| May 23, 2003: Everything
in a supermarket has a story to tell, if only we could find
it out. The produce defies seasons, geography, wars, distance,
nature. It is winter outside, but inside the supermarket golden-shell
pineapples from Côte d'Ivoire, still small and green,
bathe in humming halogen light. There is civil unrest in the
Côte d'Ivoire, but it does not seem to have disrupted
the flow of tropical fruit to the cold North. Next to them
are strange, knobbly bits of ginger dug from Chinese soil.
Gala apples from France, bagged up and reduced to half price.
Avocados from Israel and Chile. Pale tomatoes from the Canary
Islands, where it is always warm, but the fruit must be picked
green. 'Ready-to-go' meals fill the chiller cabinets. Here,
wrapped in plastic, are small clusters of perfect baby corn
and mange tout from plantations in Kenya. Here is cod, pulled
up by trawler from the over-fished, churning cold sea of the
northeast Atlantic.
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"...what we choose to put in
our supermarket baskets writes its own language upon our
bodies and our moods, our families, our economies, our
landscapes. It can mean life or death in some distant
country..." |
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Though we can't hear their stories, what we choose to put
in our supermarket baskets writes its own language upon our
bodies and our moods, our families, our economies, our landscapes.
It can mean life or death in some distant country whose name
we can only vaguely discern printed on the packaging. We are,
all of us, affected by trends in the global economy, in the
most intimate and fundamental way possible - through our food.
Only rarely do these connections become visible, when the
people who produce the food remind us of them. Those who work
the countryside are a potent source of cultural identity,
whether it's the campesinos of Mexico, the gauchos of Argentina,
the paysannes of France, Australian conkies, or the flat-capped
Yorkshire farmer. Their images are used to market food to
us, because we associate them with rural life, nature and
rude good health. But the real people who produce our food
are losing their livelihoods and leaving the land.
Over the past two years British dairy farmers, in their grief
and anger over plummeting prices, have blockaded supermarkets
up and down the country, spilled their milk, boycotted suppliers.
Why blockade the supermarkets? The average price British
farmers receive for their milk is the lowest for 30 years.
The bargaining power of the supermarkets is so great that
prices for farmers are going ever downwards. In 2000, supermarket
giant Tesco introduced international 'reverse' auctions for
its suppliers all over the world. They were asked to bid against
each other until Tesco got the lowest price.
Supermarkets blame the consumer for wanting 'cheap food'
- yet 50 years ago farmers in Europe and North America received
between 45 and 60 per cent of the money that consumers spent
on food. Today that proportion has dropped to just 7 per cent
in Britain and 3.5 per cent in the US.(1)
Even that ultimate symbol of rugged individualism, the cowboy,
is an endangered species. Most of the ranchers of the Great
Plains of Nebraska are permanently broke, mortgaging or selling
off their land and cattle to survive. The cowboy is riding
into the final sunset as the Great Plains become steadily
depopulated.
A global crisis
The details are specific to each country but the broad trends
are international: the crisis in farming is global.
| "The six founding countries of
Europe's Common Agricultural Policy had 22 million farmers
in 1957; today that number has fallen to 7 million...Everywhere
small-scale farmers are being 'disappeared'. " |
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The six founding countries of Europe's Common Agricultural
Policy had 22 million farmers in 1957; today that number has
fallen to 7 million. Just 20 per cent of the European Union's
wealthiest and largest farmers get 80 per cent of EU subsidies.
Canada lost three-quarters of its farmers between 1941 and
1996 and the decline continues. In 1935 there were 6.8 million
working farmers in the US; today the number is under 1.9 million--less
than the total US prison population.
Suicide is now the leading cause of death among US farmers,
occurring at a rate three times higher than in the general
population. In Britain farmers are taking their own lives
at a rate of one a week.(2)
In poorer countries the situation is even worse. Half of
the world's people still make their living from the land--and
it is they who feed the majority of the world's poorest people.
In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa more than 70 per cent
of the population makes a living from the land. Agriculture
counts, on average, for half of total economic activity.
In the Philippines the number of farm households in the corn-producing
region of Mindanao is set to fall by half. Between 1985 and
1995 the number of people employed in agriculture in Brazil
fell from 23 million to 18 million. In China an estimated
400 million farmers are in danger of losing their livelihoods
entirely. Everywhere small-scale farmers are being 'disappeared'.
All eaten up
Why is this happening? Somebody, somewhere, must be benefiting.
The answer is not hard to discover. It lies not in the soil,
but inside the corporations which have become known collectively
as 'agribusiness'. They traverse the planet buying at the
lowest possible price, putting every farmer in direct competition
with every other farmer. While the price of crops has been
pushed down--often even below the cost of production--the
prices of inputs such as seed, fertilizers and pesticides
have gone up.
Control of the 'food-chain' is being concentrated in ever-fewer
hands. According to Bill Hefferman, rural sociologist at the
University of Missouri, in some cases there is 'seamless and
fully integrated control of the food system from gene to supermarket
shelf'.(3) When the two giant corporations
Monsanto and Cargill went into partnership they controlled
seed, fertilizer, pesticides, farm finance, grain collection,
grain processing, livestock-feed processing, livestock production
and slaughtering, as well as several processed-food brands.
This system, developed in the US, is being exported to other
countries in the name of globalization.
This level of control is one of the reasons why genetically
modified (GM) seeds are of such concern. They give agribusiness
yet more weapons with which to enforce total dependency on
their patented seeds. Some of them require own-brand herbicides
and even own-brand 'trigger' chemicals (known as 'traitor'
technology) that the farmer has to apply for before the seed
will germinate.
This is the secret of the disappearance of the family farmer
in the North--and the peasantry in the South. To disappear
them, aside from killing them, you must turn them into vulnerable
workers on an assembly line, without control over their own
operations, and obliged to corporations.
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"Free-trade theory is based on
the idea that countries should specialize, produce the
things that they make best and buy in everything else.
But, as Kevan Bundell from Christian Aid says: 'It makes
little sense for poor countries or poor farmers to put
themselves at more risk if they have to rely on the efficient
functioning of markets which all too often fail or don't
exist.'" |
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Agribusiness writes the rules of international trade. Cargill
was largely responsible for the Agreement on Agriculture at
the World Trade Organization (WTO), which liberalizes the
global market in agricultural goods. Farmers, particularly
in poor countries, find it impossible to compete with cheap
imports. One James Enyart of Monsanto said of the WTO's 'intellectual
property' agreement (known as 'TRIPs') which makes its ownership
of seeds and genetic material possible worldwide: "Industry
has identified a major problem in international trade. It
crafted a solution, reduced it to a concrete proposal and
sold it to our own and other governments."
Why does it matter that small, 'inefficient' producers are
being eradicated by globalized, corporate agriculture? Free-trade
theory is based on the idea that countries should specialize,
produce the things that they make best and buy in everything
else. But, as Kevan Bundell from Christian Aid says: "It
makes little sense for poor countries or poor farmers to put
themselves at more risk if they have to rely on the efficient
functioning of markets which all too often fail or don't exist."(4)
How 'efficient' is a system of agriculture that ignores ('externalizes')
the huge costs of removing chemical contamination from water
or losing genetic diversity? How 'wholesome' is it to create
new diseases in animals and antibiotic resistance in people?
How 'cheap' is the expense of public subsidies to private
agribusiness, of global transport or social breakdown in rural
areas?
Prevailing free-market thinking asks why we should provide
support just to keep people in a state of 'backwardness' and
rural poverty. But experience shows us that when these people
lose their rural livelihoods, only a few will find better
jobs in the city. Many will end up in enormous and growing
urban slums.
"The future for peasant incomes and employment is grim,"
says Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Chinese State Council's
research centre. According to Chen, in 2001 over 88 million
workers migrated from rural to urban areas in China, most
of them employed in "dirty, hard, dangerous and unsafe
conditions."(5)
The question is not whether we have any right to condemn
people to the difficult life of a poor farmer--an accusation
often thrown at those who oppose the global-trade regime and
the food cartel that runs it. The real question is whether
vulnerable farmers themselves have meaningful choices. They
need an international voice for their own priorities.
Let them eat trade Nettie Webb, a Canadian farmer explains:
"The difficulty for us, as farming people, is that we
are rooted in the places where we live and grow our food.
The other side, the corporate world, is globally mobile."
To put it another way, global- trade rules might be fundamentally
transforming agriculture, but as one sceptic asked: "can
one envision a coalition of Belgian, Dutch, French, Italian,
Uruguayan, Brazilian and New Zealand farmers marching on a
GATT (WTO) meeting in Punta del Este? And what could they
demand to benefit them all, since they are all in competition
with one another?"(6)
| "Via Campesina has been marching
on every WTO meeting from 1994 onwards... This global
alliance of small and family farmers, peasants, landless
and indigenous people, women and rural labourers, has
a membership of millions...They believe food is a human
right, not a commodity, and that their job--the production
of food--is fundamental to all human existence." |
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In fact Via Campesina has been marching on every WTO meeting
from 1994 onwards. "We will not be intimidated. We will
not be 'disappeared'," they have declared. This global
alliance of small and family farmers, peasants, landless and
indigenous people, women and rural labourers, has a membership
of millions--the vast majority from poor countries--and they're
putting an alternative agricultural paradigm on the map.
It's based on the idea of 'food sovereignty'. It is, they
say, "the RIGHT of peoples, communities and countries
to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and
land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically
and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances."
They believe food is a human right, not a commodity, and
that their job-- the production of food--is fundamental to
all human existence. This attitude is summed up by a food
co-op member's retort to Brazilian President Cardoso when
he said that agriculture had to submit to the law of the market:
"Very well, Mr President. When Brazil no longer needs
food, then you can let agriculture go bankrupt."(7)
The farmers of Via Campesina argue that nothing as important
as food should be ruled by the WTO. They've been leading the
campaign to take agriculture out of its remit entirely. This
does not mean that they are 'anti-trade'. They believe in
trading goods which a country cannot produce itself. Once
a country has supported its own food needs and production
it should be free to trade the surplus.
Via Campesina vision
I spent time with Via Campesina at the 2002 World Social
Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where they explained their
vision in more depth. I'm in the courtyard of the Convent
del Capuchino. There are mango and papaya trees hung with
unripe green fruit. Via Campesina delegates--people of few
words--sit on benches, sip sweet coffee and contemplate.
José Bocquisso Jr explains the views of the National
Peasants' Union in Mozambique. "Mozambique was one of
the largest cashew-nut processors in the world," he says.
"But because of the IMF the industry was privatized and
the processing plants were closed... People should concentrate
on producing food for themselves, not products for export...
If we produce a lot of cotton the price ends up being below
the cost of production, and people are stranded with piles
of cotton, but with no food and no money. In our organization
we concentrate on producing food, we encourage our members
first to provide for their daily needs. Then it doesn't matter
so much if they don't have money, because they are secure
in food and have guaranteed the ability to feed their families."
His group is part of the expanding African contingent in Via
Campesina. "It is very strengthening to feel part of
a global movement. World powers have to be fought globally."
Via Campesina is not anti-technology. Its vision is, however,
based on a model of agriculture built from the ground up,
in which farmers' knowledge has a significant place. Indeed,
all Via Campesina's arguments about food and farming--whether
GMOs, access to land or markets--come down to one central
issue: control.
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"But we are independent when
we develop our own agriculture. We use our own productive
system, with no chemical fertilizer or herbicides. We
use local seeds and local fertilizer." |
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Indra Lubis, part of a coalition of 13 Indonesian peasant
unions with 900,000 members, explains that rejection of genetically
modified seed and pesticides is about self-determination:
"With Monsanto, who have planted GM cotton in south Sulawesi,
we'll have to depend on them for seed. They want to control
cotton and food production. As peasants, we'll be made dependent
on multinational corporations. But we are independent when
we develop our own agriculture. We use our own productive
system, with no chemical fertilizer or herbicides. We use
local seeds and local fertilizer. In Indonesia we have so
many varieties of seed. It is a deep part of our culture."
Seventy per cent of the world's farmers are women--most of
the people in this courtyard are men. Rosalva Gutierrez, from
the Belize Association of Producer Organizations, tells me:
"It is always the women who take the hardest part as
farmers, mothers, wives. We have many strong women but they
have been abused for so many years, women's self-esteem is
very low. So we give workshops and training... I'm co-ordinator
of the women's project and on the international co-ordination
of Via Campesina--I try to ensure that what Via Campesina
says on paper about gender equality becomes reality!"
And she tells me: "We don't see farmers as being from
different countries. Farmers everywhere understand the same
point.'
Via Campesina argues that food production has a unique role
to play in rural livelihoods, health, ecology and culture.
Kanya Pankiti, a peasant from the south of Thailand--on her
first trip out of the country--says the way her people grow
food preserves the forest, the watershed and the soil. She
thinks the Brazilians aren't growing enough trees. "The
way Brazilians do agriculture now will cause soil erosion,"
she worries, picking and nibbling leaves she recognizes from
home--it has never occurred to Brazilians to cook with them.
Kanya knows a lot about trees. She says: "The Thai forest
department doesn't believe that people can live in the forest
and preserve it. The reality is, we have lived in the forest
for a hundred years. It is not the villagers who are destroying
the forest, but the loggers clear-cutting. When the forest
is clear-cut the land becomes less fertile." Her house
is outside a new National Park zone, her land inside it, and
they want to clear her out. "When they declare a National
Park," she says, "they sit in an air-conditioned
office and look at a map."
What does she think of the World Social Forum? She's going
back to tell her village "that they are not alone in
the world, struggling for land, and we can link up with those
in other countries."
It's about control
| "The big companies are buying
up all the land...With contract farming, they tell us:
'We'll buy your food only if you buy the chemicals you
need from us'" They give us chemicals that are forbidden
in the US. Then we have to give them a section of our
crop. If we can't, then they take our land." |
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For anyone who eats, the question of who controls the food
chain--farmers, or an ever-more powerful cartel of food corporations--is
no less pertinent than it is for Indra, Kanya or José.
At the very same time as consumers in the rich world are objecting
more than ever to factory farming, to the use of antibiotics
in livestock, to pesticide residues in food, to the loss of
biodiversity and to food scares such as BSE, this very same
model is being set up for replication around the world, often
disguised as 'development'.
Mario Pizano, a member of the Confederación Campesino
del Suerto in Chile, joins the conversation. "The big
companies are buying up all the land," he complains.
"With contract farming, they tell us: 'We'll buy your
food only if you buy the chemicals you need from us'"
They give us chemicals that are forbidden in the US. Then
we have to give them a section of our crop. If we can't, then
they take our land."
But he, and millions like him, refuse to become serfs on
their own land. As we part, he takes off his green cap, emblazoned
with the name of his organization, and gives it to me. "This
organization is part of me," he says.
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