About this video
Who really benefits from the agreement
About this video
The European Union signs free trade agreements with the Mercosur countries in Latin America – officially also with the promise to strengthen small farmers and medium-sized agriculture on both continents.
But the reality on the ground tells a different story.
In Europe, farmers are increasingly facing economic ruin, as small structures and diversity and biodiversity have no place in the concept of the powerful.
In Paraguay and other South American countries, farmers are confronted with industrial agricultural production, monocultures, loss of soil life, land concentration, and export monopolies to an unnamed extent and pace.
Regional foods are disappearing from the market – not because they are inferior, but because they are economically displaced. The qualities of these foods are mostly just fillers and have hardly anything to do with life in the middle.
The question arises:
Where are the structures and prerequisites in practice for small farmers who are supposedly benefiting?
To this day, hardly anyone knows concrete examples, neither in Europe nor in Paraguay, and the verifiable facts speak a completely different language.
Instead, the main beneficiaries are:
international agricultural and raw material corporations
export-oriented large enterprises
political and economic lobby structures
Chemical industry, automotive industry, and machinery industry
What is sold as “free trade” means for many:
Loss of food sovereignty and quality
Dependence on global supply chains
The end of regional markets and peasant existences
In this broadcast, we want to look at the results-oriented:
Who have been the winners so far and what should change and improve through the agreement?
Who pays the price?
And what could a fair, life-serving trade policy really look like?
A conversation about holistic impacts in agriculture and its effects on humans and the environment
Here is the link to the live stream
