Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

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

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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 6th largest land size country in world and 55th 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)?

  1. 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.
  2. In 80s and 90s we were talking about starvation, and now we talk about 800mil suffering hunger & starvation – mostly rural poor.
  3. We are mainly focusing on yield improvement when we are wasting a third of production.
  4. 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

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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.

* * *

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>.

 

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