For a long time, globalisation has prevented rural communities from growing and eating food that they need and are appropriate to their cultures. Neoliberal policies made countries in the Global South reliant on the importation of agricultural products to feed their people, while vast agricultural lands that are meant to grow food crops are converted for the production of export commodities. For instance, in the Philippines, multinational agricultural company Sumifru grows cavendish bananas in the Mindanao region for Japanese and Chinese markets. While the Philippines continues to be one of the world’s top banana exporters, its farmers remain landless and communities food insecure.
For World Localisation Day 2022, PAN Asia Pacific and its partners, Khoj Society for People’s Education and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines or KMP) co-organised the webinar, “Agroecology in Action for Localisation and Food Sovereignty” last June 15. It gathered advocates and community leaders to discuss Agroecology and Localisation as meaningful tools in the struggle for food sovereignty and the right to land.
Initiated by Local Futures in 2020, the campaign for localisation aims to establish food security through scaling back food and economic structures to the level of communities– thus, allowing regions and locales to maintain a steady supply of food for themselves while maintaining independence from neoliberal economic forces.
Meanwhile, agroecology promotes the use of farmers’ local and indigenous knowledge alongside scientific innovations to encourage a holistic approach to farming based on ecological principles. Together, agroecology and localisation acknowledge the myriad of factors that affect farming and farming communities such as political, environmental, and social realities.
For Marcia Ishii, senior scientist of PAN North America (PANNA), both localisation and agroecology are essential to food systems transformation. “Agroecology as a place-based practise, go hand-in-hand with localisation in creating agricultural systems and conditions that are finely attuned to specific communities,” Ishii said.
She underscored five principles of agroecology: local ecology, local knowledge, systems diversity, reduced dependencies on agrochemicals, and collective and social solidarity.
Advocates of radical food systems change such as PANNA consider agroecology part of a “socio-political movement led by farmers, fishers, workers who are calling for the transformation of power structures in society.”
To exemplify the political dimension of agroecology, Ishii shared the story of women producer associations in Mozambique. Plagued with pesticide-laden import crops from neighbouring countries in the region, a group of widow farmers established agroecological practices via seed saving, composting, and diversified crops –resulting to an increased net income and a collective desire to confront larger agrarian issues, such as Mozambique’s government-backed land grabs.
Agroecology can truly be valuable and beneficial if pursued in the context of genuine agrarian reform, where farmers could grow agroecological crops on the lands that they own and effectively control.
Sarojeni Rengam, PANAP executive director, emphasised that for many farming nations in Asia, farmers are constantly under threats of losing their lands. “The pandemic has made new opportunities for big corporations and the economic elite to grab farmlands, forests, fishing grounds and other resources for greater profits amid the crisis. While we are all reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are looking for ways to grab more lands and resources,” Rengam said.
This has resulted in greater repression of rural communities and a deteriorating human rights situation. Rengam cited the recent arrest of 92 farmers, artists and peasant advocates after participating in a bungkalan or collective farming in the Philippines. Based on PANAP’s Land and Rights Watch monitoring, there have been 73 cases of land-related human rights violations in 2022 alone. These include killings, arrests, threats and displacement.
Despite the dangers faced by farmers and their advocates across Asia, they continue to organise rural communities to resist land grabs and promote agroecology as a tool. An example is the women of KASAMA-Lupang Ramos (KASAMA-LR) in the Philippines.
Since 2017, farmers of Lupang Ramos in Cavite province (37 kilometres south of Manila) have been able to integrate their knowledge of the lot’s terrain to produce and consume communally shared crops such as okra, eggplant, and sweet potato. Thwarting decades-long threats of being evicted and displaced by local landlords, the bungkalan’s ongoing operations continue to enrich the community with ample food and an enlivened hope for land ownership. “At the height of the [COVID-19] pandemic, we didn’t experience hunger,” remarked Miriam Villanueva of KASAMA-LR.
Localisation is also intertwined with people’s culture. Nasira Habib of Khoj shared how prior to the Green Revolution, Pakistan had a rich culture of celebrating harvest and food diversity. “Preparing the land, sowing seeds and harvesting crops were a community affair in Pakistan. We have many celebrations associated with harvesting; we celebrate food and the bounties of nature,” she said.
However, the Green Revolution brought monocultures, toxic agrochemicals, soil degradation, and market dependence—leading to less communal activities, less food diversity, and less festivities. “Rural communities must reclaim their right to common lands in villages and grow agroecological crops on these common lands to ensure food security,” Habib said.
KMP chairperson emeritus Rafael Mariano emphasised the importance of peasant-led mass struggles in campaigns for genuine agrarian reform, agroecology and people’s food sovereignty. “We have to actively promote agroecological and sustainable agriculture. We have to defend and consolidate the gains of our collective initiatives and cooperation of peasants and other small food producers in building self-reliant and self-sustaining communities,” Mariano, once the Philippines’ agrarian reform minister, said.
Together with grassroots networks across the globe which celebrated World Localisation Day, PANAP continues to support the fight against corporate food systems through radical food systems transformation, whose pillars include people-led agroecology, genuine agrarian reform, and the right to food. Localisation plays an important part in challenging and ending the historical and current domination of colonial and imperialist powers in food and agriculture and in securing adequate, healthy, and culturally appropriate food for the people.
#NoLandNoLife Features discuss recent developments, events, and trends on land and resource grabbing and related human rights issues in the region as well as the factors and forces that drive it. Send us your feedback at nolandnolife@panap.net.
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