Day three: Women's Day21 February 2007
This dispatch is written on a mattress in a very basic room at the local village - after carrying out my daily ritual killing of mosquitoes that seem to enjoy feasting on me.
Today is women's day and I met male delegates at breakfast who appeared to be feeling a little excluded.
I met Miriam Nobre from the World March of Women - an international feminist movement that campaigns against poverty, violence and corporate globalisation.
She's incredibly busy - helping to organise the event and I'm lucky to grab a few moments of her time.
What she told me captures the importance of food sovereignty for women internationally:
Food sovereignty is particularly important for women. By asserting this right, they are in fact asserting their right to remain being peasants, fishers and pastoralists from Brazil to Mali, Iran to Indonesia.
Legendary woman
The World Forum for Food Sovereignty is also known by another name - Nyeleni.
Nyeleni is a legendary Malian woman who gave her people the gift of agriculture.
Miriam told me that in Brazil, peasant women play the most important role when it comes to food as they are the main producers and they are mainly the ones that sell it in local markets.
Yet this is getting harder and harder to do as agribusiness companies are taking over both the production of food and its distribution - pushing women out of the rural economy.
The invisible barriers
In pastoralist, farming and fishing communities all over the world, women tend to be less visible in public.
Yet there is hope. Miriam firmly believes that food sovereignty is the most elaborate programme for an alternative approach to this corporate model that is hurting rural communities.
She manages to express how the most abstract, inaccessible levels such as global trade and investment are affecting the most personal parts of our daily lives such as what we like to eat.
She is confident that we can use this event to carry on the march towards for food sovereignty.
It's clear that gender issues are not going to be swept aside during the event - it's at the heart of food sovereignty.
Joe Zacune, our Trade Campaigner, is sending daily updates from the World Forum for Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali.
