This year, FAO, Section of the United Nations, has put the following slogan on World Food Day: "Sowing, feeding, supporting, sharing." The first edition of 1981 was given "food is the most important" ("Food comes first"). The states of 150 countries around the world will officially celebrate this day and the large agri-food industries bai.FAO that have been made with the greatest prominence in food production and sales, and other international organizations have stressed these days that the COVID-19 pandemic will greatly increase the number of people suffering from hunger in the world.
In front of them, the coordinator Vía Campesina, who brings together many small baserritarras organizations from all over the world (including the two EHNE unions of Hego Euskal Herria and the ELB of Iparralde), wants to give the day a more demanding content, turning the Food Day into a day of action for Food Sovereignty against the multinationals. The motto they have set in motion for the 2020 edition is: "We produce, buy and eat the local." Witness.
Via Campesina in a message he has disseminated from Harare (Zinbabue) says: "We are what we eat. Today we have to stress that agricultural production, working in cooperation with nature, is more than an act of claiming autonomy and food sovereignty, there is also an action of resistance against the oppression of our production systems and our eating habits by the multinationals. Peasant organizations, indigenous peoples, workers in agriculture, without land, fishermen, consumers, women and youth all over the world, have before them the control and strength multinational corporations exert on food systems".
"The commons," says Vía Campesina- are basic to humanity and nature... its control is increasingly concentrated in the hands of an wealthy elite that has serious consequences for the majority of the population. They are increasingly favouring intensive farming of large monocultures, with the agrotoxics and poisons they carry, which harm both the peasants and their own lives on earth. This destruction is manifested in problems such as land theft, air and water pollution, the proliferation of mines, food pollution, the loss of biodiversity and even the murder of indigenous peoples and their leaders as peasants. At the same time, the climate crisis is also getting worse. In this context, the production of healthy food, the promotion of local businesses and the promotion of a balanced diet can all guarantee resistance actions for local development based on equality, justice and dignity".