17 April – International Day of Peasants’ Struggles

17 April - International Day of Peasants’ Struggles Stop to Land Grabbing In 2013, Via Campesina International celebrates the International Day of Peasants’ Struggle under the theme of Land Grabbing. The dramatic environmental, economic and social crises that we are currently observing have surprisingly not led to a complete change in the direction taken by most national and international elites. On the contrary, we are witnessing an increased offensive by economic super-powers to grab all the resources still available to make profits. Land has become a valuable commodity to place under speculative trade, together with water, seeds etc. This hyper-commercialisation of the commons leads to a massive dispossession for the people whose livelihoods depend on land. Female and male farmers are particularly affected (http://www.viacampesina.org/en/inde...). The European Coordination of Via Campesina (ECVC) joins this celebration and organizes, within the framework of its General Assembly, a European conference, open to the public, on 17th April. The event is co-organized by its Spanish member COAG (from the Canary Islands) and will be held in Fuerteventura. With a special focus on small farms, the conference will highlight the challenges faced by the peasant community nowadays, particularly in terms of land grabbing in Europe. The results of a study on this topic, and its report, will be presented and discussed in the plenary. The study was led by ECVC with the coalition "Hands off the Land", in various countries of Europe: Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Romania, Austria, Serbia Hungary and Bulgaria. The report of the study will be available online on the ECVC website, from 17th April.