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XI World Congress<br>of Rural SociologyXI World Congress of Rural Sociology

Trondheim, Norway
July 25-30, 2004

The Congress is over.
Information provided here is for reference.

 

Plenary Speakers

Anuradha Mittal
Director, The Oakland Institute, USA

Food Sovereignty: A New Farm Economy to Challenge Economic Globalization

For thousands of years, small farmers have grown food for their local communities - planting diverse crops in healthy soil, recycling organic matter, following nature's rainfall patterns, and maintaining our rich biodiversity. Today our agricultural system faces both an environmental and a moral crisis as 'modern industrial agriculture,' replaces family farms with corporate farms, farmers with machines, mixed crops with monocultures, and has traded local food security for global commerce.

But any system built upon structural inequities is ultimately unsustainable. It fuels conflict and struggle along the lines of class, gender, and ethnicity, till it consumes itself. Today's corporate food system is just such a system. This plenary speech will present the new face of agriculture, the mobilizing force of which is the demand for food sovereignty as a human right.

Biographical Note

Anuradha Mittal, a native of India, is an internationally renowned expert on trade, development, human rights and agriculture issues.

She is the author and editor of numerous articles and books including America Needs Human Rights, The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance, and Voices From the South: Third World Speaks Out Against Genetic Engineering. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, Economic and Political Weekly, Houston Chronicle, and the Nation. Anuradha has given several hundred keynote addresses including invitational events from governments and universities, and has appeared on television and radio shows around the world.

She is the founder and executive director of a new policy think tank, The Oakland Institute. Prior to this she spent nearly a decade at Food First/ Institute for Food and Development Policy and was its co director. Anuradha serves on boards of several non-profit organizations including ETC group, formerly known as RAFI. She lives in Oakland and can be reached at amittal@oaklandinstitute.org.