On World No Pesticides Use Day, the Peoples Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) joins the call to sever the FAO Croplife #Toxic Alliance and demand a renewed commitment for rural peoples’ rights and welfare from the agency.
We, including our members and allies, are greatly disappointed with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at its blind insistence of aligning itself with Croplife, a known lobby group for seed and fertilizer monopolies.
CropLife members include BASF, Corteva, Syngenta, and Bayer-Monsanto—known manufacturers of highly hazardous pesticides and killer seeds. These monopolies have continuously wreaked havoc in the Global South and are significantly accountable for biodiversity loss, deforestation, and rural poverty among others.
The strategic partnership signed by the public agency and CropLife last year represents a fateful turn in the global efforts to radically transform the food systems for the people and the planet. It is a critical piece in the domino effect of the ongoing private sector takeover in the food and agriculture policy space. The increasing representation, if not leadership, of private monopolies and their lobbies in public policy arenas such as the UN Committee on World Food Security and, most notably, the recent UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is a direct blow to rural people’s rights to land, seeds, and food sovereignty.
We believe the partnership gives CropLife and, in effect, the monopolies undue access and influence on the national and regional public policy spaces where FAO works in. As it is today, there is a battle in the direction of transforming global and national food systems. Industry giants represented by CropLife insist on a world where profits matter above the right to food, peasant right to land, and people’s food sovereignty. The partnership gives credence to industry representatives who directly reject agroecological practices, a principle formerly endorsed by FAO.
Moreover, the UNFSS unveiled yet another slew of ‘silver bullet’ solutions including biofortification and so-called climate-smart agriculture where technology leads transformation. These techno-fixes, at the minimum, divest critical funding away from supporting real solutions for just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems including land reform, agroecology, and people’s food sovereignty.
At the forefront of these is CropLife, as seen in its central role in the newly minted US-UAE AIM 4 Climate Alliance. By championing “private-public partnerships” and innovation in “climate-smart agriculture,” CropLife represents the business-as-usual approach in the future of food and agriculture.
FAO aligning itself with these polluters and champions of fossil-fuel hungry agriculture run directly counter to its mandate. The proliferation of monopolies represented by CropLife run directly counter to farmers to land and seed, people’s right to food, and a sustainable future.
We join today’s Global Day of Action vs the FAO-CropLife #ToxicAlliance and echo the global clamor for the FAO leadership and staff to renege the deal. All is not too late. Heed the call of the rural peoples and stand for just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable food systems.
Sever FAO-CropLife Toxic Alliance!
Fight CropLife, landgrabbers, and polluters!
Stand for Just, Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Food Systems!
(PCFS is among the signatories of the petition to be submitted to FAO to demand that it stop the #ToxicAlliance with CropLife. Add your voice now! bit.ly/notoxicalliance)