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Goldegg Castle

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food sovereignty

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The goal of the forum for food sovereignty is to strengthen the movement and to connect all the people working on food sovereignty

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and to invent new strategies and ideas on how to reach a world that has food sovereignty implemented.

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Half a year before the forum started people met in the different regions of austria...

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...to network and prepare the topics for the forum.

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Food sovereignty has a lot to do with regional networks and with autonomy.

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This System, the value chain should be as fair and just as possible, for humans and nature.

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And this is hard indeed.

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But we try it!

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My connection to food sovereignty in everyday life is that I obtain my food from alternative distribution systems.

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... that humans have the right to decide on their own how they produce their food.

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... get one step closer to self sufficency and vegetable growing, at least to know where the food is coming from. To know where they are grown.

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To know under what conditions they are grown. To know about the working conditions, ideally directly connect to the people, to know the biological cycles.

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In my opinion all humanity has a right to healthy food.

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It is very meaningfull, it is for me a political vision, a path to the future. In genaral, this means a democrtization of the agrarian and food system.

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That the people that are concerned with the system can also make decisions and design der food system.

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The first global forum for food sovereignty, Nyéléni, took place in Mali in 2007.

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From there on there have been several forums in different regions. One of them was in Krems, Austria, the Nyéléni Europe Forum 2011.

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After that there where forums on the national level, like this one in Goldegg, the Nyéléni Austria Forum

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with the goal to identify alliances, strategies and networks needed in austria to achieve food sovereignty.

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This Forum was organized by different organisations and activists, notably Attac (AgrarAttac), ÖBV - Via Campesina Austria, and FIAN, an international human rights organization for the right to adequate food,

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and many many others like foodcoops, the csa movement, developmental policy NGOs and activists.

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We work on different topics:

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Change the way how food is produced. On organic agriculture, agroecology and many other topics.

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We work on food distribution systems. Foodcoops, community supported agiculture,

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on work and social conditions in agriculture,

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on acess to land, how is it possible to gain access to land and the tenure of the commons like water and the soil.

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And the political framework for agriculture.

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We are "Aktion Naschkatze", a mobile communal-kitchen domiciled in Vienna.

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We are cooking vegan and mainly ecological grown food.

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Also it is important to us, to cook food with short transportation ways

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and from known origins, which we want to support.

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That's how we are practising food sovereignity.

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Since several years we are cooking for various meetings, panels and political actions wich we declare as worthy of support.

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This year our biggest event is the "Nyeleni Forum for Food Souvereignity".

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The last 4 days we provided warm meals three times a day for more than 200 people.

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Because my health is directly affected by what I eat, I want to participate in definig what I am eating.

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In my opinion, the linkage between the right of access to public places, urban gardening and food souvereignity is given through the common need of democratic control.

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That's how we can make essential corrections in the current system.

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I got connected to the topic of food souvereignity through my working in managing board of the ÖBV.

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I already participated in the "European Nyeleni Forum" two years ago in Krems

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What impresses me the most on this forum, is the harmonic way of living together with a lot of mainly young people, but also older people of course from different professions.

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The topic and the targed of the forum itself are of course difficult ones,

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because finding solutions to change social values - as we intend to do - can not be done easily in a few days.

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But there are a lot of small actions to focus the public awareness on social wrongs, which we are trying to solve.

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The organisation concept of the forum is constituted by the regional groups, which held meetings before the forum

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and afterwards we focused the first two days at the forum on general main-issues.

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Now we are trying to bring these main-issues on a regional scale.

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Therefore people are helding plenars in the regional groups again, to discuss which issues they can implement in their regions.

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In Austria a lot of farms are given up.

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According to the last agrar-structure-analysis of 2010,

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more than 40.000 farms stopped their economic activities since the year 2000.

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This is a huge number for such a small country like Austria.

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Nowadays there are about 170.000 farms left,

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what means that the society could face some serious problems if this trend prolongs.

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So, how do the abandoning farmers find people to continue cultivating their farms, how do the right partners meet?

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Some assistance is needed!

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For the people who want to get into agriculture as well as for the farmers, who don't have a transferee for their farms.

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Of course we are aware of the fact, that farm transfers to newcomers and entrepreneur is not a solution for all of the abandoned farms, but it could be one for at least some of them.

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The situation of harvest workers in Austria is that these people are mainly migrants from Europe

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who come just for short periods of the year - the labour peaks in the agriculture - to Austria

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to work here usually with contract.

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It exists a specially negotiated collective agreement for them, but it is often avoided.

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What additionaly complicates the situation is that due to the short working period and the changing people it is difficult to built up a unionised and collective organisation.

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In order to bring the question about wagework into the forum in a productive way, we invited a unionist from the PRO-GE.

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There is a so called harvest worker campaign starting this year from the production union (PRO-GE) and the compartment of agriculturam workers,

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with the aim to support self-organisation and to make companies abide by the legal working conditions.

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The Forum for Food Sovereignty supports this campaign so far as we are working together and started an exchange of experience between the union and the forum.

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On the one hand this helps us learning more about unions work and on the other side it helps the union to better understand fields of the agricultural policy where maybe they do not have much experiences yet.

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My access in the theme food started as a consumer. When I came to Vienna to study, I had to take care of myself.

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Shortly I found out that I have a stronger interest in food but I'm not happy with the supply offered in the supermarkets.

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So I started to unite together with others to a buying syndicate, also called Food Coop.

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I made this for years and liked it very well.

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I had everything I need. I consumed very good and local products.

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Then it came to my mind that this is quite good for me but it doesn't helps the majority.

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So I started to be engaged in food sovereignty.

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Food is not a commodity, food is a right!

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Every human should have the right to adeduate and healthy food!

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Due to the multiple crisis: the nutrition-, climate- and financial crisis, the pressure on land as a resource increased extremely in the global south

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because a lot of investors don't want to invest on the financial markets any more and are now investing their money direct in land.

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As a result the access to land for peasants is getting more and more difficult in many countries.

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It led to eviction processes or to delay of agrarian reforms

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and a variety of farmers lost their access to land. landless for whom it is now even more difficult to get access to land to produce food.

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We see that the root of these problems is also lying in europe, in the form of our climate policy, our trade policy and our agricultural policy

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and that is why it is so important that this forum is taking place and that we are thinking together

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and that we also have to work on the political circumstances in order to improve the life situation, the human rights situation of peasants, of natives, of persons that live and work on the countryside.

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And now the point is that we bring together all the ideas, initiatives, actions that we develope in the forum, to continue them, to implement them

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and thus streingthen the movement of food sovereignty!