—SHALMALI GUTTAL, FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH

World hunger is on the rise—783 million people worldwide don’t know where they will get their next meal. The climate crisis, ongoing conflicts, financial speculation, and high prices driven by corporate profit-seeking are key contributors to rising world hunger. In a July press conference, representatives from the People’s Autonomous Response (with over 1,000 signatories) to the UN Food Systems Summit highlighted the urgent, coordinated actions needed to overcome the global hunger crisis and address the human right to food.

Unfortunately, the corporate capture of the UN Food Systems Summit continues to prioritize silver bullet “solutions” led by industry giants rather than the proven-effective methods led by those who face the brunt of food and agriculture-related problems. Small farmers and Indigenous peoples have centuries of knowledge from which to create real solutions to the climate crisis and food insecurity. 

The movements and organizations opposing the Summit call for an urgent shift away from corporate-driven industrial models and towards biodiverse, agroecological, community-led food systems that prioritize the public interest over profit-making. Communities on the frontlines of intersecting crises are already leading the way for food systems change and should be centered in, and lead, all discussions and efforts to reduce hunger worldwide and change how food is produced and distributed. 

Perla Álvarez of La Via Campesina, one of the signatories to the People’s Declaration, urges the UN to “change direction and support our demands and efforts for a food sovereign future based on human rights and the principles of agroecology, care, justice, diversity, solidarity and  accountability.”

In community and solidarity,

Tiffani, Tanya, and Christina 

Featured image: The international peasant confederation La Vía Campesina is one of the 1,000+ signatories to the Autonomous People’s Response to the UNFSS.

This editorial was Adapted from Food Systems 4 People’s July 13th press release.

Read Issue No. 65 of the Real Food Scoop

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It’s no secret that the farm bill is heavily influenced by Big Ag and Big Food. A handful of corporations lobby heavily to ensure that lawmakers prioritize their interests (i.e. profits for their investors and shareholders). Last month, HEAL Food Alliance (of which Real Food Media is a steering council member) joined over 500 farmers and farmer-advocates, partners, and allies in Washington DC at the Farmers for Climate Action: Rally for Resilience for a week of advocacy and power building—and to educate lawmakers on our shared vision for a transformative farm bill. For four days, HEAL staff and members rallied, marched, and advocated for a 2023 farm bill that protects food and farm workers; invests in communities; and brings justice for Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color.

HEAL’s vision for a 2023 Farm Bill is one that transforms our destructive food and farm systems, our health, our planet, and prioritizes the wellbeing of BIPOC and rural communities, public health, and the environment through policies that:

• secure dignity and fairness for food chain workers and their families;
• provide opportunities for all producers;
• invest in communities, not corporations;
• nourish people; and 
• ensures the survival of ecosystems and our planet.

While a transformative farm bill does not in and of itself ensure the future we seek, it is our belief that by building the power of frontline communities, we can shift the locus of power and begin to ensure food sovereignty for our communities.

In community and solidarity,

Tiffani, Christina, Tanya, and Anna 

This month’s Real Food Scoop editorial was adapted from “HEAL Food Alliance Shows Up Big in DC for a Transformative Farm Bill” by Eloni Porcher.

P.S. Stay tuned for a special audio story Tanya is producing, in collaboration with Midwest Farmers of Color Collective, featuring the Black and brown farmers who traveled from Minnesota to DC for the rally.    

 
Read Issue No. 61 of the Real Food Scoop
 

Photos by Rion Moon & Jam Rose

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The transnational corporations and business organizations that benefit from GM corn and biocides such as glyphosate are strongly pressuring the Mexican government (with support from the U.S. government) to renounce its right to food sovereignty and walk away from the international commitments assumed by the three governments in the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” which is the strategic plan for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in the period 2022-2030, intended to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. 

The demand by corporations and their lobbyists that Mexico reverse the legitimate and legal decisions made in compliance with the spirit of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), as well as international legal frameworks, to protect the world’s center of origin and diversification of maize from contamination by transgenic corn, as well as the gradual but effective elimination of highly hazardous pesticides such as the carcinogenic glyphosate (also known by its brand name RoundUp or Faena), is a true international legal absurdity and an anachronistic approach typical of the last century, contrary to the broad social demands and international commitments of the 21st century.

In December 2022, the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as the majority of governments in the world, participated in the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. They agreed on the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework“, which establishes four goals and 23 targets. Of those, we highlight only three, which contrast with the irrationality of the corporate demands towards Mexico:

TARGET 7
Reduce pollution risks and the negative impact of pollution from all sources by 2030, to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, considering cumulative effects, including: reducing excess nutrients lost to the environment by at least half, including through more efficient nutrient cycling and use; reducing the overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half, including through integrated pest management, based on science, taking into account food security and livelihoods; and also preventing, reducing and working towards eliminating plastic pollution.

TARGET 9
Ensure that the management and use of wild species are sustainable, thereby providing social, economic, and environmental benefits for people, especially those in vulnerable situations and those most dependent on biodiversity, including through sustainable biodiversity-based activities, products and services that enhance biodiversity, and protecting and encouraging customary sustainable use by Indigenous peoples and local communities.

TARGET 10
Ensure that areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry are managed sustainably, in particular through the sustainable use of biodiversity, including through a substantial increase of the application of biodiversity-friendly practices, such as sustainable intensification, agroecological and other innovative approaches contributing to the resilience and long-term efficiency and productivity of these production systems and to food security, conserving and restoring biodiversity and maintaining nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services.

Our organizations, and an increasing number of members of our governments and legislative and judicial bodies, see the goal of trying to put corporate interests above the priorities of respect for Mother Nature, as well as public health, as clearly irrational. Such proposals go against the socioenvironmental needs of the region and the world. Instead, we must build alternative policies for balanced development that should be the priority, in harmony with international law.

WE REJECT PRESSURE BY TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THEIR AGRIBUSINESS ALLIES THAT CONTROL SEEDS AND AGROCHEMICALS.

WE SUPPORT THE POLICY, IN EACH OF OUR COUNTRIES, OF ENCOURAGING THE PRODUCTION OF NON-GM MAIZE, WITHOUT GLYPHOSATE OR OTHER SIMILAR BIOCIDES, AS WELL AS THE POLICY OF FAIR AND SUSTAINABLE TRADE.

WE ENCOURAGE GOVERNMENTS TO RAISE THESE ISSUES, TO TAKE EFFECTIVE MEASURES TO COMPLY WITH THE COMMITMENTS ESTABLISHED TO PROTECT BIODIVERSITY AND TO RESPECT THE RIGHT OF PEOPLES TO STRENGTHEN THEIR SOVEREIGNTY AND FOOD SECURITY.

WE REITERATE OUR EXHORTATION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO TO STAND FIRM IN THE FACE OF PRESSURE FROM THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND TRANSNATIONAL INTERESTS.

Ciudad de México

MEXICO
Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC)
Campaña Nacional Sin Maíz No hay País
Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo, A.C. (ANEC)
Red de Acción sobre Plaguicidas y Alternativas en México (RAPAM)
Movimiento Campesino, Indígena, Afromexicano, Plan de Ayala Siglo XXI. (MCIAPASXXI)
Agrónomos Democráticos.
Central de Organizaciones Campesinas y Populares (COCyP).
Unión Campesina Democrática (UCD).
Promotora de Gestión de Enlace para el Desarrollo Rural (PROGEDER).
Central Independiente de Obreros, Agrícolas y Campesinos (CIOAC-JDLD).
Sindicato de Trabajadores del INCA Rural (STINCA).
Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos.
Fundación Semillas de Vida.
Guerreros Verdes, A.C.
FIAN México
Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA)
Fundación Semillas de Vida.
Colectivo Zacahuitzco
Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT)
Tortillería Blanquita Mejía
Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo Rural Maya AC
Mercado de la Tierra Toluca
Moms Across America de EU
Grupo Moojk Kaaky, Tlahuiltotepec, Oaxaca.
Centro Agroecológico Mecayapan.
Sihuatayolme de Mecayapan.
Agroproductores de la Sierra de Santa Marta SPR de RL de CV.
Chiltik Tayol de Mecayapan.
Tianguis Agroecológico de Xalapa y red de agricultura urbana y Periurbana de Xalapa.
Colectivo Zacahuitzco
Fundación Tortilla
Organización Nacional de Licenciados en Desarrollo Sustentable, S. C.
Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural Integra V. Guerrero A.C. (Grupo V. Guerrero de Tlaxcala)
Alimento Sano Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco.
Red de Coordinación en Biodiversidad, A. C, Costa Rica
Cooperativa Despensa Solidaria – Cdmx
Alimento Sano Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco.
Centro de Derechos Humanos “Fray Francisco de Vicoria Q.P. A.C.
Observatorio del Derecho a la Salud
Centro de Capacitación en Ecología y Salud para Campesinos (CCESC)
Rebiosfera A.C.
Espacio de Encuentro de las Culturas, A.C.
Tlalpantur Coop.
Maak Raiz Artesanal S.C. de R.L. de CV
Cristianas Comprometidas-
Unión de Redes Solidarias Totoquihuatzin SC de RL de CV
Promotores de Nuestras Raíces
Agromas S.C.
Radio Huayacocotla la Voz Campesina
Comité de Derechos Humanos Sierra Norte de Veracruz
Carnaval del Maíz
Haciendo Milpa, A.C.
Centro Agroecológico Mecayapan.
Sihuatayolme de Mecayapan.
Agroproductores de la Sierra de Santa Marta SPR de RL de CV.
Chiltik Tayol de Mecayapan.
Honey Authenticity Network
Alianza Nacional Apícola
Biopakal S.A.P.I. de C.V.
Colectivo de comunidades mayas de los Chenes y
Alianza Maya por las abejas de la Península de Yucatán Kabnalo’on
Red Socio-Ambiental
Ts’atai, Mercadito y Cultura
Tianguis Alternativo de Puebla
Red Tsiri (Michoacan)
Red de Comunicadoras y Comunicadores Boca de Polen
Promotora de Gestión y Enlace para el Desarrollo Rural, A.C. (PROGEDER)
Frente en Defensa del Maíz, Colima
Mercado de productores capital verde.
Espacio de Encuentro de las Culturas Originarias, A.C.
Red de Maíz de la Ciudad de México.
Alianza por Nuestra Tortilla,
Consejo Rector de la tortilla tradicional,
Fundación tortilla.
Asociación Etnobiológica Mexicana
Sociedad Latinoamericana de Etnobiología
Sociedad Mexicana de Agroecología
Ecocomunidades, A.C.
Red Ecologista Autónoma de la Cuenca de México
Individual signers
Catherine Marielle
Alma Piñeyro Nelson
Ricardo Turrent Alonso
Tamara Circuit
Jesse Circuit
Linette Galeana
Marisa Gonzlez de la Vega
María Garate
Jimena Garate
Miguel Ángel Damián Huato
Ing. Francisco Leyva Gómez, investigador agrícola
Dr. Primo Sánchez Morales, Profesor Investigador T.C.
Dr Carlos Avila Bello
Dr. Ramón Mariaca
Agustín Bernal Inguanzo

CANADA
Canadian Biotechnology Action Network
Common Frontiers – Canada
Council of Canadians
GE Free Comox Valley
Hamilton Chapter of the Council of Canadians
Kawartha Highlands and Lakes Chapter of the Council of Canadians
National Farmers Union – Canada
Northumberland Coalition For Social Justice
Public Service Alliance of Canada
Trade Justice Group of the Northumberland Chapter of the Council of Canadians

UNITED STATES
ActionAid USA
Agricultural Justice Project
Agroecology Research Action Collective
Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, Inc.
Center for Food Safety
Community Alliance for Global Justice/AGRA Watch
Community to Community Development
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Institute for Policy Studies Global Economy Program
Family Farm Defenders
Farmworker Association of Florida
Food in Neighborhoods Community Coalition
Friends of the Earth USA
Global Justice Ecology Project
Grassroots International
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
National Family Farm Coalition
Northeast Organic Farming Association-Interstate Council
Northeast Organic Farming Association-New Hampshire
Pesticide Action Network of North America
Public Citizen
Real Food Media
Rural Coalition
US Food Sovereignty Alliance

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In the wake of this year’s global climate summit, advocates are raising the alarm about how industry continues to distort climate policy with public relations spin.

Indeed, one of the most critical challenges of our times is the need to confront corporate disinformation. While the stakes of Big Oil’s climate denialism and greenwashing are ever clearer — as wildfires tear through communities, entire nations are threatened by rising sea levels, and farmlands are ravaged by extreme weather — a more stealthy set of devastating impacts hides behind the lies fabricated by Big Pesticide corporations.

Like Big Oil, pesticide companies spend hundreds of millions every year on deceitful PR strategies to keep their hazardous products on the market, even as evidence mounts that many pesticides still used today are tied to certain cancers, damage to children’s developing brains, biodiversity collapse, and more.

In a new report, Merchants of Poison, we document a case study of just such pesticide industry disinformation, revealing a PR playbook similar in strategy, institutions — and at times the very same individual players — as that of the fossil fuel industry. As nearly all agricultural chemicals are derived from fossil fuels, this interconnection should come as no surprise.

Increase in genetically modified crops

 

Today, more than 98 percent of genetically modified crops planted in the U.S. are glyphosate tolerant. 

Credit: Merchants of Poison

Merchants of Poison shows how pesticide giant Monsanto (purchased by Bayer in 2019) spent millions on deceptive communications strategies over decades to promote the narrative that its bestselling herbicide glyphosate, better known as Roundup, is safe – as safe as table salt, as Monsanto once claimed.

This messaging encouraged lax regulations that led to widespread use, especially as genetically modified corn and soy engineered to withstand being sprayed with the herbicide came to dominate farm acreage beginning in the mid-1990s.

Today, more than 98 percent of genetically modified crops planted in the U.S. are glyphosate tolerant, and glyphosate is the most widely used agrichemical in the world. In the U.S. alone, nearly 300 million pounds are used each year on farms, public parks, school grounds, and in home gardens. This despite the fact that, as far back as 1984, glyphosate was flagged as potentially causing cancer by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists. And, in 2015, glyphosate was designated as a probable carcinogen by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Recent science has also linked the chemical to lower birth weights among babies, reproductive health impacts, and other serious health concerns.

Manufactured doubt about glyphosate’s cancer link

 

Pesticide companies spend hundreds of millions every year on deceitful PR strategies to keep their hazardous products on the market.

Credit: Merchants of Poison, data from Food Barons, ETC Group 2022

So how did Monsanto thwart science-based regulation and mislead the public for over three decades? Thousands of pages of internal corporate documents brought to light through recent lawsuits over the cancer risk of Roundup reveal some answers. The documents show a PR machine in overdrive to manufacture doubt about the science linking glyphosate to cancer, and they reveal the many strategies Monsanto used to manipulate the scientific record over decades — from ghostwriting studies to running aggressive campaigns to discredit scientists who raised concerns about the pesticide.

The documents also expose how the company carefully cultivated a legion of front groups and other third-party allies that included top universities, scientific organizations, and professors who claimed to be independent even as they worked behind the scenes with Monsanto to protect sales of Roundup.

The documents also reinforce just how much the “disinformation industry” funded by pesticide companies has become a big business itself. Our analysis found that just seven of the front groups named in Monsanto’s internal strategy documents spent a total of $76 million over a five-year period, starting in 2015, pushing a broad range of anti-regulatory messaging. In addition, six industry trade groups named in the Monsanto documents spent more than $1.3 billion during that same time period, which includes defense efforts for agricultural chemicals including glyphosate.

The post Op-ed: What the pesticide industry doesn’t want you to know appeared first on Real Food Media.

“Free trade” has always been a misnomer, invoking the idea of freedom in the name of asserting corporate dominance in the global marketplace. In reality, “free trade”—and the international legal structures that regulate it—rob millions of the ability to freely produce and exchange goods in their local markets and sustain their livelihoods.

The global peasant movement, La Vía Campesina, has been making this point since its founding in 1993, at a moment when trade deals like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture were coming into force and undermining small-scale producers, causing waves of economic migration into cities and across borders. 

Earlier this month, the international peasant confederation mobilized yet again, this time around the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Their rallying cry continued the longstanding demand to “keep agriculture out of all free trade agreements,” while speaking to timely realities of the Ukraine conflict and Covid-related global food chain disturbances.

“The pandemic and the shock and disruptions induced by war have made it clear that we need a local and national food governance system based on people, not agribusinesses,” said Jeongyeol Kim from the Korean Women Peasant’s Association, a member of La Vía Campesina. “A system that is built on principles of solidarity and cooperation rather than competition, coercion, and geopolitical agendas.”

As we fight battles on many fronts—including reproductive and racial justice—international trade may seem abstract, removed from our daily realities. But there has never been a more important time to link with and support civil society groups, particularly in the Global South, who understand the impact of free trade agreements and have been organizing against them for decades.

In community and solidarity,

Tanya, Christina, Anna, and Tiffani 

 
Read the full issue of the Real Food Scoop

Images (c) La Via Campesina

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Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body—our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain’s development to our immune system’s functioning. It’s connected to the number of traumatic events we experienced as children and to the traumas endured by our ancestors. It’s connected not only to access to health care but to the very models of health that physicians practice.

Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relationships with the Earth and one another. Combining the latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with the stories of Marya’s work with patients in marginalized communities, activist passion, and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world.

The post Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice appeared first on Real Food Media.

I hate to be the dark cloud hovering over Farhad Manjoo’s solar array (“The Wind and Solar Boom Is Already Here,” column, April 30), but while those who care about climate stability should applaud the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, fossil fuel industry expansion into worrisome markets should concern us all.

As the Center for International Environmental Law has reported, for instance, the fossil fuel industry is moving rapidly into plastics, including investing heavily in expanding or building new petrochemical facilities to ramp up production. The industry is also eyeing pesticides and ammonia fertilizer, eager to exploit the emerging demand in soil carbon markets with fossil-fuel-dependent agricultural models.

If we care about getting the climate crisis under control, we have to look at all the profitable but destructive outlets for the fossil fuel industry, including plastics, pesticides and fertilizers.

The post LTE: Fossil Fuel ‘Dark Cloud’ appeared first on Real Food Media.

When a workplace accident left Lee doused in a toxic chemical and facing a deadly cancer, his turned his life upside down. In 2018, the world watched as Lee was thrust to the forefront of one the most dramatic legal battles in recent history.

The Monsanto Papers is the inside story of Lee Johnson’s landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. For Lee, the case was a race against the clock, with doctors predicting he wouldn’t survive long enough to take the witness stand. For the lawyers representing him, it was a matter of professional pride and personal risk, with millions of dollars and hard-earned reputations on the line. For the public at large, the lawsuit presented a question of corporate accountability.

With enough money and influence, could a company endanger its customers, hide evidence, manipulate regulators, and get away with it all—for decades? Readers will be astounded by the depth of corruption uncovered and moved by Lee’s quiet determination to see justice served. 

Use code GILLAM for 20 percent off the book at Island Press.

The post The Monsanto Papers: Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice appeared first on Real Food Media.

Fifty years ago, my mother exposed the damage caused by our energy-intensive, environmentally devastating food production system. The struggle to change it continues.

The post The Long Fight for a Just Food System appeared first on Real Food Media.