** TRANSCRIPT OF STJC STATEMENTS AT CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON AGROFUELS **
Many hopeful environmentalists tell us that agrofuels are a green and
clean alternative to fossil fuels. The trade justice coalition does not
see it this way.
	The momentum of the environmental movement has been essentially
highjacked by agrobusiness, and has left thousands of destitute small-
scale farmers in its wake. 
	Far from helping the energy and climate change crisis, the
agrofuels agenda is serving to advance the interests of large
corporations in the car and oil industries, world food traders,
biotechnology companies, and global investment firms at the expense of
small farmers, community rights, and food sovereignty. 
	It is kept from our social consciousness that agroindustrial
farming and global food systems involve monolculture farming,
deforestation, use of mass amounts of chemicals, and large-scale
transportation of these commodities that all contribute to climate
change.
	The Student Trade Justice Campaign is a network of young activists
from all economic, social and environmental organizations that come
together as one under the global trade justice movement. 
	As the Student Trade Justice Campaign, we have a history of
fighting against free trade and investment agreements that have
devastated and continue to devastate the fundamental rights of people
to food, water, land, work and dignity. We believe that trade justice
is not limited to fighting unfair trade agreements that the US
negotiated with other countries, but also involves creating
alternatives to the current values that drive the system of
international trade.
	This year we have established a link between, and created a
campaign about trade justice, climate change, and food sovereignty. We,
like the organizations represented here today, call for an immediate
moratorium on US policies concerning agroenergy for large scale
monocultures and a moratorium on global trade of such agrofuels.
	The coalition advocates for community based food systems where we
live, in solidarity of the localizing efforts of the Global South. We
support this moratorium because we believe the promotion of agrofuels
as the panacea for mitigating climate change is deceiving. We must put
access to food, sustainable environmental practices, and biodiversity
at the forefront of international trade and the fight against climate
change and poverty.