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From the 2nd to the 16th of October 2023 (and beyond…),
organize People’s Assemblies, Events, or Actions
to reclaim and reshape our food system,
in parks, squares, gardens, schools and communities –
– wherever you are to
take back our Seed, and Food Freedom.
[More details & ideas for Action below]
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Ideas for Actions – Key Dates – Resources
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Declaration – Beyond Climate Colonialism and Food Imperialism to Earth Democracy and Food Freedom
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Care for the Earth – Voices of Diversity, Voices of Resilience
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Today, we are facing the devastating consequences of the industrial food system and its false promises of food security, sustainability and climate adaptation through agrichemicals, GMOs and now gene editing.
The global deregulation of gene editing has opened the gateway to a new ‘Bioeconomy’ where vast amounts of genetic material will be roped off by new patents. In this new “bioeconomy,” we will see the next level of manipulation of nature’s genetics to “program” biology to become more economically productive. Including the expansion of synthetic biology, genetic engineering, the gene editing of animals, seeds and plants and the creation of new, fake, ultraprocessed foods.
There is an urgent need for us to build a movement that responds to these threats, which are being promoted as solutions through a well orchestrated greenwashing propaganda campaign.
At a time when global lawmakers are pushing new technologies that will only further entrench the consequences of the industrial paradigm, it is vital to listen to the diversity of voices already practicing an ecological way of life. Voices that are also on the frontlines of the destruction caused by industrial agriculture. The voices of women, indigenous people, peasants, and small farmers. These voices, based on experience, show us the bigger picture and remind us of the solutions we already have.
Today more than ever we need the agroecological cultures of the world to take the forefront and show us what it means to be rooted in harmony with the Earth.
The future of food and the future of life on Earth, as well as the solutions to the ecological collapse cannot be found in the logic and hands of those who caused it in the first place. Solutions are in the hands of women, farmers, and peoples that practice biodiversity based farming that is ecological and regenerative, social movements and networks that are resisting the disruption of nature and society.
We must resist the weaponization of climate change being used to funnel everything into a fully corporate controlled, dystopia, by destroying the cultures of regeneration.
We must resist the twisting of language and concepts used to create deliberate confusion, so business can go on as usual, without addressing the true causes of ecological collapse.
Diversity connects us, and in order to move forward toward a hopeful future, we need the protection and practice of biological, cultural, economic, political, and knowledge system diversity.
Let’s say no to the corporate impositions.
Let’s celebrate biodiversity and diversity in all its forms.
Let’s listen to the voices of the seed keepers, the women, the indigenous people who care for the Earth in a way that renews it.
Now, more than ever, is the protection of diversity, biodiversity, Food Freedom and Seed Freedom crucial for a future that cares for the Earth.
Let us adopt this journey in our communities to create a healthier us and a healthier planet.
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Ideas for Actions
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- Tag us on social media, in a 30 second video describing how you’re building resilience through your local food community.
- Tag us on Instagram: @navdanyainternational
- Tag us on Twitter: @NavdanyaInt
- Tag us on Facebook: navdanyainternational
- Or email us your video at info[@]navdanyainternational[.]org And we’ll share on social media.
- Promote local, organic, healthy food through local biodiverse food systems and cultures and economies of care (farmers markets, CSAs biodistricts).
- Organize a meal in your family, community, or institution with local organic food.
- Organize a meeting, event, exhibit or any gathering to celebrate our local communities and cultures of resilience.
- Educate yourself and others on why false solutions do not get at the root of the problem.
- Organize local seed exchanges, and plant native biodiversity.
- Create Gardens of Hope, Gardens of Health everywhere – in community gardens, institutions, schools, prisons, hospitals in the cities and countryside.
- Practice sustainable agriculture based on integration of diversity of crops, trees and animals.
- Create poison free zones, communities, farms and food systems.
- Demand that your government stop subsidizing industrial agriculture and unhealthy systems that create a burden of disease. Public subsidies should be redirected to systems based on agroecology and biodiversity conservation, which provide health benefits and protect common goods.
Key Dates
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2nd October, Gandhi’s Birth Anniversary: Day of Satyagraha The Force of Truth, to take a stand for non Cooperation with paradigms, laws and policies that violate the earth, farmers rights and our health.
14th October: GMO must not be deregulated – Conference in Florence (more details soon).
15th October, Rural Women’s Day. Celebrate Diverse Women for Diversity who provide an alternative voice and vision to the dominant paradigm of commercialization and corporatisation of Food Security and the privatization of natural resources.
16th October World Food Day – Premiere of “Voices of Resilience”, a short film by Navdanya.
Resources
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Watch
“Voices of Diversity”, a Short Film by Navdanya
Playlist: Farmer’s Voices
Read
The Attempted Destruction of Land-based Cultures
Safeguarding Biodiversity for the Regeneration of the Land
Agroecology, Biodistricts and Farmers’ Markets – A Celebration of Biodiversity
What is Missing from the Climate Debate
Road map: the route towards transformation
Nothing New in New GMOs – Gateway to Total Corporate Control
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From the Declaration: Beyond Climate Colonialism and Food Imperialism to Earth Democracy and Food Freedom
1. Mother Earth is a sacred, self organized living being. She creates and sustains life. Through her biosphere and complex ecological processes, she regulates her water systems, her nutrition cycle, her climate system. Over 4 billion years, using the energy of the sun and the power of photosynthesis by microbes and the green leaf of plants, she brought the temperature of the planet down to where life could thrive, and the concentration of CO2 down to pre-industrial levels.
2. Two hundred years of industrialism, combined with colonization of nature and our diverse cultures has destroyed the earth’s ecosystems and biosphere. Burning of fossil fuels has polluted the land, water and atmosphere, built up emissions, and disrupted the delicate balance of the earth’s climate systems and hydrological systems, intensifying floods, droughts, and cyclones, causing climate chaos and catastrophes.
3. Fossil fuel based industrial agriculture and globalized commodity systems controlled by corporations like Bayer-Monsanto, Cargill, Coke, Pepsi and Nestle, are the main contributors to the greenhouse gasses driving climate change; in terms of production, the by destruction of forests like the Amazon for growing commodities, food miles, ultra processing and packaging and waste. Industrial globalized agriculture is also responsible for the extinction crisis, the desertification of soil, and the disappearance of water. They are also responsible for the rise of chronic diseases. Whatever harms the health of the planet also impacts our health, since we are part of the Earth, made of the same Panchmahabhutas the Earth is made of.
4. Humans have not caused climate disasters, the greed of the 1% has. The top 1% of emitters produce hundreds of times more than the bottom 1%. Carbon emissions of the top 1% are more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity. These anthropogenic impacts do not include all of humanity. They are capitalogenic impacts of the 1% . Those of us who have not contributed to the pollution are bearing the worst impacts of floods and droughts, cyclones and heat waves. Climate change is an issue of justice. Polluters must stop polluting. Polluters must pay. We will not accept the false solutions to Climate Change being imposed by the polluters.
5. Feedstock intensive, energy intensive lab food, synthetic food, cellular food, “fake food” are the false solutions being pushed and promoted to solve the climate crisis. Cows are being wrongly blamed for Climate Change. Further industrialization of agriculture is being promoted as “AIM” – Agriculture Innovation Mission– by the US, to increase “climate-smart agriculture”. Brought to us by the same actors which brought us the chemical Green Revolution, GMOS, globalization and commodification of food, and the associated pollution and emissions.
6. Industrialisation of food with synthetic fertilizers and synthetic ingredients in ultraprocessed food have already contributed to the climate and health crisis. Further industrialization of agriculture will displace small farmers and farm workers and use more “energy slaves”, contributing to more emission, not less. More industrialisation of food will aggravate the climate and health crisis.
7. Food is the currency of life– the flow that connects the soil, to the plants, to our gut and brain. Ayurveda recognizes that Annam Sarva Aushadhi– Food is the best medicine. Growing, serving and eating good and healthy food in abundance is our highest ecological and ethical duty– Annam Bahu Kurvita.
8. Farmers have gifted the world the science of agroecology and regenerative organic agriculture, growing food according to nature’s laws of biodiversity and the law of circularity, the law of return. Our diverse seeds, foods and ecological systems of food and farming based on nature’s laws have sustained us and the earth for thousands of years. Farming without fossil fuels and fossil fuel based agrotoxins, intensifying nature’s biodiversity, regenerating her biosphere, intensifying her processes of photosynthesis is the answer to the climate crisis, the food crisis, and the health crisis.
9. As children of Mother Earth, as members of her Earth Family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam, as Earth Citizens, we have a duty to respect and protect her rights, her integrity, her self regulation. We do not have the right to pollute her and disrupt her ecological processes.
Food freedom and Food sovereignty is our birthright.
We will resist the new food imperialism of Fake Food as a false Climate Solution.
We will respect and protect the Rights of Mother Earth.
We will heal the Earth and ourselves by growing and eating Real Food, Food for Health.
We will grow Gardens of Hope Everywhere.