Landworkers' Alliance sessions at the ORFC Global 2021

As part of the 2021 ORFC Global, the LWA has helped organise a number sessions that bring in global voices and partners through La Via Campesina.

Here is the full run down of sessions we are involved with organising:

1) Food Justice Not Food Aid (Thursday 7th January, 4pm)

Access to fresh, affordable, nourishing, locally produced and culturally appropriate food (as well as the fuel to cook it and time to prepare it) should be the guaranteed right of every individual and household. However, global food systems are increasingly dominated by an ‘industrial diet’ where highly processed and low nutrient foods are widely available and most easily accessible. Many countries, including the UK, have shameful levels of food insecurity and diet-related ill health, and too many supposed solutions rely on the charity of the very businesses and government policies that are responsible for the problems in the first place.

In this session, organised by the Landworkers’ Alliance and La Via Campesina, an international panel discusses how the solutions to hunger need to be systemic and focused on meeting the needs of people rather than lining the pockets of corporations. Join organisers at the forefront of sustainable, grassroots and radical initiatives to hear why food aid, at a local and international level, undermines food justice and perpetuates the causes of hunger. Also, to learn more about their powerful community led solutions tackling household food insecurity and hunger.

2) Workers’ Power: Taking on the Multinationals (Friday 8th January, 8pm)

As power in the food system is increasingly globalised and concentrated, we need strategies to hold corporations to account for the human rights abuses taking place in the fields growing produce that supply our supermarket shelves, and improve the working conditions or agricultural labourers. Join us and hear from leaders discussing social movement strategies to mobilise workers power to defend their rights in the face of multinationals in the food and agriculture system.

In this session, we will hear from the USA Coalition of Immokalee Workers and how they have reduced exploitation, improved pay and instituted union led standards and audits by public mobilisation against the companies that ultimately benefit and control the market they supply. We will also hear about the Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations. With LVC members in Europe, we will also discuss ways in which these models can be implemented in European supply chains that rely on the exploitation of migrant labour.

3) History of La Via Campesina: How We Organise and What We Do (Saturday 9th January, 2pm)

La Via Campesina made history in 1993 with the articulation of a global peasant movement. Since then they have grown to represent over 200 million peasants, small and medium size farmers, landless people, rural women and youth, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world, and have become a leading light in social movements organising for a vision of social and environmental justice.  Built on a strong sense of unity, solidarity between these groups, it defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty as a way to promote social justice and dignity and strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture that destroys social relations and nature.

We will hear from two leaders of La Via Campesina, who will take us back to the early days of the formation of LVC and tell the story of the birth of the movement and how it grew to be the inspiration and force that it is today. This is a history lesson that no farmer or food activist can afford to miss out on.

4) The Farmers’ Strike and the Struggle Against Corporate Control in India (Sunday 10th January, 1pm)

For the last few months, farmer groups in India have been protesting. In the largest protest of its kind by farmer groups in over 3 decades, farmers have marched on the capital city of Delhi, occupying highways and launching strikes. They have received the support of all opposition parties in the country, of solidarity demonstrations internationally, of Indian trade unions and beyond.

The strike centres on a package of three laws passed by Narendra Modi’s BJP government. In this session, we will be joined by representatives of small farmers and the farmers’ movement in India to learn more about this strike against the corporate domination of India’s agricultural system and in defence of the rights of peasants and small farmers.

5) Language Justice: There is No Revolution Without Translation (Sunday 10th January, 3pm)

The transformation of the food system relies on the effective organising of locally rooted movements and struggles around the world. This work is impossible without challenging approaches rooted in the dominance of colonial languages (in particular English, French and Spanish) and without structures and platforms that ensure and facilitate for everyone’s voices and languages to be heard.

Agroecology at its heart respects the traditions and linguistic heritage of diverse land based cultures. Therefore, it must examine the history of the dominance of the colonial languages (English, French and Spanish) and discuss the pivotal role interpretation plays in social movement organising. In this session we will hear from interpreters working with La Via Campesina and other global grassroot farming groups and learn how ways of knowing the land can change with different languages.

6) In the Belly of the Beast: Food Sovereignty in the US and Beyond (Tuesday 12th January, 4pm)

This session will focus on the US Food Sovereignty Movement (USFSA) and the process of organizing for food sovereignty in the “Belly of the Beast”. We will think together about how we can work across boundaries, amongst different constituencies to mobilize for food sovereignty in contexts, like the US and the UK, from where industrial and corporate agriculture is consolidated and projected onto the world. This session is organized in the spirit of mutual learning and solidarity with the intention that new ideas, connections and inspiration can emerge from sharing the history, processes, challenges and vision of the USFSA.

The session will include a talk by Saulo Araujo from WhyHunger (US) who will present his talk, “In the Belly of the Beast”, which will provide a historical and contextual analysis of neoliberal policies and its effects on grassroots organizing in the United States. This will be followed by a dialogue between Saulo and Gisèle Yasmeen from Canada and Dee Woods from the UK, who are each engaged in their own movements working for food sovereignty in these different national contexts.

7) Voices From the Frontline of Transnational Agricultural Labour (Tuesday 12th January, 6pm)

While much of the production of food in Europe depends on migrant workers, most people are not aware of the terrible working and living conditions that most of them have to endure. In many cases these are people forced to Europe due to climate change and conflict from rural and land based livelihoods in North Africa and the Middle East. The criminalisation of migration is making people’s journeys to seek refuge increasingly dangerous and fueling exploitation of people at the hands of the industrial food and farming system.

In this session we will hear from members of La Via Campesina in Italy to learn how we can oppose racist oppression of land based workers and challenge the systemic causes of exploitation by organising labour and building new business models.

8) It’s Capitalism Causing the Crisis: Agroecology is a Solution (Wednesday 13th January, 5pm)