Farmer power the key to green advance

[Forkboy]

Farmer power the key to green advance

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.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387975.stm