Food Sovereignty and Sustainability

The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) received the 2011 Food Sovereignty Prize.  Inaugurated in 2009, the Food Sovereignty Prize, awarded by the Community Food Security Coalition at its 15th annual conference, held this year in Oakland California.  The prize recognizes leaders in the global movement for food sovereignty. The movement works to ensure the right of all people to control their own food and agriculture systems in the face of a food crisis that has driven over a billion people into hunger worldwide.  The MST has been recognized as the 2011 Food Sovereignty Prize winner for addressing the extreme disparities in land access in Brazil by organizing over 350,000 landless rural families to resettle and farm formerly idle land.

MST leader Elias Araujo was in the US to accept, on behalf of the MST the Food Sovereignty Prize for 2011, given by the Community Food Security Coalition.  On November 9 2011, Elias was ased to address the general assembly of Occupy Oakland.  Click on photo for a a link to the podcast of Elias' remarks. [NOTE: click on red down arrow to play speech.]

By Raumi Souza

In Amazonia, 299 square kilometers of forest were degraded in March of this year, an increase of 35% compared to the same period of 2010, when the area affected was 220 square kilometers. This data from the Deforestation Alert System (Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento or SAD) was included in the last report from the Imazon Institue.

 By Vivian Fernandes

Agroextractivist José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo were murdered on May 23 in Nova Ipixuna in the southeast of Pará. The couple had been threatened by loggers in the region. The information was confirmed by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of Maraba. Both were leaving the Praia Alta Piranheira Agroextractivist Settlement Project where they lived en route to the town center when they were trapped on a bridge and shot.

The Kaiowá Guarani indigenous group retook part of their traditional lands last Friday (13). They occupied a small section of the Laranjeira Nhanderu area in Rio Brilhante (Mato Grosso do Sul), from where they have been expelled for almost two years

By Valéria Nader
From this point forward, the agribusiness 'shock troops' can now count on the support of one of the most powerful speakers with the widest visibility and circulation in the country, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

By Vinicius Mansur

The "Permanent Campaign against Pesticides and Life" will be launched by the movements of rural workers and environmentalists on the World Health Day, Thursday, April 7, 2011.

The women of Via Campesina held a National Day of Women’s Struggle in light of March 8 - International Women’s Day – to denounce the extreme gravity of the situation in the Brazilian countryside.