Feeling the squeeze: Land concentration and corporate capture in food systems

Across continents, small-scale farmers, Indigenous Peoples and forest communities are increasingly calling to build more regenerative agricultural systems, drawing on existing and past traditional knowledge and practices. 

In this webinar, the first in a series entitled Cultivating Resilience, we will hear about challenges facing farmers and food systems workers - including both Indigenous Peoples and farmers in Europe, who are often confronting similar obstacles despite different contexts.  The specifics between different countries differ - tenure systems, crops, climates, histories of dispossession, large-scale farming expansion - but the underlying dynamics of land concentration and capture reveal troubling patterns. 

We will hear how oil palm companies in Peru have undermined traditional food systems and lifeways through capturing Indigenous forests to use for monoculture. We will see a short film about the Dayak Bahau people in Indonesia and hear about their struggle to defend their territories against expanding extractive agribusiness which impacts community life and food production. There will be a presentation from FAO about the new global report, the ‘Status of Land Tenure and Governance’, including land concentration levels and trends. We will also hear from a regenerative farmer from the Netherlands who has faced challenges with access to land. 

This webinar is an invitation to listen across differences and recognise common ground. Join us to hear what farmers and Indigenous Peoples are saying about land, food, and a future worth fighting for.  

Who is it for? 

European farmers, Indigenous peoples and communities working on food systems, policymakers, and anyone engaged or interested in regenerative agriculture and the creation of just and sustainable food systems. 

What will you learn? 

This webinar will explore the connections between trends that negatively affect Indigenous peoples and local communities and those impacting European farmers, with particular emphasis on challenges related to access to land. 

Cultivating Resilience webinar series

Produced by the Forest Peoples Programme, with support from Climate Farmers, the Cultivating Resilience webinar series seeks to create new linkages for knowledge exchange and understanding between small and medium-scale farmers in Europe and Indigenous and forest peoples.  

We explore their shared imperatives to adapt to a changing climate, but also the many similarities that exist in their approaches to sustainable food systems and their struggles, and in their relationships to their land and to their environment.   

The sessions allow both groups to present their knowledge and practices around a common topic, including considering how different strategies may have potential in their own countries, cultures and agroecological contexts. Upcoming webinars in the series will look at revitalising traditional knowledge, the role of women in food systems, and other key topics.