05/15/12 –Dr. Annette Desmarais:
In less than twenty years La Vía Campesina has become one of the world's most significant international agrarian movements. It is active at the local, national, regional and international levels struggling for the rights of millions of peasants, small-scale farmers, rural women, farm workers and indigenous agrarian communities. La Vía Campesina coalesced in the North and South around common goals: an explicit rejection of the neoliberal model of rural development, an outright refusal to be excluded from agricultural policy development, and a firm determination to work to build a peasant-based, socially just and ecologically sustainable model of agriculture based on food sovereignty. This presentation by Dr. Annette Desmarais of the University of Regina will explore the main strategies and collective actions of La Vía Campesina in their efforts to build alternatives to the powerful forces of neo-liberal economic globalization. At the heart of this resistance is a powerful imagination.
