http://esthervivas.com/2013/04/19/campesinos-del-mundo-unios/

Esther Vivas

Year after year the peasant population in the world has been declining. The rural exodus has become a reality in the course of the twentieth century. What has led to a radical change of scenery and traditional farming. In 2007, for the first time in human history, most of the world’s population already living in cities.

The Spanish state has not been an exception. And agriculture has gone from being one of the main economic activities to a practice almost residual. If in the 70′s even 25% of the active population worked in agriculture, today this figure has been reduced to 4%, and has meant a loss of more than two and a half million jobs. The farms are rapidly disappearing. Between 1999 and 2009, fell by 23%, according to the 2009 Agricultural Census INE. Soon we will have to hang in our fields the sign “Closed for death”.

The agricultural income also continued in freefall. And in 2012 fell to levels of twenty years ago, according to the farmers union COAG, with the consequent impoverishment of the peasantry. Poverty and rural world go hand in hand. In Europe, one third of the poor are concentrated in rural areas. And poverty affects in particular women. The aging population, lack of opportunities for young people, emigration, low incomes in agriculture, poor infrastructure are clear symptoms of poverty in the country, as the report Poverty and Social Exclusion in Rural Areas [Poverty and Social Exclusion in Rural Areas] of the European Union in 2008.

The peasants away but our food needs are still there. So who feed us? Who produce and distribute the food? A few companies in the agribusiness and distribution are those that currently control the entire food chain, from origin to end. Multinationals looking to make money, and much, with food. Dupont, Syngenta, Monsanto, Kraft, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Carrefour, Auchan, El Corte Ingles, Mercadona are just a few. And so it goes.

These days we celebrate the Week of Peasant Struggle to demand other agricultural and food policies. A key issue: the fight against GMOs. The Spanish State is the gateway of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in Europe, its paradise. Varieties banned in other countries, such as France, Greece, Austria, Germany …, here conrean. And another front: food sovereignty, which is to restore the ability to decide what is produced and eaten farmers and consumers. Being sovereign, to decide. Words prescribed in these times.

La Via Campesina, the international movement of farmers most important North and South, the hardest hit by the advance of neoliberal globalization, the landless, small farmers, women farmers … take him claiming since the mid-90s. Its leitmotiv: Farmers of the world unite. Need them.

* Article published in Public, 19/04/2013.

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