Mystica

A Mystica Ceremony, Performed by the Members of UNAC, Opened the Conference

Our country is rich in fertile soils, rich in agriculture knowledge, rich in variety of seeds and plants needed to ensure the food sovereignty of its population. The vast green plains of Mozambican coast irrigated by Komati, Limpopo, Save and Zambeze rivers, the profound agricultural production knowledge and wisdom which initiated in one of the antique world civilization, Egypt; Maize, rice, cocoa, coffee, tea, saccharine cane, matapa (cassava leaves) are the unequivocal proofs that Africa can not be identified with hunger and misery that suffers nowadays.

However the reality is different. The continent is the most affected with hunger in the world. Men, women, old people and children die everyday in Africa due to the lack of food. Hunger is a calamite. This situation is the cause of food aid emergency programs, which become the permanent aid programs, and never come to the end

Africa produces, but produces in vain because its products are condemned to rottenness, while in the following kilometre hunger kills families. Even the food aid is all from the America and other distant lands. The reasons are so difficult to understand, mainly for the people with empty stomach. Yet, the simple mind of the peasant is able to infer that the world today, Africa today, Mozambique today, produce and have the capacity to produce, with its knowledge and existing means, enough food for everyone.

Does The technology,… bring us other challenges, more solution and more problems? The invention of genetic modified organism (GMOs) by the powerful international cooperation has been forwarded with panacea to solve all the problems brought about by the lack of food in the world. Is this the final solution of the hunger problem in the world? Is this proposal very different from the green revolution?

These days, the major part of the family agricultural explorations feeds the population using the knowledge, seed and other insumos transmitted from generation to generation, without even benefiting the programs resulting from the agricultural polices proposed by our Governments. The farmers` future resides on the land, in the millennial inheritance, on the knowledge and wisdom that survived for long time. What is the function of the technology in this context? Is it to put at risk the food sovereignty of the population? If the technology has a function to fulfil it must respect the farmers` rights of defining their policies, production and distribution strategies as well as the food consumption that grantee the food right which respect their cultures and diversity of the cultivation methods, their food tastes…

The clarity over the fact that the aid is a temporary measure to overcome emergency situations increases the farmers’ conscience that they’re the leaders of their future. That’s why the solution of hunger problems in Africa will only be possible with unconditional involvement of the Africans going hungry, and not with proposals that seem to bring results in a magic way.

In this struggle against hunger it is imperious that men and women establish the unity among them, and the world population unity should be built. The different articulation and cooperation ways are necessary as the guarantor for the building of a better world. The aid efforts are important, however it is indispensable to value the local production initiatives. It is on the land that we sit, plant and live, it is where we get our aid, and it is through the motherland that we feed ourselves.

Together lets produce.