A clarion call from Mali – agroecology, not agribusiness!
Date: 4 March 2015
The International Agroecology Forum, which took place at the Nyéléni Centre in Mali last week, brought together a huge array of delegates ranging from peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, NGOs and academics to discuss how agroecology can help build an ecologically and socially just food system.
Organisations present included La Via Campesina, which represents over 200 million peasant families around the world, and dozens of other groups which are all part of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty.
The message coming out of the forum was clear. The industrial and corporate-led model of food production is leading us head first into a combination of crises: climate, food, environment and health have all been shoved aside by a relentless focus on profit.
The declaration issued on the last day of the forum does not hesitate to point the finger at corporations:
“The corporate model over-produces food that poisons us, destroys soil fertility, is responsible for the deforestation of rural areas, the contamination of water and the acidification of oceans and killing of fisheries.”
Instead, the declaration outlines how agroecology within a food sovereignty framework offers a real solution to the crises that industrial agriculture is escalating.
“Agroecology is the answer to how to transform and repair our material reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. We see agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life.”
It also emphasises that agroecology, as a set of agricultural practices as well as a political, cultural and social movement, is at an important crossroad. Like so many terms related to positive alternatives ( ‘sustainable’, ‘green’, ‘ecological’) there is a real risk that ‘agroecology’ may be co-opted by the industrial food system, in the same way as agrochemical companies have co-opted the terms ‘sustainable’ and ‘climate-smart’.
But can agroecology actually feed the world or is this a pipe dream concocted by idealistic farmers and peasant organisations?
Our new report From the roots up: How agroecology can feed Africa, shows that not only can agroecology feed the world, but it can do so better than intensive corporate-controlled agriculture. The evidence is in fact unequivocal. Agroecology can increase food yields, income, employment, agricultural biodiversity, and health and nutrition, and help to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It is therefore important that the UK government commit to promoting the principles of agroecology and food sovereignty in order to help farmers across Africa truly transform their food system.
Read our new report From the roots up: How agroecology can feed Africa
For the full Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology click here.
