LRAN

New report on Land Concentration and Land Grabbing in Europe

LRAN — 2013-04-22T02:42:15Z

New report argues that :

Land concentration and land grabbing are occurring and reaching blatant levels in Europe

Land concentration and land grabbing do not occur only in developing countries in the South ; in fact, both are underway in Europe today. A new report by European Coordination Via Campesina and Hands off the Land network shows that land grabbing and access to land are a critical issues today in Europe, and also reveals that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy scheme and other policies is implicated in a variety of ways.

The report, involving 25 authors from 11 countries and titled Land concentration, land grabbing and people's struggles in Europe, reveals the hidden scandal of how just three per cent of landowners have come to control half of all farmed land. This massive concentration of land ownership and wealth is on a par with Brazil, Colombia and Philippines.

Some of these processes of ever-increasing land concentration are not new ; however they have accelerated in recent decades in particular in Eastern Europe. Many feature European companies, as well as new actors including Chinese companies and Middle Eastern Hedge Funds, tied into an increasingly global commodity chains, and all looking to profit from the increasingly speculative commodity of land.

The report features in-depth case studies on strong land concentration trends in Spain, Germany, Italy, France and Austria. It also features various forms of land grabbing in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Ukraine. Just like their counterparts in Ethiopia, Cambodia or Paraguay, many of these large-scale land deals are being carried out in a secretive, non-transparent manner.

The report reveals that one of the drivers of this European land grab and land concentration is the subsidies paid under the Common Agricultural Policy, which explicitly favours large land holdings, marginalises small farms, and blocks entry by prospective farmers. In Spain, for example, in 2009, 75 percent of the subsidies were cornered by only 16 percent of the largest producers. Other drivers for land grabs have come from the extractive industry, urban sprawl, real estate interests, tourism enclaves, and other commercial undertakings.

Prof. Dr. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg of Wageningen University, a member of the research team, says : “This is an unprecedented dynamic of land concentration and creeping land grabbing. It has worsened the existing situation where many young people want to stay in or take up farming but cannot maintain or gain access to land. This was already a serious issue before, but has become worse. The current and planned CAP subsidy schemes are likely to solidify the barrier to more democratic access to land and entry to farming by young people. Access to land is a basic condition to achieve food sovereignty in Europe. Indeed, the three most pressing land issues in Europe today are land concentration, land grabbing, and inability of young people to maintain or gain access to land to enter sustainable farming – interlinked, triangular land issues quite similar to the ones we see in Africa, Latin America and Asia today.”

The report however shows that land concentration and land grabbing are not going unopposed, but instead inspiring a massive wave of resistance. Land grabbing and access to land are a central theme of this years celebration of the international day of peasant struggles. The study includes the case of the community of Narbolia, Sardinia mobilising against the use of prime agricultural land for massive solar greenhouse projects, and the case of opposition to the Notre Dames des Landes airport project in Nantes in France.

There are also growing cases of communities occupying land, mirroring actions by many social movements in the global South. The report highlights the case of SOC in Andalusia, where landless peasant farmers are collectively occupying land and cultivating it using agroecological farming techniques, and SoLiLA in Vienna where young people are coming together to “squat” fertile urban land for community supported agriculture and city food gardening thereby preventing it being converted for use by urban commercial projects.

Jeanne Verlinden of the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) says the study shows clearly that : “Land needs to be seen again as a public good. We must reduce the commodification of land and instead promote public management of this common resource on which we all depend. Priority should be given to the use of land for smallholder and peasant agriculture and food production, rather than handing over land to those private property commercial interests who seek land for speculation and ever increasing concentration of wealth. Access to land should be given to those who work it.”

For more info contact :

ECVC : Jeanne Verlinden : +32497605884

TNI : hildevanderpas@tni.org ;+31 20 6626608

ISS : Jun Borras


informe completo en inglés: PDF 2.9 MB

“If we rely on corporate seed, we lose food sovereignty”

LRAN — 2013-04-12T14:55:27Z

GROWING POWER IN PEASANT SEEDS SYSTEMS: Farmers seeds and struggle against GMOs, AGRA- 2nd Green Revolution

Report on a workshop at the World Social Forum in Tunis to analyse and build strategies to strengthen peasant seed systems, and challenge the forces and technologies that undermine them (GMOs, AGRA and monopoly seed laws)

Tunis, March 29.

It has become crucial to defend seeds. In the past 20 or 30 years, what was once seen as normal – peasant farmers growing, selecting, saving and exchanging seeds – has come under attack from corporations seeking to control and commodify the very basis of agriculture.

Zamouri Hayek, seed farmer from Tunisia

This was the subject of the session at the World Social Forum in Tunis on Peasant Seeds jointly organized on March 28, 2013 by La Vía Campesina, GRAIN and the ETC Group.

There are four pillars of agriculture, says Nandini Jairam, a member of La Vía Campesina and a peasant farmer from Karnataka, India, “these are soil, water, seeds, and peasants.”

mistica, Awa Djigal, LVC Senegal

“A seed is miraculous. A seed has life – you sow one and you reap hundreds. And the skilled knowledge of peasant farmers is equally important. It is knowledge transferred down through generations by farmers that guides the selection of the right seeds to plant and to save. Farmers in India know how to preserve seed for two or three years without using pesticides. And they barter seeds; they give them freely to each other, returning a part of the harvest.”

Nandini Jairam, LVC India

“It's peasant seed that feeds us,” said Via Campesina's Guy Kastler from France. “And this is a catastrophe for companies.”

Corporations want farmers to buy industrial seeds – and the fertiliser and pesticides necessary to grow them. So they need to prevent peasants from continuing to develop, produce and exchange their own seeds.

Now the world is heading into a climate crisis. By 2070, says ETC Group's Pat Mooney, we'll be facing growing conditions that have not been seen before in the 10,000 year history of agriculture.

The same half dozen companies control two-thirds of seed production, 70 percent of pesticide production, and 75 percent of private agricultural research budgets, far outstripping any government's resources.

“But in the past 50 years, peasant agriculture has donated 2.1 million varieties of 7,000 crops to gene banks around the world. In the same time, seed companies have contributed just 80,000 varieties.”

Guy Kastler, LVC France

And the contributions of peasant farmers are vastly superior, says Via Campesina's Kastler. “A plant is a living being. It adapts to where it grows, and peasants select them carefully according to their needs.”

Industrial seeds are selected to work in uniform conditions, they are not adapted to local realities; they're produced in laboratories and grown in test plots with chemical fertilisers.

“Away from the test plots, in farmers' different fields, these seeds won't grow without machines and fertiliser. The plants get sick, then you have to look after them with insecticides, fungicides, pesticides – poisons. Industrial agriculture is a science – a science of death,” says Kastler.

Pat Mooney, ETC Group

The world's top six agribusiness companies are focusing their research on just a dozen crops. “They are putting the future of the world's food supply into 12 crops. That's no way to ensure the future,” Mooney says.

Despite the vastly greater resources available to industrial agriculture, peasants grow 70 percent of the world's food.

Bernard, seed farmer from LVC Germany

“The industrial farming system has put peasant agriculture at risk. Do we trust industrial agriculture to save us, or should we instead assume that it is peasant systems have the resilience and creativity to answer the crisis?” said Mooney.

Agribusiness exists not to feed people, but to create and dominate/sustain markets.

The flagship “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA) is a clear illustration. A huge project, backed by the Gates Foundation and others, it claims its intent is to help small farmers produce more, says GRAIN's Henk Hobbelink.

mistica, Josie Riffaud, LVC France

But AGRA is not driven by the needs of African farmers. It is focused on commercial farming, with agro-dealers at the heart of a strategy to transform into small farmers into businessmen, operating in a globalised market of corporate seed, fertiliser and distribution.

Crucial to the vision behind AGRA are commercially-owned seeds, such as GMOs.

“But GMOs don't feed the world, they throw farmers off their land,” said Hobbelink. Ninety percent of GMO crops are maize, soya, canola and cotton, destined for textiles, animal feed and agrofuels.

GMOs are said to produce higher yields – but the evidence is that the opposite is true. The more seed has been manipulated, the more difficult it is to sustain high yields.

GMOs are also promoted as reducing the use of toxic agrochemicals – the evidence again points the opposite way, towards increased use. In Argentina, use of fertilisers and pesticides as increased 20-fold along with the growing use of genetically-modified crops.

Henk Hobbelink, GRAIN

What is the alternative?

First, says Kastler, peasants, locally, collectively, should save their own seed and organise themselves to select and safeguard them. “They must be autonomous in terms of seed.”

mistica, Lidia Ruíz Cuevas, LVC Paraguay

The aim should not be to create a global market. The sharing of seed is also the sharing of knowledge between peasants. La Via Campesina is strengthening traditional local and regional seed exchange and storage options including the possibility of accessing peasant varieties held in gene banks.

Second, we must fight against the laws that are stripping peasants of their rights regarding seed.

Third, we must stop GMOs: we must prevent their cultivation and resist and overturn laws that allow their expanded use.

Peasants must be present as equals in the debate over seeds. Peasants must secure recognition of the right to reproduce seed, to exchange seed, and to take an equal part in decision-making over the food system.

Kastler conludes that “If we rely on corporate seed, we lose food sovereignty. If we lose food sovereignty, we lose political sovereignty.”

Chavez Renewed Latin America and Revived Socialism

LRAN — 2013-03-08T03:46:26Z

- Social Movements

Assumptions in the European Union biofuels policy: frictions with experiences in Germany, Brazil and Mozambique

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:16:43Z

- Global Capitalism

Strike Four in Climate Change: A “Climate Space” to rethink analysis and strategies

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:14:33Z

- Global Capitalism

Whose “Clean” Development? Communities Speak Out

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:12:27Z

Our analysis, and that of many communities and organisations across Asia, is that the CDM is an extension of the generalised approach to big project and energy intensive development that has systematically marginalised indigenous peoples and local communities and over- exploited the Earth. The “clean development mechanism” is, quite simply, a mechanism that allows polluters to avoid binding emissions reductions in one location, while shifting emissions to another location. At the same time, it allows corporations and state entities to reap additional profits from projects that are questionable in terms of sustainability, community benefits or even addressing climate change.

Cambodian Platform for Struggle

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:10:22Z

This was the simple yet powerful message from the ASEAN Grassroots People's Assembly (AGPA), held November 13 to 16 In Phnom Penh and attended by about 4000 Cambodians and another 200 people from other ASEAN countries.

Focus Policy Review: Whose Growth? Whose Democracy?

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:07:51Z

Whose growth? Whose democracy? by Clarissa Militante

Voices from the countryside:Farmers speak of agrarian reform strugglesby Mary Ann Manahan

APECO's story: two visions of development contend in land grab caseby Jerik Cruz

Photos: Agrarian Reform Campaign and Consultations; FOCUS in Rio 20+ Meeting; FOCUS at the Asia-Europe Peoples' Forum 9, in Ventiane Laos

Defending water justice and democracy in Asia: alternatives to commercialization and privitizationby Mary Ann Manahan, Buenaventura Dargantes, Cheryl Batistel

Greening Free Trade means protecting status quoby Joseph -urugganan

Global Campaign to End Violence against Women

LRAN — 2013-02-14T02:42:56Z

Via Campesina International, by means of this booklet, hopes to encourage debate and reflection concerning a subject that unfortunately is part of the daily life of many women all around the world: the phenomenon violence against women, systematically silenced, naturalized and made invisible by capitalist patriarchic society.

This material gives continuity to the Global Campaign to End Violence against Women that was launched by Via Campesina in 2008. This booklet will guide discussions in our meetings and educational processes related to this theme. It also serves as the foundation for our daily actions and struggles to end violence against women.

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

LRAN — 2013-02-13T17:28:00Z

Language: English (Available in French and Spanish)

Content: For many years the CFS was a space that was neglected by governments as it had no impact on the world governance of agriculture, which states considered as resting more in the hands of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then in 2009 the committee was reformed. This booklet focuses on this reform and its consequences for civil society.

Edition: La Via Campesina