Report on the World Forum on Agrarian Reform
For a world without hunger: Agrarian reform now!
12/12/2004
- Opinión
Madrid
The World Forum on Agrarian Reform
(http://www.fmra.org), held from December 5-8, 2004, in
Valencia, Spain, exceeded all expectations in terms of
participation by grassroots social movements and other
actors, real advances in analysis, and a renewed sense
of commitment to forcing the topic of agrarian reform
back into the center of the political debate over the
future of rural areas worldwide.
More than 500 delegates came together from 68 countries
in five continents, including 13 European countries, 20
countries in Africa, 18 in Latin America, 2 in North
America, 16 in Asia, and 1 in Oceania. 56% were men,
and 44% women, and well over half came from
organizations of peasants, family farmers, indigenous
peoples, the landless, forest dwellers and fisherfolk.
If one word can be used to describe the Forum, it would
be "mobilizing." The delegates were virtually
unanimous in their belief that the magnitude of the
global problem of landlessness and exclusion from
access to natural resources is so great that only the
'politicization' of the issue, leading to massive
social mobilization, has a hope of addressing it. The
delegates left more committed than ever to building
that mobilization. The presence of nearly 100
delegates from the Via Campesina, the global alliance
of rural movements (http:// www.viacampesina.org), a
key force behind the Global Campaign for Agrarian
Reform, helped to leave the mobilization stamp on the
Forum.
The relatively successful example in Brazil of 'land
reform from below' being carried out by the Landless
Workers' Movement (MST) was inspirational for the
delegates. The MST is in the leadership role in a
global trend toward the increasing use of occupations
of idle lands as both a tool for settling the landless
and for putting pressure on governments to engage in
real land reform. It is quite clear that land
occupations will increasingly be carried out by rural
movements around the world, and a key task is to build
solidarity for these occupations, and for the better
government-led agrarian reforms as in Cuba and
Venezuela, as these increasingly come under attack from
the powerful.
The consensus that emerged from the plenary panels --
where the majority of the speakers came from grassroots
movements -- and the numerous workshops, is that the
global crisis affecting rural areas can best be
understood as a clash of models of agriculture, food
systems, and rural development, and must be addressed
as such. The draft sign-on declaration from the Forum
(available for sign-on at the Forum web site) said, in
part:
"Today, the people of the world are facing a clash
between two models... The dominant agro-export model is
based on the neoliberal logic of free trade and the
privatization of land, water, forests, fisheries,
seeds, knowledge and even life itself...and is
responsable for the growing concentration of land,
resources, chains of production and distribution of
food and other agricultural products, in the hands of
ever fewer corporations. The prices of crops drop
constantly due to dumping and other factors, while
consumer prices continue to rise.... On the other
hand, the alternative model based on family farming and
peasant agriculture and on the principles of food
sovereignty, prioritizes local production for local and
national markets, rejects dumping, and uses sustainable
production practices based on local knowledge.
Experience shows that this model is potentially more
productive per unit area, more compatible with the
environment, and far more capable of providing rural
peoples with a life with dignity, while offering urban
and rural consumers healthy, affordable and locally
produced food..."
The shared belief is that the uncontrolled expansion of
the dominant model, driven by the land policies of the
World Bank and the free trade policies of the WTO (and
regional and bilateral trade agreements), is
undercutting our hope for the obviously better small
farm model. The good news is that peasant, family
farmer, landless and and indigenous movements are more
alive, better organized and more sophisticated than
they have been in a long time, are in full resistance
to the dominant model, and are pulling together to
build political alliances with consumer, urban poor,
church, human rights and environmental groups to push
for comprehensive food sovereignty policies that begin
with true agrarian reform and with an end to
indiscriminate trade liberalization in farm products
(http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/2003/
f03v9n4.html).
In the Forum statement, the signatories call for
getting the WTO out of food and agriculture, for real
agrarian reform, denounce World Bank land privatization
policies, call for an end to state, landowner and
corporate-inspired violence against peasant and
indigenous peoples' organizations, for defending on-
going land occupations and other processes of agrarian
reform, and for working together to construct
successful local and national examples of food
sovereignty. It is quite clear that the struggle began
some time ago, but that this Forum is serving as a sort
of "trampoline" that is giving the movements the added
boost of having done joint analysis and strategizing.
The conference proceedings, which will be up on the
conference web site in a few weeks, will include
summaries of the remarkably rich workshops, with real
analytical advances on issues like land and gender, the
concept of territory versus just land, social
exclusion, parcelization of communal lands, new
farmers, alliance building, the role of multilateral
institutions, and much more. This will be a valuable
resources for movements and analysts alike.
* Peter Rosset is a researcher at the Center for the
Study of Change in the Mexican Countryside, CECCAM
(http://www.ceccam.org.mx) and is co-coordinator of the
Land Research Action Network, LRAN
(http://www.landaction.org), which co-sponsored the
World Forum on Agrarian Reform (http://www.fmra.org)
https://www.alainet.org/pt/node/111034?language=es
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