Lauching of the World Campaign in Defense of the Seeds
25/01/2003
- Opinión
The delegates of the main peasant organizations participating in the
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre have launched yesterday the world
campaign to defend seeds as the heritage of humankind and an assurance
of life. This event happened during the conference "Land, territory and
food sovereingty", at Gigantinho hall, attended by more than 15.000
people.
The 3 main presentations were around the common theme of securing a
basis to the new concepts of food sovereignty and the defense of seeds,
of which now transnationals want to apppropriate themselves by means of
the so called intellectual property rights. "This can in no way be
accepted, since a country which loses the capacity of producing its own
seeds will be forever condemned to import food from the big
corporations, and a country dependent from such imports is a country
with no sovereignty", said João Pedro Stédile, leader of the Landless
Movement. Via Campesina is demanding a new concept for food sovereingty,
starting from the understanding that feeding a country, a people, is an
issue of security and sovereingty, which implies not only the production
of food but also the model of production, sustained Peter Rosset,
representing a US organisation fighting intellectual propertyy rights of
seeds.
What we need is an environmentally sustainable model, which assures the
feeding of future generations. This means the refusal of new
technologies they want to impose upon us, such as genetic engineering.
One must tell these corporations that with new technologies one does not
give an answer to old injustices committed against the peasants,
remarked Rosset, drawing lots of applause from the audience. Another
leader speaking at the conference was Francisca Rodriguez, from Chile,
who underlined the presence of women in the struggles daily being
sustained in defense of food security. She remarked furthermore that
seeds are the heritage of humankind and cannot therefore be privatized,
since the feeding of the world hangs on them. "We need strong alliances
to defend our seeds, and we need to assure our food security. Therefore
from this day on we declare ourselves engaged in a world campaing in
defense of seeds as the heritage of humankind, in order to give
assurance to life", concluded the Chilean leader.
https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/106884?language=es
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