Photo: Sebastiao Salgado

Rebuild Local Food Economies: Report from International Small Farmer Movements

Brazil's MST
Today's food and energy crises are demonstrating what small-scale family farmers and rural peoples around the world have been saying for years:  without support for local agriculture everywhere, hunger can grow anywhere. Rodrigo Lopes of the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) and Stephen Bartlett of Agricultural Missions (based in Kentucky) are touring the US this month, aiming to clarify why this is so. Both groups are part of La Via Campesina, an autonomist, multicultural international movement of peasants, small farmers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth, and agricultural workers.