Defending Territories and Livelihoods

Antonio José Conceiçao Feitosa is a fisherman from Curral Velho in the state of Ceara in Brazil. He started fishing when he was ten years old and now uses an elaborate trap to catch fish. Antonio is active in the community and a member of Associaçao Communitaria de Marisqueiros e Pescadores (Community Association of Shellfish Harvesters and Fisherfolk) de Curral Velho. With the community, Antonio fights to protect their homes and livelihoods from windmill and shrimp farm developers.

“Fishing is the best lifestyle. You lay the nets and traps in the morning, and in the afternoon you gather your rewards. It is what keeps me going. It is what keeps everybody going.

“We have had difficult times in the past and we don’t know if it will happen again. I have been threatened, but that is the way it is. When you organize people to defend something, even if there are 3, 4, 5, or 6 people - the opponents try to infiltrate the group. We are fighting for something more fair and peaceful. We are still a little afraid, but we are not too afraid to fight. One of our biggest fights was the defense of the mangroves. Our biggest threat was the shrimp farming. Now we are trying to organize against the windmills from coming to our community. We are organizing so we can speak together in one united voice to oppose the construction of windmills. We have talked with allies in neighboring communities, so we can organize and fight together.

“People came here saying the salt plains were worthless. They may have a higher degree of education than us, but we are very civilized. We know the natural cycles. The fishermen need that access. They said they would make all this place a shrimp farm. They would put a fence on one side, another fence on the other and we would only have access to the beach one way. Later they would put gates on each side and then we would be trapped. We refused this. I said to him, Just because we live in Curral Velho, (which means old trap), does not mean we will be trapped. He did not know how to respond, so he said to me, You talk to the manager, you explain yourself to the manager and I will not interfere again. You solve the problems. We saw he was defeated and we knew we were right.

“I hope there are no more struggles. When you go to war, you have to be prepared to live or die. We are organizing ourselves. We are always alert to what is going on. We hope there is no more violence and no more murder attempts. When we get involved with these fights, you are a target.

“We feel very proud, because through the fights, we have had the majority of victories. We have won and we are here to face what is next. It has been and is still very important to keep everybody organized, united and strong. If you are uncertain, divided and falter, you will lose.”

Land Based Skills

Bonsai farms on Try-on Life Community (TLC) Farm in Portland, Oregon. He has always had a passion to farm, teach about food and promote sustainability. Bonsai is able to do all three through his community farm and the non-profit arm of the operations. They run training programs and a fully outdoor, nursery school called, Mother Earth School. They also grow an array of fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs, as well as raise goats, sheep and chickens.

“A few of us lived here in the early 2000’s. The owner wanted to sell this land and developers were the only ones making offers. He served us an eviction notice, so he could sell it easier. The eviction went through, but we filed an appeal. During that appeal period, which was ten months, we were allowed to stay here. At that time we started the non-profit and raised $1.5 million through our relentless capital campaign to protect this piece of land. It was an easy choice: condo development or a community center. Canvassing was happening all over the neighborhoods, so everyone could see the vision. Kids were walking down the driveway with their piggy banks, giving us a dollar in change. It was on that level. People were sending in checks for tens of thousands of dollars. The city gave us grants to start this community center. We had very low interest loans, personal bridge loans at no interest. All those things culminated into the purchase of this land. We put it into a land trust, called OSALT, Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust. They hold the title for the land. We have a one hundred year lease from them, so we can be stewards of the place, operate the place and operate the non-profit.

“The non-profit, called the TLC Farm, is focused on hosting workshops and teaching about sustainability, food production, natural building, animal rearing. We do consensus and facilitation trainings, workshops regarding how to plant food, when to plant it, what to plant, how to harvest, how to preserve food, how to grow medicine, how to tend animals, how to milk, how to shear sheep, how to tend bees. Land based skills, we call it. The community is Cedar Moon. The community is focused on the cottage industry, making and distributing products. Our best one so far is a raw, delicious hot sauce that we make from garlic and peppers that we grow. I’m running a bonsai nursery and a medicinal plant nursery. The school is the Mother Earth School. It’s Waldorf inspired, but not a registered Waldorf school. Their focus is on earth based spirituality, which is nothing more than awareness of the surroundings, awareness of the elements at work, the cycles of the sun and moon and the seasons, the systems that are happening in the field to make this life flourish.

“We feed everybody [in the community], but we still are buying certain stuff. The paradox of farming these days is it’s hard to grow your own grains and oils, so we’re buying stuff like olive oil, rice and oat grouts. We make yogurt and cheese and a ton of milk. Eggs are covered and all the veggies - root crops, salads, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes. We grow plenty of that, enough to feed ourselves year round. The goal is to keep all those things within the extended community, so whereas we have a ton of goat milk, we can trade that if someone is making sunflower oil at the next farm.

“These concepts of how to work with the land and of the land have been in every culture forever. People have always been thinking about the smartest ways to go about agriculture and life. Permaculture has been around forever. It’s just a new term that was given in the ‘70’s. Now, here in the 21^st century I can see not only people going back to the land, but incorporating the appropriate technologies to do so in a much more effective and efficient way. It’s the age of information now, and so this information can spread faster than ever. People who are interested, even remotely interested, can get on board and become involved in projects that they’re finding out are just around the corner. We are reinventing these systems in a way that’s applicable to our modern reality and looking back through history at how people have done that and what’s necessary, what’s needed for the future survival of our communities. This non-violent revolution is the kind of thing that we’re trying to usher in."

Maintaining A Space

Linda Behnken fishes on the F/V Woodstock out of Sitka, Alaska with her husband and two children. They longline for halibut and black cod and troll for salmon. Linda first moved to Sitka in 1982 and immediately fell in love with the environment. For the past two decades, she has been an advocate for the environment and the small boat fishing community of Southeast Alaska. Photo credits to Mim McConnell.

“What I worry about the most is ecosystem impacts and second most, maintaining a place for small, independent, community-based fishermen in the face of corporate political power, money. That’s countrywide, of course. It’s the same struggle for the family farmer and the family fisherman and the bookstore on the corner. Alaska has probably done well to hold a place for small boats, but I feel anxious about the future in that way. I’ve been talking to a lot of people who go back generations of fishing up here. There has always been that fear that there won’t be a future in fisheries. I feel concern about whether my kids wanted to choose this way of life it would still be a viable option at a level and a price they could afford.

“We’ve had a lot of successes I would have to say. We got this area closed to trawling. That would be my most satisfying fisheries policy win and the one that I think is the most significant in terms of the resource. We did put together a quota share program that goes a long way through the construction of it to control consolidation and protect and hold a place for small boats and community participation. It’s not perfect but it’s a lot better than any other one I’ve seen.

“We started this community supported fisheries program in Sitka last year. It’s like community supported agriculture where people sign up for a subscription of fish and we’re buying it from boats that are participating in the conservation work of our organization and trying to return a little extra to the fishermen, but with some very strong goals of outreach, education and connecting the consumer more with the person who catches their fish. We’re doubling our subscriptions this year and we’re going to start offering a small CSF in Juneau. Black cod, halibut, rockfish, ling cod, coho and king salmon. We’re having it processed by local processors. We let them know we have a boat coming in that is black cod and halibut and we want to buy 1,000 pounds of it and here is how we want it put up. We put up our longline product in late April or early May and then the salmon in the summer. People get a mix.

“Our association, the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, works with the North Pacific Fisheries Trust to come up with this concept of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. The concept of this trust is to be the umbrella organization for fishing groups to launch fishery conservation networks where you’re promoting stewardship innovation and fishermen and then achieve triple bottom line goals of protecting resources and the socio-economic health of the communities, but also being able to fund that work on a sustainable basis by marketing the fish. Right now, it’s just paying its own way, but hopefully being able to use the revenue from that to support expanding our conservation work. We’re going slowly and carefully, so it’s still quite small, but it’s been really well received. I’m really excited about that.”

They Know What Is Best

Recently, I returned from a week in Haiti, or “Ayiti” in Kreyol. Haiti is the last country covered in Food Voices. I chose Haiti because it has such a negative reputation of poverty, crime and natural disasters. It is often portrayed as a country facing endless problems while a rotating set of foreign governments constantly intervenes without invitation. I wanted to hear the truth from the Haitian people and catch a glimpse of what they believe to be solutions for their part of the island known as Hispaniola.

The Southwest is dotted with coastal towns that depend on the fruits of the sea. Unfortunately, the fish are scarce and people have to row their small boats farther and farther out to sea, which is dangerous and grueling. The fishing communities believe the fish are harder to find because of marine pollution. They have no facts or figures, but their own experience after generations of fishing point to degraded water quality that parallel decreased fish populations. I spoke with fisherfolks in three communities – Jacmal, Cayes Jacmal and Marigot. Only once before had an outsider spoken with them. They already have 43 fishing associations all under one federation. Now, they are looking for support to help improve their fishing methods, develop markets infrastructure, and increase their organizing capacity.

After the Southwest, I headed north to meet farmers of the Central Plateau. I stayed at the Mouvement Paysan de Papaye (MPP) (Peasant Movement of Papaye) training center where they provide agro-ecology trainings for local farmers and student groups. When I arrived, a group of students from the University of Notre Dame in Port au Prince was preparing to leave after an empowering week of hands on courses. The center has one program that has become quite successful for kitchen gardens. Tires are flipped inside out, a rich fertile compost is grown and then vegetables are planted that use a small amount of rainwater that is captured in large cisterns. I also visited a collective farm, Agricultural Production Cooperative of Kolader. They mill corn, process sugar, tend a tree nursery, raise cattle and goats and grow vegetables to feed the 150 families that are part of the collective.

On the last day, I returned to Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti. Cité Soleil, known to be the most dangerous slum in the Americas, has booming urban garden programs. In 2007, a project of Pax Christi created a soccer camp to engage the youth as an alternative to joining a gang. After the 2010 earthquake, they initiated urban gardens and youth agro-ecology training programs. By growing food together and teaching each other how to provide for their families, violence has decreased and the sense of community and dignity has increased.

Haiti is still recovering from the devastation of the 2010 earthquake. Port au Prince has a population of 2 million people, but 1 million are still living in tents. Less than 2.5 billion dollars out of the 11 billion dollars promised for reconstruction aid has made it to Haiti and those funds went to debt cancelation rather than rebuilding efforts. Haiti still needs solidarity and support to rebuild the urban and rural areas. But, they do not need or want another imperial power to tell them what is best for them. They know what is best for them.

Food Is Political

Karen Washington is an urban farmer from the Bronx in New York. She has been farming for over 20 years and was one of the original members of La Familia Verde, which is a coalition of five community gardens in the Bronx that educates, empowers and provides food. Karen and others in her community started the coalition in 1998 when Mayor Giuliani was trying to auction off gardens. She hasn’t stopped since.

I grow food. I feed people, body and mind. I have a community garden, the Garden of Happiness, which I helped create. It stared back in 1988 and I’m also a member of La Finca del Sur, which was created three years ago in the Bronx. The area that I live in is one of the poorest districts in the Bronx. The medium income of a family of four is less than $20,000. We’re surrounded by an epidemic of fast food and fast chain restaurants and there are no healthy food stores. Many of the produce in our supermarkets travel from far away, are moldy, not fresh at all. My message is education to help people understand that the problems they’re having, especially health problems, are connected to food. Well, what are we doing to change? Let’s start getting involved in farmers’ markets and community gardens and educate people to understand that there are resources we can use to help deal with the problems we have.

Let’s face it; food is political. Where it’s distributed, who has zoning rights, who is able to have loans. Who gets the fresh best vegetables and who gets the leftovers. I’m pretty sure, in my neighborhood, by the time it comes to the South Bronx, we’re getting the leftovers. What’s so appalling is that we have this huge area called the Hunts Point Terminal where a lot of produce from all over the country and all over the world comes and right next to it is a community of people that are starving. You see the trucks, you see the food and you don’t have access to it and that’s a shame. Where else, what other neighborhood would that happen? Could that happen in an affluent neighborhood? Heck, no. But it’s happening to us. So, food is political. Those that have affluence and those that have money and connections do much better than those that don’t and food and housing and education is all tied into one. I ask questions and really make it uncomfortable for people when they’re dealing with food and social justice and playing the race card because in essence racism is alive and well.

What we’re trying to get out and voice to the people is that political power is as strong as we, the people, allow it to be, because the people put those political people in office. To understand that dynamic, to shift that dynamics of thinking, is to understand that the politicians are there because of us. The power that we have is the power of vote and the power to make political people accountable to their actions and to go door knocking and to do rallies and to do marches and to bring it out in the open what they are or are not doing. Right now, a group is trying to fight City Hall in a way that it’s never been challenged before. We’re fighting to get community gardens have preservation land status. I don’t think in the previous administration people could sit down with the mayor’s group and figure out how to make community gardens permanent and come up with legislation, resolutions, changing zoning that will make community gardens permanent. That’s a social issue, but now we’re going to make it a political issue as well.

I’m on a journey. I’m on a ride. I’m just going to go with it. Making waves. We’ll see what the future holds. As I continue to grow food and really give thanks to elders, the people that came before us, I will continue to work on connecting people to the land and really empowering people to have a say and have a stand for what they feel is right and just. End of story.

Healthy Life with Full Human Dignity

The first principle of food sovereignty is "Food: A Basic Human Right: Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity." To be able to live a healthy life with full human dignity is a theme I heard from shell collectors in Ecuador to peasants in Brazil to farmers in Maine. Healthy communities require pride and dignity. Pride within each individual, for the work they do, of the natural environment and amongst each other.

The right to a dignified life is such a basic right and many farmers and fishermen are fighting for it. Despite the hard work, financial hardships and sometimes all odds against them, what I found in my interviews is the amazing resilience and hope.

Francisco Mendes Coelho is a farmer from Canadê in the state of Ceará of Brazil. He is a member of the Landless People's Movement (MST).

"This struggle is not easy; we are often arrested by the police, the media often tries to slander us, and to say that we are not a legal movement, that the movement is only full of vagabonds and bandits, but we have to show that this is not true, that we are doing this for the greater good. And our goal is to attain land, not only land but also rights, those that are sanctified in the constitution and that today are denied to us workers. Without a doubt, we do this for the greater good and I believe that it is possible to change things."

Targelia Nicolta Branda is a shell collector from Palme Real in Esmeraldes, Ecuador. She is president of the local women’s organization and a member of the Federation of the Collectors of and Aquatics of the Mangroves of San Lorenzo.

"Here, we are talking about fear. In 2009 and 2010 we had a crisis of violence, because brothers came from other countries.The paramilitary threatened us. This January 2nd, they killed one leader of the community. Because of that lack of safety, people have to leave. This conflict they had with the president of our parish was because they wanted to come and live here. Basically, to take over the community. The president of the parish said, ‘No. If you want to come here, you have to talk to Correa – he is the President of Ecuador. I am just a small leader.’ That is when the conflict started. These communities are the most forgotten by the government of Ecuador. We know about our government just through pictures, through newspapers. We don’t even have a TV channel signal or internet. We receive a lot of promises, but nobody ever fulfills those promises. They should remember us and know the poverty that is here. We also want to have a dignified life. Please don’t forget the poor people of our community."

Heather Retberg and her husband, Phil, run Quills End Farm in Penobscot, ME. She is a member of Food for Maine's Future and Maine Organic Gardeners and Farmers Association.

"A lot of us say fly under the radar, keep a low profile as long as you can. That’s certainly what we did for a really long time and I’ve come to feel like so many of us do that, but if that portion of your income is something you really depend on for your livelihood, where does that leave you if you come up on the radar? What other business has to operate like that? Drug dealers have to operate like that. People who are doing something really unhealthy for society have to operate like that. We should have the rule of law behind what we are doing because what we are doing is really healthy not just for people’s bodies, but for creating social networks in a community that binds us together so we can help each other out when hard times come. So much of that fabric of community life that comes from the farm, that gets stripped away and we really shouldn’t feel that we need to sneak around to farm."

Jay Driscoll is a commercial fisherman from Rye Harbor, NH on the fishing vessel Karenlyn. He is a board member of Granite State Fish and President of Sectors 11 and 12 in New Hampshire.

"I think cameras are the biggest injustice. I don’t understand where the fishermen lost their way so much that the government feels we have to be monitored with cameras. It is so anti-American. It is so what this country is not about. With observers today, at least it’s a human. At least there is somebody there. But, to have them say to me, I want to fit your boat with cameras to monitor your every move is a huge injustice and we are already being monitored through a satellite so they know where the boats are. But, now they want to put a camera so they can see us too. We have been slanderized by every environmental group out there to the point where we are a step below pedophiles right now. And that’s how we’re looked at. It is a huge injustice. We have rights and freedoms that we should try to protect or we are going to lose what the foundation of this country is all about."

Tara Kolla is urban farmer in Los Angeles, CA at Silver Lake Farms. She is a member of Urban Family Advocates.

"What I really yearn for is some stability and less chaos. It’s been so chaotic the last two years. Three shutdowns, then the court case. I was teaching gardening here and got shut down for that. Then I was composting. Got shut down for that. I got a cease and desist from the environmental affairs department. March 2009, I opened the door to a very sheepish man on the porch. He predicated everything by saying, 'I really don’t want to be here. But, unfortunately I’m here to tell you cannot sell your flowers.' He was enforcing this code that was interpreted to mean that it was not legal to sell flowers that were grown in a residential garden. I fought and decided that I would change the law. And luckily for me, some cool people in Silver Lake and a small group of us grouped together and had meetings with the city, city officials and Eric Garsetti, the city council president. A year later it changed. Truck gardening has been revised. It’s been called truck farming. You are allowed to grow pretty much everything, vegetables, fruit, seedlings, flowers, nut, fibers like cotton and sell them off site. So hooray for urban farming."

Sara Grusky and her husband, Michael Foley, run Green Uprising Farm at Blackberry Bend in Willits, CA. They are members of Little Lake Grange and Mendocino County Farmers Market Association.

"I think one of the things that we’ve learned from the dairy share is how ridiculously difficult it is, how ridiculously overregulated and full of obstacles it is to try to do something like a dairy share. It’s because the regulatory environment is really geared towards large dairies and it’s because there’s a long history of fear and misinformation about raw milk. The current dairy share that we have is, I would say, in a quasi-legal gray area and that’s not a very comfortable place to be. I mean the only way we can do it is to find some loophole and do something that’s actually quasi illegal but it’s the only thing that really makes sense in terms of having a sustainable local economy. In Massachusetts recently, where they were trying to outlaw raw milk, the Weston Price Foundation organized the first, I guess in 100 years, the first cow grazed the Boston Commons. So they bought a cow to graze the Boston Commons and milked her and fed people raw milk as a way to sort of protest and expose how ridiculous it is that people milking cows and drinking the milk, which has gone on for millennia is currently illegal."

Oscar Otzoy is a farm worker in Immokalee, FL and originally from Guatemala. He is a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

"A worker usually has to leave their house to find work at about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning then work for 10 or 12 hours for a total of $50 or $60 a day. If a farm worker were to be earning the same that he or she was earning 30 years ago and if it kept right with inflation, it would be $1.06 per 32-pound bucket. Now it is an average of 50 cents per bucket. And many people feel like they are just a machine in the fields. Just a machine working. If you were to get sick, the company, instead of helping with the sickness, will just fire you, let you go. It is like you are an old tool. When you are broken, instead of fixing you, they just let you go. There are far uglier, worse cases. In the past 13 years, there have been nine major slavery operations uncovered in Florida. We began the Campaign for Fair Food with a Code of Conduct with zero tolerance for slavery, a penny more per pound of tomatoes that we picked that would go right to the worker, and the voice of farm workers be included in carrying out these agreements. Nine major companies finally sign agreements with the Coalition. And this is exactly what we want: That workers are recognized and they know their rights and they are respected."

John Kinsman is a dairy farmer at Kinsman Farm in Lime Ridge, WI. He is an active board member of the National Family Farm Coalition and Family Farm Defenders.

"It is very bleak right now because there are not enough farmers left. The prices are at all time lows in relation to costs. The positive thing is the urban people all over the world are demanding food that comes from family farmers that is ecologically, culturally appropriate. That all goes to our work with Via Campesina and food sovereignty that we’ve developed. It covers everything. Feed our own people first. Food sovereignty is the rights of people to determine their own food policies. And the rights of producers to live in dignity and ecologically sound ways of producing it. All of our work revolves around that. To get people to understand and to raise self-confidence. Farmers have just lost it. Because when your product you sell has a minus value, the people who produce it have a minus value. And people say, ‘Are you crazy? Producing something when it cost you twice that much to produce it.’ And of course, it has a terrible effect on family structure, on children, the way they look at their parents and be told by someone they’re stupid and told by someone if they want to do the same thing, they’re stupid. So, we have to help people restore their self-confidence and their dignity.So they can change the policy, to get a fair price and to produce this healthy food. I’ve been in different countries and cultures where farming was the most dignified way of life. It’s tremendous to see the pride and self worth these people get and respect."

Craig Barbre is a fisherman from Morro Bay, CA and fishes for albacore and salmon on his fishing vessel Preamble. He is a member of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

"National Marine Fisheries Service was designed to enhance fisheries, to help fishermen access the fish. They need to go back to that. Now they have become the hired patrol guys. They are basically out there to try and bust you doing something wrong. They are not there to enhance the fisheries, to help you access the fish. To help this country provide our own food. Same thing with our Fish & Game. Fish & Game has become law enforcement, rather than someone to enhance the fisheries. We don’t mind being managed off a resource because the stock is in jeopardy. But, if we can access the other ten species that are around without damaging that jeopardized stock, allow us to do it. At least, allow let us show them that we can do it. We are not allowed to do that any longer. All they want to do is stop fishing, not enhance it, help modify it, make it so it is viable. In the meantime, this country is importing more and more of its seafood. We are importing most of our food and I see us as being in real trouble."

Máximo Cangá Castillo is an Ecuadorian farmer and fisherman. He lives in San Lorenzo in the state of Esmeraldes on the border with Columbia. Not only does he contend with the Columbian drug cartel and the palm tree investors, both of which steal farmers’ lands to plant drug labs or plantations, but he also is constantly fighting the invasion of the shrimp farm industry. The shrimp farm industry razes mangroves to make way for shrimp ponds to export cheap shrimp to the United States, but the mangroves are life for the people of coastal Ecuador. Mangroves are coastal forests rich in nutrients, they are nursery grounds for juvenile marine life, they protect the coastal area from hurricanes, they filter the saline ocean water for agriculture use, they provide food and housing to thousands of families. In order for Máximo to maintain his food sovereignty, he has to defend his territory – the mangroves.

“For me, food sovereignty, is to eat healthy, safe and with sovereignty. For that, we need to produce our own food and medicine. Without territory, we cannot practice food sovereignty. Today, we didn’t buy any food for our meal. The traps caught the crabs and mice, the net caught the fish, the earth gave us coconuts, oregano, chiles, spices to cook the meat. The water is from the well. That is why our struggle is in defense of the territory. Territory is not just a piece of land. It is water, plants, trees, animals, biodiversity.

“When we defend the mangroves, we are defending food, our source of income and our lives. If we don’t have mangroves, we don’t have crabs, shells, fish and thousands of families won’t have access to their livelihoods. I will die before I leave the mangroves.

“Seventy percent of the mangroves have been destroyed by the shrimp industry so people in North America can eat shrimp. There are shrimp farms in places that used to be cemeteries. Entire villages were destroyed to build a shrimp pond. One mangrove hectare (2.5 acres) supports ten families. But, only three families live off a 100 hectares (2470 acres) shrimp farm - the family who feeds the shrimp, the family who takes care of the shrimp and the owner's family.

“After several harvests, those ponds are no longer useful because of the chemicals they use, so they need fresh land and they continue cutting the mangroves. People put their lives on the line to protect the mangroves. When they cut the mangroves, the bio-aquatic life is gone. And people know they are not going to have anymore source of income, so they put their bodies on the line. At the end, the industry wins, because they kill our brothers and sisters, our shell collectors, crab harvesters along the entire coast of Ecuador. It is the same problem all over the coastal area and so leaders of coastal organizations travelled to meet one another. That is how we started to build a large, national movement. We formed one organization to represent us at the national level, to be our spokesperson and to demand that the shrimp industry leave our territories.

“For us, they are destroying the entire territory and our food sovereignty. They leave us without jobs, without food. We continue to fight the expansion of shrimp farms and it is a war that is never going to end. We need all our allies to spread the word and tell the world about our struggles.”