The struggle for food sovereignty is about fighting for land and healthy food, for decent work, and for the end of exploitation, agribusiness, and large-scale plantations, and for life that is free of violence. Women take the primary responsibility for food production and preparation, for the conservation of seed and the care for biodiversity, and they have accumulated this knowledge over a long period of time. Fighting for food sovereignty also means fighting to have women farmers’ work acknowledged as well as to reorganize domestic, care, and food preparation work.
This international virtual gallery features photographs of the archives of La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, and the World March of Women. The pictures show how women are fundamental for sowing the seeds of a political, peasant, grassroots, diverse struggle for a society with no fences and no toxic chemicals. This struggle is realized as they harvest every local maize, every medicinal herb, every bean with its multiple colors and flavors. And it is also realized in political spaces of education, grounding spirituality, and action in which women are a beacon of organizing and change.
April 17th is the International Day of Peasant Struggle, which pays tribute to the 21 landless workers who were murdered 25 years ago during a march in Eldorado dos Carajás, Pará, Brazil. That same year, 1996, La Via Campesina introduced food sovereignty as a political proposition to face the global systemic crises. This year, 2021, as the pandemic and neoliberalism advance against our lives and aggravate the reality of hunger around the world, this day of struggle also shows that another world is possible, free of hunger, poverty, and patriarchal and racist capitalism. A world with agrarian reform and food sovereignty.
This gallery is a contribution for this day of struggles. We want these pictures to convey that food sovereignty is a right of the peoples. And that it points to a different present as well as a different future, nurtured by memory, and sowed and headed by peasant women. #NoFutureWithoutFoodSovereignty!
