1: A movement against agribusiness, bankers & patents on life.
Via Campesina is the largest movement in the world, comprising hundreds of thousands of small farmers and indigenous people whose way of life is being wiped out by elite transnational corporate interests. Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, and their collaborators in global financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are systematically displacing farmers and undercutting local economies and food traditions. There have been efforts like Farm Aid that have raised awareness of rural concerns here in the U.S., and films such as the excellent The Future of Food also describe the forces undercutting farmers and the integrity of the global food supply; but this is the only book that I know of that gives attention to the people of Via Campesina who, with very few resources, challenge (often successfully) the globe's corporate overlords.
Some of us are familiar with Jose Bove, the French farmer who bulldozed a McDonalds in protest of their role in advancing the corporate food matrix.
Food for the Future: Agriculture for a Global Age
While there are many people of the "First World" who are members of Via Campesina or are sympathetic to the cause (see civic groups like "Global Exchange"), the majority of its members are in the Global South, a region of the world that gets virtually no coverage in the empire's media (except when there's some disaster). Here is a book that reveals the strength, resourcefulness and courage of peasants. In fact, their movement is quite similar to agrarian revolts that were taking place in Europe during the enclosure of the commons. Books like Levellers and the English Revolution (Socialist Classics) and The Digger Movement In The Days Of The Commonwealth, As Revealed In The Writings Of Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger, Mystic And Rationalist, Communist And Social Reformer (1906) provide wonderful analyses of a history of Anglo culture that needs to be recovered. Maybe then, we'll be more likely to act in solidarity with people waging the same sorts of struggles today.
A few other resources to consider:
Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed
Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
Third World Resurgence
Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns (Frank W. Pierce Memorial Lectureship and Conference Series)
Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad
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