ASEED’s broader goals within the Corporate Free Agriculture Campaign are to challenge industrial agriculture and be part of a growing agroecological movement. We work towards this goal through non-formal education, movement building, and direct action. Below you can read about some of our recent campaign activities that we use to shape the narrative around fossil fertilizers and support agroecological solutions!
One of our strongest suits at ASEED is raising awareness. We do this by giving workshops at many of the camps, actions, festivals, and grassroots gatherings we co-organize or participate in. In addition to workshops, we also organize solidarity events with groups from different intersections with agriculture. We host guest talks, discussions, documentary nights, and more, in Amsterdam.
It is not our goal to educate others top-down, but to facilitate spaces where we can learn from each other and engage with these topics together.
Workshops and skill shares
In the past years, ASEED workshops have taken place at various gatherings in Amsterdam and beyond. We have created spaces for reflection and co-learning on the topics of strategy and movement building, fossil fertilizers and neocolonial practices, fighting fossil gas in industrial agriculture, fostering community projects for food autonomy, incorporating undocumented migrants into farming initiatives, and investigating the fossil fertilizer industry. Our workshops take many different formats and often include creative elements that suit many learning styles and spark imagination and critical thinking.
Creating informational material
ASEED has produced a range of informative material throughout the years, including social media posts, website articles, brochures, flyers, stickers, etc.
Examples of this include:
- “The Climate Crisis is a Food Systems Crisis: Resist the Industrial Food System, Grow Better Futures” brochure (2016) written at the early stages of the Fossil Free Agriculture campaign, aiming to shed a light on the lesser-known connection between climate change and industrial agriculture.
- The collaborative social media campaign #YarafFertilizesChaos (2023) aiming to expose the truth about Yara International, world leader of the fossil fertilizer industry, in collaboration with Les Amis de la Terre (FR), Les Soulèvements de la Terre Saint Nazaire (FR) and Spire (NO) in three different languages (English, French and Norwegian).
- Flyers on the critical role of food and agriculture on the Palestinian struggle and the colonial occupation. Through the creation of critical and informational content ASEED tries to be responsive to the current political context.
Reading groups
ASEED’s reading groups are a social, communicative, creative way of learning together, exchanging ideas and thoughts, and raising awareness. In the past two years, we have looked into the topics of gas and industrial agriculture, fossil fertilizers and big agrochemical companies, soil health, agroecology, and green colonialism with a special focus on its relation to industrial agriculture, food autonomy, and Palestine.
The reading groups are organized and facilitated by members of ASEED who choose a variety of resources, such as articles, podcasts, videos, zines, etc., to accommodate different capacities and learning styles. We want to foster a co-learning environment, where we can be curious and grow together, reflect, and share knowledge on the given topic.
You can find the recommended reading lists for the most recent reading group sessions here. [link]
ASEED sees movement building as a core part of our organization. As a small non-profit with long roots, ASEED has created a far reach, and our network is still growing steadily. Together we are stronger, and we believe that we can raise grassroots power by joining forces in complementary struggles. We especially wish to connect the Dutch agroecological farming movement with other (activist) groups doing similar work, as well as bring the topic of food systems onto the agenda of the anti-gas and climate movement.
Agroecology Network Netherlands
ASEED has been active in supporting Dutch agroecological farmers to set up and maintain the Agroecology Network Netherlands. This is a network where alternative food systems actors come together and exchange strategies and tactics, with quarterly network meetings all over the Netherlands during the past three years—some of which have been co-organized by ASEED. The network centres the needs and wants of farmers. This is necessary to bring to the forefront those at the heart of our food systems struggles that are otherwise economically and socially marginalized.
Mycelia of Hope
ASEED has been a main contributor in setting up one of the working groups in the Agroecology Network, Mycelia of Hope. This is a platform to build bridges between farmers in the countryside and activists and other city-dwellers, who often live in disconnected worlds. We continue our involvement in this working group, co-organizing solidarity working days at different farms in the Netherlands. This allows for networking, “bubble hopping”, and sharing knowledge across different fields, finding common ground in shared visions for new food systems. The end goal for this initiative is to have a self-sustained website, where activists and farmers can be matched for shared projects.
Attending anti-gas gatherings
In March 2023 and 2024, the Energy Council organized the European Gas Conference in Vienna, where major actors in the gas industry come together to promote their destructive agendas. Many activist groups and NGOs organized a counter summit to this conference, and ASEED was present at these events, holding workshops on the link between fossil gas and industrial agriculture (2023) and a reading group about fossil fertilizers (2024) while making connections to the many, many collectives that attended the event. Through such collaborations, we can achieve a paradigm shift in the anti-gas movement towards more inclusion of agricultural topics.
Initiating and contributing to a coalition against fossil fertilizers
This broad coalition includes various international and local Dutch NGOs, grassroots groups, researchers, activists and farmers. Since this network began in 2023, ASEED has maintained a leading role to push for a stronger, radical grassroots presence, and for example co-organized five bi-monthly calls throughout the year following the second strategy meeting. The members of this growing coalition have been using this recurrent online gathering to update each other on the latest political and industrial developments, as well as on their ongoing activities (from reports to actions to lawsuits), in the hope of forging stronger alliances and collaborations.
We aim to link local practical action with global political struggles by engaging in spectacular, inspiring, and effective direct actions that build increasing power from below to counter the lobby of the fossil fertiliser industry. Our actions should educate the public and trigger more and more people to confront those organisations that promote and profit from a food system that serves neither the people nor the planet. We target big multinationals and the politicians that support them, not the farmers that are victims of a corrupted system.
ASEED has supported the following recent actions:
Blocking the European Gas Conference
In March 2023, we joined hundreds of activists from all over the world to block the streets around the venue of the European Gas Conference in Vienna, Austria. During this three-day conference representatives of fossil fuel companies met with investors and political representatives. Behind closed doors they decided on new major energy projects that affect countless lives and livelihoods across continents. We and our fellow activists denounced the undemocratic approach of CEOs, investors and decision makers, who are cementing the future of European gas supply for profit. While people can no longer afford gas prices, these corporations are making profits at our expense. This event was an important opportunity for ASEED to highlight the unsustainable dependency of fossil fertilizer on fossil gas.
Opposing local agricultural greenwashing events
In September 2023 and 2022, ASEED, in collaboration with other action groups in the climate and agroecology movements, mobilized an opposition to the Regenerative Food System Summit (Regen Summit), organized by massive agribusinesses such as Yara International, Syngenta, and Nestlé in the centre of Amsterdam. The mobilization consisted of a Counter Summit (in 2022), and a workshop and speech at an alternative Regenerative Festival hosted by Regeneratie Cooperatie, as well as a non-violent direct action both years.
Interrupting European Hydrogen Week
In November 2023, ASEED supported activists who interrupted the European Hydrogen Week in Brussels. One of the main participants and gold sponsors of this conference was fossil fertilizer giant Yara International – a neocolonial enterprise that generates food insecurity, dependence on farmers, & exacerbates climate change. The activists infiltrated the evening cocktail event, where investors and companies from the Hydrogen Industry were gathered. Posing as Yara sellers, they distributed a package of seeds revealing the true face of Yara, since the world leader of the fertilizer industry is also one of the most influential lobbies for hydrogen inside the EU.
In November 2024, ASEED was back to the European Hydrogen Week – where Yara was still one of the main sponsors – and did a performative disruptive action to denounce green grabbing and energy imperialism behind greenwashed hydrogen projects in Chile, Namibia, Armenia, and Palestine.
Past actions
ASEED has previously organised and supported larger actions. Click to read more about Free the Soil and the Lutkemeerpolder. [Links]