All people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that agriculture in their community is fair and healthy for everyone. This is the basic principle behind food sovereignty, a new concept that family farmers, environmentalists, organic food consumers and other people of good will are beginning to embrace.

Grassroots International is proud to support this work through our partnerships with grassroots movements and social change organizations in the Global South and in the U.S. Together with our partners we are fighting to preserve rural communities, to give local farmers everywhere the first right to local and regional markets and to build a fair, healthy, sustainable alternative to our broken global food and farm system.

Farmers today can't earn a fair price for what they raise. And, despite the fact that there is no shortage of food production, more than 850 million people worldwide—most of them farmers—go hungry everyday. Meanwhile, the environmental degradation caused by industrial farming is spreading.

The system doesn't value healthy, delicious food, productive and sustainable rural communities (that make up the world's majority) or people's right to make decisions about how to live their lives.

This year, Grassroots began an exciting food sovereignty education and advocacy collaboration with the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), an advocacy group that represents family farm organizations nationwide.

The NFFC is a member of the Vía Campesina, the largest international movement of family farmer, fisher and forester groups in the world. The Via is also a Grassroots partner, and we are supporting its international forum on food sovereignty in Mali in February 2007.The forum will bring together family farmers and other small producers from around the world to create solutions to their common problems.