Internships

Farmer Solidarity Project
Popular Education to Help Small Farmers Protect Their Way of Life

Food and agricultural production in Latin America and around the world is increasingly controlled by large transnational companies. Many agri-businesses operate as near monopolies in their industries, particularly in meat, milk, and grain, and seeds.

The rapid expansion of agri-businesses into Latin America and around the world threatens the family farmers, small producers, and cooperatives by promoting corporate agricultural models that displace small farmers from the land, increase poverty, destabilize communities, and increase national and international migration. The passage of CAFTA in the US will accelerate these trends, as will the WTO.

Campesinos (or peasant farmers) have built one of the strongest movements in the world today. These rural organizations have demonstrated the capacity to organize and mobilize at the grassroots level against corporate power in food and agriculture, free trade, groups like the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. Via Campesina, the leading international organization of campesino organizations in the world was the largest group in Cancun in 2003 fighting the WTO ---and they succeeded at blocking the Agreement on Agriculture. The will try to do the same thing this year with major protests against the WTO in Geneva (October 15) and in Hong Kong (December 15).

We are looking for student interns to help us:
  
- develop and maintain our website (www.farmersfightback.org)
  
- put together short briefings, maps, diagrams etc on the impact of CAFTA and the WTO on Central American and Carribean farmers
  
- translate articles from Spanish into English and French or Haitian Creole
  
- gather sample popular education material  

- do video editing

For more information, please contact William Kramer, Farmer Solidarity Project, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey atat wkramer (at) access4less.net