Mark your calendars! The Global Farmer Field Schools Platform in FAO’s Office of Innovation is excited to invite you to the first virtual Pitching Event for the innovation award on farmer field schools, taking place on July 31st, 2024!
Join us and more than 200 CSOs and academics signing on the Civil Society Statement on Biodiversity Offsets & Credits! Biodiversity markets will only repeat the same mistakes of carbonmarkets and distract us from the real drivers of biodiversity loss. More on biodmarketwatch.info
In 2022 and 2023, BILIM Agroecology community members gathered in person for the BILIM Forum in Turkey, fostering a spirit of collaboration and sharing. These events were a platform for members to exchange experiences, strengthen their partnerships, and discuss various topics such as farmers’ seeds, biodiversity protection, policy work, and agroecology schools. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our donors, FAO REU and the Agroecology Fund, our host organizations Çiftçi-Sen and Ekoder, and all the participants and supporters for their invaluable contributions.
Here we’re are sharing the detailed reports from these forums:
2022 BILIM Forum in Sakarya, Turkey: Read the Sakarya Report
2023 BILIM Forum in Bursa, Nilufer Municipality. Read the Report
ECVC farmers and other small-scale producers have spent decades demanding fair income through market regulation, prices that cover production costs and a better sharing of public subsidies. At last, after months of mass mobilisations, this topic took centre stage in the recent European election campaign, with almost all political groups making promises to use European policy to ensure farmers can earn a decent income.
Policymakers must tackle the important social crises facing rural areas in particular and implement concrete policy to build solidarity and understanding between urban and rural areas and deconstruct the current polarising rhetoric. This must focus on ensuring fairer prices and better working conditions for farmers and farm workers in Europe and an international agricultural trade based on food sovereignty. Without fair income, it won’t be possible to achieve the necessary sustainable agroecological transition and other legislative proposals related to agriculture will not be effective in improving farmers’ positions because the root cause of the issue has not been addressed.
ECVC is deeply concerned about the support garnered by the extreme right in a number of European countries. We recall that migrant workers provide a large part of the waged work in the agricultural and food processing sectors, very often with difficult working conditions and low wages. The rights of all workers in this sector must be defended. We reject the false opposition between farmers and farm workers: it is only by breaking the spiral of low prices and market deregulation that we will improve working conditions and pay for all who produce food.
The demands of farmers are clear, set out in ECVC’s Priorities document for the new legislative period.
The starting point should be to ensure that selling agricultural products under the cost of production is made illegal all over Europe. This should be done during the first 3 months of the new EU mandate; Member States and the European Parliament should ensure selling at loss and under the cost of production is added to the UTP Directive black list of practices by urgent procedure.
https://www.eurovia.org/press-releases/european-policymakers-must-address-farmers-concerns-about-fair-incomes-and-generational-renewal/
From May 22 to May 23, 2024, Schola Campesina, in collaboration with COSPE Association and the Professional School “Ndre Mjeda” in Bushat, Vau Dejes Municipality, organized a visit from the STINA Women’s Association from Kosovo. The delegation, accompanied by Tahir Halitaj from the Ministry of Agriculture in Pristina and Andrea Ferrante from Schola Campesina in Rome, explored rural experiences in the Zadrima territory, spanning the Shkodra and Lezha municipalities in Albania.
The visit aimed to showcase Albanian successes in rural development, focusing on key sites such as the local seed bank, the didactic field, and the educational laboratories at the “Ndre Mjeda” professional school. The group also visited BioZadrima, a collective of small organic farmers, to observe their cultivation practices and their innovative approach to selling products directly through the renowned Agritourism “Mrizi i Zanave.” This model demonstrates a sustainable way for small farmers to ensure year-round sales within their territory, fostering knowledge exchange and mutual support in agricultural endeavors.
The exchange was supported by the BILIM network, which includes associations dedicated to agroecology from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia. Both STINA Women’s Association and COSPE are active members of the AND-Albanian Network for Rural Development, which facilitated this collaboration.
This visit was part of a broader initiative to exchange experiences between Albania and Kosovo, particularly focusing on the establishment and community benefits of local seed banks. The STINA Women’s Association expressed interest in replicating these practices in Kosovo. Discussions also covered potential twinning with professional schools and future collaboration opportunities in the Balkans.
Such exchanges promote the sharing of successful initiatives, enhance the quality of educational programs, and provide valuable insights for small family farmers. By focusing on traditional techniques and local knowledge, the BILIM community places the farmer at the center of development, recognizing their vital contributions to agriculture and rural sustainability.
Eleven organizations representing civil society and Indigenous Peoples across the globe welcome the statement by the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) that it has officially ended its Letter of Intent (LoI) with pesticide industry lobby group CropLife International. We believe that this is an important victory especially for farmers, farmworkers and rural communities who suffer most from pesticide harms.
On 15 May 2024, PAN International received written confirmation from FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol that the LoI between FAO and CropLife International signed on 2 October 2020 came to an end almost exactly three years after its agreement. We have been informed that the FAO concluded its LoI with CropLife on 3 October 2023 in line with a review of all LoIs entered into prior to the development of FAO’s Strategy for Private Sector Engagement (2021-25) and the related new due diligence framework.
Since the signing of the LoI, over 430 civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations from nearly 70 countries, nearly 200,000 individuals from over 107 countries, 250 scientists and academics, nearly 50 philanthropic groups, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food have called on the FAO to rescind its agreement with CropLife to Stop the #ToxicAlliance.
We have called attention to how the agreement tied the FAO directly to the world’s largest manufacturers of the most deadly pesticides, companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Corteva. We consistently raised concerns about the #ToxicAlliance in public and formal communications to the FAO leadership and Member States, dialogues with FAO officials, as well as global actions.
We believe that such vigilance had a significant impact on how the FAO moved forward with what CropLife claimed was a “strategic partnership agreement.” In its communications with us in the course of this campaign, the FAO has maintained that the LoI did not constitute a formal engagement or partnership, but an “exploratory framework which may, or may not, lead to further engagements.”
We commend the FAO leadership for its decision to not further formalize its engagement or partnership with CropLife. We welcome and encourage the role the FAO now plays toward delivering on its commitments in the new Global Framework on Chemicals and Waste (GFC) and leading the work on implementing these commitments through the Global Alliance on Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), in coordination with WHO and UNEP. The FAO has a golden opportunity to show that it will make substantial progress on phasing out the most hazardous pesticides known as HHPs worldwide, and supporting the transition towards sustainable, resilient and equitable production systems under the agroecological paradigm.
We enjoin the FAO to not enter into any future partnership with the pesticide industry, bearing in mind that its due diligence framework includes specific sets of exclusionary criteria for high-risk sectors and makes clear that the agency must not pursue partnerships with entities that are not in compliance with human rights obligations or have the potential to negatively impact communities and the environment.
As a UN organization, FAO is obliged to serve the public interest and uphold human rights. Towards that, it must take effective measures to end undue corporate influence on its strategic direction and work, and, among others, provide full transparency about voluntary contributions and about all engagements with the corporate sector. FAO should expand the scope of the new diligence framework to include clear, accessible and effective accountability mechanisms to address duty of care, grievance, liability, and remedy.
We remain concerned about the FAO’s continuing informal engagements with CropLife and call for greater transparency and accountability in this regard. We will continue to monitor FAO´s actions and encourage the FAO to direct its engagements and resources towards phasing out HHPs, reducing reliance on pesticides, and transitioning to agroecology. To reach these goals, the FAO must strengthen its collaboration with organizations of small-scale food providers, Indigenous Peoples and civil society.
We sincerely thank all individuals, organizations, Peoples, and other allies who supported the campaign to Stop the #ToxicAlliance. Let us continue to ensure that our global food systems are not captured by corporate interests and prioritize human rights and the planet over profit.
Pesticide Action Network International
Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
FIAN International
Friends of the Earth International
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
International Indian Treaty Council (IITC)
International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN)
International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied
Workers’ Associations (IUF)
Public Eye
Third World Network
We invite you to join the presentation and discussion of the report from the in-person Grassroot Innovation for Agroecology (GIA) convening held in Italy in October ’23.
Grassroots Innovation Assembly for Agroecology (GIA)
Presentation & Discussion of the report of the in-person GIA convening in Gallese (Italy, Oct ’23)
with 11th Hour Project, OpenTeam, FarmHack, Schola Campesina, and
Maya Cohen, author of the convening report
Drawing from a foundation of food sovereignty, agroecology and the Rights of people to define their food systems, GIA has been created (2023) to defend technological autonomy as a powerful tool to strengthen small-scale food producers globally and improve resilience, autonomy and sovereignty
GIA is a space of sharing where grassroots innovations networks around the world -who are already demonstrating an farmer-led future for agricultural technology – can connect and build a grassroots perspective on innovations.
The event will be held in English,
and possibly other languages supported by GIA organizations (tbd)
Dates depending on your timezone:
Wednesday, June 12th. Registration Link
9 am PT / 6 pm CEST
Thursday, June 13th Registration Link
11 am CEST / 12 pm (noon) Nairobi time /
3:30 pm New Delhi time / 4 pm Jakarta time
The REPORT
You will find the report here
INVITE A FRIEND
Feel free to pass on the invitation to organizations and people in your network.
We look forward to seeing you there!
— Schola Campesina & the GIA organizing team –
WEBINAR INVITATION
A look inside the pipeline: Artificial intelligence in agritech research and development
Tuesday May 7th, 16h – 17h CET
In this webinar Wout Vierbergen, PhD researcher at the Flemish Research Institute for Agriculture and Fishery (ILVO), will give an introduction to the use of artificial intelligence in agriculture and food research. We will focus on a few examples that are currently in the research pipeline: What are they? How is artificial intelligence integrated into agrifood technologies? What are the incentives to do so? Who are the partners involved? What are the issues that AI should help address? And what questions does that raise?
The presentation will be followed by reflections from Andrea Ferrante, agroecologist at Schola Campesina, and an open Q&A.
This webinar is open for civil society organisations. The webinar is part of series, following the publication of a joint report between Friends of the Earth Europe, FIAN International and the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience / AgroecologyNow “Remote control and peasant intelligence. On automating decisions, suppressing knowledges and transforming ways of knowing“.
If you would like to participate. Please register HERE .
Looking forward to seeing you at the webinar!
