Who is Aseed?
ASEED strives for a world where people feel empowered to take action to achieve social justice and environmental integrity on both the local and global level.
ASEED aims to support and empower groups and individuals (especially youth) who are striving for fair and sustainable food systems. We do so through grassroots organisation, mobilising people to take action, and supporting the non-formal exchange of skills and knowledge around social issues, climate change, farming, food, resilience and resistance. Overall, we support (young) people to grow capacities to take action to change their communities for the better.
ASEED works towards an autonomous food system where:
• (Neo)colonial power structures and supply chains where especially corporations in the Global North control resources that allow the production of food such as land, water, seeds, etc., are exposed and disposed of.
• Communities have the power to choose their food, where it comes from, and how it is produced.
• Farming practices work in harmony with local ecosystems, complementing natural processes rather than fighting them. This includes discontinuing the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and other poisons – as is practiced in for instance agroecological farming.
• Distribution chains are shortened, and communities are directly connected to where the food is grown.
• Everyone in the food production system is treated and compensated fairly.
We believe that complete structural change is necessary to achieve fair and sustainable food systems., but of course, these are lofty ambitions. You can read more about our concrete goals, approach, and scope of work on our campaign [link] page.
From 1991…
Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment, and Diversity (ASEED Europe) was established by young, engaged people in 1991 in response to the UNCED Earth Summit proceedings in Rio de Janeiro and aimed to forge alliances among young people committed to social and environmental justice. Since 1992, the ASEED decentralised network grew, and regional groups were created in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, Latin America, and Japan. Each group had its own level of activity, linking youth groups and individuals in their region. By now some hubs developed in their own way, working independently from each other, while others have ceased to exist.
Over the years…
ASEED has worked with a wide variety of topics within food systems the past 30 years, including GMOs, the animal feed industry (from soy production in South America to industrial farms in Europe), seed laws, food cooperatives, misleading labels, pig farming in the Netherlands, etc. ASEED has also campaigned and taken direct action against big corporations such as Monsanto, joined blockades against the fossil fuel industry, and participated in alternative summits in numerous countries.
… until today
Presently, ASEED Europe is a small non-profit organisation (ANBI) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Our core team consists of 7 – 10 people and collaborates with many volunteers and allies at the local, regional, and European level. ASEED’s team usually counts three part-time coordinators, one financial administrator, four volunteers (financed by the Erasmus + European Solidarity Corps programme), as well as interns in the spring semester. Since 2017, ASEED’s main campaign “Fossil Free Agriculture” has centred our work around opposing the use of fossil fuels and corporate control in industrial agriculture, with a special focus on fighting fossil fertilizers.
