Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

Micro-organism & pollinators – our intervention at the UN

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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.

Biodiversity & Livestock: our intervention at the UN

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The following text is the intervention delivered by AFSA President Tammi Jonas in regards to animal genetic resources for food and agriculture at the recent meetings of the UN Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture in Rome.

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We would like to congratulate the Commission on its critical work around the role of animal genetic resources for food and agriculture, with an impressive set of reports that unfortunately tell a grim story.

We welcome the Review of methods for identification and valuation of the ecosystem services provided by livestock breeds, which, along with the report on the Status and Trends of Animal Genetic Resources provides sharp detail on the role and status of livestock in agriculture and ecosystems. The former clearly spells out the positive potential of livestock while acknowledging that in the world’s industrial livestock systems that potential is mostly transformed into a net negative impact. The latter report highlights the loss of biodiversity caused by industrialisation and a narrow focus on yield.

Selective breeding and genetically engineering livestock to increase yield has been an animal health & ethical disaster. Even Perdue, one of the world’s biggest producers of chicken, was reported to say in 2017 that they had taken the breed too far and were working to bring the genetics back towards a healthier animal than that which inhabits most intensive sheds across the globe. The FAO tells us that extinct breeds have mainly been reported among chickens.

Industrial meat producers in North America have aggressively pursued yield in highly industrialised intensive production models, and according to the FAO Report on Status and Trends this has resulted in the least number of local breeds of cattle, pigs, and poultry of any region. The countries of this region regularly work in these spaces to block urgent progress to shift away from destructive production models.

The public health risks and costs of sheds of pigs and poultry are profound. The combination of genetically similar animals in unhealthy production environments (with their attendant over-use of antimicrobials that threaten our ability to combat the most basic diseases due to the rise in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria) is what evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace calls ‘food for flu’ – a global pandemic in the making.

The 2016 HLPE Report on ‘What Roles for Livestock?’ report highlights the need for coherence and integration among agriculture, economic, nutrition, education and health policies at the national level, and we strongly support this recommendation.

Pulling together the issues facing forest genetic resources with animal genetic resources, countries must take more holistic actions and consider ecosystems, not merely sectoral concerns. De-forestation is largely driven by industrial livestock agriculture as trees are felled to make room for monocultures of soy, corn, and other grains to be fed to animals in intensive production models. Both intensive industrial livestock production and monocultures of grain are significant contributors to loss of biodiversity and polluters of waterways, thereby also contributing to the loss of biodiversity in terrestrial and marine waters.

We small-scale farmers of the world want the governments of the world to support us in our efforts to farm agroecologically. We don’t need to upscale agroecology, we need to multiply it. Governments should move rapidly to remove barriers to small-scale livestock farmers and pastoralists, and stop subsidising industrial livestock agriculture that is destroying ecosystems from the genes up.

Biodiversity and climate change – we need action now!

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18 February 2018

AFSA President Tammi Jonas is with our allies in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty representing civil society at the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture.

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The people are speaking!

Huge first day at the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture here in Rome, with many interventions from those of us here representing civil society as part of the IPC for Food Sovereignty. I'll report more fully when I get home (and am not in the midst of 10-hour-meeting days), but below is one of my interventions today on the role of genetic resources for the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change:

 

Back home in Australia, climate change is manifest and devastating. Over the past year we have suffered unprecedented drought across the eastern states, with serious loss of livestock and wildlife as pasture turned to dirt, and then the topsoils blew away. The drought was followed by extraordinary flooding, which led to the deaths of as many as 500,000 cattle, and subsequently resulted in flood waters rushing into the sea and smothering the Great Barrier Reef, which has already suffered repeated bleaching events and is rapidly losing biodiversity as sea temperatures rise.

While the north flooded, fires burned in parts of Australia’s southernmost island of Tasmania, only to be covered by snow as they declined – in the middle of summer. It is estimated that 2% of the world’s pencil pines perished in the fires – a non-recoverable loss – some of the trees lost in the fires were over 1000 years old.

To personalize the impacts of climate change on small-scale farmers in Australia, let me share that amongst the members of the committee of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, in the past month alone, one of our farmers lost half his flock of heritage poultry in the northern floods, another has completely de-stocked and is carting water in for basic needs in southern Queensland, and the town of 600 people nearest my own farm was evacuated for two days under threat of a severe bushfire at its borders. Meanwhile dozens of our farmer members in Tasmania were repeatedly evacuated under threat of fire in regions that are not traditionally considered a fire risk.

I tell these stories because the sub-sectoral reports for these meetings and indeed the proposal for a scoping study on the role of GRFA in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change do not go far enough for the level of emergency we face. We must act now – every country has a responsibility to its people and the generations that will come after them to immediately transition away from logging and clear-felling of biodiverse forests for the purposes of planting monocultures – imagine standing passively while someone ripped the lungs out of your body – this is what we’re allowing with continued de-forestation across the globe.

While the Commission nor national governments can force the practitioners of industrial agriculture to sow more genetically diverse plants nor grow more diverse breeds of livestock, they can regulate the conditions under which these homogenous seeds and breeds are grown, and limit the use of harmful agri-chemicals such as the much-cited pesticides and antimicrobial pharmaceuticals for livestock. If countries ban these band-aids that are repeatedly applied to the cancer of industrial agriculture, the production models will have no choice but to shift to healthier, more resilient practices.

Every person in this room – like every child in a primary school science classroom – knows that biodiversity is critical for a resilient and sustainable food system, and that we need now more than ever resilience to deal with the impacts of climate change. It is up to the governments of the world to do what is necessary to build this resilience back into our food and agriculture systems, by supporting best those who have always and will continue to maintain and develop biodiversity – the indigenous peoples, peasants, and small-scale farmers and fishers of the world.

Viva la via campesina!

Defending food sovereignty by building a people’s alternative to capitalism and free trade  

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Regional Meeting for Asia of the Land and Territory Working Group of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty: AFSA Report

8-14 October 2018 

 Sarah de Wit

 

Source: La Via Campesina

 This report aims to:

  • Report back on the meetings, workshops and direct actions relating to progress of the food sovereignty movement.  
  • Report back on the IMF/WB agenda in Bali.  
  • Explain and reinforce understanding of AFSA’s membership with IPC and its Asia Pacific Regional Committee.  
  • Refer to the history of IPC and the Working Group on Land and Territories and AFSA’s involvement to date.  
  • Provide members of AFSA transparency regarding funding for the trip.  
  • To give AFSA supporters the knowledge to fully understand the context of these meetings in order to solidify AFSA’s organisational priorities and to encourage the food sovereignty movement in Australia to cohere and work together more effectively and with better opportunity for democratic participation. 

Background  

Stepping out of my usual role as Paralegal for AFSA, from 8th – 14th October this year I attended regional meetings for the Asian Land and Territory Working Group of the International Planning Committee (IPC) for Food Sovereignty in Bali, after being nominated by the AFSA Committee to represent our organisation and our members.  

AFSA has been an active member of the IPC for Food Sovereignty for five years. As part of the Regional Facilitating Committee for Asia Pacific since 2016, AFSA was invited to attend the regional meetings as well as workshops and political actions that followed.  

I had the opportunity to participate as a delegate for IPC Asia and to receive a funded spot within the IPC budget. This meant that AFSA did not cover my international travel costs and expenses. The IPC designates interested delegates by prioritising geographical, gender and constituency representation, such as youth, women or indigenous people. While I am not a farmer or rural dweller, as a young woman I was empowered to attend because of the composition criteria of the IPC Working Group.  

The Meeting for the Land and Territories Working Group 

Corresponding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group Annual Meetings [1] in Bali from 8th – 14th October 2018, the meetings were called by the IPC Working Group for Land and Territories[2] to bring together peasant organisations from across the region to defend food sovereignty and the rights of peasants.[3]  

This followed a call from La Via Campesina to mobilise for the International Day of Action against WTO and Free Trade Agreements on 10th September 2018. The meetings and workshops were also held before 16th October, the International Day of Action for Peoples’ Food Sovereignty and against Transnational corporations.  

On the way to our hotel, I saw countless flags branded with the IMF and World Bank meeting logo lining the streets. Each flag featured the word “welcome” in different languages, welcoming finance ministers and central bank governors from more than 180 countries to Bali. My taxi driver told me that there would be 30,000 individuals travelling to Bali for the IMF World Bank meetings. A new toll had been set up to finance upgrades to the roads between the airport and Nusa Dua, in preparation for the meetings. I was astounded to hear that the Indonesian government had spent more than $75 million to host the three-day IMF and World Bank meetings, especially after the tsunami and earthquake incidents in Sulawesi had happened a mere week before. I later learned from an ABC article that the Indonesian Opposition criticised the government for its hosting budget (which far exceeded that of previous host countries [4]) and called for money to be diverted to earthquake victims in the cities of Palu and Donggala.  

 

Toll point constructed in preparation for the IMF World Bank meetings.

At the IPC meetings, delegates and participants from Asia and Australia as well as Africa, Americas and Europe, unanimously held the World Bank and IMF responsible for facilitating large-scale land grabbing, deforestation and ocean grabbing, which has led to increasing inequality, poverty and global hunger. The meetings were facilitated by Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), the Indonesian Peasant Union, a member of La Via Campesina and the IPC.   

We discussed what strategic support we would expect from the IPC, what fields of work proposed by the IPC Working Group would support our struggles and, according to the priorities discussed, what plans of action we could commit to.  After the presentation and approval of the agenda, we had a session on the IPC Land and Territory WG and its work plan, reviewing the 2017 WG meeting, presenting the WG and its working methods, and presenting the resolutions of the previous IPC general meeting. We also discussed the renewal of the coordination group and identified interested organisations in coordination. Discussions surrounded our response to peasant and advocate criminalisation, our communication strategy and the deepening of our vision of people’s governance according to the priorities that came out of our working groups.  

The consensus among delegates was that the World Bank and IMF have taken control of the global food chain and placed it into the hands of agribusiness and development speculators, while creating devastating impacts on food production, rural people, markets and the ecosystems affected.  

 


The South East Asian Working group breakout session. Source: LVC Twitter

 A Media Release by La Via Campesina (LVC), the international peasant’s movement, reported on the struggles of various countries according to their representatives, including Indonesia, Timor Leste, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, South Korea, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and also allies from Kenya, France, Nicaragua, Germany and Argentina. Many cited the major factors contributing to the forced displacement and development of peasant communities by the World Bank and IMF.  

For over three decades, the IMF and World Bank have “forced countries to decrease investment in food production and to reduce support for peasant and small farmers.” LVC also reported that, because of “neo-liberal policies, state managed food reserves have been considered too expensive and governments have been forced to reduce and privatise them under structural adjustment regimes.” 

Ms Jeongyeol Kim from the Korean Women Peasants’ Association pointed out the impact of free trade agreements and export-oriented agribusiness models on women farmers.  

“Peasant women face the worst of this industrial model, that is heavy on use of chemical inputs. This shift in the way we do agriculture came about largely due to conditions put forth by IMF and World Bank while giving loans.” 

Baramee Chairayat from Assembly of the Poor, Thailand said:  

“The National Development Plan in Thailand always had the blessing of World Bank and it meant that agricultural land and public forests were being diverted to make way for massive highways, large agribusiness plantations and sugar cane factories. Over a period of four decades much of rural Thailand has become landless. They have enacted laws that alienated indigenous peoples from their forest.” 

Zainal Arifin Fuad, national peasant leader from SPI, said:  

 “World Bank and IMF have, in the name of Structural Adjustment Programme, pushed for financialisation and privatisation of natural resources in Indonesia. When people resist these land grabs – taking place whether in the name of REDD+ or any other such programs – peasants are attacked, jailed and criminalised. We have the most recent case of Ahmad Azhari, who was kept in prison for nearly 9 months for defending the rights of peasants. All these institutions are here to help corporations expand their businesses rather than lifting people out of poverty.” 

AFSA shared solidarity with the movement by firstly stating Australia’s direct hand in contributing to free trade and export-oriented deals across the globe. As a country that voted against the recently adopted UN Declaration for the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, Australia is seen by many rural communities of Asia as one third of the “evil three” in the context of globalisation. During a working group discussion at the meeting, I stated that AFSA is working to build local, state and national government support for small-scale farming. I shared our successes in making planning permit applications cheaper and easier for small-scale farmers through our lobbying efforts. I also described the work of our Legal Defence Fund (LDF) which has in its first year supported farmers with their planning permits, given advice about alternative milk supply chains, responded to spray drift concerns in the urban and rural context, and made nearly a dozen law reform submissions to state and national governments relating to food and agriculture regulations. I also talked about the significant loss of farmland to peri-urban growth, and due to roads and infrastructure development and the increasing expansion of large-scale, concentrated farming methods. 

I was asked to expand on the concerns of indigenous peoples within Australia for control over land, water and seeds. While I could not represent the voice of Aboriginal people, I touched on the impact of the intellectual property regime in relation to native foods and the expression of Aboriginal culture. AFSA has strategised over these issues, significantly since Bruce Pascoe spoke at our 2017 Convergence, which had a major impact on our work for food sovereignty in Australia.  

We hope the IPC Working Group on Land and Territories will continue to open regional spaces for policy discussion and strengthen relationships between social movements. The IPC’s contribution to formulating the Declaration for the Rights of Peasants will further validate the experiences of small-scale farming in Australia. In turn, small-scale farmers are to enjoy newly formed rights given to them by way of being captured under the definition of “peasant” in that Declaration[5]. I committed at that time, on behalf of AFSA, to promote the legitimacy of the Declaration by lobbying to our national government and its departments.  

After long hours of meetings and working groups, I spent evenings in the lobby of the hotel working with newfound friends and allies from India, Argentina, Germany and Nicaragua. We designated the lobby as “The Office” where we would share resources, work for our separate organisations, socialise and reflect on the meetings.  

 

“The Office”.

Workshops and Direct Actions 

The Working Group also hosted a series of events with allies in Bali to protest against the neoliberalist agendas of the World Bank and IMF which promote free market trade regimes responsible for destroying rural peasant communities, fishers’ livelihoods and peasant markets.  

Under the theme of “A World Beyond Banks”, the workshops enabled a broad assembly of peoples’ movements, indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolks, workers, migrants, women, youth, LGBTQI people and others adversely affected by the IMF and World Bank’s agenda to meet and strategise.  

The event was organised and facilitated by Gerak Lawan, the Indonesian peoples’ movement against neo-colonialism and imperialism. The workshops included joint public forums on extractivism, monetisation, commodification, and infrastructure. We were fortunate to have the location provided by TVRI, the national broadcasting television network of Indonesia.  

As we entered the TVRI auditorium, an open picture board was visible behind the registration table. The photos, showing the struggles of rural workers’ alliances, women peasants and many others against neoliberalism, were powerful to say the least.

  

Nged Khow from APWLD, Cambodia (Mrs Khow came to the workshops to talk about her campaign to save her farm. I was honoured to meet her and hold her hand as she shared her story with me through her interpreter).  

These photos were eventually taken down by Gerak Lawan members to reduce the risk of the event being shut down by local police.  

 Women played a strong role in many aspects of the workshops. This is unsurprising as most of the world’s food is grown by peasant women [6]. I was personally inspired to see Indonesia’s women’s solidarity group, Solidaritas Perempuan and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development contributing significantly to the discussions and strategising for development justice for women. Women voices led most of the workshops, forums and direct-action preparation.   

An entire working group session was dedicated to a gender discussion, “Food Sovereignty: Power Gender and Right to Food” on 12 October at the TVRI Auditorium. The speakers highlighted the failure of the IMF’s gender equality policies, where women empowerment is promoted by way of encouraging market-based solutions to market access. Instead of assisting women in the labour force to have control over their own land, the IMF maintains that women should set up their own bank accounts to access financial services in an increasingly precarious and deregulated market.  

Among the speakers was Ms Kim from KWPA, an active member of the IPC and LVC.  

    

 

I was impressed and motivated by the leadership shown by the feminist organisations present and their drive and motivation to carry out advocacy, activism and movement building. Their efforts significantly advance women’s human dignity and development justice in the region.  

At the auditorium, we were also joined by grassroots organisations such as the Asia Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, Focus on the Global South, Fight Inequality Alliance, ReCommon, Indonesia Legal Aid Foundation, FTA Watch, World Forum of Fisher People, Peoples Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA), Center for Financial Accountability, Bina Desa, Coalition for Human Rights in Development, IFI Watch Myanmar, OT Watch Mongolia, Oakland Institute, Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), Indonesia for Global Justice (IGJ), and many others.  

The program for the workshops was designed to match the discussions being had at the IMF World Bank meetings themselves, canvassing issues relating to social justice, feminism, civil societies, the future of work, transparency and impunity of international financial institutions, and others.  

Some effective protests were held around the Nusa Dua for reclamation of farmland and ocean territory. While arrests were made two days prior, quick legal assistance provided by Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and Solidaritus Perempuan meant that the protesters were released without charges.  

Disappointingly for many, the delegates of the regional meeting for IPC were not granted police approval for a public protest by this time and were unable to participate in direct action for safety reasons. Despite this, we supported the above grassroots organisations in stating truth to power in their objectives to the police when the TVRI was investigated on 14 October.  

  

 

 Action!  

Delegates and peasant organisations have pledged to expose the incriminating role of World Bank and IMF in increasing inequality, land dispossession and poverty.  

We agreed to continue to denounce the existence of World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation as well as expose the details of corporate agreements that threaten to take away people’s food sovereignty and allow expansion of markets for multinational agribusinesses. 

AFSA agreed to write a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) about our position on the forthcoming Australia/European Union Free Trade Agreement. While we have not received an update from DFAT about this agreement, we intend to work with our allies in Europe to draft this letter expressing our views towards the agreement. We will refer to the experiences of the delegates and peasant organisations at the meetings and workshops in Bali. On behalf of AFSA, I agreed to help promote the legitimacy of the Declaration of Peasants’ Rights in Australia by lobbying our national government and discussing this strategy with AFSA and its supporters at our annual Convergence.  

La Via Campesina continues to denounce the impunity with which destructive policies are pushed forth by World Bank and IMF. As a member of LVC, AFSA will continue our campaigns for realising food sovereignty and freeing agriculture from trade negotiations. 

 

 

You can read about the history of the Indonesian resistance to WTO/WB/IMF HERE.

If you'd like to see more photos of this meeting and the events surrounding it, you can see some HERE.

 

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[1] The 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group took place in Bali Nusa Dua, Indonesia, and were held between the Boards of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank Group. Central bankers, ministers of finance and development, parliamentarians, private sector executives, representatives from civil society organizations (progressively becoming key components in a global context often described as neoliberalisation) and academics were given a luxury business travel package to attend and discuss “issues of global concern, including the world economic outlook, poverty eradication, economic development, and aid effectiveness.” In addition to the meetings of the Boards of Governors, the Development Committee and the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) convened.

[2] This Working Group is endorsed and has full support of the all the IPC organisations on a specific priority theme. They are open and flexible structures, formed on an ad hoc basis with an open working methodology. They work in coordination with the Facilitating Committee on issues relating to land, indigenous peoples, fisheries, livestock, agroecology, genetic resources and trade.  It is supported by human rights organisations, Focus on the Global South and FIAN International.

[3] According to the IPC Terms of Reference, the delegates formed an agenda for the meetings including discussions on each organisation or country’s regional priorities for food sovereignty and challenges regarding the control of natural resources (land, water, fisheries, forests).

[4] The Indonesian Opposition, the Fair and Prosperous Coalition, argued that as a host of the IMF World Bank meetings, Indonesia is only required to provide venues, simple catering, and accommodation, yet the amount being spent far exceeds that of previous host countries.

[5] Article 1.1 a peasant is any person who engages or who seeks to engage alone, or in association with others or as a community, in small-scale agricultural production for subsistence and/or for the market, and who relies significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, on family or household labour and other non-monetized ways of organizing labour, and who has a special dependency on and attachment to the land

[6] Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Role of Women in Agriculture.<http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am307e/am307e00.pdf>.

 

FAO Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers: AFSA Report

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Report on AFSA’s attendance at the FAO Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers: Unlocking the potential of agricultural innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

FAO Headquarters, Rome, 21–23 November 2018

 

Katie Johnston

Vice President, AFSA

Background

AFSA is a member of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), a global alliance of grassroots civil society organisations that work to uphold the rights of peasant farmers, fisherfolk, rural women and youth, the landless, traditional food gatherers and eaters, pastoralists and herders, and indigenous peoples. Working for the principles of food sovereignty, the IPC has, since 2003, provided the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (the FAO) with expert advice, relating specifically to the on-ground needs and demands of these peoples, and specifically in relation to family farming. In addition to working closely with civil society, the FAO are also bound, via donations and the context of the member states, to work with government, private enterprise, and research organisations. The IPC represents the people working in food production outside these areas (though some members do work in research organisations that support community development and food sovereignty).

In November 2018, the FAO held the Symposium on Innovation in Family Farming at the FAO Headquarters, Rome, which I attended. This symposium followed on from the international symposium on The Role of Agricultural Biotechnologies in Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition, held in February 2016 at the same location. In the interim, the FAO held a regional meeting on Agricultural Biotechnologies in Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition in Asia-Pacific, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in September 2017. Follow-on regional meetings in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa and the Near East where scheduled for 2017-18 after this Asia-Pacific meeting but did not go ahead. In short, the IPC members who attended this meeting (of which AFSA was one) were so effective at raising questions about the nature of biotechnologies in a genuinely sustainable and democratic food system at this regional conference that the donors for the subsequent regional meetings decided not to go ahead with the funding. As a result, the FAO effectively ‘re-launched’ the international conference under the new title of ‘Innovation in Family Farming’. So here we are.

As a member if the IPC, I also attended three days of strategising, pre-symposium, which allowed the group to craft key points on our definition of innovation, and the collective message we were committed to putting forward during the sessions. We also heard member stories regarding developments in agricultural innovation and updates around increased centralised control and corporatisation of the food system. Another great reminder for me on the importance of collective action and how working together for a common purpose serves to be so effective. This was also a chance for me to really understand how the outcomes of food sovereignty (or lack of, in a lot of cases) differ wildly from country to country. For example, in Australia we face issues such as regulation being ineffective or inappropriate for small-scale farmers, land being mismanaged as a result of our government’s focus on Big Ag, and deep injustices towards our First Nations people and loss of knowledge of traditional food systems. While many IPC members also expressed similar concerns, they also told stories of gross injustices towards farmers, such as one Uruguayan member detailing the deaths (murder) of 80 of their farm leaders in his region in the last two years. For me, hearing stories like this really reminded me of the importance of why AFSA is involved in this international work and of our collective mission to fight for food sovereignty.

What does ‘innovation’ mean for AFSA, and for the members of the IPC?

As with all issues relating to food and rights, AFSA assesses ‘innovation’ with reference to the six pillars of food sovereignty:

  • Focuses on food for people – food must be nutritious and culturally appropriate, which can only be possible when production is diversified, and specific to each locality, and in relation to community needs. It is not possible when food is commodified and food systems homogenised – innovation must focus on building resilience and diversity, not simply improving efficiency or supporting scalable models.
  • Values food providers – smallholder and family farmers must be included in discussions about appropriate innovation and technologies, not simply marketed to. They must be seen and listened to and considered as definitive decision makers on technical innovations relating to food sovereignty and production.
  • Localises food systems – food must be seen first as community sustenance and only secondarily as something to be traded further afield. Innovation must ensure that local and regional needs are met before the supply of distant markets.
  • Localises control – innovation must enable smallholder and family farmers to value, use and share resources local to their territories, lands and waterways in socially and ecologically sustainable ways and efforts must be by made by all stakeholders, critically government bodies, to recognise and respect these means of control. Privatisation of resources is not considered innovation under the tenets of food sovereignty.
  • Builds knowledge and skills – innovation must foster exchange of knowledge and enable community development for family farmers. This includes traditional knowledge of skills, methods and seeds, as well as community-developed new practices. Technologies that undermine this ability are rejected. Instead, innovations should involve appropriate research and research systems in close cooperation with family farmers and other small-scale food producers to support the development of agricultural and other food-production knowledge, skills, methods and inputs with, by, for and among family farmers and other small-scale producers.
  • Works with nature – innovation must protect natural resources, promote biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and where required, focus on the regeneration of depleted landscapes. As such, the promotion of agroecological farming methods are key, and industrial farming methods that damage the environment and the health of those that inhabit it are to be avoided, and should not be considered as innovative.

What did the Symposium deliver?

The Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers hosted approximately 600 people, comprised of roughly 76 government delegates, 300 NGO representatives and the remainder a mix of academics and private sector attendees. Held over three days, the Symposium comprised a number of plenary sessions with various speakers, six parallel sessions made up of four panel speakers per session and an ‘Innovation Fair’ held throughout the symposium to highlight global examples of innovation in family farming. Each session was chaired and two United Nations Rapporteurs recorded the proceedings. Chair summaries from each parallel session informed the final Chair Summary, which would inform the report released by the FAO after the Symposium.

The opening plenaries set the scene for what the IPC members had assumed would be another, slightly veiled iteration of the promotion of biotechnologies in the food system. Several speakers highlighted innovation in terms of regional-specific solutions and the importance of capacity building. These included Jaana Husu-Kallio, the Permanent Secretary of the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, who spoke of the Finnish government’s decision in the 1940’s to purchase food from local producers to implement their free school lunch program, a program that continues to this day and has improved health and social outcomes for Finnish students. Anil Gupta, Founder of the Honey Bee Network in India also discussed the importance of grassroots experimentation for family farmers, cross pollination of knowledge and ideas and open source networks for farmer technologies. He spoke of both the power of technology to create meaningful and empowered change, but also of the need to implement the precautionary principle, in regards to technology in the hands of people and corporations who seek to exploit its use for profit only.  These discussions were in line with AFSA and the IPC’s views on innovation and technology centred around democracy, community development, capacity building and knowledge sharing.

We also heard from some speakers in the opening plenaries whose visions for what ‘innovation’ and indeed ‘family farmers’ do and should look like did not align with ours. Marco Gualtieri, the Founder and Chairman of Seeds & Chips, Milan, presented on ‘Driving the future of food: Innovation, millennials and technology’. He gave no indication in his presentation of what his company does (from what I could garner from the internet, they are a start-up that aims to foster new innovations in the food system but I am still unclear on what they actually do), and his presentation focused heavily on the ability of technology to meet the needs of “young farmers” in order to “make agriculture sexy again”. His slides showed women using mobile phones and operating drones and he discussed the pressing need to “feed the world” and invest in high tech solutions. Interestingly, he did not mention family farmers once during his time on stage and although he threw in the need to have a “holistic vision”, many of us were left baffled by his stage tagline, “Let’s Get This Done!” This catch cry was thrown at the audience a few times with most of us left wondering, “get what done?” I am still unsure at the time of writing.

Yeming Wang, General Manager of tech giant Alibaba International (who have expanded into the online and physical food retail markets recently) graced the stage to discuss ‘Tackling the global imperatives for sustainable development using artificial intelligence’. Again, no mention of family farmers throughout his presentation, but he did show a video of ‘farmers’ in a Chinese city-based laboratory monitoring swine health to avoid disease. Apparently, they take the pigs outside to forest-bathe and play with balloons occasionally (although I fear just for the purpose of recording this film), but rest assured the laboratory-dwelling pig minders keep their lab coats on at all times. He also mentioned that Alibaba’s gross annual profit is equivalent to the GDP of the country ranked 20th in the world (Switzerland, in case you’re interested). I don’t know how true this is or if it was just a showpiece, but also consider that this would mean that a transnational corporation makes more money per year than every country listed from 21 down in GDP rankings. Anyway, back to innovation in family farming, which we have been torn away from for the entire duration of this man’s speech.

We also heard how considerable donations from countries with sizeable agri-tech portfolios had helped fund the Symposium, which raises questions around what the FAO and its member countries are expected to provide in return, and also around how balanced the proceedings could ever have been based on these contributions.

To our surprise, the parallel sessions did not prove to be as full of self-deluded grandeur or false promises of solutions not at all specific to family farmers as we had anticipated. A welcome relief. I attended three sessions with panellists including farmer organisation and association leaders, academics, private agricultural operators/managers, activists, government representatives and agricultural researchers. Broadly, the focus from people from developing countries was on capacity building, ensuring the preservation of local skills and knowledge and retaining control over means of production, while the focus from people from developed countries, in particular the United States (given that people from the US disproportionately represented people from developed countries on the panels), was on high-tech solutions that would increase scalability and efficiency in order to ‘feed the world’. One particularly noteworthy USDA panellist outlined her idea of innovation as being her ability to order her Turducken online at Christmas (the one time in the year when she cooks, she doesn’t like to otherwise), from a company six states away from the one she lives in. She was also impressed at how her requirement for Chinese vegetables at this time of year can be fulfilled by farmers from countries outside the US, or at the very least, across the country. That, to her, was the very definition of innovation, but thankfully, this varied wildly across panellists, with many discussing the need for inclusion of family farmers in decision-making processes, support for family farmers to innovate via funding and other means of support, capacity building for local communities, appropriate monitoring and assessment of technologies and context-specific learning and innovations.

 

Symposium outcomes

For anyone unfamiliar with FAO Symposium proceedings, sessions are held for discussions on pre-determined topics, comprising of eight (in this case) total panellists, after which the session moderator opens the floor to questions from ‘sectors’ of society - farmers, civil society organisations, research institutions, government bodies, and private enterprise. During this time, representatives from each sector make ‘interventions’, or comments on the discussions. Each session has notes taken by the UN Rapporteurs and these notes inform the Chair’s Summaries for each session, and in turn, the final Chair’s Summary for the Symposium.

One of the key messages that members of the IPC crafted pre-symposium, is that agroecology is a viable solution to feeding the world, as it holds up under all the food sovereignty tenets. During the parallel sessions, while agroecology wasn’t spoken about often during the panel discussions, it was mentioned numerous times during the intervention period, by all sectors (farmers, civil society, research institutions, government), with the exception of private enterprise. This in itself is a telling indication that a solution such as agroecology benefits all members of society with the exception of those whose sole requirement is to create profit. These mentions were heartening, however when the draft Chair’s Summary was released at the end of the Symposium, there was no mention of the agroecology as a form of innovation, or indeed at all. Again, possibly an indication of the immense impact private enterprise donors and high-tech focused government donors had on the outcomes of the Symposium. As such, members of the IPC, myself included, made interventions in the final plenary session which highlighted this error, among other issues we took with the final summary.

I am pleased to report that upon reading the final Chair’s Summary from the Symposium, the FAO has taken (most of) the points that members of the IPC wanted revised, and have updated or included them in the document. Critically, the term agroecology was included in the document, as part of point 5 of the Key Elements for Sustainable Agricultural Innovation, albeit lumped in with scaling up (not always possible to retain sound ecological or social practices) and agricultural biotechnologies. This still conflates expensive, high-tech solutions that are not always accessible or appropriate for small-scale family farmers with the comparatively low-tech, low-risk and ecologically-sound and socially-focused solutions proposed within the regimes of agroecology and food sovereignty. Still, these amendments were made and were made possible by the importance placed on them by those of us who stood up to draw a line on what we believe to be acceptable forms of innovation in the context of family farmers, climate change, social structures and the need to overhaul agricultural systems and recognise the knowledge and importance on family farmers globally. They are the people who will feed the world and relying on the power of technology to do it disregards the requirements of land and people and overlooks current injustices resulting from the commoditisation of our food systems.

Final thoughts

AFSA and all members of the IPC firmly reject the idea that the food system should be corporatised, and often, when we think of innovation, we think of technology and associated processes that heighten efficiency and increase scaling up capacity. But innovation is so much more than technology. While many of the ‘success stories’ highlighted at the Innovation Fair during the Symposium did embrace a particular technology, often it was to monitor territory-specific pest or weather events, improve skill-sharing capacity, track improvements in agricultural yield resulting from promotion of biodiversity and seed selection, or educate customers via increased transparency in the supply chain or labelling schemes specific to a particular product or community. Technology to communicate, monitor and predict particular outcomes is wonderful, necessary and will no doubt make many farmer’s lives easier.

That said, these technologies or forms of ‘innovation’ overlook deeply problematic injustices created by the profit-driven and extractive economies in the first place. During the Symposium, there was continual mention of 4IR mainstays such as drones, big data and other forms of expensive tech options, and a call to provide these for family farmers. Little discussion however, was had on how to enable family farmers to afford or access these technologies. Ultimately, much of the discussion felt like a big marketing drive, whereby family farmers were considered as only consumers, and not one of the most important parts of a functioning society.

As members of the IPC and the global food sovereignty community, our fear is that ‘innovation’ will become another greenwashed trend term, destined to be bandied around like the word sustainability. The current ambiguity of such terms allows anyone who deems their mission or product to fit within them to market to their selected audience – a large one in this case given the requirement of humans to eat at least three times a day. Are the biggest tech giants marketing their wares to the poorest farming communities? Marginalised communities with no access to income and who are not the recipients of donor funds? The answer remains to be seen but our feeling is that where a company or government body cannot obtain some sort of return on investment, no.

To focus on adapting seeds or systems via genetic modification and high-tech solutions, to deal with the ‘inevitability’ of climate change is dangerous. It sends the message that we can address only the symptoms of our agricultural problems, and not the root cause. While adaptations will of course be necessary given the extent to which governments and corporations have buried their heads in the sand up until this point, simply adapting to every problem will only lead to more problems.

Agroecology suggests the application of ecological principles for the management of agricultural systems. It provides a framework for observing and learning from natural ecosystems and is the only solution that addresses underlying issues associated with conventional farming and poor management and that has the capacity to address issues of soil erosion, water harvesting and use, ecosystem services, feeding communities and caring for the environment. It has the capacity to capture carbon, build topsoil and address social issues adequately. Its focus is on people-centred skills, knowledge and participation and aims to foster justice and democratisation in food systems. It is an example of true innovation. Agroecology has been recognised as a key driver in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and our focus now must be on how we can operationalise agroecology for food-producing communities.

I am honoured to have been able to participate at this Symposium, and with members of the IPC to continue our food sovereignty mission. It is critical that the voice of the people continues to be heard in spaces such as the FAO, where important practical and policy work is being undertaken to address global issues surrounding food, and we must ensure that these voices do not get drowned out by money and power.

If you would like to read more about the importance of and research behind agroecology, head over to Agroecology Now!

Thanks to the IPC for funding my attendance at the Symposium (note: AFSA’s international work is not funded by its members) and to all those willing to turn up and represent your respective communities. LET’S GET THIS DONE (just kidding!).

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