24 years later, the International Congress of La Vía Campesina is held again in Europe. Are the problems of farmers in Europe, or in the West in general, and in the rest of the world very different?

Problems and challenges may not, but situations do. In many parts of the world, farmers remain half or more of the population, while in Western Europe and North America we are 3%. Consequently, the strategies are not the same. Here we have to make alliances with other social actors, and there the peasant movement has an intrinsic weight. But the problems are similar everywhere.

And what are they?

The accumulation of land, the privatization of seeds, the very neoliberal public policies … have broken the local food systems and have been absorbed by four or five large multinationals, and what we believe is law have turned it into merchandise. Today, what gives money is not an autonomous dwelling, which uses everything around it for production; today, money gives it the raw material, not food. That is, to produce at low cost certain raw materials in places where this is possible (Africa, America…) and to move around the world. We take palm oil, we take sugar, we take soy and we make muffins. That's the system that the multinationals have invented to make a lot of money. It has to be said, however, that 70% of what is eaten in the world is still produced by small and medium-sized baserritars, although they own only 30% of agricultural plots.

And what is the remaining 70% used for?

The large multinationals, as well as some governments, are buying land for speculation; for the production of agrofuels; and also for the production of those raw materials that I have mentioned. For them, land is an important asset and they want to accumulate everything they can. We have often thought that this business has only been in the global South, but in Europe we are also seeing more and more speculation and land concentration. In addition, the European Union grants subsidies for the possession of these lands, which are also concentrated.

That 70 percent of the land also produces food for first-world cattle, right?

Yes. Europe, for example, has a 100% dependency on soya produced in America to feed its cows. Here's a picture: In South America, the soya from the great latifundia is sent to Europe, with which Europe is burdening its milk production within an intensive livestock model, thereby harming the environment, and then sending milk to other markets below production costs, thanks to EU aid, to saturate these markets. La Vía Campesina wants to transform this sinister system and I think we have the tools to achieve it.

If 70% of what we eat is still produced by small farmers, why is it said that transnational corporations are about to control food?

There are places where there are many farmers and there are still products from the peasants. But in the Basque Country, for example, the percentage of what we eat is very small. According to a study carried out by the NGO Veterinarians Without Borders, the food we have in refrigerators covers an average of 5,000 kilometres before reaching our destination. And that's business. Southern Spain is the territory where organic farming in Europe has increased the most, but consumption of organic products has not increased at all. Where is the production going? North of Europe. And the product that goes to Spain goes through Morocco, much cheaper. In this illogical situation, products lose their ecological character; a product that has travelled thousands of kilometres to reach the consumer cannot be considered ecological by its form of production.

We were talking about the strategies that transnational corporations have to control the food market...

The multinationals have several channels of control. One is about production: they establish what to produce, not only what, but also what varieties, and what treatment to give them. You can't put anything you want in the cottage, but what Eroski wants. “I want this kind of lettuce that has grown with a treatment notebook and brought in a bag like this.” And in addition, they will set the price. Well, at first you may not, at first you will buy it at the price that the baserritarra asks, but as its old market is lost (shops, restaurants, consumer groups…), when the farmer has a single point of sale, the buyer will control everything and the price will go down.

Why are past customers lost?

Because the great buyer says, give it all to me. And it's often more convenient to sell to one man than to walk from one place to another. But it's not worth it, because in the end, the great buyer is going to shake me more.

And yet, many take that path. What's that like?

There is a lot of pressure in the sector. Administration, agricultural schools, cooperatives, feed houses, veterinarians… All win with an intensive agricultural model, except for the baserritars. The more intensive the model is, the more money movement is generated around the farmhouse, and that can be interesting for other sectors, but not for us. What we're interested in is making good, healthy foods, and it's precisely against that model. It is good to generate profits in our environment, but that benefit must be social, not for certain companies.

They denounce that one of the industry's main means of pressure is to turn seeds into goods. This will also be the subject of debate at the Derio Congress.

They put the baserritars in difficulty for their daily work. If you want seeds, you have to have patented seeds. And to make it that way, at the international level there are laws in place; the seeds that you have always used at home, that have been improving from generation to generation and that have been the heritage of the people, now you have to buy them, and they are sterile seeds, you can't use them at home again and you have to buy them every year. And they have now added a further step to this climate-related system: climate-smart agriculture [see additional text]. What they think is, after all, creating addiction. How? Creating productive dependency (you need seeds, feed, supplies...). But in addition to these needs, you have the energy, the financial, the training... Behind all of them is the business and they control everyone. It’s like a pack, I offer you the seed, the credit to buy it, a technician who advises you, an insurance… and also, a product sale or a cooperative system. More technology. You end up becoming your empty pawn.

Faced with this model, the VII International Congress of Rural Agriculture and Agroecology of small farmers. The great cry you are going to make in this International Congress. Many question that with this model we can all eat.

All and more. With 30 percent of the land, we produce 70 percent of the food, so ... They said we're not able to feed all of humanity, and that's why they invented GMOs, but the fact is that 1 billion people in the world are hungry and 1.2 billion are overweight. In the meantime, I don't know how many millions of tons of food are thrown away each day in the trash.