Peasant mobilisations in Europe

PRESS RELEASE

Geneva, January 1st, 2024 – Neoliberal elites want rural populations to pay for the crisis and the “energy transition”.

CETIM expresses its solidarity with the mobilisations of peasant organisations over the past weeks in several European countries (starting in Germany and spreading to France, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Romania and Poland, among others).

The main concern of rural communities, peasants and rural workers, not to mention other rural groups made vulnerable by agri-food systems build at the service of the agribusiness sector, is to be able to make a decent living from their work. These are demands that stand in stark contrast to the demands of large industrial farms, which aim to produce more and more and win market share, at the expense of food quality and social and climate justice.

The solutions to the multi-dimensional crisis that affect farming and rural areas lie in the hands of family farming. From there, sustainable practices have been forged over the years, based on peasant longstanding experience and traditional knowledge. These solutions are set out in the principles of food sovereignty and in the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Others Working in Rural Areas, adopted in 2018.

The European public authorities must listen to the peasants’ demands. They must protect peasant agriculture, taking advantage of the UN Declaration as a tool to implement to implement the rights enshrined therein, as a precondition for moving towards the creation of just and sustainable agri-food systems.

For a better understanding of the issues and challenges surrounding these mobilisations:

Communiqué from the European Coordination of La Via Campesina
→ Fair incomes for all farmers! Stop free trade agreements immediately!

Contact: Raffaele Morgantini, raffaele@cetim.ch, +41 79 660 65 14.