Why Good Agriculture Is the First Step Toward Peace
There is a paradox at the heart of the global food crisis: countries in the Global South depend primarily on agriculture and livestock, yet international statistics document a constant increase in hunger and extreme poverty in rural communities. How is this possible?
The answer is not simple, but three factors recur in almost all the contexts where we work: the pressure of the globalized economy on local markets, climate change that degrades agricultural land, and the illegitimate land grabbing by multinationals and foreign governments. These forces push rural communities toward forced migration, conflict and dependence on external aid.
Our approach
Through over 80 projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, MSP works with an approach that places the rights of small producers at the center. The right to healthy and safe food, produced sustainably. The right to receive a fair price for one's work. The opportunity to develop local cooperatives that strengthen community economies without depending on external intermediaries.
Alongside economic support, we invest in technical training for farmers and in promoting eco-sustainable practices. Not because they are fashionable, but because "good farming is the first step in protecting the environment" — and protecting the environment is, increasingly, a matter of survival for communities that depend directly on the land.
The connection to peace
Our foundation, in 1968, was inspired by the phrase of Pope Paul VI: "Development is the new name for peace." In the agricultural field, this intuition becomes very concrete: when a family can produce food autonomously, when a local cooperative can access markets with dignity, when the environment is not plundered but cared for — the conditions for conflict diminish.
This is not naivety: it is fifty years of fieldwork, in very different countries and contexts, that have taught us that peace is not built with declarations but with the material conditions that make it possible.