expert position presented here and for decades now that we don’t need to grow more food, we need to make food systems more democratic. The response from the CSIRO was, ‘we’re an independent science research body – we can’t take sides.’

Well AFSA can, and we choose a habitable planet for generations to come. By not joining the heavy weight of evidence showing the changes needed in our food and agriculture systems, CSIRO are taking a side too – commonly known as the wrong side of history.

Tammi Jonas

President, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Micro-organism & pollinators – our intervention at the UN

February 28, 2019 by Tammi Jonas

The following text was delivered by legendary peasant farmer, activist, and AFSA comrade Guy Kastler, fellow member of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and La Via Campesina, and a founding member of Confédération Paysanne in France.

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Farmers are farmers of billions of microorganisms and invertebrates that populate our soils, water, air and live with and within the plants and animals we raise.

We welcome the taxonomic identification and classification efforts promoted by FAO and the Commission. But we wonder about the relevance of the value chain that is then proposed. The conservation and sustainable use of this immense biodiversity will never be guaranteed if we simply identify the last existing genes, microbes or invertebrates before they disappear, in order to reproduce bad copies with synthetic chemistry and biotechnology and then sell them to farmers and other economic operators who need them.

We farmers know that only balanced ecosystems that respect the laws of natural evolution guarantee the conservation of the right microorganisms and invertebrates that we need, which allows them to control the proliferation of pathogens. Spreading micro-organisms and invertebrates in an environment where they cannot multiply, or destroying pathogens that proliferate in an unbalanced environment without correcting this imbalance, is never sustainable.

We welcome the Commission's ambitious programme concerning pollinators who are essential, inter alia, for the reproduction of plants that provide a sufficiently diversified and balanced diet. But pollinators are not the only insects that disappear. In Europe, the latest scientific studies confirm what we have long observed, namely that we have lost 80% of insects in the last 30 years. They add that they could all disappear from the planet within 100 years. With them, the birds that feed on them have also left. Silent spring is now a reality in our fields, the last surviving birds only fly over city rooftops and insects that are pathogenic to our crops proliferate without any predators regulating them. To avoid using the pesticides responsible for this disaster, we are forced to spread auxiliary insects that often survive only a few days in our fields... until the day we no longer have enough money to buy them.

We call on the Commission to focus first on rebalancing ecosystems to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the diversity of micro-organisms and invertebrates rather than on the unsustainable industrial production of genes and micro-organisms that are merely a dressing designed to hide a wooden leg very temporarily.