BACKGROUND...

We live in a world full of wars, where nearly a billion people are starving despite adequate global food supplies, where new hunger is being created by destroying democracy in food and agriculture, and global trade rules are allowing a handful of corporations to control our food.

In violation of people’s democratic rights, giant corporations are controlling our seed and food systems through Intellectual Property Rights monopolies. They are using the rules of WTO to dump artificially cheap agricultural products through destructive subsidizes which have grown under WTO rules. This industrialised, commodified, corporatised system of agriculture is rendering farming unviable by raising costs of production, reducing prices of farm products, destroying topsoil and water resources, reducing biodiversity, and concentrating control over farming assets.

For these reasons and with a sense of urgency, the Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture was launched in February 2003 in Florence, Tuscany, at a gathering of leaders of creative social and ecological movements hosted by the Regional Government. In spite of the current destructive forces and trends, promising alternatives are spreading worldwide and with remarkable speed. Where people are exercising their right to choose health and safety first, large areas of the world are going organic, driving out toxic chemicals from our food systems.

Building on the experience of these viable alternatives to corporate-dominated industrial agriculture, the Commission seeks to shape a new future of food in which small farmers’ livelihoods are secure, rural areas are economically and culturally vibrant and ecologically resilient, and citizens have nutritional security through adequate food, culturally diverse food, healthy and safe food.

The Commission seeks to strengthen these alternatives and make them more visible. It seeks to strengthen forces for global democracy through helping construct a network of regional and local governments and movements working on sustainable food security systems. It also works towards putting in place global rules for preventing monopolies and the dumping of farm commodities.

The Doha Declaration, adopted on 14 November 2001 committed itself to adopt new rules "that would enable developing countries to effectively take account of their development needs, including food security and rural development". This demands an end to forcing countries to import highly subsidized and potentially hazardous food. The Commission on the Future of Food will continue to work towards removing blocks at national and international levels that prevent sustainable, democratic diverse, small farm systems from feeding the world.

2007 activities.

The Commission, with the close collaboration of Tuscany’s Regional Agency for Agricultural Research and Development of Tuscany (ARSIA), participated at numerous international, governmental and civil society evens, aimed at disseminating the principles contained in its Manifesto on the Future of Seed through a number of panel discussions, press conferences and individual presentations. These included: BIOFACH, Nuremberg; the 3rd International Conference on GMO free Regions, Brussels in April; FAO’s International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security, Rome and Terra Futura, Florence, in May. At the 5th Conf. of GMO-free European Regions’ Network that took place in Turin on 18 May, the Joint Declaration of Intent between the Commission and the European Network of GMO Free Regions and Local Authorities was signed, fruit of a joint collaboration spearheaded by the Region of Tuscany.