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When European farmers and representatives from rural Indigenous and traditional communities in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay want to talk agriculture and deforestation, they need a proper venue: I was lucky enough to be invited by the Brussels-based NGO Fern to organise such a meeting. I chose a Belgian organic farm practicing soil conservation (or “regenerative organic agriculture”, as they call it) for the occasion. The stakes couldn’t be higher: Negotiations for the long-anticipated (or feared!) EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement are in their final stages, and the deal may very well have dramatic consequences - both for the Indigenous Peoples of the Mercosur countries and for agriculture in Europe.
In short, as the Agreement stands, the EU market might soon be flooded with products from South America that don’t comply with EU environmental standards. As they are cheaper to produce, these products would represent uneven competition for farmers in Europe and might discourage them from moving towards more agroecological practices. Agribusinesses, on the other hand, would benefit from extensive tariff reductions. The Agreement therefore threatens to boost an agricultural model which in the Mercosur countries all too often consists of turning tropical forests into paddocks and fields for export. As a consequence, deforestation in the Amazon and other sensitive ecosystems would go up, as would pressure on small-scale producers on either side of the Atlantic.
The South American delegation consisted of:
- Ana Paula Santos Souza (Brazil), Altamira farming community (Pará) and professor at the Federal University of Pará;
- Ana Romero Flores (Paraguay), Indigenous Youth Union of Paraguay;
- Katia Dos Santos Penha (Brazil), member of the Quilombola community Divino Espirito Santo and of the National Coordination of Articulation of Quilombos CONAQ;
- Sergio Rojas (Argentina), member of the Qom/Tobas people and of the National Council of Indigenous Women in Chaco;
- Júlio Barbosa (Brazil), president of the National Council of Extractivist Populations (rubber tappers).
The group was brought together by Fern and the Brazilian NGOs Amazon Environmental Research Institute IPAM (ipam.org.br/en) and Instituto Socioambiental (www.socioambie....
I chose to take them to Guillaume Debouge’s farm “La Ferme qui bouge” because he’s one of the co-founders of the Farm for Good collective: www.farmforgoo...
Farm for Good supports regenerative organic farming in Belgium, by recreating sustainable agricultural production and supply chains on the local level, through products such as mustard or flour. Many thanks to Guillaume, Guirec and their families for their hospitality!
I would also like to thank the following authors who kindly allowed me to use their images for illustration:
- For maize cultivation in the traditional ways of the Guaraní people: Mongabay, Maya Johnson, Fellipe Abreu (news.mongabay....
- For deforestation in the Amazon: Illuminati Filmes, IPAM, Woodwell, IPAM Archives;
- For the video footage of “La Ferme qui bouge” at the beginning of the video: Farm for Good;
- For the photos of Belgian Blue cattle: Robert Scarth, CC BY-SA 2.0, Stoolhog, CC BY-SA 3.0.
This video was funded by Fern, which campaigns for policies and practices in Europe that focus on forests and forest peoples’ rights and delivers economic, environmental and social justice globally: www.fern.org/
This is the first time that a video in my “Tous Terriens !” series has been funded by a third-party organisation. As always, however, I want to be absolutely transparent with you: Fern has covered my travel expenses, my filming and post-production costs, but accepted the principle of total editorial independence for me. In practical terms, this means that I filmed and edited this video, including its off-camera comments, in the way I always do, that is, according to my own standards and with zero interference from Fern.
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“Tous Terriens !” is an independent series, born from a sense of civic and professional duty to deliver quality information on the environmental and societal issues of our day.
Author and producer:
Pierre Girard
Co-author and camera,
translation and subtitles (FR/EN/DE):
Geoffrey Schöning
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