Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny: The Corporate Capture of Agriculture
Many lobbyists talk a lot about
critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers.
They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and
technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat
ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches,
presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary
inputs of the global agrochemical/agritech corporations they are in bed
with. And presumably because agroecology represents liberation from the tyranny of these profiteering, environment-damaging global conglomerates.
It is fine to talk about ‘choice’ but
we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out
technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who
control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse
impact on others or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is
available because other options have been deliberately removed. And we
would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a
treadmill that they find difficult to get off.
Surely, a responsible approach for
rolling out important (potentially transformative) technologies would
have to consider associated risks, including social, economic and health
impacts.
Take the impact of the Green
Revolution in India, for instance. Sold on the promise that hybrid seeds
and associated chemical inputs would enhance food security on the basis
of higher productivity, agriculture was transformed, especially in
Punjab. But to gain access to seeds and chemicals many farmers had to
take out loans and debt became (and remains) a constant worry. Many
became impoverished and social relations within rural communities were
radically altered: previously, farmers would save and exchange seeds but
now they became dependent on unscrupulous money lenders, banks and seed
manufacturers and suppliers. Vandana Shiva in ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution‘ (1989) describes the social marginalisation and violence that accompanied the process.
On a macro level, the Green Revolution
conveniently became tied to an international (neo-colonial) system of
trade based on chemical-dependent agro-export mono-cropping linked to
loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment
(privatisation/deregulation) directives. Many countries in the Global
South were deliberately turned into food deficit regions, dependent on
(US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid.
The process led to the massive displacement of the peasantry and, according to the academics Eric Holt-Giménez et al, (Food
rebellions: Crisis and the hunger for Justice, 2009), the consolidation
of the global agri-food oligopolies and a shift in the global flow of
food: developing countries produced a billion-dollar yearly surplus in
the 1970s; they were importing $11 billion a year by 2004.
And it’s not as though the Green
Revolution delivered on its promises. In India, it merely led to more
wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no
increased or even actually decreased (see ‘New Histories of the Green Revolution‘ by Glenn Stone). And, as described by Bhaskar Save in his open letter (2006) to officials, it had dire consequences for diets, the environment, farming, health and rural communities.
The ethics of the Green Revolution –
at least it was rolled out with little consideration for these impacts –
leave much to be desired.
As the push to drive GM crops into
India’s fields continues (the second coming of the green revolution –
the gene revolution), we should therefore take heed. To date, the track
record of GMOs is unimpressive, but the adverse effects on many
smallholder farmers are already apparent (see ‘Hybrid Bt cotton: a stranglehold on subsistence farmers in India’ by A P Gutierrez).
Aside from looking at the consequences
of technology roll outs, we should, when discussing choice, also
account for the procedures and decisions that were made which resulted
in technologies coming to market in the first place.
Steven Druker, in his book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’, argues
that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US amounted
to a subversion of processes put in place to serve the public interest.
The result has been a technology roll out which could result (is
resulting) in fundamental changes to the genetic core of the world’s
food. This decision ultimately benefited Monsanto’s bottom line and helped the US gain further leverage over global agriculture.
We must therefore put glib talk of the
denial of technology by critics to one side if we are to engage in a
proper discussion of choice. Any such discussion would account for the
nature of the global food system and the dynamics and policies that
shape it. This would include looking at how global corporations have
captured the policy agenda for agriculture, including key national and
international policy-making bodies, and the role of the WTO and World
Bank.
Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. In Ethiopia,
for example, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray
region, partly due to enlightened political leaders and the commitment
of key institutions.
However, in places where global
agribusiness/agritech corporations have leveraged themselves into
strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the false narrative
that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing
lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making
institutions, these firms have secured a thick legitimacy within
policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result,
agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention
and support.
Monsanto had a leading role in
drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing
industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and
Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed
at restructuring (destroying) Indian agriculture, the powerful
agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers
and sets the policy agenda.
From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in
opening up African agriculture to global food and agribusiness
oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being
bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and
to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful
corporations.
We have the destruction of indigenous
farming in Africa as well as the ongoing dismantling of Indian
agriculture and the deliberate impoverishment of Indian farmers at the
behest of transnational agribusiness. Where is the democratic ‘choice’?
It has been usurped by corporate-driven Word Bank bondage (India is its
biggest debtor in the bank’s history) and by a trade deal with the US
that sacrificed Indian farmers for the sake of developing its nuclear
sector.
Similarly, ‘aid’ packages for Ukraine –
on the back of a US-supported coup – are contingent on Western
corporations taking over strategic aspects of the economy. And
agribusiness interests are at the forefront. Something which neoliberal
apologists are silent on as they propagandise about choice, and
democracy.
Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto/Bayer. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is
possibly behind the ongoing strategy to commercialise GM mustard in
India. Whether on the back of militarism, secretive trade deals or
strings-attached loans, global food and agribusiness conglomerates
secure their interests and have scant regard for choice or democracy.
The ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, tying farmers and regions
to a system of globalised production and supply chains dominated by
large agribusiness and retail interests. Global corporations with the
backing of their host states, are taking over food and agriculture
nation by nation.
Many government officials, the media and opinion leaders take this process as a given. They also accept that (corrupt)
profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be
owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). There is the
premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed
over to these conglomerates to milk for profit, under the pretence these
entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.
Ripping land from peasants and
displacing highly diverse and productive smallholder agriculture,
rolling out very profitable but damaging technologies, externalising the
huge social, environmental and health costs of the prevailing
neoliberal food system and entire nations being subjected to the
policies outlined above: how is any of it serving the needs of humanity?
It is not. Food is becoming
denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets are
becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity,
which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables
polluted and depleted and millions of smallholder farmers, so vital to
global food production, are being pushed into debt in places like India
and squeezed off their land and out of farming.
It is time to place natural assets
under local ownership and to develop them in the public interest
according to agroecological principles. This involves looking beyond the
industrial yield-output paradigm and adopting a systems approach to
food and agriculture that accounts for local food security and
sovereignty, cropping patterns to ensure diverse nutrition production
per acre, water table stability and good soil structure. It also
involves pushing back against the large corporations that hold sway over
the global food system and more generally challenging the leverage that
private capital has over all our lives.
That’s how you ensure liberation from tyranny and support genuine choice.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below.
Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site,
internet forums. etc.Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2019
Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page
Become a Member of Global Research
No comments:
Post a Comment