Take Back Your Own Fridge: Farmers March on Ketagalan Boulevard to Fight for Food Sovereignty

News has recently emerged that 830 Chinese agricultural products are about to knock on the door, yet Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Baoji said, "I did not say they will be opened up, nor did I say they definitely will not be opened up." This vague attitude has led farmers' groups to question whether the government is bowing to international pressure and sacrificing local agriculture. Yesterday, more than ten groups including the Taiwan Rural Front and the Alliance for the Defense of Rural Taiwan called on over 700 people to gather on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, where they personally arranged rice seedlings to spell out "Farmer 1st," pledging their determination to defend Taiwan's farmers. They also joined with the international farmers' movement organization La Via Campesina to hold five food sovereignty forums, hoping the president will listen more closely to the voices of the people.

Without Agriculture There Is No Culture

Imagine that when you are hungry, you find no food on the dining table. You turn around to take something out of the fridge to cook, only to discover that the landlord has locked the fridge. What do you do next? Perhaps many people would answer, just go out and buy something. But one day, you and I may both face the predicament of having money but being unable to buy anything.

This scenario is no fantasy, and it is quietly happening right beside you and me. The tenant with no autonomy at all is Taiwan, and the landlord controlling the fridge is the United States, China, or any grain-importing country Taiwan depends on.

"Losing food sovereignty means losing your own dining table, your own fridge," said Cai Peihui, spokesperson for the Taiwan Rural Front. Food sovereignty means that people can freely choose what they want to eat and where to obtain it; producers can freely decide what to grow and how to grow it; and they can autonomously and equally use water, soil, and seeds. Through fair exchange, consumers and producers together build a society of sustainable development and shared prosperity.

Food sovereignty not only represents people's right to exchange what they need according to their free will; it is in fact also a preservation of rural culture. Chen Jizhong, a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at National Chung Hsing University, is himself the son of a farming family. He said Taiwan has long had a smallholder system, and these smallholders produce diversified crops, feeding generation after generation of Taiwanese people and also building all kinds of rural cultures. Abandoning agricultural sovereignty is abandoning agriculture, and without agriculture there is no Taiwanese culture.

Meinong Hakka singer Lin Shengxiang, invited to perform, said even more emotionally: "Our farmland not only produces crops, it also produces literature and music. All of you here are tree planters."

Angry seedlings scattered in front of the Presidential Office. If the government does not listen to the voices of farmers, civic groups do not rule out launching an even larger wave of protests.

(1) Gathering at the Forum, Facing Neoliberalism Head-On, Ketagalan Becomes the "Farmers' Road." Text by Sun Qiongli, Coolloud