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Page added on March 5, 2015
Who Controls Our Food?
Sympathy with organic food production is at an all-time high. Perhaps ‘It’s a nice idea, when you can afford it’ sums up the approach of many people. But extending these principles of production to the whole food system? It just doesn’t seem practical. There are an awful lot of people to feed in the world and, if you’re hungry, you don’t care much about the niceties of how the food was produced.
A new report from Global Justice Now, From The Roots Up, shows that not only can small-scale organically produced food feed the world, but it can do so better than intensive, corporate-controlled agriculture. As a matter of fact, it already is feeding millions of people.
In Tigray, Ethiopia, farmers have seen grain yields double, with increased biodiversity and fertility, not to mention less debt. In Senegal, agroecological pest management techniques have allowed farmers to produce 25 per cent more rice than conventional farmers. In southern Africa, more than 50,000 farmers practising agroecology have increased maize yields by 3-4 metric tons per hectare.
But what we’re talking about isn’t a set of farming techniques. We’re talking about who controls our food supply and how that power is used.
How we produce food is a deeply political issue that affects the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. For in our global economy, it is not the amount of food produced which dictates whether people eat or starve. If it was, we would not see the inhumane but common spectacle of people malnourished while surrounded by food. Rather, it is the increasing grip which big business exerts over our food system, in accordance with a near religious faith in the power of the market.
So agroecology does not simply say ‘we can grow more’. It says, we can give people control over their food. It goes beyond a simple notion of ‘food security’ because, as writer Raj Patel points out, ‘it’s possible to be food secure in prison’. By shifting the way food systems are controlled, agroecology can play a part in challenging the patriarchal forms of organization that exist in farming.
Agroecology poses a challenge to the dogma of the free market, in whose name so many millions have starved over two centuries. It posits a system of production and distribution which treats people as deserving of control over their lives, and nature as deserving of our respect. It says that if we want a just and sustainable food system, we need a paradigm shift in how food is produced and distributed.
In Africa, an all-out offensive is taking place against smallholder farming. Under the guise of a ‘new green revolution’, food is being removed from the control of those who farm it, and land from those who till it. There’s a good reason: while 75 per cent of all seeds planted across the world are owned by 1 of 10 companies, in Africa 80 per cent of all seeds still come from systems managed by farmers. That’s a lot to play for.
Look at Malawi, where under the British-supported New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition the government is being told to eliminate export bans, make life easier for corporate ‘investors’, implement new intellectual property laws over seeds, and sell land for large-scale commercial agriculture. This is nothing to do with helping Africa feed itself; it is about further empowering an already very powerful and bloated agribusiness sector.
This needs to be challenged – to bring an end to the latest crusade for Africa’s resources. But we can go further and, by supporting agroecology in Africa, begin to glimpse what a more democratic food system would look like for the whole world. This also means supporting women farmers, who have least control over the food system, in claiming their rights to land and food.
The Global Justice Now report provides a policy framework for foreign governments that really want to help African farmers and compensate for some of the terrible resource theft which has been committed over the centuries. This means a radical reform of the aid system, which is currently doing more to entrench, than to break, corporate control. It means standing up against a number of trade agreements currently being negotiated, which will give corporations new powers to grab land, monopolize seed distribution and benefit from an export-to-the-West model of growth.
The British government must stop imposing our own broken food model on Africa, see that Africa’s first priority must be justice for Africa’s people, and commit to promoting the principles of agroecology and food sovereignty.
Nick Dearden is Director of Global Justice Now. Find out more about Global Justice Now’s Food Campaign
New Internationalist’s No-Nonsense Guide to World Food looks in depth at the state of the world’s food. Read more here.
8 Comments on "Who Controls Our Food?"
J-Gav on Thu, 5th Mar 2015 11:36 am
At some point it’ll be clear to most that it’s gonna be ‘Go agroecological – or die in large numbers.’
Humans may die in large numbers anyway, from other causes (pandemics, nuclear accidents, war, fishery depletion, climate disruption etc). Starting to move on these threats beginning with the food & water issue, which strikes a chord with just about everybody, would seem to make good sense.
Makati1 on Thu, 5th Mar 2015 5:29 pm
In a previous article, the comment that “we need to go back to communism” was made. Bingo!
A lot of land could be made productive in a short time, (a few years) without petrochemicals, if necessary. Here in the Ps, there are hundreds of square miles of such land just waiting to be used. Only the financially productive, easier areas are farmed today.
More and more Filipinos are switching to permaculture and smaller units of land to grow food for themselves and to barter or sell at the markets. Our farm was mostly old coconut plantation growth. Now it is becoming 10+ acres of productive farm.
Davy on Thu, 5th Mar 2015 5:59 pm
This article is cat piss unless it acknowledge the elephant in the room and that is consumption and population overshoot. Every single nation is guilty of either or both. All this permaculture agriculture will be overwhelmed by mass migration of urban people depopulating cities that are completely lacking support except for fossil fuels. Take away fossil fuels and mega urban areas must depopulate.
This article is a joke and a farce. It meaning is good but its delivery system is wrong. The facts are that organic permaculture agriculture will require more land to be devoted to feeding animals and creating the cycles of nutrients. More time will be needed for the land to be fallow. With less energy intensity will come lower crop surpluses. This is not to say the productivity will not go up on balance in an energy application basis. Sustainability, resilience, and natural support of the ecosystem will improve overall. But not gross food production.
Folks, permaculture is fine accept for the 7BIL people question when there are no enough fossil fuels around. These permaculture and organic farming ideas still need to be pursued there is no other choice for whoever survives. This is a similar situation to “ALL” AltE potentials should be pursued. The issue with permaculture Ag and AltE is the delivery system of the message. We should not deceive people into believing either one is going to cover more than a fraction of the needs of 6BIL people. It will be more like 1BIL.
It is just not possible to apply that much energy from these systems like fossil fuels applied. You must also consider the complexity from other production, distribution, and management function of BAU that support food getting to all those people.
We need these ideas but we do not need the deceptions that these plan B’s will make things OK. We have to prepare for a 200MIL a year excess die off on average for a generation. That is the underlying message that all other messages must include whether it be AltE, permaculture, transition communities, and peace on earth. There is no other choices we ran out of time and resources it is time to face reality.
Joe Clarkson on Fri, 6th Mar 2015 1:36 pm
Absolutely right in general Davy, but missing a key merit of the article.
The article is not mainly an attempt to sooth city dwellers in rich countries with claims that there is a wonderful alternative to the present agro-industrial system waiting in the wings to save them. Rather, it is an attempt to persuade policy makers that the fossil-fuel-saturated methods of corporate agriculture are a dead end and that those small-holders who practice ecological agriculture deserve protection and encouragement. I think we both agree that people who are capable of growing their own food year after year with minimal outside inputs are the only ones with a decent chance of making it through the coming bottleneck.
This article emphasizes the injustice of a food system that relies on large scale mechanized agriculture. While that emphasis misses your point that that system is doomed to failure for energy balance reasons, it does serve to support those small-holders who practice the only kind of agriculture that isn’t doomed.
We should encourage that support. Not every article about agriculture has to go into detail about the coming die-off to avoid being “cat piss”.
Davy on Fri, 6th Mar 2015 2:09 pm
Valid Point Joe, I lose my temper with articles that claim there are silver bullets for our predicament of an approaching bottleneck. Yet, this article is not exactly preaching a silver bullet for a collapse. Though it should mention a strong possibility of a collapse and doesn’t. That is typical MSM academics at the NGO’s, UN, and think tanks. Collapse and bottleneck discussions are taboo.
I practice what this articles preaches with my current doomsted so I believe in the message. I was also once an agro-industrial farmer. I had 1000 acres of corn and soy under production back in 2000. I did that for 4 years until my nerves could not take it anymore. I went through two flood events and one drought. Only one year was OK. My farm was near the confluence of the Osage River and Missouri River in Missouri. It was river bottom ground which was very scary when the river was in flood but very fertile. I went into production AG thinking I could reform it in my own little way. I wanted to incorporate permaculture ideas and wildlife areas. Instead I got my ass kicked by a system that is not reformable.
I will say this Joe. We will need both systems for the descent. It will have to be a hybrid affair unless we want a massive die off relatively quickly. You are right though. The small holders especially in the third world will be the backbone of this transition if life allows us a transition.
Richard Ralph Roehl on Fri, 6th Mar 2015 2:41 pm
Yeah! The writer said it all with… “there’s an awful lot of people in the world to feed.”
What to do? How do we resolve this crisis? Well… being a member of the ‘Amerikan Anarchist $ociety’… I recommend the Pope’s edict to STOP all birth control on the planet.
Indeed! Let’s us remember the number one lesson of the $ovietnam war: “Your Honor! We had to burn down the village in order to save it!”
Apneaman on Fri, 6th Mar 2015 2:53 pm
The Worse It Gets The More They Lie
http://survivalacres.com/blog/the-worse-it-gets-the-more-they-lie/
Davy on Fri, 6th Mar 2015 3:58 pm
Richie, your prescription is not even a bandaid. We are talking death in any way shape or form. That is the only effective tool for a world gone bad. Now sell that to the masses then get back to me with your report.