Today the Third International Conference of Via Campesina opened in Bangalore, India, with 110 delegates (men and women) from 40 countries around the world representing hundreds of farm and indigenous peoples' organisations.
This conference seeks solutions for the numerous problems facing peasants, family farms and rural communities around the world. The most pressing problems are as follows: * Lack of access to land. * The repression of farm leaders and farl movements. * Prices below the cost of production for agricultural products. * The imposition of an industrial model of agriculture based only on profit rather than food quality and food safety. * Displacement of local production.
On September 30 - October 1, 2000, the women of the Via Campesina held their First International Womens Assembly. Rural women from around the world agreed on the following: * The Via Campesina women denounce before the national and international institutions the severe war and conflict situations that force us to abandon our land. * We oppose the unjust neo-liberal model. This in an inhuman and destructive model which does not respect our lives, our cultures, our biodiversity. * Women around the world grow food for our families and pass on our cultures to our children; for this reason we will keep struggling for a new and more human world. We seek to build an alternative rural development model that meets our interests, satisfies our needs and respects natural, cultural and ethnic diversity. * We will struggle for comprehensive and democratic agrarian reform to prevent the concentration of land ownership into the hands of a few and guarantee food sovereignty and sustainable production. * We also defend indigenous people rights to their ancestral territory. We also support indigenous people who struggle for self-determination and the right for diverse development models. * We resolve to strengthen our struggles and our solidarity, and to clearly demonstrate our opposition to injustice and inequality.
On October 2, 2000, Via Campesina delegates from around the world joined thousands of Indian men and women farmers in a demonstration in Bangalore organised by the Karnataka State Association (KRRS), an organisation affiliated to the Via Campesina.
At this demonstration we denounced economic and agricultural policies designed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which force millions of farmers (men and women) all over the world off their land. These policies are causing greater impoverishment and repression in the countryside and condemning millions to starvation and death.
The main objectives of the Third International Conference of the Via Campesina are to discuss the current agricultural situation, to build alternatives ant to co-ordinate our work. Delegates from four continents and 40 countries are gathered in Bangalore from October 3 6, 2000, to further the work which has been done by the Via Campesina in recent years.
A rich and productive debate between peasant and family farmers (men and women) from around the world is taking place. The Via Campesina movement will continue to struggle as well as national governments which promote neo-liberalism and globalization. During the opening ceremony of the Third Conference soil and seeds from all regions of the world were exchanged as a symbol of our commitment to stand united in the struggle for a peasant and family farmer's agriculture free of the corporate industrial model:
