Nowadays there are hundreds of mobilizations against food speculation and in favour of Food Sovereignty in the World. La Via Campesina, an international network that represents 120 million rural families, impels them. Ecologistas en Acción, as member of the Rural Platform, joins these mobilizations with different actions. We also call all the citizens tomorrow, 18th April, in Zaragoza to demonstrate for non-genetically modified agriculture and food.

While the financial crisis and its consequences are spreading over the planet, the European Union and the Spanish Government keep on defending the 'free market» as a solution. Ecologistas en Acción points out that the neoliberal politics of commerce and investment have caused the global crisis, and therefore they must be radically changed. For instance, the ‘free trade» agreements (FTA) that the EU negotiates with more than 100 countries – supported by the Spanish Government- continue with the extreme deregulation of the financial industry, preventing the countries to reform his financial sector. The FTA try to prohibit the food price speculation, just the opposite of what we urgently demand.

The Spanish Government, as well as the EU and the G-20, is irresponsibly promoting new commercial liberalizations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to ‘impel the growth', what is known as ‘Doha Round'. This would suppose more deregulation, for example, in the agricultural sector. Impelling politics that allow speculating on the food and agriculture prime matters trade – when almost 1,000 million people in the world are suffering hunger- is a crime against the humanity.

Since the beginning of the current financial crisis, none of the Governments that have advocated for a reform of the financial system has taken into consideration that the WTO imposes an extreme deregulation of the financial services in more than 100 countries. Nowadays the WTO is trying to extend the scope and the rules of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This agreement imposes many restrictions to the governmental regulation on the financial services sector, prevents the high-risk financial products from being prohibited, and creates favourable conditions for new speculative products – as the sub-prime mortgages – without being able to restrict or regulate them. This way, the countries cannot prevent that foreign financial operators offer high-risk products, as for example the commerce of derivatives, considered one of the principal causes of the financial crisis. The derivatives trade with food has ended in a wild food price speculation, which affects both small producers and most consumers.

The current food and financial crises triggered a new world cycle of land appropriation. In the midst of the deepening of the financial crisis, the people with speculative capital see the investment in agricultural lands an important source of new profit. According to a study of the NGO GRAIN, the result of this investment will privatize and concentrate fertile grounds even more, turning them into new strategic assets of transnational companies and the financial industry.

The financial crisis has shown that the 'free market', deregulation and an increasing competitiveness model only benefit transnational companies and people with speculative capital. Most of the society remained unprotected, and now even must pay the price of rescuing the companies that caused the crisis. Moreover, with new trade liberalizations, the number of unemployment people will increase in the whole world. As the agriculture keeps on being the biggest employment provider in the world, one demands public politics that should promote local food and agriculture systems, based on the organic farming. That is why we demand that the State Fund should be allocated for the Local Investment for these ends of the Plan E, because it hast to be the rural agriculture the main actor to receive public helps, and not the construction companies.

Ecologistas in Acción demands from the Spanish Government to apply ‘precautionary measures‘ to eradicate the recognized financial speculation on the food and agriculture markets. All the negotiations on financial services in GATS and the ‘free trade» agreements (FTA) must stop. Furthermore, the Spanish Government must withdraw the trade liberalization, and must help to stop immediately all trade negotiations, both multilateral in the WTO, and bilateral and biregional in the EU.

We also demand a radical change of the CAP, guaranteeing food supplying in the frame of the Food Sovereignty and the social and environmental sustainability, fair prices for producers and consumers, as well as a legislative frame that helps to dismantle the worrying power concentration of the big food and agriculture distribution companies.