In Times of Pandemics, Peasants United Feed the People!

Growing Justice youth plants heirloom Zuni bush beans in Riverpark Garden in Watsonville, California, April 15, 2020.

On the International Day of Peasant Struggles CAN stands with small farmers and farmworkers! Now deemed as “essential workers,” food workers have always been at the frontlines of crises that impact our food supply. Today Covid-19 lays bare and exacerbates the injustices and contradictions throughout the global food system.

• Farmworkers risk their lives to work in the fields without protective equipment or sick leave. After years of exposure to pesticides and “affordable” junk food, their embattled immune systems and related comorbidities put them at higher risk of serious illness if they get infected. Furthermore, they carry letters from the Department of Homeland Security affirming their status as essential workers that are critical to the food supply chain without any guarantees they will not be deported.

• In Nicaragua and Mexico, small farmers loose access to farmers’ markets, and brace themselves for the return of migrant farmworkers from virus hotspots. They prepare to take care of their own without access to medical care.

• Consumers face deepening hunger while tens of millions of pounds of fresh produce are left to rot in the fields. A supply chain that privileges profits over food security has scaled production to such a level that it cannot scale down to meet the needs of the people.

As we look toward strategies to emerge from this pandemic, returning to the status quo is not an option. CAN’s partners are working diligently to stay connected, informed, healthy, and fed by their own community organization and determination. Their work, across generations, to steward land, seeds, water, and community, is a source of hope.

• Growing Justice youth in Watsonville are planting urban garden plots, maintaining physical distance and rotating through as families to ensure fresh produce for this year.

• Over 100 Maya families in the Yucatan Peninsula have native seeds to plant their milpa fields–a critical food security component for Ka’Kuxtal’s newly developed community-based protocol for mitigating the spread of Covid-19 and caring for sick community members without access to medical care.

• Union de Cooperativas Agropecuarias Augusto Cesar Sandino (UCA San Ramón) in Nicaragua is communicating critical public health information and promoting actions for food sovereignty through its network of youth promoters.

• Agroecological Articulation and Development in Coffee (VIDA, A.C) evaluates the increased impact of Covid-19 on women and elders in their communities, and is working to find alternative channels for farmers’ markets as only large supermarkets are permitted to remain open.

As CAN is working closely with our partners to address emergency needs and create contingency plans, we will continue to keep you informed. In these uncertain times, we turn to the values we practice in the struggle for food sovereignty—social organization and mutual care of each other and the land. Together we echo the calls to maintain physical distance but not be silent. The persistent struggle for justice has already laid the foundations for a global food system where people and the planet come first. We can act creatively now.

Stay at Home But Not Silent

#stay at home but not silent poster courtesy Via Campesina.org

On April 17, 1996, members of the Landless Workers‘ Movement MST were shot dead by the military police of the state of Pará (Brazil) with impunity. This incident shocked the whole world and provoked massive resentment, especially in rural communities.

La Via Campesina responded with solidarity actions and demands for justice, mobilizing peasant communities not only in Brazil and Latin America, but all over the world.

It declared April 17 as the “International Day of Peasant Struggles” to keep the peasant resistance alive in memory. This year, owing to the massive lock down in many countries due to the spread of Coronavirus, we are calling for creative mobilizations.