Food Sovereignty Day - reclaiming our food system

20 October 2011

The Food Sovereignty Day held last Tuesday 18 October at the Houses of Parliament was a great success! The Day was organised by War on Want to build the food sovereignty movement in the UK and regain control over our food. War on Want's latest report on Food Sovereignty was also launched. 

Members of the general public, small farmers both from the UK and overseas, non profit organisations, and academics debated the importance of regaining control over the decisions made on what is produced, what is consumed, how it is produced and who has access to food, which are currently defined by multinational corporations that control the entire food chain with the complicity of international financial institutions. They shared the initiatives taking place at national and international levels to challenge this dominant, corporate agribusiness model, and strongly called for Food Sovereignty as the solution to the current food crisis.

The Day ended with an International Rally demanding Food Sovereignty Now! during which the audience heard from representatives of La Via Campesina, the worldwide movement of small-scale farmers, from Sri Lanka, Brazil and Mozambique. A Cuban delegate also talked about how agroecology and food sovereignty have been successful in building a food system in Cuba based on democratic, environmentally sustainable and socially just principles.