Do you know about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)? Are you involved in a CSA project, a Food Cooperative, a GAS (Italian solidarity purchasing group), an AMAP (the French name for CSA projects), a GASAP (the Brussels’ equivalent of AMAP), a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) or any other food distribution system working to achieve Food Sovereignty? Are you interested in networking and exchanging on this topic at the European level?

Throughout Europe people from different cultures and backgrounds are already working towards the shared goal of redefining the way our society organises the production, processing and distribution of food, and are getting together to achieve Food Sovereignty in their local communities.

We are calling for a meeting to identify a shared vision for food distribution systems committed to Food Sovereignty in Europe, define future thematic focuses and develop an organizational structure for a new European platform. Our aim is to create a decentralized platform where experience-sharing between food distribution projects can be achieved, independent from any central body or institution.

This meeting is part of the follow-up process to the Nyeleni-Europe Forum that took place in Krems last August. It will focus on the Axis 2 of the Action Plan: "Changing how Food is distributed".

Urgenci > EUROPEAN MEETING - MILAN 2012 Topics we would like to address

 What is our common ground? We want to define a shared vision and set characteristics for CSAs and other distribution systems for food sovereignty.
 How to decentralise the experiences, initiatives and share solutions? How to pool our resources efficiently?
 How to build alliances to follow up on Axis 2 of the Nyeleni-Europe Action Plan?
 What organizational and operating means and methods will best enable us to work together?

We are happy to invite anyone who is interested in promoting deeper relations between small-scale producers and consumers in local food webs, short supply chains, and diversified local farmers’ markets based on solidarity and fair prices aimed at rebuilding and redefining our food systems to this working session on October, 10th- 12th, in Milan. This is the way to stop the monopoly of agribusiness and their dictatorship to farmers and consumers alike, and change the homogenisation of the global food systems that are destroying local small-scale producers and distribution systems and consumers interests! It is the way to build a sustainable local food system and solidarity economy instead.

We are aiming to have a balanced representation from the different European regions and include as many actors as possible to jointly build our common struggle for Food Sovereignty as a reflection of its true European diversity.

Due to limited funding we cannot provide travel reimbursement for everybody but we will try to cover accommodation and food during the meeting. At the meeting we will announce a suggested financial contribution per day to cover the expenses for food. We will organize interpretation according to the needs of registered participants. Please register before the 30th of June if you require interpetation support.

Registration is open until September, 1st, 2012.

First signatories:

International Network URGENCI _ Nyeleni Europe Committee _ Netzwerk Solidarische Landwirtschaft, Germany _ PRO-BIO LIGA, Czech Republic _ MIRAMAP (Inter-Regional Movement of AMAPs), France _ Association of Conscious Consumers (TVE), Hungary _ Le Réseau des GASAP, Brussels _ Terre-en-vue Movement, Belgium _ DES Brianza, Italy _ AgrarAttac, Austria _ ÖBV Via Campesina Austria

This call is also available in French, Spanish and Italian (soon, in more languages!)