Newsletter no 35 - Food sovereignty at the rural-urban interface

Editorial - Food sovereignty at the rural-urban interface Illustration: Lucy Everitt for the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network - communitygarden.org.au
The rural-urban interface is a complex social space where politics and culture are in constant flux. It can also be a physical place, where the wealth and resources of villages, towns, peri-urban suburbs, and suburbanized rural areas are in dispute. Taken globally, it is a vast territory with potential to grow food (...)

The new global majority: Peasants in the city and countryside
Food sovereignty as a banner of joint struggle was put forth by the peasantry of the world, organized in La Via Campesina (LVC). But achieving real food sovereignty would require major structural change, passing through genuine agrarian reform, a reversal of free trade policies and agreements, getting the WTO (World Trade Organisation) out of agriculture, breaking monopolies over our food system of supermarkets and (...)

Box 1 Food Sovereignty at the rural-urban interface #1
The rural-urban interface can be found in the far-flung suburbs, repartos, banlieu, and underserved neighborhoods of the inner cities of the Global North, and in the favelas, barrios, slums and misery belts surrounding big cities in the Global South. But it is also found in villages and towns dotting the global countryside. It is so ubiquitous; it is sometimes easy to miss.
On top of that, beginning with the industrial revolution, (...)

Voices from the field
Notes from a New, Peri-urban Farmer in US Caitlin Hachmyer, Red H Farm, California, USA
I look out over my crops and beyond to the fields. I don’t own this land. I farm the land, I steward the soil. But my care for the land constantly conflicts with the knowledge that I put money and more money into an investment whose return I might never see.
New and young farmers typically rent. Success depends on developing a market niche. This favors educated, networked (...)