Peasants Struggle against Imperialist Plunder, War, and Militarism

Statement for the annual Day of the Landless, 29 March 2025    

We, peasants, farmers, farmworkers, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, pastoralists, herders, rural women, rural youth and children, along with our organizations, coalitions, networks, and allies in civil society, reaffirm the anti-imperialist position and the centrality of the peasant struggle for land, food, and justice in achieving sustainable agriculture and food for all.

We recognize that the sheer onslaught of imperialism in its many forms in the Global South has caused immense poverty and hunger, has displaced millions of rural poor from their homes and communities, and has impeded their development as nations.

We register our collective objection and resistance to US-led wars and militarism, expanding corporate and private capture of the world’s resources such as lands and waters, and the co-optation of climate-recovery solutions through data mining, data management, and appropriating resources for such.

We oppose the US-backed Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Yemenis that continues to expand, especially in Gaza, despite reaching ceasefire agreements. And we decry its pivot to Asia Pacific, priming the region for war against China with ally states by building its military bases, clinching security agreements and military partnerships that embolden “counter-insurgency” programs, and stage  big war exercises.

We reiterate that imperialist expansion and capture of communities and food systems facilitated through technology, greenwashing, and supposed “carbon-offsetting” practices put market interests first before genuine development. The infrastructure needed for these  so-called “sustainable” and “smarter” alternatives displace  peasants and the rural poor from their land, use up water resources and critical minerals needed by countries to build industries for their own development. These so-called “green-technologies” are not just directly involved in land grabbing and appropriating prime agricultural lands, forests and Indigenous Peoples` sacred mountains for commercial and private use, they also rob our people of the right to development and the right to self-determination. 

We condemn governments’ sweeping neoliberal programs that convert land from sites of self-sustaining food production to serve the corporate agricultural demand for profit that not only disrupt established farming practices, but also displace and further marginalize underserved communities.

We highlight the cases of rural people fleeing their homes and farms due to militarization in the countryside and how this is precisely coordinated with counterinsurgency campaigns by governments to inhibit peoples’ political expression. Making use of advanced technology, including its massive data gathering to surveil those engaged in agricultural-based labor, governments and their favored giant corporations collaborate in militarizing rural areas that help facilitate land grabs for so-called green projects, mining of critical minerals, and the corporate capture of food systems. It is clear that military expansion and agricultural digitalization go hand-in-hand in rationalizing the profit-driven production rather than collective nutrition and national development.

We clarify our position for technological advancements that genuinely uplift peoples’ lives and fairly distribute the fruit of peoples labor rather than prioritize private profit and becoming a subsidiary market for weapons development for war and mass coercion. In this case, war has even come to weaponize hunger itself. The technological developments of the latter kind must be clearly revealed as destructive, exploitative, and severely damaging to both the people and the environment.

And lastly, we push and call for international solidarity of rural peoples and peasants with progressive pro-farmer organizations in the Global North to build and strengthen a broad resistance to the corporate-driven climate crisis, which is being packaged today to push for neoliberal reforms at the state level, as well as to the wars and militarism that ravage rural communities in the Global South.

In this year’s Day of the Landless, we, the undersigned, reaffirm our commitment to arousing, organizing and mobilizing our ranks and the broad peasant masses as a formidable force against imperialism. Only through our collective efforts and action can we achieve just demands for land, food and justice.

We assert our rights to our resources and reclaim our food systems[h1] ! 

 #DOTL2025