3rd European CSA Meeting in Ostrava, CZ

CALL FOR A THIRD EUROPEAN MEETING OF CSA MOVEMENTS

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. Agroecology is at the heart of this local food system, centred on both food sovereignty and solidarity economy. CSA is a innovative way to care for the Commons: land, soil, air, water, and other natural resources. Through CSA thousands of people acroos the whole of Europe act, on a daily basis as climate caretakers: it is a low-impact citizen empowered alternative to agribusiness and Big Food.

At the moment when official delegations from all the world gather in Paris for COP-21, we would like to remind everyone that citizens in their own countries are already engaging in this peaceful fight against climate change.

We are a grassroots movement: we believe that the power of CSA is in pragmatic, everyday action and face-to-face relationships. We believe CSA, combined with other models, has the power to heal the environmental, social and economic wounds suffered by our societies and rebuild social cohesion.

We are now calling for a third European meeting of CSA movements. 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.

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 build a strong coalition of CSAs and CSA networks across Europe.

On 16th-18th. September 2016, we will all converge in Ostrava, Czech Republic to assess our achievements and challenges. This meeting will also be an important step towards the Second Nyeleni Europe Forum on Food Sovereignty, scheduled just 6 weeks later, early November 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, 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 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, 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.