Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly, and Oswaldo Martínez, director of Cuba's World Economic Research Center, addressed the forum. Martínez denounced the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) pact as tantamount to U.S. "annexation and absorption of Latin America and the Caribbean region...into the American economy."

Martínez pointed to the impact on Mexico of the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement, a "testing ground" for the FTAA. Once a net exporter of rice, Mexico is now dependent on imports for 50 percent of its domestic needs. Six million Mexican farmers and their families have been driven out of farming, Martínez said.

Forum participants went on record opposing the FTAA, saying that "it is nothing more than a hegemonic strategic plan developed by the United States to consolidate its control over Latin America and the Caribbean, expand its economic borders, and guarantee itself a large captive market." The resolution encouraged participation in the Hemispheric Conference Against the FTAA, to be held in Havana next month.

Sponsors of the WFFS included the Coalition of Family Producers of the Mercosur (COPROFAM), the Movement of Landless Rural Workers from Brazil (MST), the Network of Peasant Agriculture and Modernization (APM) of Africa, the International Center for Rural and Agricultural Studies (CERAI) from Spain, and Via Campesina, an international peasant rights organization headquartered in Honduras. Participants came from an assortment of international organizations representing farmers and farm workers, fishermen, and indigenous people.

A delegation from the United States included farmers from Wisconsin, Iowa, and Florida.  
 
Gap between rich and poor
In the opening session, Vicent Garcés, a member of the International Executive Committee of the WFFS, reported that, according to the UN Development Program, the wealthiest 20 percent of the world's population consumes 86 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) and 82 percent of exports while the poorest 20 percent consumes 1 percent of each. More than 80 countries have lower GDPs than 20 years ago.

It was also reported that the number of chronically malnourished people only declined marginally from 840 million to 826 million between 1996 and 2000.

Geneviève Le Bihan of APM Mondial from France reported that half the world's population suffers from nutritional problems, and that on top of the 826 million people that suffer from hunger, 68 million infants are affected by low birth weight. Of the 30,500 children who die every day from preventable diseases such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, and malaria, malnutrition is a contributing factor in more than half.

Father Dom Mauro Morelli, a well- known advocate of impoverished workers and indigenous peoples from Brazil, said, "Because of economic powers beyond its borders only 25 percent of Brazilians live decently, [while] 22 million live in absolute poverty, and 53 million in poverty." As a result of centuries of oppression, only 300,000 aboriginal inhabitants remain of the original 7 million, explained Morelli.

Egidio Brunetto, a representative of the Movement of Landless Workers of Brazil (MST) and Via Campesina, spoke in the agrarian reform roundtable, pointing out that "there is a land concentration problem worldwide." One particular Brazilian landowner's holdings are so expansive that they are like "a country within a country," he said. Despite this, there is constant "propaganda in the media against organizations fighting for land, while military intelligence and paramilitary forces are used to repress mobilizations," Brunetto said.

In a workshop for peoples' right to food, Bara Goudiaby of Senegal described the results of economic devastation in his country over the last two decades in which farmers lost access to credit and technical assistance, and market competition increased from rising rice imports. Production of peanuts, an important cash crop, displaced production of grains for local consumption, he added, pointing out that in many countries local production has been replaced with monoculture crops and the countries have become forced to import their food. As a result, when a natural disaster is confronted it becomes a social disaster for many countries.  
 
Drought in Central America
An example of this is Central America, which has been hit by a drought. Trinidad Membreña, who is the president of the Coordinator Council of Peasant Organizations of Honduras (COCOCH), told the Militant that peasants were severely affected by Hurricane Mitch in 1999 and again this year with a drought that destroyed the crop. There are now 3,000 landless families, he said, adding that much of the population in the countryside doesn't have access to electricity, running water, and roads. We are asking, he continued, "for a land reform law" but, "it won't be easy because the big landlords have the power."

Participants in the forum debated the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which some large agricultural companies are developing. The corporations hope to profit from sales of seed that have traits that give them greater resistance to disease, insects, and weed-killing herbicides.  
 
Exchange of experiences
The conference provided an opportunity for farmers from different countries to meet and exchange experiences. Silvio Marzoroli, a dairy farmer from Uruguay, and a leader of Procofam and Producers of Mercosur, explained to Paul and Lana Rozwadowsky, two farmers from the United States, that while he receives only 13 cents per liter of milk, it costs him 16 cents to produce that liter. In previous years when the price was 18 cents a liter, Marzoroli said, many farmers took loans to improve their ranches. Now many cannot pay them back, and are facing foreclosure.

The Rodzwadowskys told Marzoroli that they not only face the same problems, but have the same number and breed of cows and use the same kind of milking machine.

Another farmer from the United States, John Kinsman, met Armando García, the president of the Fructuoso Rodríguez Cooperative during a visit to the cooperative by conference participants. Both Kinsman and García are 76 years old. García explained what the Cuban Revolution has meant for him.

"Before the revolution," he said, "I was put in jail for being part of the revolutionary movement." Some of his comrades were killed. García was released after the revolutionary victory in 1959 and learned how to read and write thanks to the literacy campaign. The cooperative he is a member of is doing so well that they don't need credit to carry them through to harvest.

Leonardo Chirino González, a leader of ANAP, pointed out that UN reports show that current world production levels could feed 14 billion people, far more than the current world population of 6 billion. González pointed to the example of Cuba, where the victorious revolutionary government gave 200,000 farmers ownership of the land after the revolution, as well as access to cheap credit, marketing contracts, a system of crop insurance, and social security.

"As citizens they are also entitled to free education, health care, access to culture, recreation, and participation in society in general," he added. The Cuban government also supported the establishment of ANAP to represent the economic and social interests of the peasants.

The final declaration of the World Forum on Food Sovereignty recognized that despite "four decades of the illegal and inhuman blockade imposed by the United States and the use of food as a weapon of economic and political pressure, Cuba has managed to guarantee the human right to nutrition for all of its population."

In the closing session of the conference Cuban president Fidel Castro congratulated participants for convening the first international forum on food sovereignty, but cautioned that "we are not asking for enough." "What can the peasant do with land," Castro asked, "if he doesn't have schools, doctors, hospitals, vaccines, protection against illness, credit, a price for their products, a market, and if he receives each time less and has to work harder?" Can farmers "go without roads," Castro continued, "fishermen without motors, fishing equipment, cold storage facilities? What can they do without electricity and if they don't know how to read and write? Without all these everything that we are fighting for doesn't make sense," he said.

Castro said that the current world order could not resolve problems raised at the meeting. "The human being is a lot more intelligent that we can imagine," he said, and "the world will change." The Cuban president suggested the WFFS slogan "a world without hunger" be expanded to "a just world, a new world which our species deserves and should wait to realize not a minute longer."

Karl Butts is a vegetable farmer in Plant City. Rollande Girard is a garment worker in San Francisco.  
 
 
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