We want GMO-free municipalities and regions

A campaign to invite Italian municipalities to approve a resolution declaring their territories free from genetically modified crops. Municipalities and Regions free from GMOs: this is the campaign launched by the International Center Crocevia and ARI, the Italian Rural Association, and to which Navdanya International adheres, which invites local administrations to declare themselves free from GMOs, including those obtained with Assisted Evolution Techniques (TEA).

From the associations' website, it is possible to download the draft of the resolution that, once adapted to the local context, can be brought to a vote in the chamber and approved. The associations' initiative comes as a result of the European Union's incessant attempts to deregulate new-generation GMOs, excluding them from the current rules on traceability, labeling and risk assessment.

A political line «promoted» by the powerful industrial lobby that, in the aftermath of the Europeanization of the American Monsanto, acquired by the German Bayer, invested huge resources to promote deregulation in Europe. This is a political drift that, according to the associations of the national coalition Italy free from GMOs, threatens biodiversity, peasant agriculture and the freedom of choice of farmers and citizens, favoring the control of multinationals on seeds and the entire food system. It is for these reasons that the bottom up initiative, Municipalities and Regions free from GMOs, appeals directly to citizens and administrations to defend food sovereignty and protect their territory.

Leading the way in the campaign is a small town in central Italy. We are talking about the town of Poppi in the province of Arezzo, which was the first in Europe to unanimously approve a resolution to declare its territory GMO-free. The town of Poppi recently organized, with the support of various organizations including that of the Casentino biodistrict, an event inviting, among others, Salvatore Ceccarelli, an internationally renowned geneticist, and Stefania Grando.

But this is not the only initiative. Among the testimonials of the fight against GMOs, the president of Navdanya International, Vandana Shiva, could not be missing, whose biographical film The seeds of Vandana Shiva will soon be screened in Poppi and, on March 2, at the farmers' market in Manziana, in the Province of Rome, organized by the association Articulturae. On this occasion, the book by Francesco Paniè and Stefano Mori, Why stop new GMOs, published by Terra Nuova Edizioni, will also be presented.

The organizers of the Manziana farmers' market have already launched the proposal to extend the GMO-free label to the networks of national farmers' markets. These are just some of the many initiatives that are spreading at a national and international level to try to stem a trend that would only bring advantages to the multinationals in the sector, putting peasant agriculture in even greater difficulty and agrarian agrobiodiversity at serious risk.