Via Campesina

La Vía Campesina (from Spanish la vía campesina, the campesino way, or the peasants' way) was founded in 1993 by farmers organizations from Europe, Latin America, Asia, North America and Africa. It describes itself as "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe". It is a coalition of over 148 organizations, advocating family-farm-based sustainable agriculture and was the group that coined the term "food sovereignty". La Vía Campesina has carried out a campaign to defend farmer's seeds, a campaign to stop violence against women, a campaign for the recognition of the rights of peasants, a global campaign for agrarian reform, and others.

The most systematic and comprehensive organic and living alternative to existing hegemonies comes not from the ivory towers or the factories but from the fields.

Globalize the Struggle! Globalize Hope! – La Vía Campesina

Starting in the 1980s governments were intervening less in the rural countryside, which weakened corporate control over peasants' organizations while making a living in agriculture was getting more difficult. As a result, national peasant groups began to form ties with transnational organizations, starting in Latin America and then on a global scale.

The peasants' rights movement emerged from the new rights advocacy which had arisen in the 1990s; during that time, human rights and development agendas became integrated which expanded from political and civil rights to include social and economic rights. The agrarian peasants' movement moved to challenge the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism in global economics and to find alternatives that would protect the rights of workers around the world.

The organization was founded in 1993 by farmers organizations from Europe, Latin America, Asia, North America and Africa. The foundation followed the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), where the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights were signed and approved. These agreements caused backlash from many people around the world for focusing on technical problems rather than the human right to access to food, especially for those living in the Global South. Globalization was under way at this time, affecting many industries including agriculture. La Vía Campesina gave small farmers a platform to have their voices heard about how these changes were impacting their lives. The movement has grown and is now recognized as a part of the global dialogue on food and agriculture, having presented to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Council in the past.

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