Bandar Lampung, Indonesia – Against the backdrop of the generations-old, agricultural lands of the community of Sidodadi, women from different countries in Asia and the Pacific learned more about food sovereignty in the region, the looming threats to our food systems and the important role that women play in producing and protecting our food.
The solidarity visit to Sidodadi village is one of the highlights of the 2nd Regional FPAR Training on Food Sovereignty, conducted from 2-7 March 2024 in Indonesia. The training focused on various Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) methodologies, as the six FPAR partners are gearing to embark in their data collection, research and analysis phases. With the theme, Feminist Food Sovereignty: Women reclaiming control and fighting back against the corporatisation of food, partners from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines have identified their respective research focus that aim to address food sovereignty issues in their specific contexts. The training served to assist the partners in articulating and strengthening their impact objectives, as well as identifying the data collection methodologies that they will use in their research phase.
The FPAR on Food Sovereignty is one of the APWLD’s main strategies to strengthen the regional movement against corporate imperialism that greatly impacts women’s right to food. Under the neoliberal and neocolonial paradigm, food systems are being controlled by huge profit-driven corporations that fail to recognise, and in fact dismiss the crucial role of women in the whole food production process. Corporate control over agricultural production exacerbates the plight of women food producers, driving them further into hunger and poverty.
On 4 April, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) turns 64 years old, an occasion that no poor farmers have cause to celebrate. IRRI spearheaded the implementation of Green Revolution, an agrarian development policy designed to create a crippling dependency of peasants to chemical-based inputs and resources commercialised by giant agrochemical corporations under the guise of increasing rice production in Asia. Pushed by the International Monetary Fund-World Bank (IMF-WB), the Green Revolution introduced an expensive package of technologies that small-scale farmers can barely afford: high-yielding rice varieties, synthetic fertilisers and toxic pesticides that are produced and sold by agricultural corporations.
‘Green Revolution paved the way for institutions, corporations and private entities to gain control and profit off seeds, the vital resources that farmers have been cultivating and conserving for generations,’ said Kartini Samon, GRAIN Coordinator, during one of the thematic sessions in the FPAR training. ‘IRRI as one of the instruments of the Green Revolution, gained access to hundreds of thousands of rice varieties in the region and handed them over to be managed by the World Bank, which helped open the doors for corporations to commodify these seeds which are central to farmers, especially women farmers who were traditionally a key protector of seeds.’
‘Agriculture is not just about production, it is also culture. The Green Revolution started with Western colonisation, but the process started long ago when colonisers found out that food is also about the conquest of land, seeds, and people,’ said Sharanya Nayak, Programme Organising Committee (POC) member of the BOOM programme. ‘Feminist food sovereignty entails that we take back this control not only over our resources, but over our mindset and lost culture of food systems as well.’
Feminist food sovereignty emphasises feminist leadership in the struggle against the colonial and corporate capture of food systems that extract huge profits from privatising the commons, violating human rights including women’s rights, and destroying the environment. Organising and mobilising feminist movements are thus imperative if women are to fight back against the patriarchal and neoliberal policies and institutions that hinder women’s access to safe, nutritious, sufficient and affordable food.
The six-day training was ably hosted by Solidaritas Perempuan Sebay Lampung (SPSL), who works with 780 women at the grassroots level on various initiatives such as safeguarding women migrant workers’ rights, combating trafficking, championing agrarian justice, and advocating for food sovereignty. The Sidodadi Village in the PagarDewa district of Lampung province is an agricultural community that shows the broader context of agrarian justice and the empowerment of local communities, especially women, within the framework of food sovereignty.
‘The community visit to Sidodadi Village was a great opportunity to connect with the locals, learn about their culture, and understand their needs. The visit helped us gain valuable insights and build stronger relationships with the community,’ said Suci Ramdhani, a young woman researcher from Indonesia. #
