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| La Via Campesina delegations from South and Southeast Asia |
By La Via Campesina Media Advisory, La Via Campesina, November 5, 2012
(Jakarta, November 5, 2012) - The global peasants
movement, La Via Campesina (LVC) will hold a global encounter of agroecology
trainers and peasant agroecology schools at the Community Agroecology
Foundation in Surin, Thailand from the 6 -12 November. The meeting will be
organized by the Assembly of the Poor of Thailand, an organization of urban and
rural poor, small farmers, and workers and a member of LVC. Peasant agroecology
trainers from all over the world and representatives of the various farmers’
agroecology schools of LVC peasant movements will come together in Surin to
continue their efforts to promote agroecology on a global scale.
LVC is a strong proponent of sustainable peasants
agriculture based on agroecology. Agroecology is a science, but is also seen as
a movement, or practice which is concerned with farming methods that are based
on peasant’s knowledge, local inputs as well as natures own principles rather
than external inputs and technologies that damage nature such as the green
revolution model. But LVC takes agroecology a step further than most, it is not
just about ecological productive principles but also about social and political
principles. A feudal land holding cannot be considered agroecological even if
it is chemical free, a farm that is controlled only by men without any role and
decision making power for women is not agroecological either, neither is a so
called organic farm which replaces expensive chemical inputs for expensive
organic ones without touching the structure of monoculture. There are countless
names for such type of farming all over the world and LVC is not concerned with
names or labels, whether agroecology, organic farming, natural farming, low
external input sustainable agriculture, or others, but rather wants to specify
the key ecological, social and political principles that the movement defends.
For LVC, truly sustainable peasants agriculture comes from the recovery of
traditional peasant farming methods, and the innovation of new ecological
practices.
The meeting in Thailand is a culmination of a series of
continental level agroecology meetings that LVC has already organized in
Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas over the last four years. This has served
the movement to consolidate and make a database of the various types of
knowledge and expertise of local agroecological farming methods that are
already practiced among peasant movements and to link up these experiences so
that farmers organizations can share such knowledge with each other, not just
nationally but especially regionally and globally.
Such farmer to farmers exchanges are very effective
argues LVC, and farmers protagonism must be placed at the center of such
efforts. Cuba for e.g. is a country that has transformed its chemical based
production systems into agroecological integrated and diversified farming
systems and spread it to more than one-third of all peasant families in Cuba, a
remarkable rate of growth in less than ten years, possible only because of the
farmer to farmer process and strong support to the small farmer movement. There
are countless such examples of successful farmer to farmer exchanges all over
the world. LVC stresses the importance of organizing them well and engaging
peasants organizations in order to scale them up. Many such examples will be
shared at the Thailand agroecology encounter.
Besides various meetings, the participants will also
visit local agroecological farmers in the Surin province of Thailand where the
local hosts, AOP have taken a lead role in turning farmers fields from chemical
to agroecological and have initiated programs on the ecological production of
rice, herbs and also agroforestry. Such initiatives are a breakthrough in Thai
agriculture which has mainly become dependent on the green revolution model. On
the 12th November, there will be a public forum at the Chulalongkorn University
in Bangkok city, that aims to build alliances with different organizations and
to promote LVC’s concepts of food sovereignty and sustainable peasants
agriculture among the Thai public.
Another important process that will take place in
Thailand is a global exchange between peasant’s agroecology schools. Peasant’s
movements all over the world have different training processes, some are very
informal, where there may not even be a building to call a school, and some are
at advanced levels where even formal degrees are provided. LVCs schools are
present in about 40 countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador,
Argentina and others at initial stages in India and Indonesia among others.
This will be the first time that a formal exchange will be conducted in order
to strengthen links between these schools in order to exchange experiences.
Such people to people exchanges of local alternatives are crucial to resist the
mainstream development model which has caused serious social and environmental
crisis as well as hunger.
Contact for media
Mr. Baramee Chaiyarat (Assembly of the Poor) | +66-
81-685-9458 | languages: Thai, English
Tejo Pramono | tpramono@viacampesina.org | languages: English
Ashlesha Khadse | +66-82-221-3962 | secretariatlvcsouthasia@gmail.com | languages: English, Spanish
for more info visit www.viacampesina.org
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