BUILDING A EUROPEAN MOVEMENT FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

If anyone would like further information, please visit the websites:

http://www.eurovia.org/

http://www.nyelenieurope.net/


"All European agricultures - and particularly agriculture in Western Europe – have changed drastically over the past 50 years. Increasing mechanization, concentration and specialization has led to the substantial regression of sustainable family farming and with it the loss of millions of jobs as well as the loss of local food cultures. Supermarkets have spread and grown everywhere, prioritizing the development of industrialized and standardized food. Food security may have been achieved in Europe - but at the cost of nutritionally poor mass-produced food, and increases in diseases such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease, linked to poor quality, high fat, high sugar and low vitamin processed foods. 

Furthermore the European food system today is dependent on cheap fossil fuels and does not recognize limited water and land resources. Looking ahead, rising energy costs, drastic losses in biodiversity, climate change and declining water and land resources threaten the future of food production.

To address these challenges, a completely different approach is needed to food and agriculture policies and practices. Thousands of socially and ecologically sustainable initiatives concerning food production as well as consumption, distribution and processing have already emerged throughout Europe: organic and agro-ecologic farms, consumers cooperatives, community supported farms, cooperatives of all kinds and people exploring new or renewed food chains. All these initiatives put into action the concept of Food Sovereignty.

The concept of Food Sovereignty was first launched by Via Campesina in 1996 during the FAO World Food Summit which took place in Rome. Since then Food Sovereignty has played an increasingly important role in debates on food and agriculture, as well as on alternatives to neo-liberal policies. Food sovereignty puts agricultural producers and consumers at the centre of the debate, and supports all peoples in their right to produce their own locally produced and culturally appropriate food independent of international market conditions.

Food Sovereignty furthermore represents a policy framework which gives a systemic response to the multiple crises we are facing today: it helps to face the economic crisis by empowering local economies; it provides a real answer to climate change by localizing food economies, promoting agro-ecological forms of production and supporting diversified agricultural production patterns, which need less or no fossil fuels and perform better at its mitigation. Above all it promotes the participation of citizens in the food system and encourages closer contacts between those who produce and those who consume food."


If anyone would like further information, please visit the websites:

http://www.eurovia.org/

http://www.nyelenieurope.net/

"BUILDING A EUROPEAN MOVEMENT FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
CALL TO NYELENI EUROPE FORUM AND CAMP, AUGUST 2011, AUSTRIA

We, the organizers of the International Nyeleni Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali in 2007 [nyeleni.org], call on all those who resist and struggle throughout Europe to join us in the construction of a European movement for Food Sovereignty.

On the 16th - 21st August 2011 in Krems, Austria we hope to bring together a mass meeting of groups, unions, associations and collectives of farmers, students, activists, ecologists, agricultural workers and landless youth and any others who are working for food sovereignty in Europe and in the world."