Submitted by Trudi Zundel on
More than a set of agricultural practices, agroecology is profoundly political, intertwined with food sovereignty and peasants’ and farmers’ rights. Small-scale farmers, peasants, pastoralists and small-scale fishers – who make up what ETC calls “The Peasant Food Web” – already grow 70% of the world’s food using only 25% of agricultural resources.
For them to scale up and to continue feeding the world sustainabily, nutritiously and resiliently, we must dismantle the Industrial Food Chain, which not only harms the environment, contributes to climate change and violates human rights, but also exerts disproportionate power over food and agricultural policies from the international to the local level.
Our booklet, Who Will Feed Us?, compares the Peasant Food Web and the Industrial Food Chain.
We've produced four accompanying videos to illustrate the points in the booklet and tell the story of the Peasant Food Web.
For the billions of peasants in the Peasant Food Web to continue feeding themselves and others, we need policymakers to support food sovereignty and peasant-led agroecology, including:
- Ensuring agrarian reform including the right to territories (land, water, forests, fishing, foraging, hunting)
- Restoring the right to freely save, plant, exchange, sell and breed seeds and livestock
- Removing regulations blocking local markets and diversity
- Reorienting public R&D to respond to peasants’ directions
- Instituting fair trade, determined by peasant-led policies
- Establishing fair wages and working conditions for food and agricultural workers.