FIMARC World Meeting – Atyra Paraguay – March 2010

FINAL RESOLUTION

We, the member movements of FIMARC coming from 29 countries and representing rural people, peasants and family farmers, gathered in Atyra, Paraguay from 10-25 March 2010 at a moment when the growing numbers of the hungry has surpassed the one billion mark and is facing challenges of the development and agriculture in the context of global food, finance, climate and humanitarian crisis. The world Assembly came up with one voice on a political proposal ‘DECREASE’ as an urgent response to the way forward.

The movements of FIMARC want to raise a concept for a life in dignity. This is the concept of decrease or so to say “less is more”. While the whole planet suffers the consequences of our lifestyle of consumption, we affirm that the present economic model of increasing development is coming to an end. Climate change, extreme food, financial, humanitarian and cultural crisis, increasing social conflicts, catastrophes caused by our way of life clearly indicates this trend.

Most food in the world is grown, collected and harvested by more than a billion small-scale farmers, pastoralists, indigenous people and artisanal fisher folk. This food is mainly sold, processed, resold and consumed locally. Yet, the rules that govern food and agriculture at all levels – local, national and international – are designed a priority to facilitate not local, but international trade. This reduces diversity and concentrates the wealth of the world’s food economies in the hands of ever fewer multinational corporations, while the majority of the world’s small scale food producers, processors, local traders and consumers crucially, the poor and malnourished, are marginalised.

As long as institutions such as the WTO continue to privilege commercial interests over the globally marginalised and malnourished, hunger will continue to stalk the world .The rising industries in various countries need more energy for industrial production. Fossil energies are not available in a sustainable way and renewable energies are not that much established, as they should be. Food to fuel shift will surely increase the struggle for land and keep the food price high. Because of changing eating habits, more and more arable land and virgin forests are being turned into pasture for livestock.

Industrialized and export oriented agriculture promoted within the green revolution have led to environmental problems and to the fact that the farmers are driven out of fields and rural exodus is reality. The Patents on living organisms, Intellectual property rights and GMOs have mostly led to the phasing out of the Indigenous seeds. Today what is being experienced are the rising costs for the rural farmer in buying seeds for planting, as GMOs hardly offer seeds for replanting. GMOs have left rural communities with no indigenous food, which is culturally acceptable and preferred by the people. GM Crops threaten biodiversity and poses risks to the environment. Millions of farmers have improved crop production using sustainable agriculture practices that are based on renewable and locally available materials and which build on the farmer’s indigenous knowledge.

The current dominating model of Agricultural production is not able to feed the world. In order to fight against hunger we have to raise the production of food, but this should be achieved by natural means. The over usage of natural resources can only be avoided by ecological food production as it will be using less non renewable energies, chemicals and machineries. Many of our farming groups have been using this mode of agricultural production for many years with success.

Climate change will affect food sovereignty, livelihoods and the ability to feed 9 billion by 2050. In 2005 the concentration of carbon dioxide exceeded the natural range that has existed over 650.000 years. Climate change is accelerating with the rising of temperature, sea level and melting of ice cap and glaciers. This will have enormous consequences for rural and urban poor, for those who are net buyers of food commodities. We need something radically different to feed the world's growing population and cope with climate change if we want to avoid social breakdown and environmental collapse. We demand climate justice, based on the fact that the poor cannot pay for the lifestyle of the rich.

Invasion of foreign powerful corporations taking over agricultural land for the interest of agro fuel industries creates instability in food chain as well as forced land evictions. Millions of people displaced by civil wars and worsely affected by natural disasters and most recently in Haiti and Chile. We must express our solidarity to the people who are affected by these calamities.

Corruption and thirst for power are often the main cause of human rights violation. Children, women and elderly people are the victims of such violations. We see the growing strength of the poor who organise themselves to defend the social and human rights as well as trying to promote a just and social mode of development. As a result of this, in many countries we notice the rising of criminalization of such social movements.

“Less is more” will raise dignity of our life and preserve creation. The exploiting nature of the current capitalistic production model has done a lot of harm to the Food security and sovereignty and undermined the social aspects by using the human being as tools for production and only means for profit. In this context we affirm that “decrease” is the tool and the way to get out of the aggressive neo liberal model of development. All of us should think that if we have enough based on real needs, we should not be greedy to have more, so that poor and marginalized ones can have a chance to meet their basic needs. We need to make a soul searching reflection, turning to God in our prayers, values and culture to identify our real needs. We should put up limits in our needs to have more. Then we are capable to share and live with others in harmony on this earth.

We call upon everybody not to abuse the mother earth as it belongs also to future generations.

In order to come back to the roots which mean, “less is more” FIMARC calls for;

· Build up an alternative agricultural and food system based on decrease by promoting Right to food and Food Sovereignty

· Support, strengthen and develop solidarity economies to create work in rural and urban areas

· Change the way of our thinking, doing, living and being

· Promote family farming and sustainable management of natural resources which maintains biodiversity.

• Implement measures to fully support small producers, farmers and peasants based on agro ecological and diversified food production as it causes no harm to environment but healthy, diverse, localised and cools the planet. These practices, which prioritise feeding people locally, minimise waste and losses of food and do not create the damage caused by industrial production systems
• Regulate, monitor and control regional, national and international agricultural and food security policies, to support local agriculture and to prevent food dumping
• Control and monitor the free flow of foreign capital and hidden investments from Multinational corporations
• Stop the land allocations to agro business and land evictions as well as complete moratorium on land grabbing
• Demand the ban on agro-fuel expansion and Moratorium on GMOs

• Stop the criminalisation of social movements and critical thinking
• Preserve the local culture and identity by promoting traditional knowledge, values and skills of the rural people, farmers and indigenous people
• Oblige all countries to the Kyoto protocol, reduce the carbon emissions and to participate and promote adaptation and mitigation effect of the climate change
• Keep agro ecological agriculture and agro ecological food production out of carbon market.
• Stop patents on living organism

FIMARC denounces, condemn and reject the neoliberal model of development as well as the public disinvestment in rural areas and in agriculture. A new paradigm shift based on people oriented alternative economic system is the need of this era. Agriculture is the keystone for development and thus people must decide what they want to consume and be able to produce what they need for their table, not the food and fuel industries.

We promote food sovereignty oriented agriculture and sustainable development with human and environmental responsibility

We unite and continue mobilising our actions to improve the quality of life in its diversity in rural areas

We encourage popular education among our members to orientate themselves to be able to educate in participative forms their own autonomies in order to meet their own needs. This education is based on the values, knowledge and culture of the indigenous people and local communities and to be supported by the public authorities

We commit for local and global governance through social mobilisation

We organise trainings and debates on decrease /less is more based on our own experiences to give awareness among the members.

We strengthen our interconnecting rural, urban and sub urban food web.

We convince that only the power of organized peoples and mobilization can achieve the needed changes, thus our principal task is to inform, raise awareness, debate, organize and mobilize people and finally FIMARC is open to collaborate with all the stakeholders in the society to protect the nature and permit the whole humanity to live according to God’s will, which calls us to be co creators.

Atyra, Paraguay

March 2010