SAPF issued “Kathmandu Declaration” to ensure food sovereignty, climate justice and farmers’ rights in South Asia

SUNIL NEGI

14 March 2025

The fifth conference of South Asia Farmers Federation (SAPF) concluded in Kathmandu.

Dr Prem Dangal from Nepal was elected President and Purushottam Sharma from India was elected General Secretary.

Decision to celebrate 26 November every year as ‘Kisan Sangharsh Diwas’ across South Asia.

The fifth conference of ‘South Asia Farmers Federation,’ (SAPF) held on 20-21 March in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, has decided to celebrate 26 November every year as “Kisan Sangharsh Diwas” across South Asia on the proposal of farmer leaders of India. India’s ‘historic farmers’ movement’ started on 26 November 2020 against the three agricultural laws brought for the corporatization of farming. Since then, every year on 26 November, lakhs of farmers take to the streets in 500 districts of India and vow to continue their struggle. The conference unanimously re-elected Dr Prem Dangal, President of All Nepal Kisan Mahasangh, as its President. Purushottam Sharma, Secretary, All India Kisan Mahasabha was unanimously elected as General Secretary of SAPF. The conference elected three Vice-Presidents, namely, Roula Vankaiah (AIKS General Secretary) from India, Tariq Mahmood, General Secretary, Pakistan Kisan Rabita Samiti from Pakistan and Nimai Ganguly, Bangladesh Krishak Samiti from Bangladesh. Five Secretaries were also elected to represent each country. P V Sundara Ramaraju (AIKS General Secretary, India) was also elected. The conference also issued a Kathmandu Declaration on behalf of the farmers of South Asia.

The chief guest and the inaugural speaker of the conference was Nepal’s Prime Minister and CPN-UML President Comrade KP Sharma Oli and the special guest was CPN-UML General Secretary Comrade Shankar Pokhrel. In the conference, there was a wide discussion on the protection of food sovereignty for the food security of farmers and the poor of the world against the corporate attacks on agriculture. In one session of the conference, there was also a wide discussion on the problems of small tea producing farmers of South Asia. In the conference, farmer leaders from all countries gave their meaningful statements on the problems and struggles of the people who earn their livelihood in the fields of agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries etc. The conference resolved to stop the corporate loot of the means of livelihood in this region through even wider unity and joint struggle among the farmers of South Asia. In the conference, a resolution was taken to further expand the Federation through a united struggle against the corporate attacks on agriculture and people’s resources in South Asia till the sixth conference of SAPF to be held after two years.

Kathmandu Declaration

South Asian peasants’ organisations have been long advocating for food sovereignty, agrarian reforms, and peasants’ rights. We demand the following from the governments of South Asian countries in response to the above-mentioned exploitation and marginalisation experienced by peasants in the region:

Ensure small-scale farmers’, fisherfolks’, and indigenous people’s control over the region’s food system. Keep multinational corporations out of agriculture.

Strengthen local food systems by protecting traditional knowledge and indigenous food varieties, for instance, through the establishment of seed banks/ gene bank with the purpose of protecting and promoting seed sovereignty. States are to reject the membership of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).

Bring agrarian reforms to enhance agricultural productivity and guarantee food security. States in South Asia are to enact policies that provide land tenure security to peasants and ensure their access to subsidised credit.

Implement a comprehensive scientific land reform that takes gender, caste, and ethnicity into account. Guarantee peasants’ right to land and distribute land to the landless tillers. Stop acts of eviction and land grabbing. Implement scientific land classification and land use policy in each country to protect fertile farming land. Recognise tenant farmers and provide all government schemes that have been targeted at farmers.

Enhance peasants and small-scale farmers’ access to agricultural market, currently being controlled by intermediaries.

Make taxation system pro-poor, thereby removing the disproportionate burden of taxation on peasants and agricultural workers, and instead facilitating their efforts towards commercialization or modernisation.

Protect peasants and their livelihoods from the impacts of climate crisis. Keep peasants at the centre of any mitigation, adaptation, and compensatory policies. Implement water management and flood control measures, and access to climate resilient seeds and adaptive livestock breeds to preserve agriculture amidst extreme weather events compounded by climate change.

Reject false solutions like so-called “climate-smart agriculture,” which pushes corporate-driven technologies, chemical-intensive farming, and high external input systems that primarily benefit large landholders while serving the interests of big agribusiness—at the cost of small farmers, food sovereignty, and ecological sustainability.

End policies of neoliberalism designed by corporations and operated through markets that unjustly favour profiteering of a few over people’s sustainable development and deny peoples’ collective rights to commons. Ensure peasants’ access to market on fair terms.

For our survival and resilience, prioritizing local production and consumption of staple foods strengthens community food sovereignty, preserves traditional knowledge, reduces dependence on volatile global markets, and ensures sustainable livelihoods while protecting our ecosystems and cultural heritage.

Guarantee women’s access to and ownership over land. Ensure justice and equality for women, which require the transformation of social and economic arrangements, including access to land, credit, education, social benefits, and power.

Stop the rampant supply of hybrid and genetically modified (GMO) seeds from multinational companies and traders, which is causing the disappearance of indigenous seeds and increasing dependence on Multi-National Corporations (MNCs), modern fertilizers and pesticides, ultimately harming the health of both workers and consumers.

Supply agricultural inputs to individual farmers at cheap price through subsidies. Guarantee crop insurance. Ensure Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for small-scale farmers in the form of legislation – the Minimum Support Guarantee Act at national level.

Increase the state budget allocation in agriculture, with the introduction of a separate agriculture budget.

Stop Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in agriculture.

National, regional, and local governments should introduce a comprehensive loan waiver scheme during times of crisis for small and marginal farmers, who are the most affected by the agrarian crisis. This initiative could help them escape the cycle of indebtedness and revitalize their farming systems.

Amidst the rapid feminization of agriculture, recognise and value women’s contribution to agriculture, including in the form of unpaid care work, by bringing gender-friendly plans and programmes. Compensate the unpaid work in agriculture with monetary exchange through the provisioning of social security to agricultural workers.

Take effective measures to protect the health of agricultural workers and consumers from the high level of pesticide usage.

Introduce the provision of pension or minimum basic income to elderly peasants and agricultural workers.

Protect the farming rights of peasants in national parks, conservation areas, and buffer zones.

Ensure that round-the-year work is available for agricultural workers to end their vulnerability. Address the basic needs of social protection of peasants, fishers, farm workers, tenants, and sharecroppers through medical and accidental insurance and pension schemes.

Include alternative proposals to address the agrarian distress covering pooling of land in collectives and producer cooperatives while retaining the private ownership, develop agro-processing industries for value addition, branding and market networks, surplus sharing to ensure MSP and minimum wage to ensure agriculture led development under the aegis of governments sans corporate intervention.

Implement, through strong collective action, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which provides a crucial framework, but its implementation requires strong collective action.

Devise appropriate national and regional policies/ treaties and institutions to ensure equitable, unrestricted and sustainable use, access and share upon the common water resources, including international rivers, ocean, sea and other open water bodies.

We ourselves further commit to the following:

We, the member organisations of South Asia Peasant Federation, will demand the respective national governments to review the impact of the neoliberal reforms implemented over the last three decades on the huge majority of the working people, including farmers and workers.

We will continue to press for the transformation of agriculture from chemical-based farming to agroecology as an alternative to neoliberalism.

We commit to strengthen the South Asian Peasant Federation (SAPF) as an organisational expression to fight back the problems we have encountered as peasants, fishers and workers.

We continue to extend our support, strengthen, and consolidate worldwide solidarity and commitments to peasant movements in Nepal, the South Asian region, and globally. We also call upon other peasants’ organisations and movements to join us to broaden and strengthen our collective struggle.

We, the farmer organizations working in South Asia, will celebrate 26 November every year as “Farmers Struggle Day” against the growing corporate assault on agriculture.

Country Sharing

1. Bangladesh
2. India
3. Nepal
4. Pakistan
5. Sri Lanka

Participants:

1. Saiful Huq, Bangladesh, Chairperson, Bangladesh Agricultural Labour Union (BALU)
2. Badrul Alam, Bangladesh Krishok Federation (BKF)
3. Nimai Ganguly, Vice President, Bangladesh Krishok Samiti
4. Bokhtiar Hossain, Jatiyo Krishok Samiti, Bangladesh
5. Ravula Venkaiah, General Secretary, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
6. Krishna Prasad, Secretary, AIKS
7. Purushottam Sharma, Secretary, All India Kisan Mahasabha (AIKM)
8. Ramayan Singh, Executive Chair, All India Agragami Kisan Sabha
9. Arjun Karki, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE)
10. Tariq Mahmood, General Secretary, Pakistan Kisan Rabita Committee (PKRC)
11. Subashinie Deepa Kamalanathan, National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO), Sri Lanka
12. P. V. Sundara Ramaraju, General Secretary, All India Agragami Kisan Sabha (AIAKS)
13. Padma Pasya, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
14. Ravindra Roy, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
15. AKM Masud Ali, INCIDIN Bangladesh
16. Sushovan Dhar, Progressive Plantation Workers Union (PPWU)
17. Haider Ali Butt, PKRC
18. Jan Nisar Ali, PKRC
19. Mahinda Senevi Gunaratne, NAFSO
20. Abdul Hannan, Sikkim University, India
21. Bibek Das, Small Tea Growers Protection Committee, Assam, India
22. Dr. Prem Dangal, President, All Nepal Farmers Federation,
23. Purushottam Neupane, Incharge of Foreign Affairs, All Nepal Farmers Federation,
24. Sarita Bhusal, General Secretary, All Nepal Farmers Federation,
25. Bheshraj Adhikari, All Nepal Farmers Federation
26. Safal Subba, All Nepal Farmers Federation,
27. Cyril Pathirange, Tea small grower, Sri Lanka
28. Harka Tamang, Tea small grower, Nepal
29. Krishna Pokhrel, Nepal Tea Producer Peasants’ Association
30. Mina Rai, Central Tea Cooperative Federation, Nepal
31. K Saral, Tamil Nadu, India
32. S M Abdus, Bangladesh