Dear Friend,

On October 16, peasant movements will be celebrating 25 years of Food Sovereignty! As you may know from our Sept 28th email, Grassroots is launching our Sustaining the Struggle campaign to raise up this essential concept, to defend the planet and people at the heart of healthy and sustainable food systems. But what is food sovereignty, anyway? Why does it, and your support, matter?

Different from corporate-driven ideas of “food security,” food sovereignty centers real democracy for our food systems. Ordinary people have a right to control their food, land, and territories against agribusiness that devastates small farmers and the planet.

In Mexico, massive development projects like mining, highways, and dams threaten the farmlands of peasant and Indigenous communities. SER Mixe, guided by food sovereignty, uses judicial advocacy to protect these communities.

As a result, this year SER Mixe won a major victory confirming community land rights.  A southern Mexico court compensated a community that was illegally deprived of land in order to construct a dam — but the struggle continues.

In Puerto Rico, the continued reliance on expensive, unhealthy, imported food is a key means to keeping the island under U.S. control. But activists from Comedores Sociales and Organización Boricuá are building food sovereign communities across the island by combining the struggle for peasant farming with the struggle against corrupt political elites.

The Comedores Sociales, community kitchens, are demonstrating additional creative possibilities of food sovereignty with a low-cost community kitchen and self-managed food distribution — all rooted in peasant-led agriculture techniques. They have fed the thousands of protesters who recently made the governor resign, a push toward dismantling the colonial economy.

These and other food sovereignty movements face serious threats. Agribusinesses send armed attackers to throw peasants off their land. They peddle GM seeds that shackle farmers into debt. And they have devastated the climate with fossil-fuel farming. That’s why small farmers, peasants, and Indigneous communities need our material support — much-needed resources to face down massive corporations.

Can you commit to giving $10, $25, $50, or more in solidarity with these and other movements — to meet our $14,000 goal by October 22? Our Sustaining the Struggle campaign will allow peasants, farm workers, Indigenous People, the Quilombolas, and farm communities everywhere to continue organizing in the face of corporate power.

We need real control over our food systems. We need food sovereignty everywhere. That can only be accomplished if we come together and keep up the fight. Another world is possible, and food sovereignty is key to building it.

In solidarity & gratitude, Chung-Wha Hong Executive Director