World Food Day 2016

On October 16, the farmers and peoples of the world will mark World Food Day. Various groups will highlight climate change and the need for changes in food production and agriculture, as well as the struggle of farmers and small-scale food producers for land and resources.

As a contribution to the farmers’ and peoples’ commemoration of World Food Day, the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty will highlight the issues and struggles pertaining to Food Injustice and Repression.

Monopoly capitalists, together with governments and institutions subservient to them, have failed to resolve the Global Financial and Economic Crisis which erupted in 2008. The conditions that caused the crisis, including inter-imperialist competition for control over resources and markets, continue to exist to this day of protracted global depression.

As a result, landlessness, poverty and hunger facing the farmers and peoples of the world are intensifying. Farmers, fishermen, small-scale food producers have responded with intensifying efforts to assert their most basic demands and rights.

Refusing to heed these demands, monopoly capitalists and governments subservient to them have intensified repression of efforts made by farmers, fishermen and small-scale food producers to assert their demands. Worse, they have intensified various attacks on the latter’s livelihood.

In recent years, we have seen various cases of food injustice and repression in the following countries: Cameroon, Colombia, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya and the Philippines.

In this light, PCFS will mark World Food Day 2016 with the theme: Food Justice Now! Struggle vs. Food Injustice and Repression!

To propagate among our members our analysis and calls for this year’s World Food Day, we will release a short pamphlet containing an infographic and a statement. We encourage everyone to distribute this pamphlet among our members in our activities in the lead-up to the World Food Day.

We are also encouraging everyone to send photos of your build-up activities for World Food Day to the secretariat, together with a short report on the said activity. To spread our calls and our activities, we will circulate the photos and explanation via email and social media.

>> Let us also show, in at least one of these build-up actions, our calls in relation to the International Monsanto Tribunal which will be held in The Hague, The Netherlands on 14-15 October this year. Let us show our calls: MONSANTO: Face of monopoly-capitalist control of agriculture, GUILTY!

Please watch out for updates in our Facebook Page and please circulate widely our posts in the build-up to World Food Day. Among the materials that we plan to release in social media are the following:

1. Our statement in relation to the International Monsanto Tribunal.
2. A short video containing the cases of food injustice and repression that we have listed above.
3. Memes and statements further explaining food injustice and repression.

Let us use and popularize our hashtag: #FoodJusticeNow!

Struggle against food injustice and repression!