WHO ARE WE at Nyeleni Polska?
Our initiative was founded in 2016 in Cluj during the Nyeleni Europe Forum. We collaborate since then internationally with Nyeleni Europe, La Via Campesina, European Coordination Via Campesina, Schola Campesina and regional farmers’ unions, farmers and civil society organisations, such as food cooperatives and environmental NGOs.
OUR MISSION AND GOALS
Our mission at Nyeleni Polska is to engage rural and urban citizens in common work for the right to life-giving food based on Earth care and social justice.
Over 50% of Europe’s small-scale and peasant farms are located in three countries: Poland, Romania and Italy. Worldwide, 70% of food consumed by people is produced by small-scale and family farms, with only 30% of resources used by global agricultural production. Yet the number of small agroecological farms is declining rapidly, calling for substantial rethinking of our food system as we also need to adapt to climate change.
We are working to reverse this trend and regenerate traditional, localised low-input farming practices and wide access to healthy, sustainably-produced and adequately priced food, empower farming communities economically and strengthen the emergence of the new generation of agroecological farms. We support and develop new pathways for learning sustainable food production and the transmission of the experiential, practical knowledge and skills of farming for future generations.
We are using the frameworks of Food Sovereignty and Agroecology as defined by social movements and farmers’ organizations around the globe not to maintain the status quo: we are using them as a vision for social transformation and social change necessary for our times.
“Agroecology is a way of life. It is seeing the social, not only the productive function of the Earth. It is not only a production of small scale – it is seeing nature as a living being, not a commodity”
Salete Carolo, Brazil