Mali : International Agroecology Forum to Address Food Sovereignty

Nyéléni Centre, Mali

More than 200 delegates, among them peasants, family farmers, fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, consumers, urban poor organizations, NGOs, academics and other social movements will be at the Nyéléni Centre in Mali from 24 to 27 February, to take part in the first International Forum on Agroecology. This forum takes places at a time where the world is facing economic crisis, the climate is changing, and the Mother Earth is being aggressively exploited by the corporate model of death and land grabbing.

According to La Via Campesina, agroecology is essential to humanity, since it builds autonomy and a better life for small scale food producers, produces more healthy food, provides a strong base for food sovereignty, and allows rural peoples to live in harmony with and take care of our Mother Earth. Peasant and small scale food producers’ agroecology is considered to be the model of life, of farms with farmers, of food producers with productive resources, of rural communities with families, of countryside with trees and forests.

According to Ibrahim Coulibaly, a leader of the National Coordination of Peasants Organizations (CNOP) in Mali, “this forum will bring practical responses, that will lead to concrete solutions on how agroecology can save the planet from hunger and climate change”.

Together with La Via Campesina, organizations such as More and Better (MaB), Movimiento Agroecológico de América Latina y el Caribe (MAELA), Réseau des organisations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA), World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF), World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP) are co-organizers of the forum.

The Mali forum aims at exchanging local knowledge and know–how of farmers, sharing the innovations of peasants and small scale food producers, training materials and territorial processes to address the challenges of building an ecologically and socially just 
food system, as well as strengthening the synergies between the different small scale food producer organizations, social movements and other organizations promoting Agroecology.