Water, land, and food under debate

Food sovereignty is fundamental to Sumak Kausay, or good living, an indigenous way of life grounded in the construction of social systems that are based on the reciprocity between humans and nature.

That’s how it’s understood by the principal indigenous and campesino organizations in Ecuador, like the National Confederation of Campesino, Indigenous and Black Organizations, or FENOCIN, which is closely aligned to the national government, and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or CONAIE. The two, along with smaller organizations, are looking to join forces to get laws approved that guarantee food that is safe, healthy and permanent.

An early victory for the grassroots organizations was getting into the country’s 2008 Constitution articles on the right to food as well as to food sovereignty.

For example, Article 13 of the Ecuadoran Constitution states: “Individuals and communities have the right to safe and permanent access to healthy, sufficient and nutritious food, preferably produced locally and in accordance with their different identities and cultural traditions.” Specifically regarding food sovereignty, Article 281 reads: “Food sovereignty is a strategic objective and an obligation of the State to guarantee that individuals, communities, towns and nationalities achieve permanent self-sufficiency with foods that are healthy and culturally appropriate.”

For those articles to work, the Constitution places the responsibility on the State in designing fiscal, technological, and production policies, as well as those for biosecurity and the provision and use of seeds, among others.

After the new Constitution went into effect, the indigenous and campesino organizations took up a campaign together to seek approval of different laws that ensure food sovereignty. To that end, in early February 2010, about 75 grassroots indigenous and campesino organizations declared that year the Year of National Mobilization for Food Sovereignty.

Of primary concern to the organizations was the lack of consensus in the National Assembly to approve a Food Sovereignty Law, which elaborates on issues like agrarian development, seeds, local farming, and bans on transgenics, and which need to be buttressed by a Water Law, which would regulate access to water on equal terms, prioritizing human consumption and agriculture. These bills were drawn up in the National Assembly in 2009 without consulting the social sectors involved. This sparked an indigenous mobilization in September 2009 and lead to the death of Shuar professor Bosco Wisuma.

One disagreement over the Water Law is about managing the flow of water; the government wants to establish a state agency, disregarding the historic “juntas de agua,” or water boards, in which communities participate. Another point of contention is with the Land Act, which seeks land redistribution and the elimination of the large estates.

The call for the organizations’ campaign denounced the tendency of neoliberal governments to favor agribusiness, monoculture, the prioritization of agricultural production for export (of exotic products such as flowers, strawberries, uvillas, broccoli, etc.), for which entrepreneurs look to take over productive land and water sources. The organizations countered this with an appeal to promote sustainable agroecology, the recovery of traditional practices, and fair trade.

One of the campaign’s strong points was the call to reestablish family and communitarian farming practices, forms that allowed indigenous peoples to survive despite the pressure of the Western world.

“You just have to look at how the last indigenous march was held to know that indigenous communities can feed their people autonomously,” says Gloria Chicaiza, an activist with Acción Ecológica, the country’s leading environmental organization, referring to the mobilization last March in defense of water.

Chicaiza highlighted how in all indigenous protests, each community is responsible for feeding and supporting their own delegations, fully decentralizing the logistical responsibility for the general mobilization.

“A similar practice could ensure food not only for the communities but for the surrounding towns,” Chicaiza said.

Despite the importance of the call to action and the involvement of pro-government organizations —like FENOCIN, the National Federation of Agribusiness Workers and Free Campesinos in Ecuador, or FENACLE, and the National Campesino Coordinating Body Eloy Alfaro, or CNC-EA — neither government officials nor President Rafael Correa accepted the proposals. The bills are held up in the National Assembly.

“Ensuring a system of food sovereignty requires the adoption of laws relating to the administration and regulation of water flows, and the redistribution of land; that is the only way to transform the agriculture and food systems in our country,” said CONAIE President Humberto Cholango.

He added that one of the basic requests of the recent indigenous march was the adoption of the Land Act, but despite talks with the government, no progress has been made because neither it nor the Water Act are priorities for the National Assembly.

“Without solving the problem of land tenure, without eradicating the large estates and redistributing idle land, we cannot guarantee food, let alone food sovereignty,” Cholango told Latinamerica Press, referring to the law’s basic points.

“In talking about land, we also should talk about its spiritual character, the community structures there, and not merely consider it as something to be exploited,” said Cholango, pointing out the difference with how land is seen by the indigenous groups allied with the government.

While the government talks of production and productivity, for which it is seeking to implement agrobusiness and turn communities into units of production, CONAIE claims the land is more than that.

In short, if it is true that the indigenous and campesino organizations have decided to act together on the issue of food sovereignty, there are still differences that divide them. In the meantime, the National Assembly and Correa’s administration are not making inroads to legislate and put into practice the constitutional principles adopted four years ago.

El Salvador women put their faith in agroecology

María Elena Muñoz industriously weeds a clearing in the forest and then digs several holes, where she and another four dozen women are planting plantain seedlings to help feed their families in this poor farming area in El Salvador.

The group is involved in an agroecology programme that has two main aims: achieving food sovereignty, which is at risk in the rural communities of San Julián; and fomenting the development of energy forests, which provide local families with sustainable energy and help mitigate the impact of climate change.

"The forest belongs to everyone, it gives us fruit and firewood for cooking," said Muñoz, 42. She is president of the Association of Communities for Development in the district of Los Lagartos in the municipality of San Julián, which is home to 19,000 people in the western province of Sonsonate.

These communities, and especially local farms, are hit hard by climate swings year after year, said Mercy Palacios of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit (Unes), a local environmental NGO. "During the drought, the crops are scorched, and during the rainy season, they are drowned," she said the day IPS accompanied the local women in their activities in the community forest.

Subsistence agriculture is the mainstay of the communities, where peasant farmers grow corn and beans on infertile hillsides, and the harvests are steadily declining due to climate phenomena.

El Salvador, and central America in general, suffers heavy rain in winter – the rainy season – which almost inevitably leaves a trail of destruction. In October, for example, the rains claimed 43 lives in the country and flooded 10% of the national territory. Rebuilding in central America in the wake of the October storms will cost $4.2bn (£2.6bn), according to estimates by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"We are suffering from climate extremes, something new that we have to adapt to," Palacios said.

"There are very poor families that subsist on what they get out of the forest," said Elsy Álvarez, a 37-year-old mother of two. "For example, they sell tangerines in the town, and get a 'cora' [quarter – 25 cents] for tortillas or to give to their kid when he goes to school."

Tired of losing the family harvest, the women in Los Lagartos decided to do something to ensure food sovereignty, and began to plant an energy forest. Food sovereignty refers to people's right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

The idea came from Unes environmentalists who were working in the area, establishing an "agroschool" to teach the basic concepts of agroecology. But soon the local women made the idea their own. They have made it flourish – without financing.

The food sovereignty project encompasses a quarter of the 40 rural villages and communities in San Julián, a municipality 60km west of San Salvador. The project benefits about 50 families – 300 people – and the energy forest component will be expanded from Los Lagartos to other participating communities.

In Los Lagartos (population 5,000), the women work in their family gardens, where they grow vegetables with organic compost that they produce. They also use it in their plots of corn and beans, staples of the Salvadoran diet, and on fruit trees in the forest. The compost is helping to change planting techniques in favour of the environment. And the women plan to start selling their organic fertiliser, to earn funds for the project.

The forest is less than one hectare (2.5 acres), but it has a special importance for the women because they have managed to regain control over the area and replant it, after a sugar mill destroyed it 10 years ago to plant sugar cane.

"For 10 years we have been fighting for this forest," said Muñoz, a mother of four. When she and the rest of the women saw that the forest was being cut down, they complained to the authorities and managed to rescue a small part – but the damage was already done. So they began to replant. They planted avocado, mango and nance (golden spoon) trees. This year they began to grow plantains and trees that can be used for their wood.

"Now we don't let anyone cut down our forest," Álvarez said. "We exploit it ourselves, but only the dry branches and what is cut in the pruning process."

The concept of energy forests is not based on planting trees to cut them down later for lumber, but on their sustainable use, for instance by using dry branches as firewood and planting fruit trees. "A tree has a useful life expectancy, and the branches can be used as firewood, while maintaining its capacity to regenerate," Palacios said.

In this country of 6.1 million people, 25% use firewood for cooking, according to official figures. The poorest 10% of households spend more on firewood than on electricity, according to the 2010 United Nations Development Programme report on El Salvador. Consumption of firewood not only represents an important expense in family budgets, but many households also dedicate a significant proportion of their time to collecting it, the report says.

In El Salvador, 36.5% of the population live in poverty, and 11.2% in extreme poverty, according to official figures from 2010. But in rural areas, the poverty rate stands at 43.2%, and 15% live in extreme poverty.

Luis González, an environmentalist with Unes, said the Los Lagartos project falls under the concept of climate justice, which indicates that not every region, and not every population group within regions, is affected in the same way by global warming. "There are sectors that are more vulnerable than others, and different studies show that women are among the most heavily affected groups," he said. For example, he added, when drought dries up a water source, women suffer the stress of having to find a new source of water, further away from their homes.

A gender focus must be included in this kind of environmental project to give women a more decisive role, said Ima Guirola of the women's group Cemujer. In this part of the country, she said, women are taking the lead in efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. "The important thing is to see whether women are adopting technological tools and scientific knowhow on the environment, and whether they are participating in the decision-making involved in the project," she said.

Occupying farmland for organic food and fairness exposes university elitism

On Earth Day—April 22, 2012—about 200 people, accompanied by children in strollers, dogs, rabbits, chickens, and carrying hundreds of pounds of compost and at least 10,000 seedlings entered a 14-acre piece of land containing the last Class I agricultural soil in the East Bay. Located on the Albany-Berkeley border in the Bay Area, the plot is owned by the University of California Berkeley. By the end of the day, they had weeded, tilled, and successfully cultivated about an acre of the land. By May 14, when 100 University of California riot police surrounded the tract and began arresting the farmers, Occupy the Farm had cultivated around five acres of the plot known as the Gill Tract.

The Occupy farmers have laid out footpaths around cultivated plots, created wildlife corridors, riparian zones, and protected areas for native grasses and a wild turkey nest, and set up a library and a kitchen. They have planted thousands of seedlings of corn, tomatoes, squash, beans, broccoli, herbs, and strawberries, including heirloom varieties from a local seed bank. Other plots have been reserved for agro-ecological research. There’s also a permaculture garden for kids on the other side of a gazebo of woven branches where wind chimes tinkle in the breeze.

Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation, says that the vision for the farm is the “practice and promotion of sustainable urban agriculture with a commitment to food justice and food sovereignty.” He is a father, activist, and member of what he calls the “new urban peasantry.” Food grown on the farm will be distributed—for free—through existing food justice networks in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On April 24, the University shut off the water supply and threatened the farmers with eviction. University administration has gone on a media offensive, attempting to pit researchers against the Occupy farmers and according to some reports, preventing them from negotiating with the farmers. Some faculty members have published statements in support of the farmers, arguing that the goals of the farm are aligned with the public policy goals of the state and the U.C. mission. If transforming a student’s life is part of that mission, U.C. Berkeley student Lesley Haddock has certainly experienced it working on the farm. “Before our project began, I had never planted a seed,” she admits. “But in the past two weeks, I have become a farmer!”

One of the Occupy farmers, Ashoka Finley is a program assistant with Urban Tilth and runs an organic farm in collaboration with students at Richmond High School, in Richmond, California. A political economy graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Finley believes that the farm is redefining and reclaiming the role of the public university, just as the Occupy movement is redefining and reclaiming public space.

“The history of the Gill Tract is [about] public subsidization of private research that [profits] the corporate industrial complex; not research for the public good,” he says.

It was not always this way. The 104-acre plot was sold to the University in 1928 by the Gill family with the condition that it be used as an agricultural research station. Under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, part of the University’s mission as a land grant institution is to promote community involvement and initiatives in agriculture.

From the 1940s through the 1990s, research conducted at the Gill Tract laid the groundwork for successful, non-chemical and non-petroleum-based methods for controlling numerous major insect pests on several California crops, and for the integration of biological, chemical, and cultural methods of pest control.5 The innovative methods developed, shared, and refined at the International Center for Biological Control included intercropping6 and using bugs to control pests in addition to or in place of pesticides, and means to reduce overall chemical dependency and prevent the development of superbugs in industrial and community agriculture worldwide.

The turning point came in 1998, when Novartis gave $25 million to the Plant and Microbial Biology department to conduct genetic research on the land. “They kicked off the local organic pest management project to do gene research,” says Ulan McKnight of the Albany Farm Alliance. “What was here before directly benefitted the people of California; now what they do here directly benefits biotechnology companies. Instead of doing things that can help people, they are doing things that benefit the one percent.”

Among the projects closed down at the time was a seed bank of rare heirloom varieties of many important food crops, and a state-of-the-art drip irrigation system from a student-run urban sustainable agriculture demonstration plot. Until the water was cut off at the Tract, the Occupy farmers were planning to start using those irrigation tubes again.

The trend of privatizing the research and knowledge produced at public institutions is systemic, according to Julie Sze, associate professor of American Cultures at U.C. Davis. A long-time supporter of social justice and student movements, Sze attributes her activism to her student days at U.C. Berkeley, where she took courses with the likes of RP&E founder Carl Anthony. She credits the university with being the “social justice innovation lab” that produced so many of the environmental justice leaders of today and argues that corporatization is an impoverishment of the U.C. system and a betrayal of the system’s legacy for California.

It is worth noting that the number of people graduating from UCLA annually exceeds the total number of people graduating from all private colleges in the state. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to say that whatever happens with the U.C. system affects the future of California.

Universities have a special role to encourage ways of thinking that go beyond the corporate workplace, says Sze. People who have fought to work with communities on the side of racial and economic justice are an important legacy of the university. People like Paul Taylor, who in the 1930s, promoted the idea of the agricultural job ladder (where farm workers could eventually become family farmers) over the agribusiness model, which depended on seasonal workers. The university is a place to explore and imagine different possibilities and different futures, which is why student activism is a global force and so deeply threatening to the existing order.

Sze believes that the move towards corporate funding of research, coupled with increasing student debt, has curtailed the ability and desire of students to participate in the creative and innovative social justice thinking and activity that is so important to the common good.

David Naguib Pellow, another movement scholar-activist and a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, observes, “Every [public] university I’ve worked at, professors are encouraged to secure external funding for their research to alleviate state budget constraints. This often involves seeking resources from corporations and foundations that have little or no accountability to the public, which amounts to the privatization of ideas, knowledge, and the commons, and is a dangerous trend if we desire to live in a democratic society.”

The tuition hikes and the cuts in programs that do not have a corporate/profit bent are a direct result of the bias towards education in the service of corporations, according to Finley, and needs to be countered by the training of people in the service of people.

In an email sent out in early May, Adbusters urges recipients to “occupy the future;” that is, “to describe, build and sustain the post-capitalist future we want to live in.”

Dayaneni concurs with that sentiment. “People ask me what they can do to support. I say, take more land. Occupy a library, a clinic, whatever, plan it right and [re-launch] it appropriately and at scale. We need to prove that we have the ability to self govern. This is the new moment of occupy, not tit for tat, not cat-and-mouse games with cops, but full-scale intervention. Occupy the Farm is one of the first to-scale interventions.”

Projects like Occupy the Farm also create a sort of sovereignty and allow a space for larger political expression where people can articulate their demand for a more egalitarian, just society through work done with their own hands, argues Finley.

“In the first world, we have been fed a false sense of security that is imploding,” says Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan, recounting her family’s experience with the militant experiment in collective governance and self-sufficiency. “On Earth Day, our families were a part of manifesting a collective vision for a better way forward—that the land be a community educational center. We have planted strawberries in the children’s garden and feed the chickens with snails that we collect from our own garden. My partner, a cook, brings us food regularly. We are making that vision real.”

Not everybody, however, sees Occupy the Farm in the same light and on the same terms, Finley points out. For many communities of color, farmwork is both a practice of material and cultural survival and self-sufficiency, and, at the same time, deeply tied to racialized exploitation in the United States. For African Americans, farming is related to slavery and sharecropping. For recent immigrants from Latin America, farming is about the bankruptcy brought on by the dumping of subsidized monoculture products in their countries. And for Southeast Asian immigrants, farming is associated with a bloody countryside strewn with unexploded ordnance and other detritus from U.S. wars. At the same time, like other forced immigrants before them, these people have also brought with them a knowledge and identity that is wrapped up in the cultivation and ceremony of working the land.

Subsistence through the production of one’s own food is one of the most effective forms of resistance. But the action at Gill Tract also points toward the broader challenges at the University.

The arena of struggle revealed by Occupy the Farm is not just organic farming, food justice, and food sovereignty. The classrooms, the libraries, and the research agenda of the university are being shaped to meet the needs of corporate sponsors. Groundbreaking areas in scholarship that were pioneered in the University of California, such as Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, were won by student-led protest and strikes (and occupations) in the early 1970s. They now face devastating cuts against which students are mobilizing. Battles against tuition hikes, student debt, and democratizing University governance will be key to shifting the overall direction of the university and the society.

Amilcar Cabral, the African revolutionary and agricultural engineer once said: “Culture contains the seed of resistance, which blossoms into the flower of liberation.” At the Gill Tract we can see seeds of resistance that have been planted—but it is clear that in order to blossom, they will need watering.

Locusts threaten beleaguered Mali

Mali is bracing for an invasion of locusts as unrest in north and west Africa hampers efforts to control the crop-ravaging insects. Locust sightings have been reported in northern Mali, where families are already hard-hit by conflict and food insecurity, and where equipment used to control the swarms has been looted by armed groups.

As desert locusts approach northern Mali and neighboring Niger, national experts in Mali, who normally work on mitigating the impact, are hamstrung by unrest and a lack of access and equipment.

As of June 8, the Food and Agriculture Organization - the U.N. agency that monitors locust movements - classified Mali as a zone where surveillance and control “must be undertaken” where crops are threatened.

Oumar Traoré, head technician with Mali’s locust control center, which normally would carry out that surveillance and control, says most of the national center’s equipment was stocked in a warehouse in the northern town of Gao and everything was stolen when armed groups seized northern Mali.

When the groups swept into the region just over two months ago, they looted government buildings, hospitals, and the offices and warehouses of national and international aid organizations.

Most families in Mali’s extreme north depend on livestock, and locust swarms would destroy pastures that feed their animals.

Traoré says the worry now is that the insects could quickly advance farther south, where people live off farming.

As areas dry up, locusts move on and seek vegetation. Keith Cressman, the FAO’s senior locust forecasting officer, said sporadic rains in northern Niger and Mali could affect how the swarms behave.

"Of course not all areas have received these rains so there are areas in the north of both countries that are dry. So the locusts could overfly those areas and continue as far south as they can before they hit the southerly headwinds, Cressman explained, "but it could put them into the agricultural zones of the central parts of Mali and central and southern parts of Niger. The time they would be arriving would coincide with the planting of this year’s crops and we already know that in both countries [people] are very vulnerable this year to food insecurity because of last year’s poor harvest."

The U.N. World Food Program says that drought in the region has left millions of people hungry. The agency says the conflict in Mali has forced at least 300,000 people to flee, adding to the food crisis there and in surrounding countries.

The desert locust swarms threatening Mali and Niger are coming from Algeria and Libya to the north.

Cressman told VOA that normally locust control teams would be able to control the insects along the Algeria-Libya border, but given events over the past several months that has not been the case.

"Algeria made an estimate, saying that of the potential areas that are infested with desert locusts, the ground teams could only reach 15 percent of those areas, so that means 85 percent of the areas were unsurveyed and untreated," he said.

Cressman said the situation is likely similar on the Libyan side.

FAO says a small portion of an average swarm - about one ton of locusts - eats as much food in one day as 10 elephants or 2,500 people.

Land reforms: Food sovereignty should trump food security, say speakers

Participants in a land ownership forum on Monday underlined the need for equal distribution of land rather than land reforms and ensuring food sovereignty rather than food security in the country.

They pointed out that due to the corporatisation of farming and gifts of land to foreigners, not only food security, but also food sovereignty is at stake.

The national consultation on land reforms was organised by Pakistan Mazdoor Tehrik (PKMT) and Roots for Equity.

The participants expressed concern that the masses of the country are facing issues like food insecurity and malnutrition while the government continues to give irrigated lands away to foreigners.

Speakers pinpointed that the strong nexus of the military-bureaucracy-feudal troika is the key impediment in the way of land reforms. It was underlined that without breaking the influence of this troika, not only land reforms, but even real democracy could not come as the feudal overlords have always remained instrumental to the survival of the established government. It was also highlighted that lands are given freely to generals, bureaucrats, cricketers and actors, instead of to farmers and peasants, who are the real owners.

PKMT National Coordinator Ali Akber felt food sovereignty instead of food security should be a basic pillar of the agriculture development framework.

The PKMT member pointed out that 2013 is an election year and it is important that political parties ensure that land reforms be made a key part of their manifestoes.

Speaking on the occasion, Roots for Equity Executive Director Dr Azra Talat said that 50 per cent of the total irrigated land is owned by only four per cent of landlords, which causes frustration and underuse of the land.

She said there is a need for a new line of action to launch an effective peasant movement to stop the corporate land grab strategy and push for equal distribution of land.

She felt that a consensus approach has led to the equal distribution of land becoming a more important issue than land reforms.

She pointed out that the Sindh Agriculture minister has himself given 3,200 acres of land to foreigners for corporate farming and the entire population of the area has been displaced. “Our lands are given to foreigners, leaving our own people homeless and jobless,” she added.

Ali Hassan Chandio, a nationalist from Sindh, said land reforms are not possible in Pakistan while the troika endures. He said that there is a need for a strong movement against this troika to force land reforms and land redistribution.

He added that the new trend of corporation farming has displaced many peasants and crops were sent abroad, which is endangering the nation's food security. “Land should be redistributed among farmers and peasants… corporate farming is the new face of feudalism”, he maintained.

Pakistan Business Review Chief Editor Dr Shahida Wazarat also advocated land reforms. “There will be adverse affects on food security if corporate farming continues in future,” she opined.

Family planning and subsistence agriculture key to food security

Papua New Guinea’s high fertility rate is exerting pressure on land and food production in a country where 80 percent of the population lives in rural communities. But the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) argues that traditions of subsistence agriculture provide a firm foundation to build food security for a growing population.

Papua New Guinea, a fertile island nation in the South Pacific, is a natural habitat for diverse food crops and wild plants. Most people in rural and peri-urban areas grow their own fruit and vegetables for consumption, while in rural villages selling agricultural produce can be a significant source of income.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the nation’s strong agricultural sector could easily ensure food security, with agricultural exports of 882 million dollars exceeding imports of 425 million dollars. Furthermore, the country has an agricultural labour force of five million, out of a population of 6.9 million people.

However, Sim Sar, programme director of agricultural systems improvement at NARI, warns, "Food production is not keeping pace with population growth. Approximately 42 percent of the population in rural and urban areas are unable to meet a target food energy requirement of 2000 calories per person per day."

The fertility rate in Papua New Guinea is 4.6 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), compared to the average fertility rate in developed countries of 1.7 births per woman. The National Research Institute (NRI) predicts the current population could rise to seven million by 2014 and 8.5 million by 2024.

Attaining food security will entail addressing both population growth and agricultural productivity.

The UNFPA’s 2011 State of World Population Report emphasises, "In many parts of the developing world, where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great."

Contraceptive prevalence in Papua New Guinea is 24 percent, while the regional range in the Pacific Islands is 20.5-46.1 percent, lagging well behind the 62 percent average in all other developing countries.

Distant rural communities and under-resourced rural health centres are obstacles to the dissemination of family planning materials and services.

Russel Kitau, Chair of Public Health at the University of Papua New Guinea, believes too many people ask, "Why should the government stop (us) from having many children? Who is going to take care of (us) when we get old? Is it the government?"

"Another (obstacle) is the fear that the side effects of contraception might cause cancer," he continued, adding that some people believe women’s use of contraceptives could encourage infidelity.

Through the National Health Plan (2011-2020), the government aims to expand free family planning coverage and improve sexual and reproductive health for adolescents.

"We are doing our best to train our health workers to go back to the health centres and implement the family planning programme," Kitau explained. "But funding for family planning is very low compared with programmes for (prevention and treatment of) HIV/AIDS. The small amount of donations and funding from development partners is not sufficient or sustainable in the long run."

A large and growing population will be a reality for years to come in Papua New Guinea and Sar believes the agricultural sector must be at the centre of strategies to ensure sustainable nutritious food supplies.

"Agriculture in PNG is the primary source of food security," he explained. "Hence the key strategy to attain food security is the enhancement of productivity, efficiency and stability of agricultural production systems."

A socio-economic farmer survey conducted by the Fresh Produce Development Agency, which is tasked with developing a sustainable and commercially viable horticulture industry, reported that farmers grow an average of 4.7 commonly cultivated crops for sale, including sweet potatoes, bananas, tomatoes, taro, peanuts, beans, corn, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cassava, cucumbers and pawpaws.

When questioned about challenges to productivity, 65 percent of growers identified pests and diseases, 32 percent cited the high price or shortage of fertilisers and seeds, while 22 percent blamed bad weather.

In order to boost production of local foods, as well as conserve crop diversity, NARI has released 27 new farming technologies since 2003. These include high yielding and disease tolerant banana varieties; drought tolerant sweet potatoes; upland rice varieties; improved peanut production methods; pest control technology packages for bananas; methods of controlling taro beetle with insecticides; and drought coping strategies.

Land is central to agricultural productivity and sustaining lives in the developing world, especially when, in times of poverty, people turn to land-based resources for sustenance. Most land in Papua New Guinea is held under customary tenure and has not been surveyed or registered, so there are disputes over land access and rights.

According to the NRI, land registration and secure land titles encourage efficient land-use, provide access to competitively priced credit and create incentives for investment, thereby enhancing agricultural productivity.

Land registration would also allow for easier and more robust exchanges of land between parties, thereby making land which is not being utilised accessible to those who need it.

"Though 80-90 percent of land is under customary tenure, not everyone has access to land due to uneven distribution (among) clan members, migration and death," Sar added. "Hence the number of landless people is increasing, particularly those residing in urban areas or those in marginalised and disadvantaged areas."

Only by investing now in family planning, agriculture and land reform will Papua New Guinea ensure a sustainable future for the next generation.

OAS states divided over food sovereignty

Representatives attending the 42nd General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) squabbled here on Tuesday over the inclusion of "food sovereignty" in a declaration on food security.

Bolivia proposed the inclusion of the term, which was coined in 1996 to describe rights of people to "define their own agricultural, livestock and fisheries systems in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces."

However, Chile, among the countries that have registered the highest growth rates in food exports in recent years, opposed the idea, saying such a concept might harm the free flow of food stuff.

The majority of foreign ministers attending the meeting supported the proposal put forward by Bolivia, said Diego Pari, Bolivia's ambassador to the OAS.

He added that Chile, backed by the United States in its opposition to the inclusion of "food sovereignty," succeeded in including a footnote in the declaration questioning the use of the term.

"Chile opposed the issue of food sovereignty and has established a footnote," said the Bolivian diplomat.

"We think it's a somewhat covert opposition, but we managed to gain the support of several countries which had previously perceived the term as a threat rather than a right of the people," he said.

Despite the disagreement, the OAS's general committee decided to approve the 42-paragraph declaration so that the issue becomes a matter for discussion in the OAS and other frameworks over the next few years.

Fisheries agreement with Kiribati gets new protocol

The European Commission (EC), on behalf of the European Union (EU), and the Republic of Kiribati initialled a new protocol to the Fisheries Partnership Agreement in Nadi, Fiji.

The Commission welcomes this renegotiation of the new Protocol that confirms the commitment of the EU to work with its partners on strengthening sustainable fisheries wherever its fleets operate.

The new protocol provides fishing opportunities for tuna vessels. Out of the EU annual financial contribution EUR 1,325,000, EUR 350,000 has entirely been earmarked for sectoral policy support to help the Republic of Kiribati to promote responsible and sustainable fishing in their waters. It should be noted that in this agreement the shipowner's fee was substantially increased.

The fishing opportunities available under the new protocol include a reference tonnage of 15,000 tonnes, which corresponds to fishing authorisation for four purse seiners and six long liners. The fishing opportunities have been calculated on the basis of the scientific recommendations.

According to the Commission, bilateral relationships with countries in the Pacific are ensuring the benefit for all parties involved. They are also important for the regional development in the Pacific and for the strengthening the EU position in regional fisheries organisations such as the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).

Fishing opportunities under this Protocol will be of the use for the ship owners coming from Spain, France and Portugal.

This new protocol to the fisheries partnership agreement will cover a period of three years and will replace the current Protocol, which expires on 16 September 2012.

In the past few years, the EU has been moving from traditional fisheries agreements to partnership agreements which, in the case of developing countries, focus on providing full support to the partner country to establish sustainable fishing in its waters.

Fisheries Partnership Agreements also increase the coherence of such agreements with the other policies of the EU in the field of development and protection of the environment. The EU has currently 15 Fisheries Partnership Agreements with third countries.

It remains to be seen what effect the new partnership will have on remedying the problems posed by Kiribati's massively overfished waters. Local fishermen have long been pushed out of competition by commercial fishers, with destabilizing effects on the Kiribati economy and diet. Any efforts to establish sustainable fishing in the Pacific will have to solve that problem first.