1.Hungry for change - Patrick Mulvany and John Madeley
2.NEW REPORT: Farmers' Views on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers - Michel Pimbert...
EXTRACTS: ...current global policies, far from working, are consigning the hungry to stay hungry.
...trade liberalisation, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering and military dominance... were now [in 2002] the main causes of hunger. Since then the situation has got worse. The world's food system - from the seed, livestock and agrochemical industries to transport, processing and retailing - is now controlled by even fewer corporations, which take an ever larger share of the price paid by consumers. (item 1)
"Two kinds of science are possible. The first consists of completing the historic move towards industrialisation of farming, the privatisation of living things and the subservience of small farmers to patented genetic chimera (the so-called GMOs): sterilising living things to separate production from reproduction and place our future in the hands of seed merchants manufacturing toxic chemicals. The second, agronomy, lets nature do for free what we do with machinery, fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation, i.e. using oil. The future, if there is still time, is agronomy, 'the no-cost science'..." (item 2)
"When governments decide to hold public consultations to help guide their decisions, policy experts as well as representatives of large farmers and agrifood corporations are usually centre stage, not small-scale producers, consumers and their organisations." (item 1)
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1.Hungry for change
The Guardian, October 25 2006
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1930362,00.html
Since the UN last pledged to help reduce world hunger, an extra 25 million people have joined the list of undernourished. Now small-scale farmers are insisting on being heard. By Patrick Mulvany and John Madeley
When governments meet next week in Rome to assess how far they have gone towards meeting their pledge to halve food hunger by 2015, the mood will be sombre. The goal is moving out of sight. New figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will show not a reduction but an increase of more than 25 million chronically undernourished people since 1996. The figure now stands at over 850 million, and is testament to how current global policies, far from working, are consigning the hungry to stay hungry.
So what is going wrong? Let's go back to 2002, when the UN World Food Summit pledge was last reviewed. Then, the parallel Forum for Food Sovereignty, organised by non-governmental groups representing small farmers and people around the world at the sharp end of hunger and farming, concluded that the problem was not a lack of political will, as the FAO asserted, but the opposite: too much political will. The advances of trade liberalisation, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering and military dominance, it said, were now the main causes of hunger.
Since then the situation has got worse. The world's food system - from the seed, livestock and agrochemical industries to transport, processing and retailing - is now controlled by even fewer corporations, which take an ever larger share of the price paid by consumers. Farmers worldwide are being forced to accept lower and lower farm gate prices until they can no longer go on. As a result, there is now an epidemic of farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides in many countries.
The problem is being exacerbated by the way we use diminishing land and water resources. The appetite for industrially produced livestock, fed on grains and starchy vegetables, consumes millions of hectares of land that could be used for food production. Equally, vast areas of land in developing countries that were used for intensive farming in the "green revolution" that started in the 1960s are now poisoned by pesticides, as well as salinised by poor irrigation. Now yields are stagnating and the pressure is mounting to convert land to produce biofuels for the affluent.
Britain's environment secretary, David Miliband, has recently spoken of the need for "one planet farming". This minimises the impact on the environment of patterns of food production and consumption, and maximises its contribution to renewal of the natural environment. Miliband's backing of such a scheme perhaps heralds a shift in policy, and yesterday a vision of how this might be achieved was published in a conference report reflecting the views of small-scale farmers. Views that are largely ignored, neglected or actively undermined by the international development community, despite their local food systems being so vital for alleviating hunger.
Speaking out
Michel Pimbert, programme director for agriculture and biodiversity at the International Institute for Environment and Development, one of the report's authors, listened to smallholder farmers in France, Indonesia, India, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal and the UK over a three-year period. He says: "All the small-scale producers I met asked that their voices be heard in the choice of policy for food, farming, land and water use. That is why we organised the conference."
The farmers, from 30 countries, who participated in the conference were eloquent about how farming for small producers is much more than just a food production system. Edgar Gonzales Castro, from Peru, said his vision of the future was "traditional" agriculture aimed at satisfying the food and livelihood needs of farmers and their families, rather than generating profit and accumulating wealth. "What matters is that, on the family plot of land, farmers and their families have a range of crops to fill the cooking pot," he said.
Peter Ooi, a Thai farmer, said there was a belief that international trade and the modern agrifood industry have denied farming's potential to be responsive to local conditions and to enable people to make a living. National policies should protect farmers and domestic markets properly, but this is rarely the case, he said.
One farmer observed that the migration of peasants from Central America to the US and other rich countries was closely linked to the lack of support for small producers. Another stressed the need to produce as closely as possible to the market in order to minimise transportation, and hence the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.
Climate change and deforestation were seen by people in Latin America as responsible for lower rainfall and drought. This is now a major problem for food production, they stressed, with the less frequent but heavy rainstorms and lack of trees causing erosion, reducing soil quality and producing lean harvests. Small-scale, largely organic farming, using local resources such as natural fertiliser and diverse seeds from local sources rather than bringing them in from far away, could play a key role in combating climate change.
The report says that free market, neo-liberal economic policy has encouraged and justified the elimination of small-scale food producers in developed and developing countries. Farmers and indigenous peoples are seen as "residues" of history - people whose disappearance is inevitable. Throughout the world, small farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples are increasingly being displaced.
"When governments decide to hold public consultations to help guide their decisions, policy experts as well as representatives of large farmers and agrifood corporations are usually centre stage, not small-scale producers, consumers and their organisations," says Pimbert.
Worldwide, the message of the report is that small-scale farmers - the majority of growers in the world - want radically different policies from those being promoted by governments such as Britain. The call is for policies to start from the perspectives and needs of food producers and consumers rather than the demand for profits that has underpinned UK policy.
If Miliband's "one planet farming" means, however, that the UK government, at home and abroad, will only support farming practices that will provide healthy, local food, maintain livelihoods for local producers and conserve resilient landscapes, then there is common ground with small-scale farmers.
But if it means a uniform "one planet food system" for all, this will accelerate the hunt to source food globally as cheaply as possible. It would result in a continuing decline in food quality, with ever higher social and environmental costs, and be lorded over by fewer and fewer transnational food agribusinesses. It would lead both to greater hunger and increasing obesity, and see the eradication of ever more farmers and further loss of farmland.
If the governments meeting in Rome are listening, they need to take these farmers' views seriously enough to influence policy that will forever banish hunger.
* Patrick Mulvany is senior policy adviser at Practical Action and is chair of the UK Food Group, the principal network of UK NGOs concerned with global food and farming. John Madeley writes on agricultural issues.
* The report Farmers' Views on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers is at www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/full/14503IIED.pdf
UK Food Group is at www.ukfg.org.uk
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2.NEW REPORT: Farmers' Views on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/full/14503IIED.pdf
Michel Pimbert, Khanh Tran-Thanh, Estelle Deleage, Magali Reinert, Christophe Trehet and Elizabeth Bennett (Editors)
EXTRACTS: Jean-Pierre Berlan, researcher at the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, argues for a type of research which does not contribute to 'the technical and economic enslavement' of farmers, but which complements their increased autonomy. Supporting his case with an example of a successful farmer-scientist initiative, he concludes:
"Two kinds of science are possible. The first consists of completing the historic move towards industrialisation of farming, the privatisation of living things and the subservience of small farmers to patented genetic chimera (the so-called GMOs): sterilising living things to separate production from reproduction and place our future in the hands of seed merchants manufacturing toxic chemicals. The second, agronomy, lets nature do for free what we do with machinery, fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation, i.e. using oil. The future, if there is still time, is agronomy, 'the no-cost science'..."
Here is Berlan's example of successful agronomy:
"In Kenya, maize is attacked by an Asian pyralid moth and damaged by witchweed (Striga sp.), a parasitic plant. Efforts to combat these pests using the cowboy methods of industrial farming insecticides and herbicides have failed. Researchers at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) have developed an agro-ecological method of control: sow a legume, tick clover (Desmodium sp.), with the maize. Its smell is unpleasant to the pyralid moth, which is further encouraged to move away from the maize by a belt of elephant grass (a fodder plant), on which it can lay its eggs. After the first stages of development, the caterpillars penetrate within the stalk, where they are destroyed by the plant's mucilage. In addition, tick clover eliminates witchweed. This legume fixes nitrogen from the air and fertilises the maize. Finally, it covers and protects the soil. Researchers and small farmers undertook this superb scientific work together. It produces reliable, abundant harvests, with no need to buy fertiliser, herbicides or insecticide. The well-being and selfreliance of small farmers increase, but... GDP and profits fall. For the economy and the state, it's a catastrophe."
Extracts published in the Express magazine Jean-Pierre Berlan Connecting with agronomy again, i.e. with no-cost science