Today CAGJ signed on to the Call to Action of the US Working Group on the Food Crisis, an ad hoc group of organizations from around the US, representing various sectors of the food system, including anti-hunger, family farm, community food security, environmental, international aid, labor, food justice, consumer, and other groups. We do not view the food crisis as an unexpected, sudden emergency of the last year, but as the inevitable consequence of the development of a long list of misguided agricultural and food policies over the last 30 years.
We believe that we will not resolve the problems exposed by this food crisis by applying more of the same policies and thinking that caused the crisis in the first place. Nothing less than a wholesale change in the worldwide food system will allow us to address these problems sustainably and equitably.
CALL TO ACTION
As a result of decades of misguided policies and the recent sharp rise in food prices, a billion people around the world face hunger and food insecurity. Dangerous volatility in the financial system puts these people at even greater risk. We, the undersigned, call on people across the United States to use our political power and actions to fight for food system changes that:
1) Stabilize prices for farmers and consumers globally:
*Regulate the finance sector’s investment in food and energy commodities.
*Establish and strengthen publicly-owned domestic, regional, and international strategic food reserves.
*Suspend international trade and investments in industrial-scale biofuels (a.k.a. agrofuels).
*Reform food aid.
*Expand fair trade, not so-called free trade.
2) Rebalance power in the food system:
*Reduce the political influence of agribusiness corporations on public policy.
*Strengthen antitrust enforcement in agribusiness.
*Convene multi-stakeholder, representative food policy councils at state and local levels.
3) Make agriculture environmentally sustainable:
*Support family farming with agroecological practices through purchasing and procurement.
*Halt expansion of government supported biofuels programs, mandates, and tax incentives and other subsidies unless they only support sustainable, domestic production.
*Direct state and national farm policy, research and education, and investment toward agroecological farming and sustainable food businesses.
4) Guarantee the right to healthy food by building local and regional food systems and fostering social, ecological and economic justice:
*Call on the US to join the community of nations supporting the human right to food.
*Support domestic food production and independent community-based food businesses in
the United States and around the world.
*Establish living wages, so that everyone can afford healthy food.
*Implement full workers’ rights for farmworkers and other food system workers.
*Strengthen the social safety net for low-income people across the US.
*Create a solidarity economy that puts people before profit in the United States and around
the world.
Resources:
Read more about this issue and other actions you can take:
http://www.usfoodcrisisgroup.org
http://www.foodforthoughtandaction.org
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news-publications/articles_op-eds/the-time-has-come-la-via-campesina-and-food-sovereignty
Support dynamic small farmer organizations around the world solving the food crisis:
http://grassrootsonline.org/donate
