They talk about food, who produces it and how it is produced, who has the right to food and the way to produce food in a sustainable way at a global scale.

As in many debates, those who have power seem to want to stay out as a way to continue with their profitable, yet unfair, practices.

The G8 member countries insist with the absolute liberalization of the food market in the official summit, while outside hundreds of voices of small peasants, social organizations and NGOs are demanding a change in the system as the only way to solve the most important problem of humanity: that of material and moral survival.

A mobilization in Porta Capena square took place on Monday. The message sent to the FAO delegates was the following: “In the kickoff of the Forum both the mayor of Rome, Mr. Gianni Alemano, and FAO’s Director General, Mr. Jacques Diouf, have recognized that the food and climate crises have a response in the rural movements. Now the World Summit has the chance to show us they believe their own words”.

The activity included other actions like the exhibition of the tools with which millions of peasants produce over 75 per cent of the food consumed by the planet, and still suffer hunger and displacement.

The message is urgent and clear towards the representatives of the states participating in the FAO summit: “We also need public policies that focus on the ones who produce the food that the world consumes. Measures should be adopted to give way to the peoples’ food sovereignty. That promote the peoples’ right to control their natural resources”.

As part of the official summit, the FAO’s Director has began a symbolic fast to represent the growing number of people who suffer hunger, even though the official discourse speaks of a paradigm of efficient and technically advanced food production.

From the tents where the Peoples Food Sovereignty Now! Forum is taking place, this move by the FAO’s Director was received as his commitment to the problem. But they point at the most industrialized countries grouped in the G8 as the main responsible for the situation.

But this was not the only ‘bridge’ between the official summit and the social movement’s meeting, led by La Via Campesina.
On Friday 13, in the opening of the summit the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, was present to express his optimism about a new structure of the Food Security Committee under the slogan “one country, one vote”.

He warned about the fact that the agency in charge of managing the FSC’s resources will be the World Bank and called on the social movements to supervise the approved reform.

“If we are to highlight something, Olivier explained, one of the mistakes of the past 25 years, has been precisely the marginalization of small producers, of the fisherfolk, of rural women and young people, of rural workers, shepherds, indigenous peoples...The construction of Food Sovereignty lies in the democratization of the decision making processes that affect the peasant and rural world”, he concluded.

Foto: http://peoplesforum2009.foodsovereignty.org