The Agroecology Fund recently collaborated with A Growing Culture on five episodes of their Hunger For Justice Series. Launched to highlight the inequities of the industrial food system exposed by Covid-19, these live broadcasts featured agroecology leaders from the AEF grantee network, and sought to amplify their grassroots community-led solutions for resilience.
“The series is a chance to pull people with an environmental focus into the social aspect of the food movement. A lot of the people tuning in are familiar with regenerative agriculture and sustainability but not food sovereignty and agroecology,” says A Growing Culture’s Loren Cardeli.
On October 2, the series featured AEF grantee partner, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, the Landless Rural Workers Movement from Brazil. Adriana Oliveira and Ceres Hadich of MST shared the importance of solidarity in times of uncertainty and why agroecology is crucial in the fight against inequality.
The MST, or Landless Workers’ Movement, is one the largest peasant movements in the world, with an estimated informal membership of 1.5 million across 23 of Brazil’s 26 states. They have been striving for land reform and the right to healthy food in Brazil for nearly four decades. Their actions—increasingly met with state opposition and violence—are part of a larger fight against inequality and injustice, which disproportionately affects rural women, Indigenous peoples, and the urban poor. “We stand against hunger, against imperialism. We cannot lose our solidarity,” said Adriana Oliveira, a member of the International relations team of the MST.
“When we distribute food, we are sharing the wealth that was created between all of us.”
Covid-19 highlighted the importance of solidarity at the grassroots. Since the start of the pandemic, as part of their emergency plan to overcome the crisis, MST delivered more than 3,500 tons of food to people in need—a coordinated effort across 52 camps, 127 settlements and 20 communities. More than 800,000 boxed lunches were also delivered to people in low-income urban neighborhoods.
“Solidarity is not charity,” explained Ceres Hadich, a settler from the state of Parana. “When we distribute food from our settlement, we are sharing the wealth that was created between all of us; sharing the right to good food and food sovereignty. It’s a way to educate others.”
Importantly, the MST’s actions also demonstrate that Brazilians are able to feed themselves with the bounty produced on their own lands. “Look at the food we give in the boxed lunch: there are more than 80 different products—from corn to squash to beans to fish to a wide variety of greens. This food diversity reflects our agriculture, and our values,” said Adriana.
In promoting diversity, the MST’s small producers also confront the import-dependent and industrialized food system that has standardized their markets and their diets, and compromised their health and livelihoods. They are demonstrating that alternatives to corn and soy monocultures exist, and that commodity agriculture serves only a few, not the many.
Their community kitchens, community bakeries and food distribution efforts have helped people understand why agroecology and self-sufficiency are so important, especially in times of crisis. “In this time of this pandemic, we work to build a different kind of society,” said Adriana. A society that centers the rights of the people over corporations, and is not based on unsustainable exractivism.
In the long term, the solution to crises like these lies in agrarian land reform.
“Even though the dominant class does not recognize the need for land reform, the MST knows it’s a way to fight against hunger, but also against all the environmental damage that is currently happening.” explained Ceres. “We seek to ensure dignified living conditions for the people in the countryside, decent housing, access to education, the ability to live without violence, to be respected and respect each other.”
And even in the midst of these challenging months, the working class continues to organize, and offer reasons to hope: “In the peripheries of the city, new leaders of young people, women, and different ethnic groups are emerging.”
Watch the full recording on YouTube:
Learn more about AEF’s Emergency Fund grantees here.
Photographs courtesy MST.