The “We plant ourselves” movement demands a fair and urgent agroecological transition

The We Plant ourselves movement demands a fair and urgent agroecological transition

• Looking ahead to the next day of global peasant struggles, led by La Vía Campesina, the state movement Nos plantamos, of which Ecologistas en Acción is a part, joins the demands of the international organization.
• Nos Plantamos vindicates the need for an urgent agroecological transition that favors and supports family and social agriculture.
• Faced with the current crisis in agriculture, the movement advocates the defense of food sovereignty, based on the care of people and ecosystems.

On the occasion of the World Day of Peasant Struggle, next April 17, the Nos plantamos movement, of which more than 50 organizations are part, demands the need to commit to an urgent transition towards agroecological, sustainable and diversified production methods, under prosperous and small-scale family projects.

The organizations demand, in turn, an agri-food system in the hands of farmers and consumers, that is not dominated by the power of the agri-food industry, large supermarkets or agribusiness lobbies. Consumers want to be able to easily access healthy food, produced fairly and sustainably.

This agroecological model, which responds to current social and environmental challenges, also seeks the preservation of biodiversity and peace with social justice, peasant solutions to the food and climate crisis experienced in Spain and other places in the world. Faced with this transition, the group also considers access to land, fair prices for producers and consumers, the promotion of agroecology and peasant seeds, and the defense of the sovereignty of the people to be essential. 

The decrease in the number of farmers, the increase in the surface area of large farms, the decrease in small and medium-sized farms, or the unequal distribution of aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), show the reality of a prevailing model in the Spanish State: an agriculture without farmers, dominated by markets, free trade agreements, and standards and policies tailored to the agribusiness, which leaves behind family and social agriculture based on agroecology.

This industrial agri-food system continues to drive the loss of rural population, family and social agriculture, and the lack of generational replacement. It also has serious environmental consequences, such as increased water pollution from intensive agriculture and loss of biodiversity. Added to this is the impact of the climate and biodiversity crisis on small and medium-scale agriculture, with losses of up to 80 % depending on the crop.

Family farming in Spain accounts for 82 % of agricultural holdings, and is essential for social cohesion in the rural world, for the care of agricultural biodiversity that produces healthy and sustainable food, and for the development of the socially fair and sustainable. The development of sustainable and resilient food systems in the face of the ecosocial, climate and biodiversity crisis must focus on this agriculture.

For this reason, the organizations that make up La Vía Campesina, as well as Nos Plantamos, are reminded of the importance of supporting small-scale family and social farms towards a more sustainable and fair transition from a social, environmental and economic approach that strengthens sovereignty. food.