We are local small-scale peasant farmers and eaters engaged in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a direct partnership where the risks, responsibilities and rewards of farming are shared.
Through CSA thousands of people across the whole of Europe act on a daily basis to change the food system. CSA is part of both the Food Sovereignty and Solidarity Economy movements.. We are also climate carers. Our peaceful fight against climate change and for system change helps to relocalise the food system and build real alternatives. This is agroecology and system change in action!
We are a grassroots movement: we believe that the strength of CSA lies in pragmatic, everyday actions and face-to-face relationships. We are convinced that CSA - combined with other dimensions of food sovereignty - has the power to heal the social, economic and environmental wounds of our societies and to rebuild social cohesion.
A lot has been accomplished since our first European Meeting that was held in Milan 4 years ago. After the second European meeting in Villarceaux, we shared our stories from the field in a decentralized way. We are now calling for a third European meeting of CSA movements.
With the support of Urgenci, the international CSA network, and many other organizations:
1. We have enabled knowledge sharing between all actors, especially farmer-to-farmer;
2. We have communicated the benefits of CSA widely, as well its vital role in the radical transformation of the food system;
3. Local, national, and continental CSA networks have been empowered in all their diversity;
4. We are now working to define our Common Ground: the result of this work, a European Charter of CSA, will be presented at our next European meeting;
5. We have been investigating our successes and failures as CSA members: next year, we will be able to share the results of the First European Census on CSA, and to present a European Guide of CSAs.
But there is still a long way to go to consolidate a strong coalition of CSAs and CSA networks across Europe!
On 16th-18th. September 2016, we will converge in Ostrava in the Czech Republic to assess our achievements and challenges. This meeting will also be an important step in preparing for the Second Nyeleni Europe Forum on Food Sovereignty 26th-30th October 2016, in Cluj-Napoca, in Romania. As part of this process, we shall feed our outcomes into this process.
CSA is an important part of the Food Sovereignty movement: it builds practical tools to restore citizens' control over their food chains, helps develop a truly sustainable local food system, and supports social cohesion and inclusion. This alliance is absolutely crucial if we want to avoid the capture of our momentum by corporate business, protect small-scale producers, and ensure access to land and to healthy local food.
If your priority is also to give voice to those taking action in the field, to build food sovereignty and solidarity economy, and to cool the planet, we welcome you to join the Steering Committee of the 3rd European Meeting of CSA Movements.
Please take 5 minutes of your time to fill in the form to help us shape this meeting:
https://survey.owlswatch.net/index.php/721333?lang=en_us
http://ostrava.urgenci.net/ (then click on "join us in creating the programme")
You may also contact us for any question:
contact@urgenci.net
+33 6 87 04 49 30