On October 16th, REDES celebrated World Food Sovereignty Day, and issued a statement where it highlighted the importance of family agriculture, agroecology, organic production and the use of native seeds for the production of food.

Food sovereignty is a political demand launched in 1996 by La Via Campesina, the international network of rural organizations. This concept defends the right of the people to define what they produce, how they do it, and how they commercialize their products. It highlights sustainable and fair food production, distribution and consumption policies, that benefit family and ecological agriculture. Food sovereignty promotes a model of local practices and decisions, instead of the transnational food paradigm.

In Uruguay, around 1 million hectares are used by forestry and foreign cellulose industries. It is expected that next year, GM soy monoculture plantations will occupy the same extension of lands. This is a large figure if we take into account that there are 16 million hectares of arable land in the country.

The current Uruguayan production model is characterized by the increasing concentration and foreignization of land. The displacement of family farmers, the destruction of biodiversity caused by monoculture plantations and the excessive use of agrotoxics, in addition to the loss of food sovereignty are some of the most serious consequences.

One of the main characteristics of this approach is the expansion of GMOs, especially soy. Uruguay has authorized the commercial growing of GM RR Soy (from Monsanto) in 1996 and GM maize MON 810 (also from Monsanto) and Bt 11 (from Syngenta - Switzerland) in 2003 and 2004 respectively. In 2009, seven new GM varieties of maize and soy, were authorized for testing and the production of seeds for export.

“It is quite concerning how rapid the new GM varieties were approved, even though the experts who participated in the assessments recognized that the deadlines granted to them to decide, sometimes no longer than a week, were not enough”, highlighted REDES.

The activists also said that the current production model in Uruguay, considered by them as “transnational, concentrated, biotechnological and focused on exports”, makes the lives of small-scale farmers –“who have traditionally produced our food”- increasingly difficult. “REDES supports their demands for incentives to ecological and family production, access to land and production materials, and for better services in the rural areas, to the benefit of the population and our sovereignty”, reads the statement.

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