21st Century Food and Farming Manifesto

The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) held their Anniversary conference in November 2010. Here is the Manifesto circulated at the conference.

“Farming for the People with the People”

The global food economy, served and shaped via state and corporate control of the food chain, has resulted in unquantifiable levels of pollution, destruction and exploitation in every dimension of agriculture, from soil to seed, to plant, to animal and to man. In other words: our existence.

As we approach the second decade of the 21^st century, it is becoming abundantly clear that an entirely new vision, understanding and implementation is required in order for agriculture to truly serve its original purpose of feeding humanity (all peoples) with good quality, affordable and mostly local foods in ways that do not harm the environment.

In order to make this wholesale shift it is necessary to entirely step aside from State and corporate control of the food chain. No compromise is possible here. Maintaining and re establishing the genuine independence of farmers throughout the world is a prerequisite for our survival as sentient, healthy human beings.

Non participation in the corporately controlled global market place must, in order to be effective, be accompanied by the widespread implementation of localized, quality food production and consumption practices. Practices that bring into close proximity the food grower and the food consumer; at the same time – by-passing entirely, the corporate multiple chains that profit by keeping them separate. This is the only way that genuine accessibility of optimum condition foods and medicinal plants can be ensured for billions of people throughout the World.

Continuing to adhere to the present corporate and state controlled food and farming regimes means that:

• Farmer’s time honoured right to save their seeds and to cultivate, distribute and trade the produce resulting from these seeds will continue to be subverted, curtailed and stolen.
  
• People’s right to perpetuate the biodiversity of locally adapted native plants, herbs and animals for culinary, medicinal and general environmental health will be denied.
  
• People’s rights to gain lawful access to unused or barren land for the purpose of growing food for their own consumption in ways that do not harm the environment will be blocked.
  
• People’s time honoured right to carry on the daily operations of good farming practice unhindered by state and corporate power structures, will be denied.
  

It is the obligation of head’s of state to consult the people, in advance, about any new laws or alterations of the current law and any political questions concerning agriculture.

“Farming for the People with the People” therefore calls for all farmers, growers and sympathetic citizens, to take back control over their destinies and to join together to free our agricultural practices from the corporate treadmill of destruction and despair to which they now are tied.

At the same time, we call upon the Polish government, and all national governments, to act NOW on the demands of the vast majority of their citizens to:

Ban all forms of genetic engineering in agriculture, horticulture, silviculture and fisheries.

Withdraw all financial support for factory farming regimes that dehumanise agriculture and  debase the animal kingdom.

Prohibit, without exception, any and all patenting of plants, animals, their traits and genes, as well as patents on breeding methods. Thereby making it unlawful to attempt to exercise control over biodiversity.

Every Country should have the right to protect its food sovereignty.

We call for a people led and people owned  renaissance of agriculture. One which will liberate the creativity and ingenuity of man and draw inspiration from the time honoured peasant and family farming  practices that still form the foundation of self sufficient, sustainable and ecological agricultural production throughout the world.

Please feel free to use and adopt in your Country! Brought to you by Food Politics.