Comments
I suspect that accepting money from EA-linked sources would be, on net, corrosive to movements like the MST. I am not able to read original-language sources, but if Wikipedia is correct, the MST "is organized entirely, from the grassroots level up to the state and national coordinating bodies, into collective units that make decisions through discussion, reflection, and consensus." It displays a "non-hierarchical pattern of organization" that "avoids distinct leadership that can be bought off . . . ."
Even assuming EA funders thought some of what MST does is fundable, it's very unlikely they would find all or even most of it meets funding criteria. (Nor are EA funders unusual in not giving out large unrestricted grants to organizations that do a lot of things -- foundations usually want to fund specific programs, not whatever organizational leadership wants to spend money on). Having big external donors exerting that kind of influence on MST would likely warp MST's governance and legitimacy (which seems to be bound up in its grassroots coordination).
If the topic is literally "do EAs help peasants" then the answer is presumably yes since all x-risk related work and much global health work benefits peasants. (Some animal welfare work may harm peasants I guess). Normally EAs don't really use the term 'peasant' though.
These groups in particular I have not seen discussed, but they seems to be basically anti-capitalist groups, and the broader topic of "why doesn't institutional EA support my favoured leftist groups" is a frequently discussed one.
MST has 1.5 million members, Brazilian farming families struggling for access to land and building various cooperative forms of mutual aid. La Via Campesina is an umbrella organization of nearly 200 groups in more than 80 countries.
To my knowledge there is no unifying ideology, even a vague one such as “anti-capitalism.” However, their ways of producing food are different from the capital-intensive corporate farming incorporating petroleum-based fertilizers ( which contribute hugely to climate change) as well as chemical herbicides and pesticides. Small-scale farming of this sort produces most of the world’s food for human consumption.
Here are some recent headlines from the La Via Campesina website:
I really don't see how this is not a leftist group.
If opposition to genocide and oppression of poor farmers makes one a “leftist,” then I guess it is. Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” highlighted the oppression experienced by poor peasants during the war of secession that established Bangladesh as a separate nation.
So there are movements of the very people Singer seemed concerned with in that essay, people suffering from hunger and marginalization. Does no one who is part of the EA movement believe that EA should express solidarity with hunger’s victims fighting on their own behalf?
There seems to be a choice between doing for passive others or acting in solidarity with hunger’s victims who are active in struggle. Is it always the former, never the latter? If so, doesn’t that smack of “the white man’s burden?”
Note the many elements of leftist ideology (cooperatives, "mutual aid", small-is-beautiful-ism, etc.) that appear in this comment alleging that these groups have no common ideology.
Just a fact: traditional peasant farming produces more food per unit of land than capital-intensive large scale farms. So much for “small is beautiful.”
Since when is mutual aid “leftist ideology?”
The idea of mutual aid comes from anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin.
I also don't think it is accurate that peasant farming is more productive per hectare than capital intensive large scale farms.
On productivity of small farms vs. larger ones see Peter Rosset’s paper at this link https://archive.foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/PB4-The-Multiple-Functions-and-Benefits-of-Small-Farm-Agriculture_Rosset.pdf.
Also https://grain.org/en/article/4929-hungry-for-land-small-farmers-feed-the-world-with-less-than-a-quarter-of-all-farmland.
On mutual aid: citing Kropotkin’s use of that phrase (or presumably a Russian phrase so translated) is odd. If my next door neighbor and I help one another out, does that make us followers of Kropotkin? That was a standard move of anti-communists in the ‘50s and 60s: to call anyone who agreed with communists on any issue a communist dupe.
La Via Campesina is an umbrella including 180 peasant organizations with a total of 200 million members. All followers of Kropotkin?