Small farmers must not be left alone
SAAPE calls on EU summit to guarantee food sovereignty and to support small-scale sustainable farming in the developing world

BRUSSELS - Against the backdrop of the global food crisis and in the aftermath of the FAO emergency session, the EU Summit will discuss today implications and challenges for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and development aid. SAAPE, the South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication, calls on the EU to invest a greater percentage of their development assistance ODA (as opposed to the current 4%) in agriculture and rural development focusing on small-scale farming based on sustainable and local food production and to recognize countries' rights to food sovereignty.

The European Union should further promote fair trade rules that support small producers and guarantee, that high world market prices make also a difference on the ground and translate into fairer revenues for farmers. As the world has been witnessing in the last years liberalisation of agricultural markets in developing countries will only harm local producers. Therefore the ongoing CAP review must protect the interests of small farmers.

The present capital-intensive industrial model of agriculture, based on mono crop culture and the promotion of biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMO) has recently again been presented as a silver bullet to raise food output and feed the world. But the lesson learned from the Green Revolution of the 1960s in South Asia is appalling and unambiguous: "technology-driven approaches only widen the gap between rich and poor farmers, destroy biodiversity and have proven to be unsustainable as yields are now in decline in parts of India" said Rukmini Rao with the Gramya Resource Centre for Women in India - and stressed, that all interventions to tackle the current crisis must address women as the most vulnerable group, who constitute the majority of small-scale farmers and who are the principal food providers for their families.
Not only have technical solutions oftentimes failed and proved to be inappropriate under diverse climatic, geographic and social conditions, but have also led to over-indebtedness and dependence on multinational corporations, who control pesticides, fertilizers and genetically-modified high-cost seeds. As a tragic result tens of thousands of small and destitute farmers have committed suicide by drinking pesticides and recent scientific research in North India proves carcinogenic DNA mutation of farmers due to exposure to pesticides.

"The obsession with industrial agribusiness is even more obscene given that evidence and research clearly suggest that smaller farms lead to higher yields", said Prerna Bomzan, EU representative of SAAPE, countering the argument that small scale farming cannot be profitable. This stunning but logic assumption, first made by Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize laureate in economics, has since then been proven in a wide range of countries from India to Paraguay.
"Food sovereignty is the answer to the crisis", said therefore Prem Dangal, general secretary of the All Nepal Peasants Federation. "It is the inalienable right of peoples to define and implement their own agricultural policies, which are ecologically, socially and economically appropriate to their unique circumstances". Food sovereignty includes the right to food producing resources and technologies while the patenting of natural resources by multinationals violates the farmers' sovereign right over their crops and seeds.

Farmers, who have maintained their right to choose their mode of production, have all over the world found distinct approaches to secure food safety and have managed to feed themselves and their families sufficiently. Instead of mono-cultures, traditional farmers in India plant up to 13 different crops on the same field, as mixed cropping makes optimum use of soil nutrients, water utilization, pest and weed control and has been a proven strategy to ensure the survival of millions of poor farmers. As integral part of the current democratization drive in Nepal, the right to food sovereignty has been included in the interim constitution.

"The recent European Parliament's resolution on the soaring food prices was very encouraging as it strongly called on the Council and the Commission to promote sustainable food production and fair international trade. In particular, the call for readjustment of the very foundation of the EU development assistance, the Country Strategy Papers, in order to prioritise agriculture is significant", said Prerna Bomzan.