With Global Solidarity, We Build the Path to Food Sovereignty: NFU Statement on the International Day of Peasant Struggles, April 17th
On April 17th, 2025 the National Farmers Union (NFU) stands in solidarity with farmers and peasants internationally to defend food sovereignty. On this day in 1996, 21 peasants were massacred in Eldorado dos Carajas, Brazil for defending their land and their right to produce food. During the protest, military police attacked members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) who were blockading a highway, killing 19 landless peasants and injuring thousands. Two later died of their wounds. This crime remains unpunished and the displacement of rural peoples continues.
Every year, organizations of small-and-medium scale farmers, peasants, farmworkers, and Indigenous peoples in the world-wide La Via Campesina movement come together for the International Day of Peasant Struggle. We honour the lives and struggle of these Brazilian peasants by speaking out against the injustices that peasants and farmers face around the world.
In Canada, imposed, threatened and retaliatory tariffs violate Canadian sovereignty and the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, cause economic instability and an unpredictable market situation, and result in direct losses in farm income, as well as uncertainty over plans for future production seasons. Farmers, farm workers and Indigenous members of the NFU are standing up for our sovereignty and challenging existing or looming injustices —including long-term defunding of social safety nets, the rise of anti-immigrant anger and scapegoating— by taking action on our farms and organizing in our communities. These actions also build global solidarity by working for the kind of changes that support more just food and agriculture systems internationally.
Every day, and over many years, NFU members have been cultivating food sovereignty by: growing healthy and culturally appropriate food for communities; advocating for and supporting local- and regional-scale processing, storage, and distribution to bolster domestic markets; building soil health and reducing our on-farm carbon footprint; defending the rights of agriculture workers to fair wages and safe working conditions; standing up for migrant workers by joining calls for their full labour rights, open work permits, and a pathway to citizenship; affirming Indigenous rights and sovereignty, especially the rights to refuse consent for unwanted mega projects; and defending Canada’s unique supply management system that keeps food dollars and decision making power in farmers’ hands.
Through our day-to-day work as farmers, and by organizing in our communities to create a more just food system, NFU members and our international allies resist the corporate monopolies, trade regimes and other imperialist power grabs that constrain sovereignty, rob farmers and peasants of their livelihoods, grab control over lands and water, fuel violence and war, and criminalize resistance. We oppose the military attack on the Palestinian people and call on the Canadian government to take action for a lasting ceasefire in Israel-Palestine.
The NFU is a founding member of La Via Campesina, which today brings together an estimated 200 million diverse food producers from 81 countries on five continents. It is considered by many to be the largest social movement in the world. Today, we feel the strength of this unity, built over decades. We continue to find hope in our international solidarity in the struggle to defend life and the wellbeing of our communities and Mother Earth.
