Blog

Grassroots International board and staff members Marie Kennedy and Salena Tramel saw first-hand the devastation in Gaza after the Israeli assault on the territory in Dec08-Jan09.

Grassroots International's friends at the Global Development & Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University announced their award of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Bina Agarwal of Delhi University, India. Agarwal is an early pioneer of research and advocacy on gender and land rights, which many of Grassroots' partners have been fighting for in the field.

Grassroots International joins our ally Jewish Voice for Peace in calling on Caterpillar to respect human rights and end its business with the Israeli government.  Please sign onto the petition and forward it to friends and family by June 9th.  Jewish Voice for Peace will deliver the signatures at Caterpillar's annual shareholder meeting next week!

Here is the message that I received from Jewish Voice for Peace this morning:

"See if you can explain this… I can't.

Even though I grew up in Missouri, my first introduction to agriculture did not occur until my college days in Northfield, Minnesota, in the early 1980s. Depending on which way the wind blew, my college (Carleton) was filled either with the toasted grain aroma from the Malt-o-Meal factory or the smell of the surrounding dairy farms. Sadly, the dairy farms began to lose out in more than just the scent in the air. I remember clearly my sophomore year when a big stoic man stood up at church and, with tears in his eyes, told us that the last of his dairy cows were sold in an attempt to pay off farm creditors. Thus began my awareness of corporate farming, agricultural and trade policy and their devastating impact on families and communities.

Salena Tramel, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for the Middle East and Haiti, recently visited with all of Grassroots' partners in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. This was not her first time in the region, having lived and worked in the West Bank just two years ago. Her previous experience in the region provides a vantage point from which to consider the current political, economic and social reality in the region.

Last month, Grassroots International, along with a few other U.S. food justice organizations, collaborated with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter to organize his U.S. visit. Among his most important stops, de Schutter spoke at the United Nations on May 4, 2009, presenting a report on the right to food in the context of the global food crisis.

Our colleagues at Friends of the Earth and Earth Track recently released a report titled A Boon to Bad Biofuels: Federal Tax Credits and Mandates Underwrite Environmental Damage at Taxpayer Expense which examines the extent to which the biofuels industry is subsidized by federal tax credits and a federal renewable fuels mandate. The report finds that between 2008 and 2022, biofuels will receive more than $400 billion in subsidies.  The report also shows that, rather than promoting the production of less harmful biofuels, many of these subsidies

My colleague Saulo Araujo and I were recently in Guatemala visiting our partner CONIC (National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples & Campesinos). CONIC's staff took us to visit a local community they have been working with in the village of Cocorval, in the Department of Chimaltenango, over an hour's drive from Guatemala City on a "chicken bus."

The Food Sovereignty movement in the United States is well and alive. And thanks to the work of food cooperatives, community supported agriculture (CSA) and local farmers, little by little more neighborhoods and cities are joining this social movement that is reclaiming the right to quality food.

This past weekend, the movement's strengthen was displayed in Brooklyn, NY, where over 2,000 people met in one of the largest U.S. events for Food Sovereignty this year. 

Participants in the Brooklyn Food Conference represented different places and backgrounds in the U.S. food movement. Event speakers included some of the leading voices in the United States, such as social activist Malik Yakini from Detroit, and Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved.

As more cases of Swine Flu are reported across the globe, two kinds of opportunism seem to be spreading as well. First, non-profits spin the story to seek funding or media coverage for whatever portion of their work might overlap with the rising pandemic. Some are more relevant-and actually engaged-than others. Second, businesses might use the health scare for their own purposes.

In Egypt, pigs are being slaughtered to "prevent" the spread of swine flu in a country where even a single case of the illness has not yet been confirmed.

 Saulo Araujo, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I traveled to the People's Summit of the Americas with the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA). The HSA is composed of networks, social movements and organizations from across the Americas that are primarily opposed to free trade. Its beginnings were in the Belo Horizonte, Brazil People's Summit in 1997 in anticipation of the Santiago, Chile Summit of the Americas.

Progressive social movements from across the hemisphere met in Trinidad from April 15-18 for the IV People's Summit, a parallel event to the Summit of the Americas.

Led by local trade unions and the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples, the IV People's Summit happened at a critical moment in the Americas.

The promises of economic prosperity through free trade agreements have left many across the Americas without the basic means of decent living. The unemployment rate in the United States is over 8%.  Further south, severely affected by the same failed policies, small-scale farmers have been turned into food beggars in larger cities in the Latin American and Caribbean regions, and millions have been forced to migrate in search of economic sustenance.

My colleague, Saulo Araujo, Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica, and I are in Trinidad for the 4th People's Summit of the Americas (April 15-18, 2009). Being held in conjunction with the 5th Summit of the Americas, the People's Summit was coordinated by local Trinidadian social movements and civil society organizations, particularly labor unions (for e.g. the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and NGOs and the Oilfield Workers Trade Union), as well as transnational networks such as the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA).

Family farmers and other food justice activists will mark April 17, the International Day of Peasant's Struggle, with a protest against corporate speculation on agricultural commodities which is behind the global food crisis now threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers. This action is in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the world's largest umbrella movement of family farmers, Grassroots International's ally the National Family Farm Coalition, rural workers and indigenous peoples.

Specific demands include: