---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---

December 9, 2019

Media Contact:
Anuradha Mittal
amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
+1(510)469-5228

December 10, International Human Rights Day

Oakland, CA—Amidst growing authoritarianism and intolerance of dissent, Tanzanian President John Magufuli’s latest move takes away the ability of individuals and NGOs to file cases against the government in the African Court on Human and People’s Rights—continental court that Tanzania hosts. This is not only a grave threat to human rights in the country but also sends the wrong message to African governments and thwarts African efforts to establish continental human rights bodies.

“When domestic mechanisms fail and there is no rule of law, independent regional and international mechanisms are essential to ensure accountability and human rights for all,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute. “The Magufuli administration’s action to pull out from the African Court on Human and People’s Rights further entrenches the human rights crisis that has been building in the country since 2015 with passage of various legislations criminalizing dissent and freedom of opinion,” she continued.

Similarly, basic rights to life, security, food and housing, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and more—are being systematically denied to the Indigenous Maasai pastoralists in the Loliondo and Ngorongoro regions of northern Tanzania. The Oakland Institute’s research and advocacy has exposed the plight of the Maasai villagers who face intimidation, violent evictions, arrests, beatings, and starvation—by the Tanzanian government to benefit safari and game park businesses. Following violent evictions of Maasai villagers from their legally registered land in August 2017 which left 5,800 homes damaged and 20,000 homeless, four impacted Maasai villages sought recourse against the government—perpetrator of these abuses—in the regional East African Court of Justice (EACJ). In September 2018, EACJ granted an injunction prohibiting the government from evicting communities, prohibited the destruction of Maasai homesteads and confiscation of livestock on said land, and banned the office of the Inspector General of Police from harassing and intimidating the plaintiffs, pending the full determination of their case. Despite this, intimidation and threats continue which allegedly led to the expert witness for the plaintiffs not showing up at the last hearing in November 2019.

“In case of failure to secure justice at the regional court, Tanzania’s withdrawal from the African Court, takes away the ability of the Maasai villagers to seek redress at the continental court, thereby severing a vital path to peace, development, and security,” said Mittal. According to Amnesty International, Tanzania has the highest number of cases filed against it and judgments ruled against it by the African Court. By September 2019, 28 decisions out of the 70 decisions issued by the court—or 40 percent—were on Tanzania.

“With a full-blown human rights crisis in the country which threatens stability and democracy, it is essential that the Tanzanian government immediately reverses its decision. Instead of weakening African human rights bodies, it should work to strengthen its domestic judicial system. The Magufuli administration needs to understand and respect that when a government recklessly violates the rights of its citizens, international scrutiny and action is paramount,” Mittal continued.

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Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for achieving peace with Eritrea. Yet Indigenous groups in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley have been abused by government forces, a fact the prime minister must address, says the Oakland Institute.

By Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute & Naomi Maisel, Intern Scholar

Just as the calm before a storm, the notion of “peace” is relegated merely to a temporary ruse if not supported by the foundations of justice and equality.

This international Human Rights Day, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for securing peaceful relationships with neighbouring Eritrea, as well as domestic reforms supporting equality and justice. Yet he already made headlines days before the ceremony in Oslo, Norway, by refusing to attend a press conference called by the Nobel Institute and an additional one alongside the Norwegian Prime Minister, normally attended by each year’s Nobel Laureate.

The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Olav Njolstad, expressed concern regarding Ahmed’s refusal to attend any events at which he would face questions by the press, especially as the ceremony comes in the wake of violence throughout Ethiopia, with reports of at least 67 people dead in Addis Ababa, the country’s capital, during protests at the end of October.

Addressing violence in the Lower Omo Valley

While Ahmed condemned the bloodshed, promising to “bring perpetrators to justice,” he hasn’t yet addressed reports of violence among Ethiopia’s marginalised groups located in the country’s south, in the Lower Omo Valley region. The Oakland Institute has received evidence that Ethiopian forces have detained and abused members of two tribes in the area, the Bodi and Mursi, under the guise of a disarmament campaign, subjecting them to inhumane conditions.

Early December, the Trump administration finalized a rule that will tighten work requirements to qualify for food stamps; a decision that will strip desperately needed food assistance from an estimated 700,000 people.

The administration points to the low unemployment rate as justification for cutting off those it sees as taking advantage of the assistance. "Government dependency has never been the American dream,” offered Sonny Perdue, the secretary of Agriculture and longtime proponent of rolling back such programs. However, claiming that those who will be cut from assistance are simply idle government dependents demonstrates a willful ignorance over who will be impacted.

The move is especially ruthless, as it will impact those who are already experiencing homelessness, have significant health issues, or already struggling to reach 20 hours of work per week at multiple low-income jobs. While most low-income, non-disabled adults work, their job security is low and they struggle through periods in between jobs, often relying on temporary or variable-hour labor. When in between jobs, food assistance provides a critical lifeline for low-income groups. Living far below the poverty line and with monthly income averaging just US$600, those who will be affected are especially vulnerable. Overall, people of color, those without higher education, and those in rural areas will be the hardest hit.

This move is the first in a series of efforts by the Department of Agriculture to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - previously known as food stamps. According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, if all these proposed regulatory changes are adopted, food assistance to nearly 4 million people would be cut and nearly a million children would lose free or reduced price school lunches.

With food insecurity affecting more than 820 million people globally, it is all too easy to forget how pressing this issue remains within the US, where over 37 million people– including 6 million children, live in food insecure households. Further limiting who can receive SNAP will likely worsen these numbers, as the program is the primary source of nutrition assistance for low-income groups and has been found to reduce the overall prevalence of food insecurity by up to 30 percent.

In one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world, allowing millions to suffer from food insecurity is a policy choice.

This choice has been made after passing a massive, US$1.5 trillion tax cut package to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. These cuts have not benefited the middle class, raised wages, or spurred investment, as the corporate savings have fueled record “stock buy-backs” that benefit shareholders instead of workers. Others to benefit from Trump’s handouts are large agribusiness. In response to a self-inflicted trade-war that has seen China implement retaliatory tariffs,Trump ordered the USDA to distribute a US$28 billion bailout to impacted farmers. According to data analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), half of the US$6 billion given between August and October 2019 went to the top 10 percent of recipients– the wealthy owners of the largest, industrial-scale farms. Instead of means testing bailout recipients (just as USDA does for SNAP) and targeting American farmers struggling on the margins, the Trump administration is yet again granting handouts to the rich while further limiting support to those struggling to make ends-meet.

While the administration estimates the cuts to SNAP will save on average just over US$1 billion a year (US$5.5 billion over five years), the move has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. To place the savings from the SNAP cuts in further context, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that as a result of Trump’s tax bill cuts, government revenue fell by US$40 billion from 2017 to 2018. In mid December, both houses of Congress passed a massive defense spending bill that, in addition to creating the “Space Force”, authorizes US$738 billion in military spending for 2020– an increase of US$30 billion from 2019. Spending at this level further indicates where the administration’s priorities reside.

Together, these measures further intensify inequality in a country where the richest one percent holds over 42 percent of national wealth. This trend has only grown over the past 50 years, as the wealth of the top one percent has grown 100 times the rate of the bottom 50 percent. The wealth of American millionaires and billionaires continues to climb alongside homelessness. This stark contrast is all too familiar in California, where an estimated 130,000 homeless people live. In the Oakland Institute’s home Alameda County, homelessness jumped by 43 percent from 2017 to 2018.

Those waiting for the massive wealth held by our richest citizens to trickle down and benefit the entire country should not hold their breath. While inequality at this scale is not inevitable, it will continue until it is confronted head-on by a government not beholden to the richest handful of Americans.

On October 15^th 2019, Malawi’s Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Water Development, Kondwani Nankhuma kicked off the 14th year of the country’s Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP). The program, which distributes vouchers to farmers that subsidize the cost of fertilizer and “improved” seed varieties, has been the dominant response to persistent food insecurity in the country.

Just two weeks before FISP began the new season, the Famine Early Warning Network System announced parts of Southern Malawi will experience acute food insecurity at “Crisis” levels between October 2019 and March 2020. Food shortfalls were attributed to the massive floods that wreaked havoc for hundreds of thousands in March 2019. Climate change has without question arrived for millions of vulnerable farmers in Malawi.

After over a decade, has FISP been successful in addressing hunger in Malawi? In this new climate reality, will Malawian farmers be able to adapt using the “improved” seed and chemical fertilizer subsidized by FISP?

The Limitations of FISP

In terms of funding, FISP has dominated Malawi’s agriculture development strategy. At its peak in 2008/9, FISP received 74 percent of the Ministry of Agriculture budget and 16 percent of the entire Malawian government budget. While spending on the program has fallen, the program was still allocated over US$ 48.5 million (K 35.5 billion) –20 percent of the Agriculture budget– to target 900,000 farmers in 2019/20. Three quarters of this sum subsidized chemical fertilizer for the 2019/20 season.

The limitations of addressing hunger by subsidizing chemical fertilizer and “improved” seeds are obvious after 13 years of the program. While maize production has increased over the lifespan of FISP, it remains volatile and highly dependent on precipitation. From 2004 to 2014, maize production more than doubled to nearly 4 million tons, but subsequently dropped to under 2.4 million tons – a drastic 40 percent fall that followed drought and floods between 2015 and 2016.

The FISP program has failed to meaningfully reduce food insecurity and the high volatility of maize prices in Malawi. This volatility in prices harms farmers primarily reliant on maize: as years with good harvests see prices fall and incomes stunted, while poor production years result in not having enough surplus maize to sell. Either way, volatile prices within a maize dominant system keep Malawian farmers from climbing out of poverty.

Throughout the lifespan of FISP, Malawi has remained tethered to the bottom of various food security indicators. The Global Food Security Index currently has Malawi ranked 107 out of 113 countries in terms of affordability, availability, and quality of food. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that between 2016 and 2018 over 9.6 million Malawians – 51 percent of the population – were severely food insecure.

So why does so much money continue to support a program that has failed to significantly improve food security? If farmers are not benefitting from FISP, who is?

Benefitting Agribusiness at the Expense of Farmers

While FISP has not lifted Malawians out of hunger, it has benefitted the multinational agribusiness companies whose hybrid seed and chemical fertilizer are paid for by the program. Without subsidies, these multinational companies would have a much smaller market in poorer countries, as farmers could not afford to buy the inputs they sell. The subsidies are therefore crucial to the business of these firms in Malawi–regardless of the program’s impact.

In a chapter of his recent book Eating Tomorrow, Timothy Wise takes a deep dive into the insidious role agribusiness has played in ensuring FISP continues in Malawi. Through interviews with Monsanto staff, government officials, and academics, he reveals how the program is a “cash-cow for seed companies” and documents how FISP benefits agribusiness at the expense of farmers.

The stranglehold that the Gates Foundation and other development players behind the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) have over debt riddled African governments will not be easily broken. Major donors, working hand in hand with agribusiness, push governments towards input heavy approaches that, while profitable for corporations, have been ineffective in reducing hunger in Africa.

Politicians and farmers are trapped in a vicious cycle that is both financially and environmentally untenable. For politicians, ending FISP would be politically disastrous without offering a viable alternative to pervasive hunger. Heavily reliant on donor support, governments struggle to independently change course. For farmers, the use of chemical fertilizer depletes the land’s nutrients– requiring more fertilizer each year to produce at the same level. This creates a dead-end: Farmers’ incomes and food security don’t improve while their soil loses fertility overtime, requiring higher expenses on fertilizers every year.

While many farmers remained trapped in this cycle, those who have broken free offer a clear path forward.

An Agroecology Success Story: The Permaculture Paradise Institute

Born into a family of 12 children in Malawi, Luwayo Biswick grew up all too familiar with persistent hunger. While the government and aid agencies continued to call for more fertilizer and “better” seeds, Luwayo came to see the deeper flaws in a system designed to “provide maize at one point in the year.” Even when everything went to plan, farmers had to struggle through the long hunger season.

After working his way up to Permaculture Manager at Never Ending Food in Chitedze, Luwayo had the knowledge to implement his vision. “My aim is to build the capacity of farmers so that they can establish systems that adapt to the changing climate, thrive under difficult conditions, and provide nutritious food year round.” In line with agroecology, this system offers farmers the tools necessary to adapt to climate change by relying on a diverse range of crops sourced from farmer saved indigenous seed varieties and grown with organic fertilizer.

Luwayo saw the need to show that a better system was possible and to stand up as a pillar for those left behind by ineffective input subsidies.

Along with his wife Grace, they founded Permaculture Paradise Institute (PPI) on just over six hectares near Mchinji in 2017. Through intercropping diverse native crops, installing a simple and affordable water catchment system, planting trees, and composting organic fertilizer, the PPI farm now produces over 200 different crops without chemical fertilizers or hybrid seed.

Word of the farm quickly spread to surrounding villages as farmers flocked to see the rapid transformation. In 2019 alone, Luwayo and Grace trained over 150 farmers from nine surrounding villages. These farmers had land they had previously believed to be unproductive, as the conventional input heavy model had failed them. Through in depth training, distributing seeds grown at PPI, and providing follow up consultations, PPI was able to give these farmers the tools necessary to grow ample amounts of diverse food year round. In return, PPI takes 10 percent of the seeds from each farm to spread to the next group of farmers.

Without major donor funding or government subsidies, PPI has created a highly scalable model to spread the knowledge and share the seeds necessary for a deep agricultural transformation.

Adapting to Climate Change and Building Resiliency through Agroecology

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Food Security makes it clear that the agroecology model directly addresses many of the concerns farmers face in the wake of ineffective input subsidy programs. Because they are diverse and adapted to local contexts, locally developed farmer seeds have been proven to be more climate resilient compared to commercial “improved” varieties. Two case studies from Malawi demonstrate how tree planting and intercropping with legumes have both been found to improve soil previously degraded by chemical fertilizer. These cases are not isolated and provide hard evidence that agroecology has proven effective for some of the most resource constrained farmers living in the least forgiving climates.

Successfully scaling agroecology in Malawi would have massive implications globally; as input subsidy programs like FISP continue to consume agriculture budgets across the continent. Just like in Malawi, these programs have largely failed–as evidenced by the intensive multi-year study conducted by the African Centre for Biodiversity on the negative impact FISP has had on Zambian farmers or by their video series that reveal farmers’ frustrations with FISP interventions across Africa.

Transitioning away from input subsidies and massively scaling up agroecology offers the only viable path forward to address hunger. The time for a system that empowers farmers instead of agribusiness, restores the fertility of our soils, and preserves our environment is long overdue.

For more information on the Permaculture Paradise Institute: Visit their Facebook Page

Highlighting the diverse range of success stories across the continent, The Oakland Institute has published 33 case studies showing the success of agroecology across Africa.

Reformed World Bank Program Still Fails the Farmers

In 2013, the World Bank launched the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, aimed at guiding pro-business reforms in the agriculture sector. It was initially commissioned to support the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, an initiative launched by the G8 to promote private sector-led agricultural development in Africa.

Financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the US, and the UK (and formerly by the Dutch and Danish governments), the EBA’s goal is to help create “policies that facilitate doing business in agriculture and increase the investment attractiveness and competitiveness of countries.” To achieve this, the Bank recommends pro-business reforms and scores countries on their performance in applying these recommendations. The scores obtained then condition the provision of international aid and are intended to influence foreign investment in these countries. The EBA exemplifies a growing trend in international aid programs, which have become instruments to enforce market-based and pro-private sector industrial agriculture.

The 280-member strong, multi-continental campaign, Our Land Our Business, was launched in 2014. It brings together over 280 organizations, including farmers groups, trade unions, and civil society organizations from around the world that have joined hands to denounce such a top-down imposition of policies detrimental to farmers and food security by the World Bank and its donors.

Impacts of the Our Land Our Business Campaign

Since its inception, the advocacy campaign has yielded some tangible results.

Donor support to the project has faded in recent years. The Danish and Dutch governments withdrew their financing in 2016, and the UK (DFID) cut its funding by nearly half over the last three years. DFID funding has been extended through October 2020, but it has urged the Bank to search for new and alternative sources of financing for the program. Additionally, the EBA team has shrunk from over 50 staff in January 2019 to just 11 today - indicating a dramatic restructuring of the project.

In 2017, following joint advocacy letters signed by 158 organizations and academics to the World Bank and its donors regarding the EBA’s threat to farmers’ right to seeds, the Bank recognized for the first time in EBA publication the importance of informal farmer seed systems, incorporating almost verbatim the language of the campaign into its 2017 EBA report:

“Informal systems are based on small-scale farmers’ own efforts to save seeds from their crops, and by farmer-to-farmer gifts, exchanges, and trade. Informal seed systems provide a rich diversity of seed, including varieties that are relevant to farmers and adapted to local weather conditions.”

This constituted a major statement from the Bank given the EBA had solely focused on promoting commercial seeds previously, which was a major concern for farmers and civil society organizations for its impact on biodiversity and food security.

2019 saw another major achievement for the campaign, as the latest EBA report released in October has dropped the Land Indicator, which the Oakland Institute and others had denounced as a route to privatize the commons and promote large-scale industrial farming and land grabbing. The Land indicator asked governments to formalize private property rights, ease the sale and lease of land for commercial use, systematize the sale of public land by auction to the highest bidder, and improve procedures for expropriation. The dropping of these demands by the Bank is a major victory for billions of family farmers, pastoralists, and Indigenous Peoples around the world who rely on their land for their livelihoods and struggle to protect it from the greed of private interests and corporations. Although the land indicator was included in the 2017 report, the Bank said in October 2019 that it is “still under development” and that this was the reason for not including it in its new report.

The 2019 report also incorporated positive shifts in language, recognizing the importance of customary land rights and stating that safeguards to protect these rights should be “a development priority.” The report continued to acknowledged the importance of informal seed systems, while also shifting its overall rhetoric from a focus on agribusiness to a focus on farmers. For instance, in 2017, the Bank stated that the main objective of the EBA was “to measure and benchmark regulations that impact agribusiness globally,” while they now claim that it “measures whether governments make it easier for farmers to operate agricultural businesses.”

This shift is apparent in the Bank’s inclusion of “better farm practices” via stricter regulation of plant health, the dissemination of water-management information and increased access to livestock feed and medicinal products. Making valuable information and products more available to farmers that were otherwise out of reach is a step in the right direction.

The Bank also makes recommendations for increasing farmers’ credit and market access, focusing on finance and food trade via the use of warehouse receipts and non-bank lending organizations. These recommendations tend to provide farmers with options outside of the traditional bank-lending systems that have historically excluded and/or taken advantage of them.

EBA Still Favors Large Agribusinesses at the Expense of Farmers and the Environment

However, despite what appears to be positive changes, there remain ingrained issues within the development doctrine behind the program.

The most recent EBA report demonstrates a strong focus on commercial agricultural inputs and on encouraging a transition to mechanized agriculture and monocropped farming methods. The Bank deems agricultural inputs (commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides) as at the heart of “lagging” productivity growth and low yields. However, focusing on intensifying the use of these inputs will favor market opportunities of large agribusiness, while leading to dependency and higher expenses for farmers, as well as environmental and health degradation.

Looking at seeds, while it still acknowledges the importance of farmer-led seed systems, the 2019 report claims that farmer-sourced seeds are of low quality, and, although it doesn’t explicitly disqualify them, gives a score of “0” if no seeds are formally registered. The Bank still uses the seed indicator to prioritize regulations favorable to commercial seeds, giving higher scores for Variety Release Committee activity, a listed registered variety catalog, and regulations allowing private companies to access genetic material and more easily register seed. Additionally, by focusing on measures to increase cereal yield, the Bank encourages farmers to grow mono-cropped fields and overlooks the importance of diversified agricultural production in terms of food and economic security, resilience to climatic shocks, and sustainable management of soils and natural resources.

As the Oakland Institute reported in January 2017, the Bank’s prescriptions threaten seed diversity, require farmers to pay for a resource that was previously free and renewable, and put them at risk legally for engaging in their own “informal” practices. Farmer-managed seed systems encompass both on-farm seed saving and farmer-to-farmer exchanges. They provide a rich diversity of seed varieties adapted to local conditions, and ensure cheaper and often more reliable access to seed than formal systems.

The fertilizer indicator is similarly misleading with a focus on “farmers’ access” while also easing private-sector fertilizer registration, via decreased time and cost, and encouraging farmer use, via public catalogs and language-inclusive labels. Prescriptions around “quality control” encourage the avoidance of dual-registration if a product is already registered in another country, making it easier for agribusiness to trade fertilizers across borders.

For the Bank, the aim of the machinery indicator is to encourage the “transition from subsistence to commercial farming,” by easing the sale of four-wheel drive tractors to farmers. Despite the drop of the land indicator, which was clearly geared towards promoting large-scale farming, this indicator is further evidence that the Bank’s agenda has not changed. Focused solely on such tractors, which require large surfaces of agricultural land to operate on, the Bank ignores all sorts of machinery that can be of use for smallholders, for instance small two-wheel or three-wheel drive tractors, adapted to small surfaces, water pumps for small-scale irrigation, or de-husking machines for the processing of crops.

Beyond the above concerns over the focus on increased use of agricultural inputs and tractors, one must also remain wary of some of the positive changes mentioned earlier regarding the 2019 report. Whereas the Bank acknowledges the importance of customary lands and informal seed systems in the report, these elements are not actually factored into the countries’ scoring. These changes are thus meaningless in an EBA program that was established to score countries on their reforms in favor of agribusiness and large-scale industrial agriculture and to condition aid to the implementation of such pro-business reforms.

The EBA program was not created to help farmers. The Bank’s claims to support farmers via the EBA is inherently contradictory to the own raison d'être of the program. The best way for the World Bank to assist farmers would be to disband the EBA program altogether.

February 10, 2020

António Guterres
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, NY USA

Call to Revoke AGRA’s Agnes Kalibata as Special Envoy to 2021 UN Food Systems Summit

Dear Secretary-General Guterres,

We, the undersigned 176 organizations from 83 countries, write to condemn and reject the appointment of Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), as your Special Envoy to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.

With 820 million people hungry and an escalating climate crisis, the need for significant global action is urgent to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Given the history of AGRA, the appointment of its President to lead, prepare, and design the Summit, will result in another forum that advances the interests of agribusiness at the expense of farmers and our planet.

Founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s efforts have centered on capturing and diverting public resources to benefit large corporate interests. Their finance-intensive and high input agricultural model is not sustainable beyond constant subsidy, which is drawn from increasingly scarce public resources. Since 2006, AGRA has worked to open up Africa—seen as an untapped market for corporate monopolies controlling commercial seeds, genetically modified crops, fossil fuel-heavy synthetic fertilizers and polluting pesticides. This is an ill-conceived approach focused on mono cultural commodity production by large agribusiness at the expense of sustainable livelihoods, human development, and poverty eradication.

Ignoring the past failures of the Green Revolution and industrial agriculture, AGRA continues to promote the same, orienting farmers into global value chains for the export of standardized commodities. Vast power imbalances in these global chains means multinational grain traders, silo owners, transport companies, feed manufacturers, and financial institutions extract and retain the majority of value for themselves, while farmers remain trapped in cycles of poverty and debt.

Furthermore, this model of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture is laying waste to the environment. Synthetic fertilizers are responsible for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen from these fertilizers is poorly absorbed by plants, and subsequently leaches into water systems and escapes into the atmosphere in the form of nitrous oxide. Long distance transport adds carbon emissions. Family farmers, pastoralists, and Indigenous communities, who are the stewards of the land and guardians of agricultural biodiversity, are marginalized and forced off their land, replaced by pesticide-reliant monocultures.

If the Food Systems Summit truly aims to “generate momentum, expand the knowledge and share experience and approaches worldwide to unleash the benefits of food systems for all people,” Agnes Kalibata is unfit and the wrong candidate to lead it. The world must shift gears on food and agriculture in order to tackle the major challenges of our time. Beyond increasing agricultural yields, we must produce and consume better. We need diversified and nutritious crops, produced in a truly sustainable manner, preserving and restoring the health and fertility of our soils, managing our water efficiently, ensuring resilience to climatic shocks, and providing adequate food and income to family farmers. Dr. Kalibata’s appointment is a deliberate attempt to silence the farmers of the world who feed, nurture, and protect the planet.

As stated by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, the priority should be to strengthen food sovereignty, the fight against climate change and the conservation of biodiversity. This requires a rapid transition from corporate-dominated industrial agriculture to family farms working in harmony with nature and maintaining diverse ecosystems. Agroecology is a practical solution for systemic change to ensure dignified rural livelihoods and the right to healthy food and nutrition for all, while freeing farmers from cycles of debt and dependency.

AGRA and Dr. Kalibata, who also sits on the board of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), are puppets of agro-industrial corporations and their shareholders. Led by DR. Kalibata, the Summit will be nothing but a tool for further corporate predation on the people and natural systems. We therefore call on you to immediately revoke Dr. Kalibata’s appointment.

Sincerely,

Signatories:
ACT NOW!, Papua New Guinea
Action Aid International, International
Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN), International
African Women's Network for Community management of Forests (REFACOF), Cameroon
Agroecology Research-Action Collective (ARC), International
All India Kisan Sabha, India
All India Union of Forest Working People, India
Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), India
Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV, INC), Philippines
ATTAC Hungary Association, Hungary
Autre Terre, Belgium
Banana Link, UK
Biowatch South Africa, South Africa
CELCOR, Papua New Guinea
Center for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, UK
Center for Development Programs in the Cordillera (CDPC), Philippines
Centre d’études et d’expérimentations économiques et sociales de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, International
Centre International de Formation en Agroécologie Nyéléni, Mali
Centro de Documentación en Derechos Humanos “Segundo Montes Mozo S.J.” (CSMM), Ecuador
Centro Interdiscilinario de Investigación y Desarrollo Alternativo, U Yich Lu'um, Mexico
Cercle pour la Défense de l’Environnement (CEDEN), Democratic Republic of Congo
CCFD-Terre Solidaire, France
Community Alliance for Global Justice/AGRA Watch, USA
Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes (CNOP),Mali
CNCD-11.11.11., Belgium
Cultural Survival, International
Eat for the Earth, USA
Eco Custodian Advocates, Papua New Guinea
Entraide et Fraternité, Belgium
Environmental Monitoring Group, South Africa
Eclosio, Belgium
Ecological Solutions Foundation, Solomon Islands
Ecumenical Academy (Ekumenická akademie), Czech Republic
ETC Group, Global
Europe Third World Center, Switzerland
Fair Food Alliance Brisbane, Australia
Farmworker Association of Florida, USA
FOCO Foro Ciudadano de Participación, Argentina
Food Connect Foundation, Australia
Food Sovereignty Ghana, Ghana
Forest Peoples Programme, UK
Federation of Friends of the Earth International (76 national organizations)
Fundacion para Estudio e Investigacion de la Mujer, Argentina
Global Aktion, Denmark
Global Forest Coalition, International
GRAIN, International
Gram Bharati Samiti (GBS), India
Green Development Advocates (GDA), Cameroon
Green Scenery, Sierra Leone
Groundswell International, Global
Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria
Human Rights Defenders Network, Sierra Leone
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), India
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI), USA
Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, India
Jubilee Austalia, Australia
La Route du Sel et de l'Espoir, France
La Via Campesina, Denmark
Iles de Paix, Belgium
Inyanda National Land Movement, South Africa
Louvain Cooperation, Belgium
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Brazil
Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation, Inc. (MISFI), Philippines
National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE), Uganda
Network Movement for Justice and Development, Sierra Leone
Never Ending Food, Malawi
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, USA
People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS), International
Plateforme Nationale des Organisations Paysannes et de Producteurs Agricoles du Bénin (PNOPPA), Benin
PLANT (Partners for the Land & Agricultural Needs of Traditional Peoples), Brazil
Popular Education & Action Centre (PEACE), India
PROSALUS, Spain
Rapad Maroc, Morocco
Regional Center for International Development Cooperation(RCIDC) International, Uganda
Rural Initiative on Participatory Agriculture Network (RIPAN), Kenya
Rural Women’s Assembly Southern Africa, South Africa
Sahara Bahuuddeshiay Sanstha Kinhi, India
Sahayak Trust, India
Send a Cow (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia)
Social Watch, International
Solidagro, Belgium
Solidarité des Femmes Burundaises pour le Bien Être Social et le Progrès au Burundi, SFBSP, Burundi
SOS Faim Belgique, Belgium
Sierra Leone Adult Education Association (SLADEA), Sierra Leone
Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI), South Africa
Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN), Uganda
Tamil Nadu organic farmers federation, India
The Oakland Institute, USA
The Trust for Community Outreach and Education, South Africa
ToxicsWatch Alliance, India
Undral Gombodorj, Democracy Education Center (DEMO), Mongolia
United for the protection of Human Rights (UPHR-SL), Sierra Leone
Washington Biotechnology Action Council, USA
World Animal Net, International
World Family, UK
Zambia Alliance for Agroecology and Biodiversity, Zambia

Image: Screenshot from AGRA Harvest's February 6, 2020 video, Dr. Agnes Kalibata's Message on Building Sustainable Food Systems. Credit: AGRA Harvest

SAN FRANCISCO (IDN) – As Dr. Agnes Kalibata arrived in Rome on February 10, 2020 to meet with Dr. QU Dongyu, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), her appointment as the UN Secretary-General Guterres' Special Envoy to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit was rejected by over 175 civil society organizations from 83 countries.

By 2021, when the UN summit will take place, an estimated one billion people will be suffering from chronic undernourishment while climate crisis is already the defining issue of the century.

While strong political will is urgently needed to tackle this human made disaster, the appointment of Dr. Kalibata – President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) – to lead, prepare, and design the Summit, hijacks yet another global forum to promote fossil-fuel based corporate industrial agriculture.

In order to measure the implications of this capture of a UN Food Summit by AGRA, it is essential to look at the history of the organization.

Founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA has worked since its inception in 2006 to open up Africa—seen as an untapped market for corporate monopolies controlling commercial seeds, genetically modified crops, fossil fuel-heavy synthetic fertilizers and polluting pesticides.

Willfully ignoring the past failures of the Green Revolution and industrial agriculture, AGRA continues to promote the same – orienting farmers into global value chains for the export of cash crop commodities.

Its finance-intensive and high input agricultural model is dependent on constant subsidy, which is drawn from increasingly scarce public resources. Furthermore, AGRA's model of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture is laying waste to the environment.

Synthetic fertilizers are responsible for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen from these fertilizers is poorly absorbed by plants, and subsequently leaches into water systems and escapes into the atmosphere in the form of nitrous oxide. Long distance transport adds carbon emissions.

As industrial monoculture plantations spread, family farmers, pastoralists, and Indigenous communities, who are the stewards of the land and guardians of agricultural biodiversity, are marginalized and forced off their land.

It is not a coincidence that Dr. Kalibata also serves on the board of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC). AGRA is after all a mouth-piece of agro-industrial corporations and their shareholders.

---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---

March 11, 2020

Media Contact:
Anuradha Mittal
amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
+1(510)469-5228

Oakland, CA—The Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) is terminating its agreement to purchase carbon credits from the Norwegian forestry company, Green Resources—finally recognizing the devastating impact the company’s plantation has had on local communities in Kachung, Uganda.

Citing the ongoing legal dispute over land and the inability for farmers to graze their cattle within the forest, the SEA’s decision comes after five years of research and advocacy by the Oakland Institute, documenting forced evictions from the land locals depended on for agriculture, grazing, and forest produce.

The Institute’s first report in November 2014, The Darker Side of Green: Plantation Forestry and Carbon Violence in Uganda, exposed the devastating impact of the Green Resources pine plantation. But it was only after the Institute’s third report, released in August 2019, along with the actual eviction notices served to the local farmers, that the SEA announced its suspension of payments, and eventually termination of the agreement in March 2020.

“Despite solid evidence and documentation, Green Resources and its financiers, including the SEA, callously, not only turned a blind eye to the victims of their ‘green’ fraud, but also dismissed our findings,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “If they had paid heed to the concerns raised in 2014—which should have been obvious to the SEA if due diligence had been done from the get go—Green Resources could not have gotten away with causing hunger, displacement, and distress amongst the population of 17 villages for this long,” Mittal continued.

On March 10, 2020, Development Today reported that the SEA terminated the agreement because of concerns over the ongoing land dispute and the unresolved issue of cattle grazing not allowed in the plantation. The SEA claims the work done by the Oakland Institute did not impact its decision, however, their findings are in line with its past research and advocacy. Hans Lemm, CEO of Green Resources, however, blamed SEA’s decision on the Oakland Institute.

“Land grabbing from Ugandan villagers to set up non-native pine plantations is a false climate solution, designed to allow polluters in Northern countries to continue with business as usual. This is the cautionary tale that Mr. Lemm should learn from, instead of placing blame elsewhere,” was Mittal’s response to the CEO.

Despite ample hard evidence, public investment funds of Norway and Finland—Norfund and Finnfund—are the primary shareholders of Green Resources since 2018. They have financed the company over US$62.5 million (NOK 600 million) . The question is now how long Norfund and Finnfund—supposed investment vehicles for developing countries—will remain complicit in its wrongdoing.

The SEA’s decision is another step towards justice for local communities. The Oakland Institute renews its call for Green Resources and its financial backers to be held responsible. The protracted misery inflicted on Kachung’s communities can only be rightfully addressed with the immediate end of this devastating project, so that they can reclaim their land and livelihoods.

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Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Kaamil Ahmed

A global summit on food security is at risk of being dominated by big business at the expense of farmers and social movements, according to the UN’s former food expert.

Olivier De Schutter, the former UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said food security groups around the world had expressed misgivings about the UN food systems summit, which is due to take place in 2021 and could be crucial to making agriculture more sustainable.

“There’s a big risk that the summit will be captured by corporate actors who see it as an opportunity to promote their own solutions,” said De Schutter, who criticised the opaque evolution of plans to hold the meeting, which he said emerged from “closed-door agreements” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

His comments followed protests last month over the announcement that Agnes Kalibata, the former Rwandan minister for agriculture, would lead the event, despite her role as president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), which has been accused of promoting damaging, business-focused practices. De Schutter emphasised that his comments were not directed at Kalibata personally.

In February, 176 organisations from 83 countries signed a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, saying Kalibata’s appointment was “a deliberate attempt to silence the farmers of the world” and signalled the “direction the summit would take”.

Kalibata was appointed by Guterres to serve as his envoy to the summit.

Last year, the US national academy of sciences awarded Kalibata the public welfare medal for her work in improving livelihoods. The UN pointed to her accomplishments as an agricultural scientist and policymaker and said her time as minister had driven “programmes that moved her country to food security, helping to lift more than a million Rwandans out of poverty”.

But signatories to the letter, published on the website of the Oakland Institute, accused Agra of being “puppets of agro-industrial corporations and their shareholders”.

Agra was established in 2006 as an African-led, Africa-based institution. According to its website, it “puts smallholder farmers at the centre of the continent’s growing economy by transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle to survive into farming as a business that thrives”. Over the past decade Agra has been funded by the UK, as well as Canadian and US government agencies.

While COVID-19 keeps consumers withdrawn, ensuing economic turmoil was made much worse by the outbreak of an epic global conflict between today’s top three oil-producing nations: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. Yet as we isolate ourselves physically, it is important to recognize real opportunities to convert the current crisis into a viable transition toward social, economic, and climate justice globally.

“How might we make this current crisis an authentic opportunity and a true turning point for changing the economic system plundering people and our planet?”

The crude conflict between the three countries exposes how energy can be an economic weapon of war. Consequently, control over oil—and hence over today’s economy as well as the amount of carbon emitted in our atmosphere—is now evermore concentrated in the hands of three autocrats whose political survival depends on our continuing to burn as much oil as possible before being banned by surging climate concerns.

Low oil prices set panic on financial markets

With oil demand dropping dramatically due to global pandemic, Russia recently rejected proposals by the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reduce oil production. To “teach Russia a lesson,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) suddenly set Saudi Arabia’s Official Selling Price so low it panicked global financial markets, since as much as one trillion dollars had been invested in U.S. shale oil on expectations that prices would remain much higher.

MBS’s flooding the market meant half of U.S. shale oil companies—perhaps Trump’s biggest base of donors—now face bankruptcy. One of Trump’s earliest and largest oil backers, fracking billionaire Harold Hamm, saw his net worth cut almost in half following news of MBS’s pumping oil at full blast. Global financial markets continue falling as businesses caught short of cash and credit clamor for financial bailouts. Congress’ coronavirus package included a $500 billion bailout for big businesses, from which oil companies can apply for financial assistance. Public pressure will be needed to ensure the new fund’s Inspector General enforces checks and balances that leverage larger changes, like a few listed below intended to help trigger oil’s just transition. 

Another Oil Industry is Possible? Policy Priorities to Trigger Oil’s Just Transition

Inspired by peoples‘ movements for social, economic and climate justice, especially now in the context of COVID-19, grassroots groups across the USA are mobilizing for a “people‘s bailout.“ Today’s political moment makes it more important than ever NOT to rescue over-leveraged oil companies that embody our teetering economic model, drive disastrous wars, and corrupt our political system. 

How might we make this current crisis an authentic opportunity and a true turning point for changing the economic system plundering people and our planet?

Building on principles already articulated by civil society, our big opportunity now requires to move on four fronts: 

1. Prohibit the Federal Reserve to purchase corporate debt or equities of indebted U.S. shale oil companies. As Trump tries to rescue overleveraged oil companies—via central bank monetary support and fiscal stimulus—the public must avoid assuming risks inherent for oil investors. Defaults are already shuttering several shale companies, so no public financing for indebted drillers who were already granted federal exemptions for water, wildlife, and environmental protections—including the flaring of methane, a greenhouse gas far more immediate and intense in its impacts than carbon. No public purchases of oil-risk related liquidity facilities, corporate bonds, commercial paper, or money market instruments associated with increasing risks and costs. If any, assistance must be made contingent upon providing full disclosure in advance.

2. Demand disclosure of full climate risks of any oil assets assumed by the public, in advance and subject to democratic decision-making. As climate campaigners have been communicating to investors (with the smart money already adopting campaigners’ proposed practices), fossil fuel assets can become counted as liabilities when climate and other associated risks are recognized by private investors and public authorities. While excellent work has begun by central banks and investors to “climate stress test” banks and insurers, now is the time for expanding full disclosure of downside risks by the oil industry. Beyond climate, risks come from geopolitical conflicts, terrorist attacks, extreme weather events, disease disruptions, and social instabilities due to economic inequality. If no private bank is willing to buy U.S. shale oil companies given that MBS or Putin can suddenly switch the spigot back on at full blast, then nor should the public.

3. Deepen ongoing cutbacks of oil demand—with “normal” life in lockdown—we all re-learn how to live with less travel or trade. In restarting the economy from almost a full standstill, let’s keep demand down by discouraging driving combustion engine vehicles and other oil intensive activities while robustly funding new infrastructure for renewable energy economy, especially public transit with pristine hygiene practices. If investors need sectors to invest in, their money must be guided by new incentives that are truly ecological and equitable.

4. Advance a multilateral mechanism to stabilize oil prices and fairly share shrinking space for carbon in our atmosphere. Such an agreement among top oil producing and consuming nations would go beyond the current OPEC+ “Charter of Cooperation” that ignores scientific warnings of irreversible climate catastrophe. Neither Putin nor MBS now deny climate change; unlike Trump, Putin’s recent remarks indicate serious concern. Phasing out oil transparently, predictably, and fairly is the only way to avoid a “mad dash for the door” by herds of investors the moment a critical mass decides the climate science is sufficiently scary to dump all oil assets, possibly destabilizing oil economies round the globe. Oil’s decline must be managed according to climate science and principles of “climate fair shares,” which would preference countries having the heaviest reliance on oil revenue, the fewest options to diversify, and the relatively least polluting oil before nations that have already benefited the most monetarily from oil exploitation, and its historical emissions.  

Of course, many other measures must also be taken to transition the industry that fuels the global economy yet the above actions could play a strategic part. People and the planet have already paid too much for the risks taken by the oil industry, so we must shift more of these risks to the parties most responsible for the problems industry creates. Today’s economic model built on fossil fuels intrinsically has the cause of its own collapse.

The outbreak and subsequent spread of COVID-19 has radically altered daily life around the world. As of March 26, the US has the highest number of confirmed cases of any country. With current shelter in place orders looming indefinitely, most white-collar jobs have transitioned to remote work, and people have been directed only to go into public places to get food and medicine.

The workers who ensure that grocery stores are full during the pandemic have been deemed essential and are risking their health. From the farmworkers picking fresh produce, to the supply chain workers packaging and shipping it, to the grocery store employees who continue to stack shelves – the vital role these women and men play has never been more apparent.

Forced to continue working in conditions that place their lives at risk, the harsh realities these workers face in daily life are coming center stage. With low rates of healthcare coverage, working (and often living) in close proximity, and in conditions where exposure to dust and chemicals results in high prevalence of underlying conditions, farmworkers face especially grave health risks from COVID-19. In the words of Cesar Chavez, whose birthday we celebrate today, “It’s ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.”

What Farm & Food Chain Workers on the Frontlines Should be Guaranteed

“Despite the fact that the undocumented immigrant communities are possibly the only people in this country who will not have access to any of the federal government’s relief aid, the response from industry has so far been minimal…”

The United Farmworkers (UFW), founded by Chavez, issued an open letter on March 17 to agricultural employers and organizations calling on them to take concrete steps towards protecting workers’ health and safety. These include extending sick leave, eliminating the 90 day waiting period for new workers to accrue sick time, and ending the need for doctor notes to take sick time. Farmworkers cannot be faced with the choice to either come to work feeling sick during a pandemic or lose their jobs and ability to take care of themselves and families. UFW additionally calls for state and federal stimulus benefits to include all farmworkers, including the estimated 50 percent or more who are undocumented. Despite the fact that the undocumented immigrant communities are possibly the only people in this country who will not have access to any of the federal government’s relief aid, the response from industry has so far been minimal, failing to meet any of the workers’ major demands.

The Food Chain Worker’s Alliance (FCWA) is leading the charge on what food workers on the front lines urgently require through a petition to grant workers the health and financial protections they have long deserved. The letter calls for investments in making working places safe, hazard pay at a premium of time and a half, paid sick time, expanded access to unemployment insurance and cash grants for the restaurant workers laid off en-masse, a moratorium on rent, protections for street vendors, and increasing the right to organize workplaces, among other measures – all of which must also apply to undocumented workers. Long marginalized and exploited, food workers are coming together at this crucial moment to address their needs.

Undocumented Workers under the Double Threat of ICE and COVID-19

The undocumented workers are especially vulnerable. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to conduct raids and imprison people in close quarters that medical experts from the Department of Homeland Security have labeled a “tinderbox scenario” during the pandemic. In response, hunger strikes have broken out at three ICE detention centers over justified fears of COVID-19’s rampant spread. On March 26, a federal judge in New York ruled that detainees must be released from county jails where cases have been confirmed, freeing 10 detainees being held at three different centers where positive cases have already been found. With over 37,000 people in immigration custody, where inadequate medical care has already had fatal consequences, immediate action is required. It is time for the US Congress to force ICE to immediately release detained people.

Essential Grocery Store & Delivery Workers Need a Fair Deal

While corporations in the food economy continue to generate massive profits amidst the crisis, the people making this possible have been left behind. As sales skyrocket at grocery stores, their employees are fighting for higher wages and adequate sick leave. Following a petition that quickly gained over a thousand signatures, employees at the Northern California based Berkeley Bowl grocery stores just received a $2 hourly increase in pay during the pandemic. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, representing another 30,000 workers at Albertsons-owned Safeway grocery stores also reached an agreement for $2 hourly increase and additional paid sick leave. Workers at Whole Foods are planning a “sick-out” day on March 31 calling on Amazon to meet their demands for hazard pay, increased sick leave and adequate sanitation equipment.

Delivery workers for Instacart, the grocery delivery service company now seeing historic business, began a massive strike on Monday, March 30 – demanding hazard pay, safety gear, and expanded paid sick leave to workers with pre-existing conditions. Instacart has been able to profit from the pandemic without protecting the wellbeing of its employees. For many of the delivery workers who depend on each paycheck, they are being forced to work when sick in order to pay rent and feed themselves. In response to the planned strike, Instacart countered with measures that the strike organizers (Gig Workers Collective and Instacart delivery workers) called “a sick joke,” as the planned strike remained in place. Understanding that Instacart cannot function without them, delivery workers are coming together to demand the basic protections they require during a pandemic. 

The same solidarity that has secured past victories is needed now more than ever. As reminded by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW),“only when we realize that we are one community of workers with common interests, regardless of race or nationality or gender, can we truly come together to defend those interests as one, unified force.”

Long Term Implications of Pandemic Response

The next few months, as the US government mobilizes monumental sums of money in stimulus packages, will be extremely consequential. Instead of the Trump administration granting massive subsidies to the wealthiest interests in society, this moment should be a catalyst for monumental shifts towards a more equitable society. This starts with ensuring basic rights of the working poor in the United States of America and holding corporations like Instacart and Amazon accountable.

Ideas around universal Medicare coverage, student debt relief, and tenant protections deemed radical just weeks ago, now offer a sensible path out of the current situation. Following the rapid allocation of trillions of stimulus dollars, the persistent “How will you pay for it?” question used to stifle progressive policies can finally be put to rest. Moving forward it cannot be forgotten that we could have always taken action to remedy the suffering of the millions of working Americans who suffer from low wages, lack of health care, food, water, and adequate housing.

To sign the Food Chain Workers Alliance Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/food-workers-on-the-front-line-need-urgent-protections-now

Ethiopia's Mursi tribe says they were imprisoned and tortured to protect Chinese sugar plantations.

By Roc Morin

OMO VALLEY, Ethiopia — One night, in his village of 20 grass huts in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, Golonkiwo had a nightmare. As a komoru, or mystic of the Mursi tribe, Golonkiwo’s duty is to receive and interpret dream prophecies. It is a vital role, passed down from father to son in one of the world’s oldest surviving cultures.

“In my dream, I saw the government soldiers coming for us,” Golonkiwo stated. “They killed a lot of people.”

At that time, last October, rumors were already circulating in the villages about a massacre of nearby Bodi tribesmen. Government soldiers had come to disarm the Bodi, and the Bodi had fought back. “The crocodiles are still eating corpses,” a Mursi witness reported, after having seen security forces chase the Bodi into local rivers.

After Golonkiwo’s dream, several komorena had sprinkled cow’s milk on the roads to prevent, by divine magic, a similar tragedy befalling the Mursi. The komorena maintain that it worked: the government changed its tactics.

Instead of an assault, invitations came. The Mursi say the government had prepared a meeting, requesting the attendance of approximately 220 high-ranking tribesmen. When the men arrived, however, there was no meeting. The Mursi men were imprisoned in a compound, under ransom. The price of their release was set at 9,000 guns, to be extracted from a population of 7,000-11,500 Mursi.

Making Peace with the Earth

The Covid-19 pandemic is a Planetary wakeup call from the Earth to humanity.

It reminds us that we are one with the Earth, not separate from it, that we are not her masters, owners and conquerors, nor that we are superior to other species, as the anthropocentric dogma would have us believe.

The pandemic is reminding us that we violate the rights of the Earth and all her species at our own peril. And it would be necessary to value and learn from the ancestral knowledge, cosmo-vision and wisdom of the original peoples, guardians of the Earth down the ages, whose deep respect for the Earth is based on the awareness of the interconnectedness of all life. Harming one part means harming the whole.

This pandemic is not a “natural disaster”, just as the crisis of species extinction and climate extremes are not “natural disasters”. Emergent disease epidemics are anthropogenic – caused by human activities.

The Earth is an interconnected web of life.

The health emergency we face as a global community is connected to the health emergency the Earth is facing: its steady degradation, the extinction and disappearance of species and the climate emergency. When we use poisons and agro-toxins, such as insecticides and herbicides to kill insects and plants in the industrial model of agriculture, we produce desertification, we pollute water, soil, air, and destroy biodiversity. Agro-toxins are immunosuppressants, that weaken the body and make it more vulnerable to infections. Agro-toxins are driving species to extinction including pollinating agents, as we have seen in the decimation of bees. When we do open-pit metalliferous mining we use millions of liters of water that is essential for human and natural life. When we practice hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, we alter the geological conformation and increase the seismic risk. When we burn fossil carbon that the earth has fossilised over 600 million years, we violate planetary boundaries. By industrialising and globalising our food systems we contribute up to 50 percent of the greenhouse gases and climate change is the consequence.

Science informs us that as we invade forest ecosystems, destroy the homes of species and manipulate plants and animals for profits, we create conditions for new disease epidemics. Over the past 50 years, up to 300 new pathogens have emerged. It is well documented that around 70 percent of the human pathogens, including HIV, Ebola, Influenza, MERS and SARS emerged when the forest ecosystems are invaded, and viruses jumped from animals to humans.

When animals are cramped in factory farms for profit maximisation, new diseases like swine flu and bird flu spring up and spread. Agrochemical-intensive industrial agriculture and industrial food systems give rise to non-communicable chronic diseases like birth defects, cancer, endocrine disruption, diabetes, neurological problems, and infertility. With COVID-19 infections, morbidity goes up dramatically with these pre-existing conditions.

While claiming to feed the world, industrial agriculture has pushed a billion humans to hunger and this number is growing with the world-wide lockdown and the destruction of livelihoods.

Our health and the health of the planet is one health. Respecting planetary boundaries, ecosystem boundaries and species integrity is vital to protecting the planet and our health. The solutions to Climate Change are also solutions to avoiding new disease epidemics. The debate on the climatechange issue cannot avoid considering how the dominant technological and economic model, based on fossil fuels, does not take into account the finitude of the Earth’s resources. A global economy based on the myth of limitless growth and limitless appetite for Earth’s resources is at the root of this health crisis and future crises.

The holistic and integrated response to the health emergency is to make a transition from the fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive paradigm of agriculture and globalised trade, with its heavy ecological footprint, to local, biodiverse, ecological systems of producing and distributing food, to healing the Earth, and healing ourselves as being part of the Earth.

Our Earth Day Commitment: Return to Earth, in our minds, our lives

During the COVID-19 crisis and in the post-Corona virus recovery we must learn to protect the Earth, her climate systems, the rights and ecological spaces of diverse species, and diverse peoples – indigenous people, youth, women, farmers and workers. For the Earth there are no expendable species and no expendable peoples. We all belong to and are part of the Earth.

To avoid future pandemics, future famines and a possible scenario of expendable people, we must move beyond the globalised, industrialised and competitive economic system, which is driving climate change, pushing species to extinction, and spreading life-threatening diseases. Localisation leaves space for diverse species, diverse cultures and diverse local living economies to thrive.

We must shift from the economics of greed and limitless growth, of competition and violence, which have pushed us to an existential crisis, and move to an “Economy of Care” – for the Earth, for people and for all living species.

We must reduce our ecological footprint, to leave a just share of ecological space for other species, all humans, and future generations. We must stop seeing nature’s common goods as “resources”, abandon the utilitarian, colonial, capitalist and anthropocentric vision that has taught us to name nature’s gifts as “natural resources”. Only in this way will we be able to consciously reduce our ecological footprint: by acting responsibly as the ancestors of the future.

The health emergency and lockdown has shown that when there is a political will, we can de-globalise. Let us make this de-globalisation of the economy permanent, and localise production in line with Gandhi’s philosophy of “Swadeshi” – made locally. As the Pandemic shows, it is local food communities who are able to regularly provide and distribute food while globalised food chains, in some parts of the world, collapsed and even speculated with rising food prices.

Contrary to what we are made to believe, it is not globalisation that protects people from famines, which it produces and aggravates, but peoples food sovereignty, where people at the community level have the right to produce, choose and consume adequate, healthy and nutritious food, under fair price agreements for local production and exchange. Future food systems have to be based on seed sovereignty and food sovereignty, on local circular economies giving back to the earth , and ensuring fair prices to producers.

The mechanistic mind that dominates our societies, creates corporate and personal profits through extraction and manipulation. The corporations and billionaires who through their actions have declared war against the Earth and created the world’s multiple crises, are now preparing for the intensification of industrialised agriculture through digitalisation and artificial intelligence. They are envisioning a future of farming without farmers, and a future of fake food produced in labs. Such developments will deepen the ecological crisis, destroying biodiversity and increasing our separation from the Earth.

Food is the web of life and making peace with the Earth begins with food. We return to the Earth when we take care of the soil and biodiversity. We remember we are human because we are of “humus” – of the soil. Only our minds, hearts and hands working together with the Earth, as integral parts of her creativity, can heal the Earth, providing us and all other species with healthy food.

As our experience together with other Earth conscious organisations and networks for Seed Freedom and Food Freedom have taught us, local, biodiverse organic food systems regenerate soil, water and biodiversity and provide healthy food for all. The biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms, our food and our gut microbiome connect the planet and her diverse species, including humans. Thus, health becomes the common thread, as does disease which the Coronavirus is so clearly showing us today.

The war against the Earth is a war against the future of humanity

All life-threatening emergencies of our times are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic and patriarchal world view of humans as separate from nature – as masters of the Earth who can own, manipulate and control other species as objects for profits. It is also rooted in an economic model that views ecological and ethical limits as obstructions that must be removed in the interests of unbridled corporate profit and power.

Scientific predictions indicate that if we do not stop this anthropogenic war against the Earth and her species, we will soon destroy the very conditions that allowed humans to evolve and survive. Human greed, arrogance and irresponsibility speeds us to the next Pandemic – and finally to extinction.

The Earth reflects who we are. She is showing us her inter-connectedness and calling us to start recognising her diverse living intelligences – in the soil food web, in plants and animals, and in our food.

The Earth has sent a tiny invisible virus to help us make a quantum leap to create a new planetary, ecological civilisation based on harmony with nature — today it is a survival imperative.

Our Resolve

In signing this manifesto, we commit ourselves as a planetary coalition, to urge and exhort the authorities and representatives of the governments in each one of our countries, cities, towns and communities, to shift from the paradigm of ecocide that today governs our models of productivity, to a paradigm where ecological responsibility and economic justice are central to creating a healthy and vibrant future for humanity.

Real climate change action means leaving behind our petroleum-based civilisation of extraction and greed and bringing in a new era of interconnection and care of the Earth.

We call for concerted support of communities, territories and nations that put ecology at the centre of a paradigm of a new and just economy of care.

On Earth Day let us apologise for the harm we have done to the Earth through the illusion of separation, creating violent paradigms and violent tools which have waged war against the Earth. Let us commit to making peace with the Earth and all her species by co-creating with her on the basis of her laws of life.

The Earth has given us a clear message through the Coronavirus pandemic. It is our moral imperative to seize this moment in time to make a transition to an ecological civilisation so we sow the seeds of a common future for humanity and all beings.

Together we rise as Children of The Earth!

A Call to Action and Transformation – One Planet, One Health

It is time to abandon our resource intensive and profit intensive economic systems that have created havoc in the world, disrupting the planet’s ecosystems and undermining society’s systems of health, justice and democracy.

The Corona virus pandemic and consequent global economic collapse, and collapse of lives and livelihoods of millions calls us to urgently take action.

Let us prepare for a post Corona Recovery where the health and wellbeing of all peoples and the planet are at the centre of all government and institutional policy, community building and civic action

Actions for sowing the seeds of a new Earth Democracy include:

• Promote and protect biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms and our food to stop the destruction of the earth and the sixth mass extinction.

• Promote local, organic, healthy food through local biodiverse food systems and cultures and economies of care (farmers markets, CSAs biodistricts).

• Stop subsidising industrial agriculture and unhealthy systems that create a burden of disease. Public subsidies should be redirected to systems based on agroecology and biodiversity conservation, which provide health benefits and protect common goods.

• Halt subsidies and further investments in fossil fuels sector, including fossil fuel based agricultural inputs, as real climate action.

• Stop favouring industrial junk food and unhealthy food systems based on toxic and nutritionally empty commodities.

• Put an end to monocultures, genetic manipulation of plants and factory farming of animals which are spreading pathogens and antibiotic resistance.

• Stop deforestation, which is expanding exponentially through industrial monocultures for corporate interests. Forests are the lungs of the Earth.

• Practice sustainable agriculture based on integration of diversity of crops, trees and animals.

• Save, grow and reproduce traditional seed varieties to safeguard biodiversity. They need to be saved not as museum pieces in germplasm banks, but in living working seed banks as a basis of a health care system.

• Create poison free zones, communities, farms and food systems.

• Introduce policies to assess the costs of damage to health and the environment caused by chemicals and enact the polluter pays principle.

• Health must have priority over corporate interests with respect to chemical and pesticide use in food and agriculture. The precautionary principle must be enacted.

• Transition from globalisation to localisation and make permanent deglobalisation. Stop the corporate takeover of our food and health.

• Introduce local circular economies which increase the wellbeing and health of people.

• Support, regenerate and strengthen communities.

• Create Gardens of Hope, Gardens of Health everywhere – in community gardens, institutions, schools, prisons, hospitals in the cities and countryside.

• Stop using Growth’ and GDP as measures of the health of the economy. GDP is based on the extraction of resources from nature and wealth from society.

• Adopt citizens wellbeing as a measure of the health of the economy.

Signatories

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes an economic system unable to meet the needs of people and planet. Our only solution to address this global crisis, occurring amid a devastating climate crisis, is to join together and build a more just, resilient, and sustainable world. As members and allies of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice we are making an initial set of demands of governments as they respond to the pandemic.

The word apocalypse comes from the word for revelation. The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing what the global majority has known all along: that the dominant economic system prioritises profits over people and planet.

”As with the climate crisis, the COVID-19 crisis loads the heaviest burdens on those most vulnerable.“

With each new day of infections, deaths and destroyed livelihoods, the pandemic is exposing the gross injustices of our existing systems. Years of neoliberalism, ‘structural adjustment’ and austerity have dismantled the social welfare state, specifically underfunding and hollowing out health systems across the globe. We are left with deficits of life-saving equipment, and surpluses of polluting industries.

The dimensions of the collective suffering and individual trauma unfolding are too vast to contemplate. Families confronting loss or lockdown in abusive relationships; bodies facing devastating illness; communities facing hunger and isolation.

But the pandemic has also shown our enormous collective strength, and the possibilities that emerge when a crisis is taken seriously, and people join together.

For those of us in the global climate justice movement, the unravelling of the pandemic comes as no surprise. For decades, as movements we have denounced the violent impacts of an unequal global economic system, the devastation of an accelerating climate crisis, and the shockingly cruel ways in which those least responsible bear its heaviest burdens. For decades, we have demanded an end to a status quo that was and continues to be a death sentence for the world’s poorest. The coronavirus crisis is a stark reminder of a prolonged past, and our response to it a dress rehearsal for the present and future.

As with the climate crisis, the COVID-19 crisis loads the heaviest burdens on those most vulnerable. The poorest are affected first and worst. It inflames the disparities carved by wealth, gender, class, race, (dis)ability and other intersectional factors. The highest costs are being borne by those least able to pay them, who were always condemned to bear such costs.

Most clearly, those most at risk of infection are those least able to isolate themselves.

A lockdown means confinement in our homes. But some of us are entirely without a home, or live with multiple family members and relatives in one house. Some of us are internally displaced people’s or refugee camps, or in detention centres, or go without access to running water and sanitation. For some of us, home is the site of violence and abuse, and staying home means an end to public activity we rely on for our day-to-day subsistence. Some of us can’t stay home because we are working in the most crucial and life-sustaining sectors, such as agriculture, without protection, including many of the subsistence and family farmers who feed over two-thirds of the world.

Women and girls bear the brunt of care work in our current system, in the home, in our communities and also in the economy, as they are the majority of health care workers. This pandemic has shown us the importance of care work, the work needed to raise families, to cook and clean and take care of the sick and elderly. It has shown us the profound impact of the lack of public services and social institutions for care work . We must use this moment to understand the importance of care work, share it among all peoples and build a society and economy that takes on care work based on feminist, care-affirming principles.

In many countries, health, food and basic services sectors are supported by migrant labour, many of whom do not have a voice, recourse to public funds and most often serving with the least protection. Migrant voices are also most often ignored in climate discussions. In times of crises, whether health or natural calamities, they are one of the most vulnerable, discriminated against, and ignored.

Those most affected by the climate crisis - people in the Global South who have faced the violence of environmental degradation, extended drought, and forced displacement - have now become one of most vulnerable populations to contagion and its effects. In areas where the health of communities has been debilitated by polluting industries, leading to an array of respiratory and immunological conditions, people are particularly at risk to COVID-19.

The pandemic is already opening the door to a major economic crisis, with an upcoming recession that will render the vast majority of the global population - who live day-to-day with precarious livelihoods - in a condition of even more chronic poverty. The risk of famine and deep disruptions to food sovereignty is significant. Southern countries are burdened with illegitimate and unsustainable debt - accumulated through decades of exploitative and predatory lending by Northern governments, international financial institutions and big banks in collaboration with southern elites and those Southern governments with authoritarian and corrupt practices. The prioritization of payments of these debts have taken a heavy toll on public services and continue to take up a huge part of public spending that should be allocated instead to public health responses to the pandemic.

A Crossroads

We are at a crossroads. For years, we have demanded ‘system change not climate change’. System change now seems more necessary than ever, and more possible. The rules of the game are changing swiftly. Upheaval is unavoidable.

The question is: what kind of change is unfolding? What kind of system is emerging? What direction will change take?

“Our movements know the way forward, the type of world we need to build. Across the world, people are realising that our dominant economic system does not meet peoples’ needs.”

The powerful are taking advantage of the crisis to advance disaster capitalism and a new authoritarianism, handing themselves expanding police and military powers, and rushing through extractive projects. Many governments are seizing the chance to push through draconian measures, police the population, undermine workers’ rights, repress the rights of Indigenous peoples, restrict public participation in decision-making, restrict access to sexual and reproductive health services, and institute widespread surveillance. In the worst situations, repressive actors are using the moment of political instability to violently quash dissent, legitimise racism, religious fundamentalism and advance predatory mining frontiers, and execute land defenders.

But the crisis they are making use of, also offers an opportunity for our movements to shape the emergent future. Our movements know the way forward, the type of world we need to build. Across the world, people are realising that our dominant economic system does not meet peoples’ needs. They are clearly seeing that corporations and the market will not save us. They are noticing that when a crisis is taken seriously, governments are capable of taking bold action and mobilise enormous resources to confront it. The limits of the possible can be radically shaken and rewritten. Within weeks, policy proposals long-campaigned for in many contexts (an end to evictions, liberating prisoners, bold economic redistribution to name but a few) have become common-sense and mainstream responses.

We are living through a convulsive but very fertile political moment. Our world has been forced into solidarity by a virus which ignores all borders; our deep interdependence has never been more undeniable.

In such a crisis rethinking and reimagining our economic model is inescapable. Resilient and justice-based solutions are not only possible, but the only real solution.

It is clear now that we need a response of solidarity, equity and care, with massive public investment that puts people and planet first, not polluting industries and profiteers. Just recoveries, and global and national new deals to build a regenerative, distributive and resilient economy is both necessary, and increasingly politically feasible.

The Fight for A New Normal

We will not return to a normal in which the suffering of the many underwrote the luxuries of the few. While politicians will push for a rapid resumption of the status quo, we can’t go back to normal, as social movements have affirmed, when that normal was killing people and the planet.

Our climate justice movements are in both a perilous and promising situation. The urgency of climate breakdown has dropped under the radar, even as climate violence is relentless, expressed most recently in devastating storms across the Pacific, forest fires in China, and torrential rains in Colombia. Unless we take this political moment, climate action will be on the backburner, and economies in the rich North will be turbocharged and revived with dirty investments that deepen the climate crisis. We must be vigilant and persevering to ensure that addressing the climate crisis must be front and center of bailouts, and programmes to ensure the resilience of society and all peoples.

Our movements have an expertise which is invaluable at this time. While COVID-19 and the climate crisis may have different direct causes, their root causes are the same: a reliance on the market, a failure of the state to address long-term threats, the absence of social protection, and an overarching economic model that protects investments over lives and the planet. The same extractivist system that extracts, burns and destroys ecosystems, is the same system which enables dangerous pathogens to spread. The solutions to the COVID-19 and climate crises are the same: solidarity, redistribution, collaboration, equity, and social protection. It is our opportunity and responsibility to join the dots, and use this political moment to confront corporate power, and build a more just and sustainable society.

The Horizons We Can Claim

The pandemic has changed the game. We have the resources to build an economic model that doesn’t trash the planet and provides for all. We have the momentum to recover from this crisis in a way that builds our resilience and fortifies our dignity as societies. Now is our time to claim it.

As members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, we demand a bold response to the COVID-19 pandemic that simultaneously helps address the wider climate crisis, and transform the unequal economic system that has led to both.

We demand that governments:

1. Prioritise the health and wellbeing of people. People must always be valued over profit, for an economy is worthless without its people. No one is disposable. Fully fund and resource health services and systems, ensuring care for all, without exception. Governments must also prioritise robust investment in other essential public services, such as safe shelter, water, food and sanitation. These services are not only essential in stemming the spread of disease in the long-term, but are core to governments' obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights for all. Therefore, they must not be privatised and instead be managed in an equitable, publicly-accountable manner.

2. Guarantee the protection of marginalised populations. Provide aid, social protection, and relief to rural populations and the families that compose them, who are at the forefront of feeding our world. Special protection must also be guaranteed for the social and human rights of all peoples put in vulnerable and precarious circumstances, such as those in situations of homelessness, people in prison, refugees and migrants, elders in home care, orphans, and especially environmental defenders who are now being murdered with even greater frequency under the cover of the COVID-19 emergency.

3. Issue immediate economic and social measures to provide relief and security to all, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in our societies. Protect labour rights and guarantee protections for all workers, from the formal to the informal economy, and guarantee a universal basic income. Recognise, visibilise and value all care work, the real labour that is sustaining us during this crisis.

4. Governments must stop subsidies for fossil fuels and reorient public funds away from the military-industrial complex, and private corporations, and use them instead to ensure access to clean energy, water, and important utilities and public services for the well-being of communities.

5. We call for an immediate cancelation of debt payments by Southern countries due in 2020 and 2021 with no accrual of interest nor penalties, so that funds can be used for health services to combat COVID19 and for economic assistance for communities and people who are facing greater hardships in the face of the pandemic and responses to it. A mere suspension of payments is not enough, and will simply delay the pain of debt servicing. We also demand an immediate start to an independent international process to address illegitimate and unsustainable debt and debt crises to pave the way for unconditional debt cancelation for all Southern countries.

6. Governments must also transform tax systems, abolishing fiscal holidays for multinational corporations which undermine revenues, and abolish value-added tax and goods and services taxes for basic goods. Take immediate steps towards stopping illicit financial flows and shutting down tax havens.

7. Support a long-term just transition and recovery out of this crisis, and take the crisis as an opportunity to shift to equitable, socially just, climate-resilient and zero-carbon economies. We cannot afford bailouts that simply fill corporate pockets or rescue polluting industries incompatible with a living planet. Rather, we need an economic recovery that builds resilience, dissolves injustices, restores our ecosystems, and leads a managed decline of fossil fuels and a justice-oriented transition towards a fair & sustainable economy. Governments should pursue economic programmes including just trade relations that prioritize domestic needs, dignified and decent jobs across the entire economy, including in the care economy, ecological restoration and agro-ecology, essential services and decentralised renewable energy—all necessary for an equitable and climate-just world.

8. Reject efforts to push so-called “structural reforms” that only serve to deepen oppression, inequality and impoverishment , including by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, who may use the pandemic to push schemes in the Global South under the guise of "shortening the time to recovery." The neoliberal pillars of austerity, deregulation, and privatisation—especially of essential services such as water, health, education etc—have devastated people across the world and are incompatible with a just recovery.

9. Bolster international cooperation and people to people solidarity. Global problems that respect no borders, whether they be the climate or COVID-19 crisis, can only have cooperative and equitable solutions. In a deeply unequal world, transferring technology and finance from the richest to the poorest countries is crucial. Governments should facilitate instead of hindering the efforts of people’s movements, citizens groups, Indigenous peoples and civil society organizations to link up across borders and countries for mutual support. We also call on governments to honor their historical responsibility and stop using tactics that dismiss that responsibility and delay a strong international response, such as withholding funding from the WHO and other institutions in a time of crisis.

10. Collaborate on the development of and unrestricted access to vaccines and any medical breakthroughs of experimental therapy drugs, led by principles of international cooperation and free distribution. We need to ensure that any COVID-19 vaccine will reach all and that no country will be able to become a monopoly buyer, and no entity a monopoly producer.

11. Immediately cease extractive projects, from mining to fossil fuels to industrial agriculture, including extraterritorial projects undertaken by corporations headquartered in your country, which are accelerating ecological crises, encroaching on Indigenous territories, and putting communities at risk.

12. Reject any and all attempts to waive liability of corporations and industries. The actors that are responsible, in so many ways, for this multifaceted crisis and the broken system absolutely cannot be granted loopholes that allow them to escape responsibility for their abuses at home and across the world.

13. Governments must not take advantage of the crisis to push through draconian measures including the expansion of police and military powers that undermine workers’ rights, repress the rights of Indigenous peoples, restrict public participation in decision-making, restrict access to sexual and reproductive health services, or institute widespread surveillance under cover of the crisis.

Initial Signatories

The outbreak and subsequent spread of COVID-19 has radically altered daily life around the world. As of March 26, the US has the highest number of confirmed cases of any country. With current shelter in place orders looming indefinitely, most white-collar jobs have transitioned to remote work, and people have been directed only to go into public places to get food and medicine.

The workers who ensure that grocery stores are full during the pandemic have been deemed essential and are risking their health. From the farmworkers picking fresh produce, to the supply chain workers packaging and shipping it, to the grocery store employees who continue to stack shelves – the vital role these women and men play has never been more apparent.

Forced to continue working in conditions that place their lives at risk, the harsh realities these workers face in daily life are coming center stage. With low rates of healthcare coverage, working (and often living) in close proximity, and in conditions where exposure to dust and chemicals results in high prevalence of underlying conditions, farmworkers face especially grave health risks from COVID-19. In the words of Cesar Chavez, whose birthday we celebrate today, “It’s ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.”

What Farm & Food Chain Workers on the Frontlines Should be Guaranteed

“Despite the fact that the undocumented immigrant communities are possibly the only people in this country who will not have access to any of the federal government’s relief aid, the response from industry has so far been minimal…”

The United Farmworkers (UFW), founded by Chavez, issued an open letter on March 17 to agricultural employers and organizations calling on them to take concrete steps towards protecting workers’ health and safety. These include extending sick leave, eliminating the 90 day waiting period for new workers to accrue sick time, and ending the need for doctor notes to take sick time. Farmworkers cannot be faced with the choice to either come to work feeling sick during a pandemic or lose their jobs and ability to take care of themselves and families. UFW additionally calls for state and federal stimulus benefits to include all farmworkers, including the estimated 50 percent or more who are undocumented. Despite the fact that the undocumented immigrant communities are possibly the only people in this country who will not have access to any of the federal government’s relief aid, the response from industry has so far been minimal, failing to meet any of the workers’ major demands.

The Food Chain Worker’s Alliance (FCWA) is leading the charge on what food workers on the front lines urgently require through a petition to grant workers the health and financial protections they have long deserved. The letter calls for investments in making working places safe, hazard pay at a premium of time and a half, paid sick time, expanded access to unemployment insurance and cash grants for the restaurant workers laid off en-masse, a moratorium on rent, protections for street vendors, and increasing the right to organize workplaces, among other measures – all of which must also apply to undocumented workers. Long marginalized and exploited, food workers are coming together at this crucial moment to address their needs.

Undocumented Workers under the Double Threat of ICE and COVID-19

The undocumented workers are especially vulnerable. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to conduct raids and imprison people in close quarters that medical experts from the Department of Homeland Security have labeled a “tinderbox scenario” during the pandemic. In response, hunger strikes have broken out at three ICE detention centers over justified fears of COVID-19’s rampant spread. On March 26, a federal judge in New York ruled that detainees must be released from county jails where cases have been confirmed, freeing 10 detainees being held at three different centers where positive cases have already been found. With over 37,000 people in immigration custody, where inadequate medical care has already had fatal consequences, immediate action is required. It is time for the US Congress to force ICE to immediately release detained people.

Essential Grocery Store & Delivery Workers Need a Fair Deal

While corporations in the food economy continue to generate massive profits amidst the crisis, the people making this possible have been left behind. As sales skyrocket at grocery stores, their employees are fighting for higher wages and adequate sick leave. Following a petition that quickly gained over a thousand signatures, employees at the Northern California based Berkeley Bowl grocery stores just received a $2 hourly increase in pay during the pandemic. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, representing another 30,000 workers at Albertsons-owned Safeway grocery stores also reached an agreement for $2 hourly increase and additional paid sick leave. Workers at Whole Foods are planning a “sick-out” day on March 31 calling on Amazon to meet their demands for hazard pay, increased sick leave and adequate sanitation equipment.

Delivery workers for Instacart, the grocery delivery service company now seeing historic business, began a massive strike on Monday, March 30 – demanding hazard pay, safety gear, and expanded paid sick leave to workers with pre-existing conditions. Instacart has been able to profit from the pandemic without protecting the wellbeing of its employees. For many of the delivery workers who depend on each paycheck, they are being forced to work when sick in order to pay rent and feed themselves. In response to the planned strike, Instacart countered with measures that the strike organizers (Gig Workers Collective and Instacart delivery workers) called “a sick joke,” as the planned strike remained in place. Understanding that Instacart cannot function without them, delivery workers are coming together to demand the basic protections they require during a pandemic. 

The same solidarity that has secured past victories is needed now more than ever. As reminded by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW),“only when we realize that we are one community of workers with common interests, regardless of race or nationality or gender, can we truly come together to defend those interests as one, unified force.”

Long Term Implications of Pandemic Response

The next few months, as the US government mobilizes monumental sums of money in stimulus packages, will be extremely consequential. Instead of the Trump administration granting massive subsidies to the wealthiest interests in society, this moment should be a catalyst for monumental shifts towards a more equitable society. This starts with ensuring basic rights of the working poor in the United States of America and holding corporations like Instacart and Amazon accountable.

Ideas around universal Medicare coverage, student debt relief, and tenant protections deemed radical just weeks ago, now offer a sensible path out of the current situation. Following the rapid allocation of trillions of stimulus dollars, the persistent “How will you pay for it?” question used to stifle progressive policies can finally be put to rest. Moving forward it cannot be forgotten that we could have always taken action to remedy the suffering of the millions of working Americans who suffer from low wages, lack of health care, food, water, and adequate housing.

To sign the Food Chain Workers Alliance Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/food-workers-on-the-front-line-need-urgent-protections-now