A Vision for an Ecological and Sustainable Food System

http://www.biosafety-info.net/article.php?aid=1158

THIRD WORLD NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICE ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Dear Friends and Colleagues 

Almost one billion people go hungry everyday while 30% of the world's food is wasted and 1.5 billion people are obese. Our current corporate-controlled agriculture system pollutes and harms the earth's natural resources, contributes massively to climate change, is wasteful, and harms biodiversity and the wellbeing of farmers and consumers. Clearly, there is an urgent need for a big systemic change.

This is the underlying premise of a new report by Greenpeace International which discusses how the current industrial agriculture system is a broken one that has failed and instead provides a vision for an ecological food system that protects, sustains and restores the diversity of life on Earth.

The reportposits seven principles for a proper ecological farming system: food sovereignty where people, not the corporations, are empowered to be in control of the food they grow and eat; benefitting farmers and rural communities in allowing them to thrive; smarter food production and yields through ecological means to produce enough food where it is most needed; providing biodiversity from seed to plate; sustainable soil health and cleaner water; ecological pest management without chemical products; and food systems which are resilient to changing climatic conditions and unstable economies.

The report concludes with recommendations on how everyone cancontribute to changing the broken food system into an ecological food system with people at its heart, by supporting the farmers already practising ecological agriculture and demanding that agricultural policies and funding be redirected to promote the urgent uptake of ecological farming all around the world.

The full report can be downloaded at: www.greenpeace.org/ecofarmingvision. The introduction and the seven principles are reproduced below.

With best wishes,

Third World Network
131 Jalan Macalister
10400 Penang
Malaysia
Email: twn@twnetwork.org
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ECOLOGICAL FARMING: THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF A FOOD SYSTEM THAT HAS PEOPLE AT ITS HEART

Greenpeace International Netherlands
www.greenpeace.org/ecofarmingvision