The People indict Agrochemical corporations

Tribunal verdict vs. 6 agrochemical TNCs hailed, urgent action on recommendations urged


Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International hailed the verdict of the Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) against the world's six largest agrochemical companies Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont and BASF after a historic four-day session that culminated in Bangalore, India yesterday.

Victims and survivors of the pesticide industry from all over the world, represented by PAN International, testified before a distinguished international jury to indict the "Big 6" for human rights violations. Based on evidence presented before it, the Tribunal found the Defendant agrochemical TNCs "responsible for gross, widespread and systematic violations of the right to health and life, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as of civil and political rights, and women and children's rights." see the verdict here

Read the whole Press release

What is the Permanent People's Tribunal?

* The Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) is an international opinion tribunal founded in 1979, in Italy based on a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples".
* It looks into complaints of human rights abuses submitted by the communities facing the abuses.
* It uses the rigorous conventional court format.
* It issues indictment, names relevant laws and document findings.
* While its verdicts are not legally binding, these can set precedent for future legal actions against, in this case, agrochemical corporations.

here

fundamentally screwed

The conservative government who won the last election by a popular vote of 39% has this to say about the democratic process for Canada's wheat farmers.

"Let me be clear, we will never reconsider western wheat and barley farmers' fundamental rights to market their own wheat and barley," Federal Agriculture Minister Ritz said. CBC Winnipeg

Ritz's words (from an Ottawa area farm) followed A Federal Court judge's ruling last week that the Agriculture Minister "breached the Canadian Wheat Board Act by making changes without holding a plebiscite for producers".

Here are some voices of Canada's wheat farmers:

IAASDT Report: we need a PR machine in people acting

harvesting soy


Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore posts about "the biggest report you've never heard about. I didn't know much about it. It was the Intergovernmental Plenary Session in Johannesburg, South Africa in April, 2008. Who is burying this important information?

"Over 400 scientists and 30 governments came together as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) to write a report on the global food system. The director of IAASTD, Robert Watson, won a Nobel prize. Why hasn't anyone heard of this? Well... my guess is two-fold: 1) the report employed scientists not PR strategists and marketers and 2) the companies that have the big money to put into PR and marketing didn't like the results".

Farmers, scientists, NGOs, government, global bodies, came to conclusions that many of us have been saying for a long time.

"Multifunctionality of agriculture and the productivity and effectiveness of small household farms and gardens to provide food security was recognized.

The old ‘one size fits all’ approach of industrial agriculture was not sufficient to abolish poverty and hunger and caused irreversible damage to the environment everywhere it was introduced.

For poverty and hunger alleviation the paradigm shift will have to include solution packages that are tailored to the given situation and will include initially low-tech and certainly cost-free strategies"

from: The IAASTD report and some of its fallout – a personal note By Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, ETH Zurich, Institute of Integrative Biology, Zurich, Switzerland

Biotech food giants could not come up with the science they trumpet. Take this claim as an example: "‘biotechnology is key to reducing poverty and hunger…’. They can't claim that.

They could not work with a huge majority in consensus about several matters: that context counts, that industrialized farming has some untenable human and ecological costs and that small, local and sustainable is productive.

Biotech can provide the PR and industry "science" to argue against those things, but not the facts. They picked up their marbles and left. Now this work is "discredited for not being "scientific". But they've changed the definition of that to mean convincing, haven't they? It is very much like, and perhaps related, to the shadow banking comic tragedy unfolding. They both involve pyramids with a very few on top and by god, lots of global suckers. They have massive numbers of indepted parties, control industry and governments profit and seek new toxic assets to keep the wheels going. But the masses of us want change.

We obviously need an accounting and a strict regulation of the life science, industrial farming industry and a reclamation of our governments to steer agriculture to a more sustainable central, just and bountiful place.


See Tom Philpots great article in the Grist, for example.




The photo is from a 04/08 BBC story, Global food system 'must change', about the IAASTD report.


The Report can be found on the IAASTD website

Hands in the soil for us

One of the things I noticed in my new home here in Nova Scotia, were the numbers of Jamaican agricultural workers in the vegetable fields in the Annapolis Valley. Harvesting lettuce, carrots, hoeing brassicas, crowds of colorful workers out in the hot fields all day long.
All across Canada, horticultural crops are coming under the care of workers who pay hefty administrative fees to come work for 8 months to in farm fields.

Over Christmas, over a hundred Mexican, Guatemalan and Jamaican workers in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program were terminated and evicted with a few days notice by Rol-Land Farms in Ontario, despite a recent court decision allowing workers to unionize.
"We lost everything over night, our home, our jobs and our dream of being able to stay and work in Canada," explained Carlos one of the recently fired farm workers employed at Rol-Land Farms. He added, "Rol-Land farms didn't even give us notice or an explanation. I can't believe that Rol-Land fired and evicted us so close to Christmas. This is a company with no heart." more

"Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada stated, “these waves of firings and repatriations are testaments to the failures of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Canada needs programs that bring workers here as permanent residents, not programs that treat immigrants as second class workers and disposable tools.”
Read more and here

Here is the press release from Justicia for Migrant Workers, if you can help:

Community Support Alert!!!

Justicia for Migrant Workers is collaborating with UFCW to respond to the firings and repatriations of migrant workers at Rol-Land Farms who came to Canada through the "Low Skill Temporary Foreign Worker Program"

Workers were recruited from Mexico, Guatemala, Thailand and Jamaica and paid high recruitment and administrative fees in order to come to Canada to work through this program. Now they are being forced to go home without a cent back to their families for the holiday season.

Workers need the following:

1. emergency shelter/ short, medium and longer-term housing for
workers who choose to stay in the country (workers are able to remain in the country until their visas expire)
2. access to vehicles/help with transportation
3. translation (English - Spanish, Tagalog & Thai)
4. donations of toiletries
5. donations of food including Maseca flour to make tortillas
6. monetary donations to Justicia for Migrant Workers (Justicia does not have paid staff nor an office-we do this work voluntarily as community organisers alongside other paid employment and academic work)
7. advice/expertise on Employment Insurance and Settlement issues

contact us: info "at" justicia4migrantworkers "dot" org

Deccan Development Society

During my stay in India I walked into the Taj to have a look see and it was an opulent intense contrast to the poverty on the streets a few steps beyond the Red turbaned doormen. Flaming now... just one way to destabilize an India in resurgence, who could possibly want to do that. I feel sad today for the violence in India and share here a link to a very powerful group of women, The Deccan Development Society who for two decades have organized thousands of very poor women at the village level to empower their voices and their access to resources, particularly sustenance. Seed security has become the key issue in recent years and the fight to preserve and protect traditional seed from transgenic contamination and corporate control. Be sure to visit their great website that is full of resources and links to their inspiring fight against the destabilization of India's rich agricultural traditions and the empowerment of the Dalit.