Staff Activities for September

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WINSTON CARROO

Executive Director, Agricultural Missions, Inc.

It is that time of year for submitting program reports for 2010 and for filing applications for support for the next year. These reports and applications, along with the necessary budgets and financial reports, have taken a significant amount of time during the month. In addition, the following travel and related program activities were completed:

Attendance at the 4^th Quadrennial Conference of International Rural Churches Association (IRCA), held in Altenkirchen, Westerwald, Germany, September 19-26.

The IRCA is worldwide community of rural church and denominational leaders who are concerned with the challenges faced by rural churches around the globe. The U.S. based Rural Church Network, with which AMI is associated, is affiliated with the IRCA and that was the channel through which I was invited to attend as a keynote speaker. The theme of the conference was “Hunger—the Global Challenge” and was attended by some 50 delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Malawi, United States, Germany, India, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Great Britain, Switzerland, Canada and South Korea.

The Report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was the main reference for the conference, with perspectives given from different regions and countries. The IAASTD is a four-year, multi stakeholder process involving over 400 scientists and other interested parties, aimed at discerning the best way forward in achieving a just and sustainable food system on a global scale. This process was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, but was also supported by the World Bank and several other organizations and governments. The conclusions of the report were highly critical of the industrial food system in creating the conditions for hunger and injustice, particularly in rural areas and in developing nations. The report clearly states that “the practices of the past 25 years cannot be the practices of the next 25 years” if a just and sustainable food system is to be created or achieved. “Business as usual must end” is the major theme of the report.

I was asked to make a presentation on the “Politics Facing the IAASTD Report” from the North American perspective. The theme of my presentation was that the conclusions of the report are in direct opposition to the promoters of “BIG AG” and their political allies and thus the report faces major opposition from the food and biotechnology industries - with deep pockets and considerable influence. The text of my presentation can be viewed at http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/IRCN-Presentation.pdf

The text of the resolution passed at the meeting is also available at this website.

IAASTD-Ag-Assessment

THE WEST AFRICA INITIATIVE (WAI)

The WAI is a continuing effort to develop and implement a community-centered model of development in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The program, now in its third year, was initially supported by three agencies of the Presbyterian Church USA, now also has the support of the United Methodist Committee on Relief and the United Church of Christ. AMI, in partnership with the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone and community-based organizations in Liberia, is responsible for the design and implementation of the program

I visited Liberia in October to assess the progress of the six community groups and six community-based facilitators, with respect to specific criteria that was established at the beginning of the year. Overall, there is success in terms of the increase in group membership, area under cultivation and increase in food production for local consumption and sale. However, there are significant concerns regarding the groups’ abilities to function effectively as decision-making units regarding the management of the project. Development of groups is essential to the long-term sustainability of the program at the community level and there are current efforts to achieve a functional level within the groups.

The groups in Sierra Leone are functional well with respect to decision-making and management of the program in the local communities. The September 30 interim report of the WAI in both Liberia and Sierra Leone is also available on our website.■

http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/WAI-P2-REPORT-Sept-30-2010.pdf

STEPHEN BARTLETT

Coordinator for Constituency Education

U.S. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY ALLIANCE LAUNCHED ON OCTOBER 16, 2010

IN NEW ORLEANS! AG MISSIONS WAS THERE!

On October 16, 2010, World Food Day, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance was launched. This was not done at a podium, with light bulbs flashing. No, it was done in the streets, on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans to be exact. It was done as a street protest in support of 15 restaurant workers whose wages were stolen by the owner of Tony Moran’s Restaurant, in coordination with the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New Orleans (ROC NOLA), one of the members of this brand-new alliance. It was accomplished by means of organizing, flyering among those present at the opening reception of the Community Food Security Coalition, by announcements made on the buses that allowed us to tour a Mississippi farm and urban gardens in and around New Orleans, by means of long-standing relationships and networking with the Food Chain Workers Alliance and one of their member organizations ROC NOLA. We gathered, we marched and we protested the injustices endemic in the restaurant business nationwide and in particular in New Orleans. As our press release began: Farmers, fisher folk, farm workers, urban agriculturalists, restaurant workers, indigenous people, and food justice advocates gathered in New Orleans to launch the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance on October 16 in solidarity with restaurant workers at Tony Moran’s.

The launching of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance was not just about a new list of organizations arranged on the same page. Rather, it was about the building of a movement eager to take strategic and effective action, aware of the monumental challenges and interconnected multiple crises of economic concentration, exploitation and pillage, and environmental degradation and climate chaos. It was about the determination to work together in ways that will unite urban communities struggling with economic marginalization and unhealthy food with rural peoples under the flail of bankruptcy and a cynical commodity economy regime and farm worker exploitation, of peoples displaced and people struggling to stay in place. It is about organized consumers who desire to eat foods that honor the Mother Earth and honor the brothers and sisters who produced, processed, distributed and even cooked the food. And it is about those who suffer malnutrition, in food deserts urban and rural, in abandoned communities the world over.

The US Food Crisis Working Group has now become the US Food Sovereignty Alliance! As our press release for the NOLA action stated: The Alliance seeks to “turn the tables” on the broken food system by restoring power to communities to govern their own food systems, limit and regulate corporate control, and stop damaging US foreign policy that undermines the ability of other countries to provide for themselves.

While the governance and membership issues are still being worked out, the alliance has already had its first solidarity action, and it was a good one!

For photos posted by a member of the Food Chain Workers Alliance go to the flickr link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodchainworkers/5096601559/in/set-72157625073802709/

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT INFUSES COMMUNITY FOOD "SECURITY" COALITION GATHERING IN NEW ORLEANS WITH URGENT NEED FOR SOLIDARITY AND STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS.

The BAD EGG of Seed Thievery is Confronted

The ‘Food Sovereignty’ track of activities during the 3-day Community Food Security Coalition gathering in New Orleans looked like the program of a gathering of Via Campesina, the worldwide peasant and family farm movement that first popularized this comprehensive and transformative concept decades ago. Member organizations of the newly launched US Food Sovereignty Alliance, including Agricultural Missions, were present in numbers, and organized! Here is a listing of workshops led by or featuring alliance members:

Credit and Capital for a Just and Sustainable Food System, featuring Ben Burkett, Bob St. Peter and Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition and Niaz Dorry of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance.

Food Movements Unite! Led by Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First and featuring Joann Lo of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development.

Innovative Solutions to Food Deserts in Urban Areas, featuring Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and others.

Food Justice Forum, with Eric Holt-Gimenez batting clean-up in a panel, calling for transformation as opposed to mere reforms of the current model.

From Detroit to New Orleans: Building a US Food Sovereignty Movement, led by Stephen Bartlett (AMI) and featuring Ben Yahola of theMvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative, Karen Washington, New York City Urban Farmer, Bob St. Peter (NFFC/ Via Campesina),Joaquin Martinez, Community to Community, and Nefer Ra Barber, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

Confronting Corporate Power in the Food System: Si, se puede!, with Kathy Ozer (NFFC), Joel Greeno (NFFC, Family Farm Defenders),and Karen Washington, Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners, and Niaz Dorry (Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance)

Emerging Technology and the Threat to a Just Food System, with Dave Andrews and Sarah Alexander of Food and Water Watch.

Organizing for Labor, Racial and Immigrant Justice in Community Food Systems, with Derek Robinson, ROC-NOLA and Joann Lo, Food Chain Workers Alliance.

The International Links Committee, with Marcia Ishii-Eiteman of Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), Heather Day of Community Alliance for Global Justice, Christina Schiavonni of WHY Hunger, Stephen Bartlett, (AMI)

The Annual Food Sovereignty Prize awarded by the International Links committee went to long-time fighters for food justice the Family Farm Defenders! With honorable mentions to another USFSA member the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network,as well as the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty of Canada and the Network of West African Peasant and Agricultural Producers Organizations!

In sum, many individuals representing dozens of grassroots community organizations and NGOs expressed a keen interest in joining forces with the US Food Sovereignty Alliance!

To put it in a nutshell: We Rocked and Rolled!! We’re making things happen!! It is an privilege to represent Ag Missions in this cutting edge work.

See photos from Brooke of WHY Hunger at: http://picasaweb.google.com/WHY.GAN/NewOrleans2010#

See additional reports, photos and video footage: http://presbyterian.typepad.com/foodandfaith/2010/10/solidarity.html

Sacred Land Liturgy Explored at Worship Service, October 20, 2010 at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Stephen Bartlett worked with seminarians at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on a Sacred Soil/ Sacred Land liturgy for an outdoor worship service that took place at midday on October 20, 2010, a slightly late celebration of October 16^th World Food Day.

Becca Barnes and Garrett Schindler, along with Professor Claudio Carvalhas joined Stephen Bartlett in a memorable worship service that focused on the story of Naboth’s Vinyard and the Love of the Land that led to Naboth’s being stoned to death. 1 Kings 21

Stephen, Becca and Garrett read the following dramatic sermonette click:

Dialogue/ Call and Response for Sacred Land/Earth worship service. (in lieu of sermon)

PLANS FOR HAITI RURAL COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY DELEGATION

Plans for Haiti Rural Community Solidarity Delegation are progressing, despite an unconscionably stagnated response to the catastrophe, a rigidity of aid agencies that maintain the homeless in urban camps in order to receive any aid, an upsurge in protests, problems of security in the camps, an outbreak of cholera and intermittent rains. The member organizations of FONDAMA continue the courageous work of revitalizing the agricultural economy of Haiti, with their seed and tool projects, their tree nurseries, their training of builders of community grain silos, and their advocacy work to defend the agricultural biodiversity of Haiti (against threats by transnational seed monopolies). Stephen Bartlett and Lionel Derenoncourt (AMI Board president) will be leading the delegation from November 10-19, 2010 in three regions of Haiti, the Artibonite, the North, and the Central Plateau. Participants that appear to be confirmed as of this writing number six.

BRIEFS

Week of Actions Featured 10 10 10, 350.org events across the country.

The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance sent out a Call to Action for 10-10-10 to make the connection between industrial ag and climate chaos. In Louisville AMI staff organized and hosted a Work Party to combat Climate Change at the 1.5 acre gardens of the Refugee Agriculture Partnership Program (RAPP). Volunteers turned up to help refugee farmers cut and carry corn stalks and harvest seed to save for next year. See the 350 photo that was taken of some of the folk who turned up on that sunny and hot Sunday afternoon. Temperature on October 10, a new record of 90 degrees!

Stephen Bartlett has also supported the work of the Community Farm Alliance (CFA), an AMI partner and member organization of the National Family Farm Coalition. CFA has just hired a new and highly respected person to be the Executive Director of the statewide organization. The Louisville/Jefferson County chapter of CFA has lost its organizers (due to financial crunch) but is moving forward with a town hall meeting on the creation of a Food Policy Council, and also is doing grassroots outreach for the convening of a Food Justice Roundtable for Louisville.

Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville (SAL), another partner organization of AMI, added a new program this year, a Training Program for Aspiring Farmers, Urban Agriculturalists and Food Justice Advocates. October 25 will mark the last seminar for that training that began in February and entailed 9 seminars, four months of practicum work, and 3 business planning sessions. SAL also held its 8^th annual series of four one-week gardening day camps that served 60 children, 65% of whom were returnees, some with up to five summer camps under their belts. The Father Coyote story series continued as did the Rhubarb Pie Fridays, now in its second year as a camp tradition. Kids roll pie crusts by hand and bake freshly harvested rhubarb pies to share with fellow campers and their parents.

AGRA watch begins national planning process to combat the two-headed hydra of Philanthra-capitalist Gates Foundation beside Monsanto corporation. The news that the Gates Foundation purchased $500,000 worth of Monsanto shares brought home the reality that so much of the so-called new Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) agency is loaded with individuals who previously worked in executive positions for Monsanto corporation. Ag Missions staff has been participating in these planning calls and has been communicating about this process with our Ugandan partners.

New York City urban agriculture visits: Stephen visited (and worked on) a farmers’ market organized by Karen Washington, an urban ag producer and community organizer in the Bronx, and also consulted with Jessie Walker Beaumont on the progress being made with the dynamic and growing Brooklyn Food Coalition, following up ton the collaboration at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit.

Louisville’s Health Food Local Farmers annual conference featured Anna Lappe as the keynote. Anna took this photo of the Socio Drama enacted by AMI staffer SDB as part of that conference that took place September 24-25, 2010 at Spalding University in Louisville, KY.

THE EDUCATION WORKING GROUP OF AMI IS BEGINNING THE PLANNING PROCESS FOR THE 2011 AMI STUDY SESSION

The Rural Coalition and AMI are planning for a joint gathering in Oklahoma for late June or early July, possibly on the theme of Land, Colonization and Liberation. You will be hearing more about this soon.