Manifesto from Peasant Women farmers in Brazil for the celebration of March 8th, 2010

*Manifesto from gaucho [Rio Grande do Sul] women* 



Rural and urban women united in the struggle against agrobusiness and for food sovereignty.

This month when we are celebrating 100 years of March 8th, as the international day of women's struggle, we, rural and urban workers in Rio Grande do Sul are once again on the streets. This year our mobilization aims to denounce to society that most of the food that reaches the table of the Brazilian population is not food, is poison. 

Brazil is world’s champion in the use of agrochemicals, which are very dangerous poisons used in agriculture and cause many diseases to producers and consumers alike and generates grave environmental impacts. Furthermore, the large majority of industrial products we eat are produced with GMO soya which also causes harm to our health. 

But who eats all this poisoned food? We, the poor. Workers, women and men, who receive low wages or are unemployed and choose food based on price not quality. They are the landless, homeless, on government food welfare system. The rich have the choice to eat organic produce, grown without poisons. 

Agrochemicals and GMOS are not good to satiate people’s hanger, they are good to satiate the hunger for profits of the agrochemical companies, which are transnational corporations in its large majority. Those products are poisoning the land, water and especially people. 

* Breast milk is only a source of life when mothers eat healthy foods * 

In this mobilization we are breastfeeding skeletons to denounce to the general population, and mostly women, that when we eat poisoned foods and give milk to our babies, instead of feeding them we are transmitting death.

Diseases caused by agrochemicals are transmitted from generation to generation, and one of the ways it can be transmitted is through breastfeeding. However, the same government that is involved in campaigns encouraging women to breastfeed is also financing the agro-business to produce poisoned food to feed poor people, contaminating the milk of the majority of mothers in Brazil. 

* We don’t want only food * 

We women who spend most of our lives involved in cultivating and/or preparing food to ensure health for our family, we are on the streets to shout out loud and clear that we don’t  want just food, we want healthy food, we want food sovereignty! 
For the agrobusiness, profit is above life. Agribusiness is not good for the health of people and the environment! State and federal governments that finance the agrobusiness are using public money to poison the poor population and to contaminate our land and water. 

* We are struggling against * 

Against the agrobusiness model of farming which is based on the over-exploitation of people’s work, the contamination of food and the destruction of our natural resources. We struggle against the use of public funds to finance the contamination of people and the environment: We fight against all forms of violence against women, including the imposition of a dietary pattern that does not respect the traditional ways of eating and causes harm to health. 

* We are fighting for * 

* Food Sovereignty * - with agrarian reform, generating employment and decent life for peasant population, for an ecological farming that respects the diversity of biomes and eating habits. Governments express concern about food safety, they want people to have several meals a day. But the quality of what we eat is as important as the quantity. Therefore it is not enough to have food security; we need to build Food Sovereignty.

* Via Campesina Women*, from *MTD*, from *Inter-Tradeunion* and *women’s collective from UFRGS*

Porto Alegre, March 2010.