The World Food Crisis and Food Sovereignty

international | environment | news report Monday June 09, 2008 17:03 by Fergal Anderson - Food Sovereignty Ireland

A report from the FAO meeting in Rome

The world is now more than ever suffering the effects of the liberalisation of markets and the consequences of Structural Adjustment Programmes implemented in the Global South in the 1970s and 80s. One of the most telling episodes in the history of this process has been the effect of liberalisation on food production and consumption. In the context of the current "food crisis", world leaders met in Rome last week at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN to debate their responses.

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The representatives of many of the world’s governments met last week at the headquarters of the Food and Agricultural Association (FAO) of the United Nations to discuss the current crisis in world food prices at a high-level meeting entitled “Food Security: The challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy”. This process was accompanied by a parallel forum of Civil Society Organisations and NGOs, organised by the International Panel for Food Sovereignty (IPC). This parallel forum was called “Terra Preta”, after the fertile black soil created by Indigenous Peoples in central Amazonia, soil which constantly regenerates itself, defying scientific explanation.

Much of the blame for the soaring prices of commodities has been placed by the mainstream media on a number of key issues, namely:

- the increasing amount of agricultural land being devoted to agrofuels/biofuels
- climate change affecting harvests internationally
- the increase in population and subsequently demand in the global South

However, these issues do not completely explain the current crisis. While Agrofuels are a dangerous and inefficient way of using the land, providing investment opportunities for hedge funds, oil companies and agro-businesses, they do not entirely explain the current crisis in food prices. Similarly a lack of production does not entirely explain the problem, the international grain harvest is 8.5% up this year on last year, and while increasing amounts are diverted to provide feed for livestock and to produce ethanol, this has not been significant enough to cause the current crisis. Blaming the crisis on increasing population in countries such as India and China, as Chancellor Merkel did on her recent visit to Dublin, is untenable.

The fundamental basis of the current crisis in world food markets is the market itself. By regarding food as a commodity to be bought and sold on the world market, including allowing speculation on “wheat futures” as well as other crops, the provision of food to the world’s population will not be on a rights-based basis, as is outlined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the UN, but subject to the fluctuation and speculation of international markets.
Many of the countries worst affected by the current crisis originally had national buffer stocks and state agencies charged with maintaining production in national markets and in assuring fair prices for both producers and consumers of basic foodstuffs. Countries were forced to dismantle these structures in line with the Structural Adjustment Policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1970s and 80s and liberalise their internal markets, destroying local production by opening the economy to imports of heavily subsidised American and European food.

The debate between the two camps in Rome, however, went further than just the discussion of the current crisis and the themes of agrofuels and climate change. There are two distinct models of agriculture being debated and fought globally. One is an industrial model of highly mechanized large-scale agriculture, factory farms, genetically modified seeds (including so called “Terminator” and “Zombie” seeds) and completely open and deregulated markets. This model was proposed by the governments of the countries most influenced by the huge agricultural businesses of Monsanto, Cargill and others, as well as by the supermarket chains and other corporations which support the global food chain. At the parallel forum, a distinctly different model was proposed.

The IPC, supported by the international social movement of small farmers known as the Via Campesina, called for the removal of agriculture and trans-national corporations from the process of the World Trade negotiations, for the promotion of local production and consumption, for national governments to protect the rights of their people to affordable foodstuffs and for the control of production and consumption to be regulated by the people producing and consuming the food; themes encapsulated in the concept of food sovereignty.

Flavio Valente, president of FIAN (Food Information and Action Network) international, called the current situation a “crime against humanity”, seeing as there is enough food produced globally to feed the population of the planet yet the number of people experiencing hunger and starvation has increased steadily since governments adopted the “Millennium Goals” at the turn of the century. As opposed to halving hunger by 2015, it is predicted that the number of hungry people in the world will have doubled, a situation caused and exacerbated by the corporate agenda which dominated the talks in Rome.
Large agrobusiness corporations have literally been “making a killing” from hunger - profits for Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, were up 108 per cent, while Cargill and Archer Daniel Midlands, the world's largest food traders, registered profit increases of 86 and 42 per cent respectively. Profits for Mosaic, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, rose 1,134 per cent.

The declaration adopted in Rome at the intergovernmental conference once again failed to bring on board the opinions of the small farmers and agricultural unions who having been calling for a radical overhaul of the systems which control international agriculture for the last fifteen years. In 2002, La Via Campesina made the same demands of the FAO as it made last week, namely demanding that governments make the effort to control their internal markets, control prices and ensure that basic foodstuffs are not subject to large scale speculation and private interest and investment as is currently the case.
Industrial agriculture also has a much greater impact on the environment than small scale local production and consumption. Agriculture alone accounts for 14% of the greenhouse gases produced internationally, and transport (a great degree of which is attributable to food transport) accounts for another 16%. The use of vast amounts of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals also contribute to the warming of the earth, chemicals which have no placer in the agroecological models proposed by the Via Campesina and other social movements. The reality of the situation is that an agro-industrial complex, based on monoculture, the use of biotechnology, chemicals and further industrialization of farming practices, with further liberalised markets and vast areas of land given over to agrofuels, represent the greatest threat currently posed to the sustainability of the earth’s biosphere and its capacity to sustain human society.
In spite of the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of industrial agriculture, delegates in Rome this week developed a declaration which does not address the fundamental issue which causes hunger internationally the domination of the entire foodchain, namely the influence of a series of transnational agrobusiness corporations, who operate across international frontiers and are unaccountable to any legislative body for their actions. These corporations are involved from the ownership of the genetic rights to seeds to the production, processing, transport and resale of foodstuffs all over the world.
The time has come to listen to the small farmers and peasants who promote an alternative which cools the planet, preserves biodiversity and is capable of feeding the world.

For more information:
www.viacampesina.org
www.fian.org

Video of actions in Rome:
www.wsftv.net

The FAO declaration is available at:
www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration-E.pdf