"when you look at the trade figures for food flowing in and out of developing countries, we are not feeding the Third World. They are feeding us. So who, exactly, is benefiting from industrial agriculture, if not the farmer or the starving millions? ...Monsanto and Du Pont"
1. Down on the farm: global food industry destroying farmers
2. Peasants demand: End Global Hunger! WTO Out of Agriculture!
3. Nicole Cook re: scientific cover up for multinational interests
4. Ingo re: multinationals want to control the world's food
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1. Down on the farm
Stuart Laidlaw
Toronto Star August 26, 2001 Sunday
The global food industry is destroying the traditional family farm and a Canadian way of life
Sure, farmers have suffered through bad weather, bad prices and bad government policies before, but the confluence of events that year after year, it seems, brings all three down upon them with more force than the year before makes the current farm crisis different from the rest. For one thing, drought throughout the country (recent rain notwithstanding) threatens to ruin the crops of farmers in every province this year. But because not all farmers around the world are suffering with this weather, prices remain low. So farmers get what has become a familiar triple whammy: small crops, bad prices and governments unwilling to help. The culprit, as outlined in Winnipeg journalist Ingeborg Boyens' new book, Another Season's Promise: Hope And Despair In Canada's Farm Country, is industrial agriculture driven by world trade that has put farmers on a treadmill of having to keep getting bigger to cover ever-dwindling margins. As costs rise and prices drop, the logic goes, only the big will survive. It's a simplistic economic formula that has cost Canada thousands of well-run family farms and threatens the future of those that remain. But farmers keep pushing, ever optimistic that next year will be better - which is why Boyens chose the title of her book from the Stan Rogers' tune about the promise each new crop holds as the seeds are planted. The optimism that puts farmers on their tractors every spring, however, becomes increasingly tough to maintain as the season turns to summer and then fall and the realities of weather and global economics begin to set in. Boyens illustrates the pattern by portraying a southern Manitoba farm family, the Weilers, whose trials and tribulations introduce each chapter. The answer offered to farmers during the last 50 years of industrial agriculture, cleverly dubbed the Green Revolution, has been to grow more food: Get bigger and do whatever you must to take more product off each acre of land. The result has been massive increases in world food production, which has driven down the prices paid to farmers and driven farmers from the land. You may not have noticed the low prices at the grocery store, since marketing, packaging and processing have gobbled up an increasing share of the money we spend on food. Still, Canadians enjoy the lowest food prices in the industrialized world. Boyens joins a growing chorus against industrial agriculture, not only for its environmentally questionable reliance on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified foods, but also as a business model for the modern farmer. "Our current industrial system cannot honestly be described as sustainable under any definition," she notes. "How can it be sustainable if farmers of today are going broke and there is not opportunity for a future generation?" Family farmers are caught between struggling to maintain a way of life they love, the business realities of modern farming and moral pressure to feed the world - an awesome responsibility big food and agriculture companies use to justify the more unsavoury of their practices. It amounts to little more than a guilt trip perpetrated against the farmer, made to feel that the starving millions in Africa need him to put the financial and environmental health of his farm at risk so they may eat. In fact, when you look at the trade figures for food flowing in and out of developing countries, we are not feeding the Third World. They are feeding us. So who, exactly, is benefiting from industrial agriculture, if not the farmer or the starving millions? Boyens makes a convincing argument that it's the companies benefiting most, such multinational conglomerates as Monsanto and Du Pont that sell the farmers the tools of industrial agriculture (seeds and chemicals) and other such corporate giants as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, those able to play farmers in one part of the world off against those in another to get the cheapest commodities they can. Any benefits from industrial agriculture accrue to those companies; inefficiencies trickle down to the farmer as low prices and high input costs. In any business, an additional cost can be justified only if it will raise the business income. Industrial agriculture simply does not meet this standard. Any increase in output is offset by lower prices, making the investment in industrial agriculture's toolbox harder to justify, from a business point of view. As Boyens writes, "This system generates great wealth from the countryside but returns poverty to the farmer."
Farmers have also been sold on the opportunities presented by export markets. The problem is, so have farmers around the world, and the current emphasis on trade liberalization has done little more than pit farmers everywhere against each other, to the benefit of those who trade in food commodities. "In the past the rule was to feed your family and trade the leftovers. Now the advice seems to be: trade all you can and hope there will be something left over for your family," Boyens writes. To cope with all these pressures, farmers have been encouraged to specialize, to concentrate on one or two crops and build economies of scale to stay afloat. But since no soil can handle the same crop year after year, such farms require chemical inputs to keep putting out a sizeable crop. This hands any benefit from the more efficient farm over to the companies making the chemicals. Meanwhile, as the farmers have specialized, the companies that supply them and buy their produce have diversified. Cargill, for instance, sells fertilizers, pesticides and animal feed, buys corn, wheat, soy beans and dozens of other crops, slaughters cattle, pigs and chickens and, in parts of the U.S., even owns the banks farmers turn to when they need financing to keep afloat. Those farmers who have jumped off the treadmill, trading lower yields for much lower input costs, have fared better. Their costs are much lower and, once their soil has got over its chemical dependency, have seen yields start to come back. If they can certify their food as organic, they even get higher prices to match their lower costs. Paying farmers more for the food they grow won't necessarily send grocery prices through the roof, since so little of your grocery bill ever makes it to the farmer. Consider that just 4.5 cents from an $1.49 loaf of bread is paid to the farmer, and that Ottawa collects more in taxes from a case of beer than the farmer was paid to grow the barley. In fact, food companies today spend more to convince you to buy the food than they pay the farmers who make it. Those who would gladly let the family farmer fall by the wayside, asking why the taxpayer should bail out farmers every time they are in trouble, have a point. There are solutions in the market to help farmers, it's just a question of which business model they follow. But while we're worrying about tax money going to farmers, why not worry about taxes going to companies? Every dollar spent by the likes of Monsanto on university research into industrial farming methods is matched by federal and provincial tax dollars. Taxpayers subsidize the farm industry, not farmers. Consumers worried that changing the way we grow food might lead to higher prices should also consider how much their taxes are being used to prop up an unsustainable recipe. Boyens' book is a good place to start. MAGMA / FROM 'ANOTHER SEASON'S PROMISE' (VIKING)AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS BOYENS Another Season's Promise: Hope And Despair In Canada's Farm Country by Ingeborg Boyens Viking, 276 pages, $35 Small is beautiful GRAPHIC: MAGMA / FROM 'ANOTHER SEASON'S PROMISE' (VIKING)
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2. Peasants Demand: "End Global Hunger! WTO Out of Agriculture!"
From: "People's Caravan 2000" This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Press Release from the PEASANT MEETING, 26 - 27 August 2001, Bangkok, Thailand; taking place in conjunction with the NGO Consultation on the World Food Summit after 5 years, currently also taking place in Bangkok, between August 28-29th.
Press Release August 28, 2001 From PEASANT MEETING, 26-27 August 2001, Bangkok, Thailand
We are peasants from 20 peasant organizations and Via Campesina, from 4 Southeast Asian countries-Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines-who have gathered in Bangkok, and talked about the impact of globalization on our lives as small farmers. We are having the same problems among us such as intensifying landlessness, Genetic Modified Organisms (GMO), Patenting on life forms, dumping, low prices of the agricultural products, withdrawal of protection, the monoculture system, peasant rights violations etc.
We realize that the common problems that we have are spawned by neo-liberal globalization, which further worsens global hunger. It has devastated the livelihoods of millions of peasants, and woman peasants, as a result of policies most particularly of agricultural trade and financial liberalization, deregulation and privatization.
This peasant meeting is among the series of activities to bring peasants position on WFS+5 in Rome and the fourth Ministerial meeting of WTO in Qatar.
The World Trade Organization is mainly to blame for this catastrophe as its policies promote the business interests of transnational corporations. It has opened agricultural markets to the importation of apparently cheap, but unhealthy food. But this is resulting in the dependency and domination by food and agrichemical TNCs, resulting in the displacement of domestic food and agricultural sectors.
The negative impacts of the Agreement on Agriculture has drawn imports of cheap products, more production for export, intensifying monopoly control, increasing landless, increasing unemployment, increasing poverty and eroding food sovereignty.
Under the stewardship of the governments of the G8 countries, the globalization process has only benefited transnational corporations and the elites of our countries who have been increasingly taking control of the natural resources and land from the toiling peasant. Agriculture is increasingly being corporatized resulting in greater promotion of monopoly control of our food production and distribution.
The alternative solution that we would like to call for is food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the right of a people and its nation to define their own agricultural and food policy, which take precedence over any macro economic policies. It is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its capacity to produce its basic food for a balance diet, respecting cultural and productive diversity. As a conclusion we resolve our demands with "End Global Hunger! WTO Out of Agriculture!".
The Peasant Meeting participants:
Via Campesina, Federation of Indonesian Peasant Union (FSPI), Aceh Peasant Union (PERMATA), North Sumatera Peasant Union (SPSU), South Sumatera Peasant Union (SPSS), Jambi Peasant Union (PERTAJAM), Lampung Peasant Union (SPL), West Java Peasant Union (SPJB), Pasundan Peasant Union (SPP), Central Java Peasant Union (SPJP), East Java Peasant Union (SP Jatim), Education and Research Association for Consumer (ERA Consumer), Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Assembly of the Poor, Northern Farmer Alliance, Federation of Northern Peasant, Alternative Agriculture Network (AAN), Community Forest Network, Slump Network in Four Regions, and Assembly of Moon River,Watershed.
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For more information:
Ms. Walaiporn Od-ompanich, RRAFA, 86, Ladprao 110, Sonthiwattana 2, Wangthonglang district, BKK 10310, Thailand. Tel: (66-2) 935 2981-4 Fax: (66-2) 935 2980 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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3. Re: ngin: scientific cover up for multinational interests
Well done for running this article as it goes straight to the heart of what is wrong with the current funding situation not only with investigating health scares but all research. Those of us out the here, the ordinary people, who care about our health and the health of our environment are struggling to make sense out of all the scientific and political spin, knowing that we do not have all the facts that there are many cover ups. All I know is i have yet to read one word that has reassured or proved (in the case of GM crops) that there is any real need for them, that they are safe for the environment or safe to eat.
There are a few brave souls researching independently, like Mark Purdy the Somerset farmer, who has plenty of compelling evidence that BSE and CJD are also linked to the use of OP's in agriculture.
It is time to trust our intuition and common sense. Pouring chemicals on to our land, our crops and our animals, and ultimately down our own throats in unknown combinations and quantities is utter madness. We need a future free of these poisonous chemicals start now make a stand clear out your cupboards, garages and garden sheds. Return unwanted chemicals to the manufacturer or contact your local council and ask about safe disposal.
Grow your own vegetables or buy organic. Encourage your friends family and neighbours to stop using chemicals. If you have any doubts remember that in India people are starving, millions of tonnes of food grains are rotting, farmers are unable to sell their crops and many thousands commit suicide by drinking agricultural chemicals. This is, like those that died in Spain and here in the uk of nCJD, a symptom and the legacy of industrial agriculture.
Nicole Cook
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4. Re: ngin: multinationals want to control the world's food, says French
dear all
Multinationals don't just want to controll the worlds food, they want to controll our essential public services. GATS the general agreement of trade in services is a WTO negotiation round which talks of 'leberalising public services'. This will mean the privatisation of education, police,social and health services, taking these services out of local democratic controll and placing it into the laps of companies who have no roots or social responsibilities to this, or any other, country. To highlight this important move of T Blair, a massive demonstration is called at New Labours conference in Brighton on the 30.09.2001. there will be buses leaving from Norwich to take part, and tickets are available from Conrad tel. 01603 505583. Students from People and planet, the Green Party, SA, SWP and many UNison trade unionists have formed 'Norwich coalition against privatisation' a casmpaigning coalition which is specific and only for this demonstration. Anybody who want to take part in this non violent protest can take part.
So if you are concerned about privatisation/globalisation of essential public services come and join us, we want to fill as many buses as possible.
cheers Ingo