As the Sri Lankan government is on the path to bail out everyone, but the people it’s responsible to serve from the disastrous debt crisis, the people are suffering from the devastating consequences of the austerity-driven fiscal policies of this meticulously orchestrated attack. The most marginalized people and communities, like Smallholder Food Producers and the Plantation Community, have become the sitting ducks.

As of today, 5.3 million people in Sri Lanka are food insecure. This proves that what the governments’ have been doing for more than 70 years to this date to feed its people has failed. The governments’ attempt to ensure food security have failed. What the governments have been doing to ensure farmers’ livelihoods have failed. What the governments have been doing to alleviate rural poverty have failed. The laws, bills, policies, international treaties, and Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) which were brought up to guarantee food security, have left the people hung out to dry; while very few businessmen and their friendly political counterparts have been riding the gravy train for years. At a time when more than millions of people are starving in Sri Lanka; the immeasurable wealth these oligarchs have created and the empires they have built through this injustice should be considered a crime against humanity.

Today, October 16th, the day of struggle for Food Sovereignty for our peoples, we, the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform, once again stand with the smallholder food producers and the plantation community. We stand with the smallholder farmers, who are feeding us every day while battling the debt and climate crisis, while being chased off of their Land, their Water, and their Seeds. We stand with the plantation community, who are keeping our economy floating even after being robbed of their basic human rights. And we stand with anybody and everybody who has been wronged by the systematic injustice. We stand with anybody and everybody who has been a victim of this planned crime!

It looks like both the World Food Forum and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); the institutions promising to end global hunger, are ‘selectively blind’ to hundreds of millions of people around the world starving. The benefactors who are funding these failed endeavours, such as IMF, World Bank, and Investment Banks, have only made the crisis their cash cow, and now these vultures are circling overhead of more than 50 countries that are crippled with foreign debt.

While denouncing the IMF and World Bank-funded market-driven Food Regime of Sri Lanka, we call for a People’s Food System starting from Food production to Food market and responsible consumption through Agroecology, ensuring Food Sovereignty where Smallholder Food Producers have their right to Land, Water, and Seeds. We demand the government to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas – UNDROP, which is useful to strengthen the promotion and protection of the rights of food producers in Sri Lanka.

We call for all the Smallholder Food Producers in Sri Lanka to stand with us by joining the Agroecology Movement. Let’s not let them fool us into believing that this unsustainable and unjust Food System will put food in our stomachs; or their failed solutions will be enough to keep us from going further into the debt trap and provide shelter over our heads. Let’s join the global struggle to end Global Hunger and ensure Our Rights!

Faced with global crises, we build Food Sovereignty to ensure a Future for Humanity!”

16/10/2023

Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform