People’s Assemblies for The Future of Our Food & The Future of Our Planet

We face social, economic, and ecological collapse in every corner of our world. Big Industrial Agriculture is a major contributor to this collapse.

While having destroyed 75% of our soil, water, and biodiversity, and contributed to 50% of climate change, this model, that has its roots in war, produces only 30% food.

The real food producers are our pollinators, soil organisms, and biodiversity and small farmers who – as co creators and co producers with nature – provide 70% of the food which is nourishing for the planet and people.

Monsanto has emerged as the biggest destructive force in agriculture over the last 20 years using myths of GMOS, patents, free trade and toxics to monopolise our seeds and poison our food.

This year during the Seed Freedom Call to Action from 2nd October to 16th October 2016, Navdanya will be co-organizing a Monsanto Tribunal as well as a People’s Assembly in The Hague from 14 to 16th of October.

INDEX: – Key Dates – People’s Assemblies Guidelines — World Food Day –

2016 DAYS OF ACTION – PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLIES ACROSS THE WORLD

Also read: 6 Questions to Monsanto —
Monsanto Tribunal and People’s Assembly at The Hague – Download Leaflet

Key Dates

15th – 16th October – The Hague, Netherlands: International Monsanto Tribunal

14th – 16th October – The Hague, Netherlands: People’s Assembly for the Future of our Food and the Future of our Planet.

2nd – 16th October – Everywhere: Local People’s Assemblies for the Future of our Food and the Future of our Planet.

16th October: World Food Day – Everywhere: Monsanto Protests/Marches against Monsanto.

Local People’s Assemblies – 2nd – 16th October 2016 – Guidelines

People’s Assemblies for the Future of our Food and Future of Our Planet are self-organised events aimed at placing criminal corporations that threaten the health of our planet under a public trial. At any level; in communities, villages, towns, regions and countries, people are taking stock of the harm caused by Monsanto and other similar corporations to our environment, public health, scientific and regulatory independence and to our freedom and democracy. People’s Assemblies also aim at laying out a collective vision and participatory planning at a local level towards the GMO free, poisons free, fossil fuels free, patent free, “free trade“- free, corporate control free future we want and are shaping.

Form a group of volunteers from different aspects of movements, such as: seed savers, gardeners, farmers, mothers, chefs, schools, local authorities, doctors, lawyers, citizens, etc… Find a public space (garden, farm, town hall, public square, community facility, church yard, school, college or university) where you can organize your local People’s Assembly between 2^nd to 16^th October and invite all friends and families, all movements and institutions to attend.

The format is yours to shape -it can be a food festival with an organic meal/picnic and/or a seed festival for seed exchange and a commitment to not accept patents on seed.

The two aspects that should be addressed are:

1. Identify the harm Monsanto and co. have done in your local community and region. The role of Monsanto and its products in your area – Roundup, GMOs, Patents and Royalties, genetic contamination, attack on scientists, corruption of officials and elected representatives, dismantling and deregulating laws for safety and farmers’ rights to seed. Hold a public trial of the corporate criminals destroying our species, biodiversity, our health, the health of our children, our democracy.

2. Identify the initiatives in your area that people are taking to create poison free, GMO free, patent free, fossil fuel free, corporate control free local food systems and local food communities in your area, including initiatives for seed saving, organic farming, urban and school gardens, local farmers markets, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), ethical purchasing groups, etc…
Chart the vision you have for a GMO free, chemical free future, as well as a vision for Seed Freedom and Food Freedom for 2020 and a transition plan on how to get there. If you wish, form discussion groups, create kids’ and adults’ drawings, vision boards, and artworks.
Create a people’s alliance to continue the democratic process to stop the war criminals in our food systems and create a non violent, healthy and abundant food system. Sow the seeds of Life, Sow the seeds of Freedom.

For more ideas/discussion points. check the draft agenda of the People’s Assembly at Monsanto Tribunal, which will be held in The Hague 14 – 16 October 2016.

More ideas for your People’s Assembly from march Against Monsanto South Africa

How to share your event

1. Announcement

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2. Outcome

Send us findings and resolutions in writing and videos and/or photos of your local People’s Assembly on the Future of our Food, Future of our Planet. Email: submit [@] peoplesassembly.net

If you are organising a Monsanto Protest on 16th October, read out your vision at the rally, break bread together, exchange seeds. Our Bread is Our Freedom.

World Food Day – 16th October

By Dr Vandana Shiva

This World Food Day let us make a choice for Seed Freedom and Food Freedom, let us make a commitment to break free of corporate propaganda that imprisons us.

Let us make the Earth and Biodiversity our guide on seeding the future based on Seed Freedom and Food Freedom.

The 2016 Corporate World Food Prize given on World Food Day has been announced for « Biofortification ».

Corporate Scientists funded by Gates have been given at the Prize for inventing an Orange Sweet potato. But the Māori in New Zealand had developed kūmara, orange (Beauregard) sweet potato centuries ago. Gates is also funding the biopiracy research of Dr Dale of Queensland, who took the vit A rich indigenous bananas of Micronesia and declared it his invention by genetic engineering banana. Biopiracy of people’s Biodiversity and indigenous knowledge is not science or innovation. 107 Nobel Laureates (including a dead one) had to be mobilised to prop up the failed “golden Rice” to continue pushing GMOs. And even as Bt and Ht GMOs fail to control pests and weeds and instead create superpests and superweeds, Big Money and the Biotech industry it owns is trying to unleash exterminator technologies such as gene editing and gene drives.

Extermination is a crime against nature and humanity.

Biodiversity produces more nutrition than the “corporate “Biofortification” projects.

On World Food Day let us celebrate Agroecology and our Rich Biodiversity, as alternatives that are superior to all the violent and failed tools that come from war and a militarised mind.

Let us honour all beings, and our communities in their rich and vibrant diversity with marches and feasts, with fairs and festivals.

Add your upcoming World Food Day event to the Seed Freedom calendar http://seedfreedom.info/events/submit-your-event/

Also read:

• The great seed piracy

By Dr Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 16 June 2016

• Biodiversity , GMOs, & Gene Drives of the Militarised Mind

By Dr Vandana Shiva, 7 July 2016

• Genetically modified Golden Rice falls short on lifesaving promises

By Gerry Everding – The Source, Washington University in St Louis, 2 June 2016

• Glenn Davis Stone, Dominic Glover – Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines – Agriculture and Human Values, 2016; DOI: 10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1–
• Pro-GMO campaign exploits Nobel laureates to attack Greenpeace and fool the people

GM Watch, 30 June 2016

• Women and Biodiversity Feed the World, Not Corporations and GMOs

By Dr Vandana Shiva – Common Dreams, 20 May 2015

• Biodiversity Or Gmos: Will the Future of Nutrition be in Women’s Hands or Under Corporate Control?

• No Gmo Banana Campaign

• Learn more about Monsanto Tribunal and People’s Assembly at The Hague

• Learn more about Navdanya’s campaign on Jaiv Panchayat – Living Democracy since 1999

Further Actions for Seed Freedom

• Sign the Declaration on Seed Freedom: http://seedfreedom.info/declaration-on-seed-freedom/

• Subscribe to Seed Freedom News & Updates: http://seedfreedom.info/newsletter/

Join Seed Freedom online:

Website – http://seedfreedom.info
Twitter – https://twitter.com/occupytheseed
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/savetheseed
Facebook Event — http://bit.ly/SF2-16Oct15
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/occupytheseed
Email: info [at] peoplesassembly [dot] net

Reports quoted by Dr Vandana Shiva in the above video

Report ‘Monsanto the Gene Giant

The Monsanto Files – The Ecologist, 1998 (browse 1998)

The GMO Emperor has No Clothes

SOCIAL MEDIA KIT