Farmer power the key to green advance (BBC) {Viewpoint}

[eppur_se_muova]

Behind several kinds of environmental damage lurks the hand of the farmer. The key to better prospects for them and the environment, argues Michel Pimbert in the Green Room, is giving them more control over what they do.

Farmers and other citizens in various parts of the world are engaging in a major effort to change the nature of agriculture.

The key phrase is "food sovereignty"; and this weekend, many of the interested parties are gathering for a conference in Mali, one of two countries (the other being Bolivia) which have adopted it as their overarching policy framework for food and farming.

Food sovereignty is all about ensuring that farmers, rather than transnational corporations, are in control of what they farm and how they farm it; ensuring too that communities have the right to define their own agricultural, pastoral, labour, fishing, food and land policies to suit their own ecological, social, economic and cultural circumstances.

Why is it needed? From the social point of view, because everyone has an unconditional human right to food, and it is simply unacceptable to allow over 850 million people go to bed hungry in a world that produces more than enough food for all.

On the environmental side, industrial farming damages our planet's life support systems in a number of ways:

* it is a major contributor to global warming through intensive use of fossil fuels for fertilisers, agrochemicals, production, transport, processing, refrigeration and retailing
* agrochemical nutrient pollution causes biological "dead zones" in areas as diverse as the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea and the coasts of India and China
* human activity now produces more nitrogen than all natural processes combined
* crop and livestock genetic diversity has been lost through the spread of industrial monocultures, reducing resilience in the face of climate and other changes
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387975.stm