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A great harvest!
In this moment when it is vital to assert that Black lives matter, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance honors Black and Afro-Indigenous farmers, fishermen, and stewards of ancestral lands and water. We especially honor them as a vital part of food chain workers, who together are creating food sovereignty,
meaning a world with healthy, ecologically produced food, and democratic control over food systems.
In 2015, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance's two prize winners are the
Federation of Southern Cooperatives in the U.S., and the
Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras. The prizes will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015.
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives strengthens a vital piece of food sovereignty: helping
keep lands in the hands of family farmers, in this case primarily African-American ones. The Federation was born in 1967 out of the civil rights movement. Its members are
farmers in 16 Southern states, approximately 90% of them African-American, but also Native American, Latino, and White.
The Federation's work is today more important than ever, given that
African-American-owned farms in the US have fallen from 14% to 1% in less than 100 years. To help keep farms Black- and family-owned instead of corporate-owned, the Federation promotes
land-based cooperatives; provides training in sustainable agriculture and forestry, management, and marketing; and advocates to the courts and to state and national legislatures.
Comment: Don't let Monsanto deny, obscure and belittle the carcinogenicity of glyphosate!