Farmer and civil society leaders carrying out a peaceful action today {June 3, 2008} in Rome, Italy at the FAO Summit on the Food Crisis were forcefully removed from the premises. At around 1:30pm farmers and representatives of civil society organizations staged an action at the press room to deliver a message that millions of additional people are joining the ranks of the hungry as the corporations that control the global food system are making record profits.
The issues of corporate control and speculation, which are leading causes of recent spikes in food prices, are not being discussed by the government delegations and the international agencies meeting in Rome to debate solutions to the crisis.
"We are outraged that such fundamental aspects of the food crisis were nowhere on the agenda for the Summit," says Paul Nicholson, member of the International Coordinating Committee of Via Campesina and one of the farmer leaders who was expelled from the Summit.
The 10 people involved in the action carried posters contrasting the record profits of agribusiness corporations during the latest reporting financial quarter of 2008 with the estimated 100 million people in the world who now, alongside 800 million or so others, are hungry because they cannot afford to eat. Profits for Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, were up 108 per cent, while Cargill and Archer Daniel Midlands, the world's largest food traders, registered profit increases of 86 and 42 per cent respectively. Profits for Mosaic, one of the world's largest fertilizer companies, rose 1,134 per cent.
The action was necessary to bring to the world's attention that the main causes of the world food crisis are not being dealt with and that the world's food producers-- the farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and indigenous people-- have been shut out of the discussion. In previous high-level FAO events, civil society was given more space to express its views and to have a dialogs with the delegates. For this Summit, civil society was blocked from meaningful participation in the preparation and in the event itself.
read the rest of this article HERE
One more reason to set ourselves up to be able to grow all our own food: Corporate farms control the world's food production and distribution.
3 comments:
Makes me want to rip out some grass and make another raised bed.
~anajz~
Definitely has me chomping at the bit to get out house done so we can get that garden started!!
The grandkids and I finally got my garden planted yesterday. It's a bit late, so we'll just have to wait and see if we get anything from it.
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