Food sovereignty can cool down the earth!

Via Campesina position on UNFCCC (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change)

Small-farmers and peasant communities are among the first victims of climate change. Everywhere, in our fields, amongst the plants we cultivate and the animals we raise, the consequences of climate change are palpable. Yet, this is nothing new. Already back in the 1970s, African farmers started to suffer the consequences of desertification and a radical change in the seasons. Since then, many of us have suffered hurricanes, large-scale floods, shortening of the wet season and plant and animal diseases caused by unusual temperatures. Small-scale farmers and peasants have adapted their way of living and farming in order to withstand these changes. For example, they have chosen seeds from varieties that grow more quickly or resist dryness, they have developed water management systems to deal with floods and to keep soils humid during the dry season. Most of the time, they have done it so successfully that it has gone unnoticed. The attention of the mass media was only brought to the long-term crisis faced by farming communities and the critical situation of food production in the globalized economy by the food price crisis in Spring 2008 and riots in cities that threatened national governments.

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