Asserting People’s Food Sovereignty: An Initiative of VOICE in Bangladesh

Food sovereignty, ecological agriculture and environmental justice are some of the major premises of VOICE. In pursuing these, VOICE strives toward empowering communities, and building capacity and sharing knowledge among farmers’ groups, community people, CSOs and NGOs, and students and social movement activist groups. It critically analyses the factors that reproduce poverty and hunger and strongly raises the issue of the corporate agencies (including the international financial organizations (IFIs) and the WTO) taking control over agriculture policies, dominating local market, damaging the environment and ecology, violating the farmers’ choices and rights through the introduction of hybrid and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and also threatening the indigenous knowledge, practices and diversities.

With the aim of upholding the people’s choices, ensuring them rights over their own resources and ensuring food sovereignty, VOICE creates interactions between the different actors through seminars, dialogues, study circles, debates, discussions, and meetings, and organizes trainings, ecological farming, media briefings, etc. It also analyzes the global trade regime and domestic policies and builds a micro-macro to generate an increased support for the influence of the grass-root on the policy making process.

Along with its actions on the policy making level, VOICE helps the building of alternative practices on the ground by establishing local seeds preservation centers and by practicing organic agriculture in order to facilitate the farmers’ access to local seeds and establish their rights and ownership over resources, which will lead to food sovereignty.

VOICE is associated with a number of national and international networks working on the issue. It is the member of the International Food Sovereignty Network, the Asia Pacific Research Network, and is the national Secretariat of the national platform Right to Food, which consist of providing a co-coordinating support to the various member organizations spread across the country.

Background and Perspective

Bangladesh, known as land of rivers, counts 144 million people, mostly living in the villages, and is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The acreage of Bangladesh is only 147 570 sq kilometers or 14.43 million hectares of land, of which 3.75 million hectares (25.3%) are used for housing, water bodies, roads, etc. Forests cover 2.25 (15.2%) million hectares and only 0.50 (3.4%) million hectares are cultivable but presently remain unused. The net area available for crop production is 7.96 million hectares, or 53.7% of the country’s surface. Out of the net-cropped area, 36% is single cropped, 51% double cropped and 13% triple cropped. The total cropped area comes to 14 million hectares, making a cropping intensity of 177%. About 70% of the population depends on agriculture as a livelihood, but more than 50% of the population lives below the poverty line as measured by the minimum calorie intake of 2122 kcal/day while the same number has none of their own land. On the same basis, approximately one fourth of the population is consuming less than 1805 kcal/day and thus is the extreme poor. Moreover, their diet is not balanced as respectively 85% and 60% of the calorie and the protein intakes are derived from cereals. Unlike the situation in rich industrialized countries, agriculture is for Bangladeshi an entire way of life that constitutes of knowledge, practices, lifestyle, ethics, and values. Therefore, agriculture represents an overall social, economic, cultural and interactive practice that leads to a process of exchange, sharing and participation between and among peoples and communities. Access to food is a fundamental right for each and every one of us, although people of the global south still die from starving. The situation is aggravating due to the ruthless interventions of multinational companies, international financial institutions, and the WTO. Under the capitalist imperialism, the domination and control those actors exercise over the people’s life and the way they over-exploit the global common resources threatens the people’s sovereignty over their own resources like seeds, food, agriculture, biodiversity, environment, natural resources, etc. This leads to an ecological crisis threatening the life support systems and destroying natural resources such as land, water, environment and bio-diversity.

The global capitalist aggression or neo-colonialism impedes freedom of choice and on human rights, creates unequal distribution of social wealth and productive resources. Thus, the whole system and mechanism of global policy and implementation system needs to be reviewed with the objective to ensure the peoples’ choices, rights, and sovereignty over their own resources, lives and livelihoods. The major strength of the country’s economy is agriculture, as it contributes to 21.77% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But the contribution of agriculture to GDP has been decreasing for the last few decades: in 1960-61, agriculture contributed nearly 62% of the GDP. The output of the agricultural sector has thus been growing at a much lower rate than the GDP of Bangladesh. In the 2007-08 budget, agriculture gets only 5.6% of the total allocations. Concerns have also been expressed about the loss of agricultural land for the benefit of other industries, at the rate of 1% per annum. However, the biggest concern is to ensure a high agricultural production, high enough to feed the people of Bangladesh. Since the mid 1960s, ’Increment of agricultural production’ based technologies have been used in the name of the Green Revolution. A significant increase in the food grain production has been achieved, but at the cost of soil degradation like the loss of nutrients, the iron and arsenic toxicity of water, the loss of flora and fauna in the aquatic environment, the drying up of rivers, and the loss of bio-diversity. So, considering these facts, there is an urgent need to practice organic agriculture based on indigenous knowledge and practices.

In the 1980s, global trade, the interventions of multinational companies and the WTO, and the World Bank and IMF structural adjustments programs became a reality of the agricultural sector of Bangladesh. With the advent of fertilizers, new irrigation processes, and imposed trade liberalization, the country’s main industry became subject to international pressures and external control over the seed and food market. It is in that context that VOICE initiated its work and action on the food and agriculture issue. At first with its own means and without any funding, VOICE managed to conduct, in 2002, a study on the people’s rights to seeds and food and how they are affected and threatened by multinational companies. A report, entitled An Overview of Corporate Control on Food Sovereignty was published in May 2003, and a few workshops were conducted to make public and disseminate the information in order to raise awareness and engender action. Today, with funds annually supporting its agricultural projets, VOICE is able to conduct regular and long-term projects on food sovereignty and agriculture, and thus make the people of Bangladesh more aware of their rights. VOICE’s work can be divided into seven categories: advocacy; campaigns; publications; capacity building; organic farming; networking; and finally micro-macro linkage.

Advocacy

As part of its advocacy mandate, VOICE initiated to build awareness on seed and food issues, more specifically on the access to market, agreements on agriculture, and the corporate control on the agriculture system, by organizing study circles and debates with students groups, in educational institutions. It is through this process that the Youth Leadership Program on Alternative Paradigm (YLP) focuses on the issues on trade, globalization and MNCs interventions in the food and agriculture industries.

Food sovereignty is the right that peoples, communities and countries have to define the agriculture and food policies that are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique and own conditions. In this regard, VOICE organizes meetings with community people in lokokendra (community learning centre), and attempts to achieve recognition of the women’s role in seed collection and preservation and in food production, and to promote an equitable access and control over the productive resources.

The 10 Reflect Circles initiated by VOICE also represent a suitable environment to discuss food-related issues. The Circles are an ongoing grass-root project dedicated to women of all ages in rural areas, seeking the literacy of women on various subjects such as food sovereignty, and where all relevant issues can be raised. The circles emphasize the self-determination of local communities and their autonomy in finding solutions to local problems such as food sovereignty, and promote the sharing of information on ways to preserve local seed, on the bad impact of hybrid seeds, and on indigenous knowledge.

VOICE also organizes dialogues on the food sovereignty issue with other organizations and civil society actors, because building awareness among the different stakeholders is crucial to create an electorate able to claim the people’s rights to seeds and food.

In its Dhaka office, VOICE developed an Information Resource Centre, where hundreds of publications are made available for consultation or even for borrowing on the issues of agriculture, trade, and food sovereignty, but also on other topics such as education, communications, communication rights, democracy, aid effectiveness, economics, globalization, etc. The center is open to the general public and is also likely to serve people already formally or informally involved in organizations, NGOs or civil society groups.

Campaign

Publications

VOICE publishes a number of publications such as the monthly Bangla newsletter Golaghor on trade and agriculture, various manuals, and user-friendly guides for farmers highlighting the food sovereignty, trade, and agriculture issues, and including critiques of the corporate-dominated food systems. Those publications also offer consumer-led alternatives that ensure justice, equity and ecological sustainability, and help understand the links between corporate globalization and agriculture in developing countries.

VOICE also published a book on `monga’ that portrays food aid, food security, and liberalization in the context of monga in Bangladesh. This research booklet also analyses the monga phenomenon from a perspective based on right and justice, and relates it to global and national political commitments.

Capacity building

There is a need to promote critical awareness over the seed and food resources and to strengthen social movements in order to ascertain the people’s rights to seed and food. That is why VOICE has been organizing capacity building trainings among the different stakeholders, trainings that also highlighted the role of corporate agents controlling the seed and food market. VOICE also aims at enhancing the people’s capacity to analyze the food and agriculture situation in Bangladesh, and take active initiatives to achieve an agricultural ecological system.

VOICE uses various media and means to disseminates information on agriculture and food issues, such as the Internet, workshops, seminars, dialogues, consultations, booklets, posters, leaflets, and stickers. This information dissemination process enhances the stakeholders’ capacity to develop a new perspective on seed and food rights and thus to take effective steps and actions towards a more just agricultural industry.

Organic Farming

The farmers face a severe crisis regarding seeds and seedlings, and the only way to remedy to the situation is for them to become independent of the seed market that is controlled by corporations, multinational and transnational companies. Thanks in part to a farmers’ initiative, VOICE established two seed houses in Mymensingh. Their main objective is to revive traditional varieties (food and vegetable crops seeds) and to reduce the farmers’ dependency on external markets.

VOICE has been promoting an ecological agriculture free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. A jute demonstration plot was organized by VOICE in Mymensingh. Its strategy is to help farmer movements for food sovereignty and endorse alternative systems in Bangladesh, such as a sustainable peasant-led food system.

Following the VOICE initiative, a group of farmers has formed and is now committed to preserve the local seeds and create a source of traditional varieties of seeds, in the ultimate goal of improving their quality of life.

Networking

VOICE is an active member of various national and international food sovereignty networks as well as a member of the International Food Safety Network (IFSN), the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN), the Asia Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty (APNFS) and the Right to Food movement network. The Right to Food Movement is a network of NGOs, activists and civil society organizations working around the issues of food, agriculture, environment and biodiversity to ensure food security and establish the people’s right to food. Local NGOs in Bangladesh are the main partners of this network of which VOICE is the Secretariat.

Micro-Macro linkage

VOICE has experience working in partnerships on both the local and national levels, providing the possibilities of creating a linkage and network around the issues of globalization and food sovereignty. A linkage between the micro and macro levels of action is essential in achieving results and giving power to the local people.

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