PRESS CONFERENCE, Wednesday December 1, 1999
at Seattle Town Hall, International Media Center, 8th Ave and Seneca
8:30 to 9:30 am
VIA CAMPESINA DEMANDS:
TAKE AGRICULTURE OUT OF THE WTO
The Via Campesina, a worldwide movement of peasant and family farm
organizations, joined tens of thousands of protesters in downtown Seattle on November
30, 1999. We deplore the violent reaction against the marchers including the use of tear
gas and clubs. Peasants and family farmers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, the
Caribbean, as well as North America are experiencing the adverse results of the existing
WTO agriculture agreements. These results are devastating small scale farming. We
support the world wide request for a complete audit quantifying and evaluating the
consequences of the WTO on the well being of civil society.
Food is a basic human right and food production is dependent on biological
processes. It is inappropriate to treat food as just another tradeable commodity subject to
the same rules as industrial production. The basic WTO goal of trade liberalization and
the removal of all protections is completely unacceptable for the agricultural sector. It
undermines food security, food quality and ecologically sound food production
everywhere and increases social instability and poverty. Therefore agriculture must be
removed from the WTO framework.
We, the Via Campesina, demand that each nation has the right to maintain and
develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods, respecting cultural and productive
diversity. We also hold that the right to protect health, the environment, natural
resources and social and labour standards is a right that should not be curtailed by the
WTO. Those international protocols and conventions which protect these sectors must
supercede the WTO.
Family farming and peasant agriculture can produce safe and diversified foods,
protect the environment and assure sustainable development. The removal of agriculture
from the WTO would open the way to create genuine international democratic
mechanisms to regulate food trade while respecting food sovereignty in each country.
The Via Campesina demands:





support for local production and an immediate end to all food dumping
the recognition of community and farmers’ rights instead of intellectual property
rights.
the right of each country to define its own agricultural policy in order to meet its
internal needs.
that each country have the right to establish food quality criteria appropriate to the
preferences of its people.
agrarian reform to give women and men access to land and the right to produce their
own food.
For more information or interviews please call the following:
Rafael Alegria, Operational Secretariat of the Via Campesina at 206 419 0298
Bill Christison, National Family Farm Coalition, at 202 421 4544