5 reasons you should support the Monsanto Tribunal

5 reasons you should support the Monsanto Tribunal

A symbolic trial being held in The Hague, Netherlands this week could shape the future of the food we eat. Agrochemical giant Monsanto faces people who have suffered from the corporation’s approach to agriculture. Communities around the world are lining up to hold Monsanto to account for their alleged atrocities against humanity and the environment.

Here are five reasons to support the international tribunal against Monsanto:

1. If you eat, this is your fight 

Ecological farmer Sovanry Nhem and her family enjoy an ecological meal at home in Cambodia. © Peter Caton / Greenpeace

You eat, so you’re involved. Hopefully you’re eating three square meals a day, but chances are you don’t know how, or even where, that food was grown. We have become disconnected from one of the basic necessities of our lives. That’s why, on World Food Day (16 October), we’re taking back control.

2. Farmers need your support

Ecological Farming in Kenya Merry Rabilo at her ecological farm, harvesting ecological cow pea. Merry is a push-pull farmers in Mbita district, Kenya. She also diversifies in different horticultural ecological crops to help finance her children to go to school after selling the produce in the local market called Kipasi.  © Peter Caton / Greenpeace

As food production becomes more commercialised, we lose touch with what we eat and farmers lose control over what’s grown and how. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Together we can tip the balance of power away from the likes of Monsanto and Bayer – whose merger will create a mega-corporation that will seize more control over the world’s food supply.

Let’s put power back in the hands of the people who grow our food – the farmers who toil every day so that we can all enjoy the food we love.

3. A better food system is possible

With a giant Airship flying over Milan, the venue of the 2015 Universal Exhibition on food, Greenpeace displayed a 200m2 banner reading “Don’t feed a broken system, make Ecological Farming fly”, to call for a change in our food and farming system. The current industrial agricultural system, characterized by large scale monocultures, relying on chemical pesticides and fossil fuels, impacting our natural resources, water and soil, is failing. With this activity, Greenpeace urges Agriculture ministers to support and scale up truly sustainable ecological farming solutions. © Francesco Alesi / Greenpeace

The industrial scale of agriculture today has broken our food system. Giant agri-businesses fail to take into account the health of the environment and the communities who depend on it. Monoculture and dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides are taking its toll on the planet, animals and us.

It’s time to make the switch to ecological farming – to a system based on innovation and science that not only respects biodiversity, keeps carbon in the ground and rebuilds soil fertility, but also sustains yields and provides a secure livelihood for farming communities. We need a food system that puts people, not corporations, at its heart.

4. Become part of an amazing movement

Citizens across 20 states of India came together at Jantar Mantar for a day-long sit-in and marched towards the Parliament demanding immediate withdrawal of BRAI bill 2013. 8 Aug, 2013  © Karan Vaid / Greenpeace

The Tribunal brings together people of different nationalities, ages and walks of life to discuss, plan and take action. Doctors from Germany, scientists from India, academics from France, farmers from Mexico and lawyers from across the world are meeting in The Hague, united in determination to reclaim food and farming from corporate control.

5. Protect your children’s food

Children enjoy homemade pasta and vegetables that were cooked during an event at an organic farm in Tokyo. Greenpeace Japan collaborates with an organic farmer and beekeepers to organise a workshop in a Tokyo organic farm for supporters to learn about the link between ecological farming and bees.  © Kengo Yoda / Greenpeace

Are you happy to let the next generation eat unhealthy, chemical loaded, processed food? Or would you rather your child enjoy earth’s natural bounties and defend the land that grows them?

The future of food depends on the stand we take today. Show your support for the Monsanto Tribunal.

Angelica Carballo Pago is a media campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia based in Manila, the Philippines.


Source: Green peace

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
This entry was posted in Green Warnings and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.