To make matters worse, there are now more pesticides used globally as Southern governments align the thrusts of national agriculture towards export-crop production for the world market. This is an alarming trend when we consider that as far back as 1990, studies in the World Health Statistic Quarterly revealed that in the South alone an estimated 25 million workers and farmers are poisoned by pesticides. The agrochemical market was worth US$31 billion in 1998 and grows every year: the 1998 total was up 5 percent on 1997. The industry's promotion of herbicide tolerant, genetically engineered crops have triggered higher use of herbicides. This translates to worsening working and production conditions for farmers and agricultural workers and serious questions over the safety of foods produced. This is not to mention the wide coverage of lands needed for such mono-crop agriculture production consequently displacing small farmers.

The long-held universal principle to realize rural justice through the concept of land to the tiller as the core issue of land reform is now being set aside, and its original meaning watered down and mangled. Once, part of the lip-service in their policy directions of such key policy makers on agriculture and lending agencies like the FAO, World Bank and IMF are now throwing this away under globalization. Under WTO, land must not be distributed to the landless and small farmers as this would not be "productive" and therefore would not be competitive in the global market.

Under corporate rule, the control of how to make use of the land and other natural resources lie in the hands of majority stockholders--either the big landlord-compradors or the TNC's themselves. Control of our food supply has shifted increasingly into the hands of a few large corporations-via patent laws that essentially make seed saving illegal-seriously jeopardizing rural farmers seed saving practices crucial for the food security of their communities. Using genetic engineering technologies, these transnational corporations are also imbibing facets like sterility (what RAFI calls Terminator Technology) and crop trait control through dependency on chemical inducers like pesticides (Traitor Technology), to gain monopoly control of the world's food supply. Sanctioned by superpowers like the U.S., these technologies could potentially wipe out small rural farmers, and seriously threaten food security in the South.

The legacy of the Green Revolution, which promoted high-yielding varieties and intensive chemical farm inputs like pesticides, has, in reality poisoned our food, ravaged the land, and left millions of small farmers landless or near landless and hungry. It also promoted monoculture farming, displaced local crop varieties, indigenous flora and fauna, and drastically reduced natural biodiversity on which communities everywhere depend for their food and livelihoods. In short, it created health and environmental problems and undermined food security for millions, particularly the poor.

Now, genetically altered seeds seriously threaten the livelihoods of over 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seeds and who produce almost 20 per cent of the world's food. These trends will drive farmer's dependency to the limit. The little freedom that was left after the "Green Revolution" disaster will be taken away by the 'Gene Giants'.

The monopoly position of the TNCs will ensure no escape: while their crops are hooked on expensive chemicals, farmers will be forced into 'addiction to credit' at the expense of their freedom and the survival of their families. Moreover, ongoing research in genetically engineered food is directed at the needs of the corporations, not at the needs of the farmers. Genetically engineered crops are designed mainly for use in industrial monoculture systems, and will contribute further to degradation of the environment, and resurgence in pest problems. Small farmers will be displaced, will be effected by these side effects when they become contract growers or measly paid farm workers in agro-corporations while the TNCs reap the profits.

Poor farmers in the South, already under pressure from heavily subsidized food and agricultural imports from the North, drive them to bankruptcy and ultimately drive them from their lands to make place for corporate farming. Landlessness and poverty will inevitably go on the rise as governments follow the WB's market-assisted land reform which advocate such models like, in the Philippines, the "corporative scheme" where tenants were supposed to be converted into "shareholders" or receiving wages as farm workers. Agricultural lands planted with commercial and export crops are exempted from the agrarian reform program and thus, the break-up of land monopoly through actual land distribution to decades-old tenants will never be fulfilled.

Women are particularly threatened by this system. Within it, women's labour and concerns are invisible. Poverty has become increasingly feminized, and women are increasingly exploited. As peasants themselves, women will never have the opportunity to acquire a land of her own or for her family. They also lose access to resources which were once common: land, water, trees. They are forced to migrate and often end up selling their bodies to earn a livelihood.

Family-based farming and democratic systems of food production is fundamentally based on the break-up of land monopoly through genuine agrarian reform. Land distribution, therefore, is essential in ensuring people's participation in food security. Moreover, in order to achieve gender equity being an integral component of social justice, women needs to be directly involved in economic work and be part of decision makings in the planning and execution of any rural development plans.

The support of seasonal and natural, chemical-free produced local foods; the preservation and promotion of traditional and indigenous flora and fauna is critical to ensuring food security from village to town, and producing safe foods for all-for this, the right of farmers and peasants to land is critical. Also crucial is the preservation and protection of local/traditional knowledge and practices, such as seed exchange-much of which lie in the hands of women. Sustainable agriculture practices (include organic farming), are a crucial way towards safe and secure food for the future.

Why a People's Caravan? The Challenges That Lie Ahead...

Because of the above threats to food security and rural livelihoods; growing TNC control of our food production systems and sources; and the poisoning of people and lands from perpetuated use of pesticides, which stands to be made worse with genetic engineering, it is imperative that people are made aware of these issues. The Peoples Caravan 2000 is a project to mobilize and raise awareness among the widest range of people - from farmers, agricultural workers, to students, youths, mothers, women's groups, trade union groups, policy makers, the media etc - on the key issues of the Caravan. This is so that they can start discussing and possibly take up actions and campaigns on the issues raised. But the Caravan also aims to celebrate and uphold the abundant local diversity of our food and culture, and the alternatives, that we have in our midst.

This is the time to reassert peoples rights to land, the right to livelihood and the right to production and market of safe foods away from the dictates and control of TNCs. In reality, food and land are not only a source of livelihood for these communities but are also the basis of their culture, and this culture is now being threatened. The key to enhancing community livelihoods, ensuring safe food and food security for all is a move away from industrialized, corporate centered farming and food production systems, and the dangerous inputs and technologies they require.