Environmental for Food Justice

Imagen de una protesta en el Centro de la Ciudad de México contra la trasnacional Monsanto. Photo by Pablo Ramos. Moderator’s Note: We have been waiting for news on this important case, the latest, and perhaps the last, in a ten-year campaign by Monsanto and its allies to impose transgenic maize products on Mexico. Due process in Mexico is a tangled and lengthy juridical process and Monsanto has exploited the ‘amparo’ rights clause of the Mexican Constitution to prolong and intensify its attacks on Indigenous and peasant farmers. These are the farmers who sustain the living seed libraries of the vital Mesoamerican Vavilov Center of Origin and Diversification of corn among more than three dozen other native crops that literally feed the world. This attack continued through the means of repeated challenges to successful court decisions and rulings verifying the legality of the ban on genetically engineered corn, soy, and other transgenic crops. The underlying rationale of the anti-GMO m...

NATIVE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY ACTIVISTS PRESENT AT ANNUAL BIODYNAMICS MEETING Moderator’s Note: From Chile to Alaska, we are witnessing the resurgence of indigenous foodways, agroecology, and the heritage cuisines. Among Mesoamericans and other Mexican-origin peoples on both sides of the border many people are returning to the milpa-based diets of our ancestors. I thought it opportune to share these two YouTube video clips from the joint meeting of The Agrarian Trust and the Biodynamics Association held in Santa Fe, New Mexico this past November 17, 2016. The clips were published by the Agrarian Trust on Dec 1, 2016.   These clips document part of a half-day workshop at the Biodynamic Conference focused on “Land as Commons: Tracing the Acequia Commons.” Participants included Dr. Devon G. Pena, William deBuys, and Tezozomoc. The half-day session explored issues surrounding the acequias systems in the desert Southwest including geography and ecology, exploring the social architecture of di...