People Putting Food First #117

New on the Food First web site, www.foodfirst.org
--Spanish edition of Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture. Send this link to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues http://www.foodfirst.org/en/taxonomy/term/51
--In the wake of the WTO trade negotiations collapse, 18 Latin American countries meet to address the food crisis
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2187
--WTO Doha Collapse because of Failure to Deliver Development
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2186
--Eric Holt-Giménez talks about the food crisis and food sovereignty on Radio Diaspora http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2180
--Pouring Fuel on the Food http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2179
was picked up by UNobserver.com
--Monsanto’s Vultures are Closing In on the Food Crisis http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2177
--Eric Holt-Giménez on the food crisis in Mexico. Listen here
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2184
--Eric Holt-Giménez interview--The Gates Foundation and the New Green Revolution for Africa http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2176

Action Alert: Write to the President of Honduras to protect Honduran peasant leaders from death threats
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2194

People Putting Food First Stories include:
1. Belo Horizonte: The Brazilian City that Values Food Sovereignty
2. “Union Time” at Smithfield
3. Peru’s Farmers Strike

1. Belo Horizonte: The Brazilian City that Values Food Sovereignty

For the past 15 years the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil has successfully implemented a city-wide effort to feed the 340,000 people who need assistance to get affordable, healthy food. While many other programs in Brazil have failed, Belo Horizonte has succeeded with a mix of innovations that involve government programs, direct negotiation with private food firms, decentralization; and collaboration between government and non- governmental agencies.

These city-wide programs are coordinated by the Secretaria Municipal de Abastecimento (SMAB) with three goals—promotion of consumption and nutrition, food distribution administration, and food production incentives. There are three departments for each goal, and each department collaborates with The Conselho Municipal de Abastecimento e Segurança Alimentar (COMASA) which includes 20 municipal, state, and federal agencies; labor unions, food production and distribution; consumer advocacy; and nongovernmental organizations.

The food programs implemented by SMAB and the community include:
--City listings of the lowest prices for select food, hygiene items, and cleaning supplies. This list can be found on the phone, internet, newspapers, and at bus stops.
--The Pro Orchard Project to promote planting of fruit trees by providing small and large-sized seedlings as well as organic fertilizer.
--The City Supplies Center (CAM) which sells 40,000 tons per year, The CAM has two sectors: wholesale farmers; the other, retail Old Fair. Here consumers can find quality products monitored by the city. The Center also has a bank, post office, telephone station and police station. But the great novelty is the Green Market, where producers sell wholesale to grocers and restaurants and retail to consumers.
--Straight from the Country offers farm produce harvested year-round. Each producer sells directly to the consumer, with the producer getting better prices for his products and the consumer buying healthy food for a price below market value.
--Agroecological Experience Center is a community space for the production, reproduction and distribution of seedlings and seeds.
--The Worker’s Convoy mobile grocery store is aimed at people with incomes between 1 and 3 times minimum salaries to provide healthy nourishment. It sells quality items of basic rations at low prices. It is supervised by SMAB.
--"ABasteCer ("To Supply") is a small market that is price and quality controlled by the city with products sold up to 50% cheaper than at grocery stores.
--District Markets: Belo Horizonte city government is revitalizing the district markets by transforming them into multiple use spaces, where food and culture meet.
--The Lagoinha Popular Market is a market with a theatre, restaurants, and bars. The city is also implementing incentives for retail spaces to be given to family businesses to create a stronger local economy.
--The Popular Restaurant: serves around 3,000 meals to low-income workers (1 to 3 times minimum salaries) at low prices.
--The Pe-de-Moleque Program -Nourishing Children and Teenagers consists of three projects: Preventing and Fighting Malnutrition, School Meals, and Nourishment Support to Nurseries.

http://www.unesco.org/most/southa10.htm
http://www.alternatives.ca/article3930.html

2. “Union Time” at Smithfield!

The Smithfield Foods pork plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, is union-free and Smithfield is determined to keep it that way. The company’s anti-union attitude and illegal anti-union actions, together with workers divided by racial differences (60 percent Latino immigrants and 30 percent Black), has long prevented workers from standing up for their rights. In a surprising turn of events, the act of a single worker writing “union time” on his hard hat led to a successful unionizing effort. His simple courageous act led others to put “union time” on their hats, and then people began wearing Justice@Smithfield T-shirts. This in-plant action was supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which also represents workers at other Smithfield plants.

Union supporters are distributing Gone Hog Wild!, a bilingual monthly newsletter, and collecting pledges to support the workers. In addition, workers are joining in a lawsuit over unpaid “donning and doffing” time (the time the workers spend putting on and removing protective clothing). Furthermore, last year some workers boycotted on Martin Luther King Day, and along with the UFCW, campaigned and obtained MLK as a paid holiday this year.

Recently a Washington D.C./Maryland boycott, “Buy Better than Smithfield,” was launched in Smithfield’s biggest markets for ribs and other pork products from the Tar Heel plant. The campaign includes radio, TV, and bus ads as well as door-to-door campaigning. Many D.C. area residents migrated from North Carolina and some are relatives of workers in the Tar Heel plant. There is now hope that soon Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant will finally be unionized.

http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/us/05bar.html?scp=2&sq=smithfield+work...
http://ufcw.blogspot.com/2008/06/we-can-buy-better-than-smithfield.html
http://www.ufcw.org/smithfield_justice/index.cfm
http://labornotes.org/node/525

3. Peru’s Farmers Strike

On July 8th, Peruvian unions called a one-day strike to coincide with a two-day farmers’ strike, to protest the President and his government’s free-market economic policies. The government has been trumpeting six years of economic growth, while little has been done to increase the standard of living for the 40% of the population in poverty. These strikes, including transportation, textile, and energy industry stoppages, are aimed at obtaining a dramatic shift in economic policy in order to alleviate poverty as well as the heavy toll of the food crisis on the population.

So far the government is holding firm on negotiating more free-trade agreements, with farmers threatened by the prospect that will allow foreign dumping into the markets as well as new policies that will make it easier for foreign investment, rather than giving incentives to the people of Peru.

These failed free-trade policies ignore food sovereignty, and the necessity of a strong self-sustaining economy. An earlier 10-day strike by potato farmers succeeded in obtaining a price increase from 2 cents per lb to 9 cents a pound and also obtained state purchasing of 5,000 tons of potatoes for distribution to the poor.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09396330.htm
http://www.themilitant.com/2005/6918/691811.html
http://www.truthout.org/article/peruvian-farmers-block-roads-machu-picch...
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This edition of People Putting Food First was compiled by Jonathan Yee and Jasmine Tilley.