Last year, the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization officially declared that 2015 would be celebrated as the International Year of the Soil citing the threat to one of the key ingredients to the planet’s food and farming systems posed by “expanding cities, deforestation, unsustainable land use, pollution, overgrazing and climate change.”
“In the seed and the soil we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crisis of violence and war; the crisis of hunger and disease; the crisis of the destruction of democracy.” —Dr. Vandana ShivaThough many recognize the FAO declaration as a largely symbolic gesture, many advocates of organic food and sustainable agricultural are planning to seize the designation as a way to push forth their message that the health of the planet’s soil should not be relegated as a metaphorical issue, but rather one that should be at the very heart of serious conversations and policy changes humanity must begin in order to transform its economic systems, its democracies, the way it generates power, and the way it feeds itself.
Click Here: new zealand rugby team jerseys
Summarizing the issues at stake and the fight ahead, one of the world’s most prominent advocates for democracy and organic agriculture, Dr. Vandana Shiva, an Indian activist and founder of the seed-saving organization Navdanya, has posted an impassioned New Years message to those battling on behalf of food sovereignty, economic egalitarianism, agroecology, climate action, and social justice.
In the video posted to the website of Seed Freedom, Shiva applauded all those who have stood up for the the rights of people and Mother Earth against the greed and disregard perpetrated by corporate power and the neoliberal economic model which is ravaging economies, human rights, and the planet’s ability to sustain life.
Looking back on 2014, Shiva celebrated that it was a year in which the phrase ‘We Are All Seeds’ rang out in resonance aross the world and described how “for a while we might lie underground, but at the right moment we germinate and burst forth with our full potential.”
At the dawn of 2015, however, she welcomed global activists to look forward to this coming ‘Year of the Soil’ and called it a year that will commemorate “earthiness… groundedness… [and] rootedness” of individuals and organizations that make up the global movement for climate, economic, and social justice.
The year ahead, she said, will be a year in which the seeds—”of hope and love” and “of abundance and creativity”—that activists and well-meaning citizens from around the world have sown and will sow, shall be political and cultural seeds that “will multiply and show the way forward.”