Frontline Farmers

Annette Aurélie Desmarais is the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty at the University of Manitoba. She is the author of La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. Prior to obtaining her doctorate in geography, Annette was a small-scale grain farmer. She then also worked with the National Farmers Union in the Global Agriculture Project and provided technical support to La Vía Campesina for over a decade.

• Contents: Beginnings • Recounting the Past, Counting on the Future: Stories of the nfu (Nettie Wiebe) • NFU Takes on a Corporate Giant (Carla Fehr) • Stopping Monsanto: Coalition Building Against RBGH and gm Wheat (Carla Fehr and Emily Eaton) • Protecting Seeds (Terran Giacomini) • Organizing the Market: The Canadian Wheat Board (André Magnan) • Farming Ecologically: The NFU in Ontario (Bryan Dale) • Saving the Prison Farms: Cows, Community and Civil Disobedience (Asha Nelson and Meghan Entz) • Owning the Island: The Question of Land in Prince Edward Island (Naomi Beingessner) • Embracing Agrarian Feminism: “The Farm Is Mary’s and Mine” (Carla Roppel) • Inspiring Re-Generation: NFU Youth (Terran Giacomini) • Globalization Solidarity: La Vía Campesina and Food Sovereignty (Asha Nelson and Annette Aurélie Desmarais) • Building Relationships: Indigenous-Settler Solidarity and the NFU (Lauren Kepkiewicz and Terran Giacomini) • References • Index

“The book offers a front-seat look at some of the key organizing efforts undertaken by one of the founding members of the global food sovereignty movement: The NFU.[…] Frontline Farmers is an important contribution to the conversation on contemporary food movements and offers numerous insights into the on-the-ground and evolving struggle for food sovereignty in Canada and beyond.”