Workshop with Irmi Salzer (ÖBV-Via Campesina Austria), representatives from the Graz Community Gardens Project, among others

If sufficient and healthy alimentation for the increasing world population is to be ensured, a move away from the prevalent industrial and export-oriented agricultural model must take place. This agriculture system which is currently dominated by a handful of more and more powerful corporations with its high energy consumption, broad transit, and increasing use of genetic engineering is no longer sustainable, and must be substituted by local, ecological, and socially compatible modes of production.In consequence of the neo-liberal globalization of the last ten decades, farmers worldwide have been victims of strong and violent repressive measures of corporations (supported by governments and international institutions). Although many of them have witnessed the livelihood of their fellow workers being destroyed they continue to work according to the above mentioned principles of sustainability and small-scale farming. In the last ten years their global networking and political collaboration has intensified, leading for example to the growth of the international peasant and landless workers’ movement Via Campensina into one of the biggest and most important social movements of today.  By proclaiming the principle of food sovereignty, this movement takes a step up to the prevailing problems and campaigns for ecological and socially sustainable agriculture. Quoting scientific studies, Via Campensina predicts that this form of small-scale agriculture could actually provide nourishment for the global population – in contrary to the current industrial mass production.The workshop will give further information on the above mentioned issues, as well as presenting the growing number of initiatives that work upon these principles in Graz and elsewhere, such as Community and Guerilla gardening or Intercultural and Social gardens. The workshop offers networking possibilities and above all we hope it will motivate individuals to become active in their own lives.

http://www.viacampesina.org
http://www.guerilla.gardening.spektral.at