SMG PRESS STATEMENT: INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY- 2021

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August 12, 2021
PRESS STATEMENT: INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY- 2021
On the occasion of the celebration of the 2021 International Youth Day celebration, the Youth League
of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) joins the numerous voices around the world to celebrate
our gallant young women and men who are doing everything possible to survive and to contribute to
the building of this world through hard-work, innovation and ingenuity even in the face of treacherous,
repressive and hopeless global capitalist system. We say AYEEKO!
The theme for this year’s celebration as put out by the United Nations (UN) is “Transforming Food
Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”, and this clearly shows that the success
of the global effort at providing the nutritional needs of the people depends in large measure on youth
participation.

Global capitalism has for reasons of profit invaded the area of agriculture in a bid to continue
perpetuating its greed for profit and by so doing carrying out the following negative practices that have
had negative consequences for the world food system:
a) Increasing Monopoly of Mosanto-Bayer and other liked companies that control farm seed usage
and force smaller farms to use their GMO seeds under very strict compliance laws and using the law to
intimidate family farmer’s rendering them poorer whiles collapsing other peasant farms and creating
unemployment.

b) Introduction of industrial agriculture which has displaced most young people from farms in rural
areas and encouraged rural urban migration in search of jobs for survival. Many energetic young people
have had to relocate to survive because what hitherto fed them and their families have been taken
away from them with the introduction of industrial machines for profit purposes without creating any
alternative for survival.
c) Use of agrochemicals like soil conditioners, liming and acidic agents etc. Which the World
Health Organization(WHO) has determined has determined to be carcinogenic and having negative
health implications for all consumers around the world.
d) Taking away farmers rights over seeds even though article 19 of the Declaration on the Rights
of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas ad adopted by the United Nations in December
2018 states that “the right to seeds includes the right to the protection of the traditional knowledge
contained within seeds and the right of peasants to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed or
propagating material