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.