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The Vancouver Statement On the
Globalization and Industrialization of Agriculture We
believe that the industrialization and globalization of food and fiber
imperils humanity and the natural world. Reducing farming to a
monocultural, synthetic, transnational corporate business threatens the
health, nourishment, right livelihood, and spirituality of communities and
the earth. It is insane to believe that we must poison land and water and
waste the soil in order to feed and clothe ourselves. Five decades of the
so-called Green Revolution have not only led to the destruction and
contamination of water, soil, biodiversity, and human communities, but
exacerbated hunger worldwide. One of the most critical impacts of
industrial agriculture is climate change, which will destroy the natural
basis of agriculture itself. The patenting of life, corporate ownership
and manipulation of our genetic heritage is one of the greatest threats
ever imposed by industrial agriculture: the human right to feed, clothe
and shelter ourselves and our families is at stake. Institutions and
treaties such as the World Trade Organization, the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, North American Free Trade Agreement, the Food and
Agriculture Organization, and the European Union have accelerated the
process of agricultural industrialization and globalization while
promoting the rights of corporations over those of people.
We know that there are non-toxic and non-destructive alternatives to
global industrial agriculture, and we know that these alternatives can
provide more food. Farmers around the world are farming in ways that
respect their unique ecological and cultural communities. Building on
their wisdom, all farms of the twenty-first century can be ecologically
regenerative, community sustaining, biologically and culturally diverse,
as well as energy conserving. We must not only build upon the existing
knowledge and vision of farmers, but we must expand partnerships and
create coalitions that serve to re-empower them.
In order to rescue our food system, we need more skilled farmers who
have access to land, seed, and the knowledge of local biological systems.
Also essential to a healthy food system, is clean land, air, water and
soil and the right to save seeds to ensure future harvests.
Scientific organizations and transnational corporations that are
experimenting with, and releasing poisons, synthetic compounds and
genetically modified organisms into the biosphere should be held fully
accountable for the safety of their practices and products. Corporations,
scientists and governments should honor the precautionary principle and
take preventive action in the face of scientific uncertainty in order to
avoid cultural and ecological harm.
We affirm, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that the
right to food is sacred. The right to food transcends basic nutrition and
hunger and includes the right to produce one's own food. We also affirm
that consumers have the right to know where their food comes from, what is
in it, and how it was produced.
Furthermore, farmers and consumers have a right to maintain local
control over food production, distribution and consumption.
Our bodies, our plants and animals, our air, water, land, and soil, are
not commodities and are not patentable. When a food production system
violates the rights of citizens and the natural order of the planet's
ecosystems, it is essential that we the people make use of our inalienable
freedom to correct those abuses. We stand united on these points.
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