Student Papers

GLOBALIZATION AND THE FARMING CRISIS

Class: Global Context of Conflict - CONF 735
Instructor: Ho-Won Jeong
Date: December 11, 2000

By: Vivian Levén

Introduction

Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for three quarters of humanity on earth. It plays a particularly vital role in many third world countries where farming plays a central role in the local community. This dependency is as much cultural as it is economic.

The globalization of food production we are experiencing today has the effect of replacing the small family farming system with corporate industrial agriculture instead. It has created a shift from local to global markets and with it the displacement of small family farmers, leading to disastrous effects for poor traditional farming societies.
The focus has turned to specialization and monoculture where countries are cultivating only a few types of crops, which majority is destined for the export market. It has made poor countries much more vulnerable in terms of self-sustainability.

An independent food production system has many dimensions. It covers ecological concerns, promoting conservation and sustainability. It provides the livelihood for the people in a country and serves to protect rural communities and people that are poor. The cultivation of a diversified food production has a cultural dimension, as different communities will grow what is suitable for their particular climate or soil quality. It also plays a role in maintaining health and nutrition.

The expansion of a global food trade has had effect on the environment as rich countries encourage an increased use of resources and energy. A global specialized food market requires many long distance transports which translates into more polluted air. To survive the long journeys food need to be processed and packaged appropriately. The requirement of pesticides and fertilizers for the food production also has a negative effect on the environment. When all the energy inputs into the global food market production are counted it is likely to use up more fuel than any other industrial sector.

It is a real concern that this shift in power is creating unacceptable hardship on small farmers and poor people as corporations are in the business to make money and not to feed starving people. As expressed by Senator McGovern of the US Senate, "Food security in private hands is no food security at all." [www.writeshop.org/~vshiva/ food.htm]. What long-term effect will this shift in power have on food security, biodiversity, and the displacement of people from their land?

The Controlling Structures and the Dependency Factor

International organizations like the World Trade Organization [WTO], International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the World Bank are all powerful institutions that forcefully have pushed the expansion of industrialized agriculture. Basically the extended arm of the Western societies that are looking for expanded markets and more resources. This has completely changed the reality for millions of farmers around the globe.

Through WTO, under the Agreement on Agriculture [AoA], together with World Bank and IMF imposed structural adjustment programs [SAPs] the developing countries have been forced to open up their economies to cheap food imports and to severely reduce the support to their own domestic farming sector.
The increase in trade has proven to be very beneficial for a small group of transnational corporations that have come to own 60% of the entire global food stocks. Cargill, the largest player in the world's grain market is one example of a company who has benefited enormously of their involvement in the implementation of the green revolution in India. Other major players are Philip Morris, ConAgra and General Mills.

The systemized dumping of food products by the developed countries in poor countries has devastating effects. The cheap flow of products has had local markets collapse and left many farmers in these countries dependent on food aid of some sort. Because it ruins the economic infrastructure in the country there are many people that are left so poor they cannot even afford to buy even 'cheap' food.

The General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade [GATT] did call for the prevention of using "trade distorting" subsidies by rich countries, but without much success. They can do this by giving direct payments to their own farmers to compensate for the low prices. The incentive to win market shares and create dependency in the buyer is more attractive than to sit on a mountain of surplus, even thought the sale is at a loss.

In the developing countries each farmer gets approximately $29,000 a year of subsidized money. This compared with the US $25.5 billion and the EU $85 billion. Also keeping in mind that in the US and EU both the farmer population make up less than 3% of the population. Rich countries also provide big export subsidies to their domestic agribusiness industry, undercutting the production cost in developing countries as well.

[Thomas, Binu, Aug. 30, 2000]. There are many other examples how the developed countries have made regulations, decided upon within the WTO, into great benefit to them.

Cheap dairy imports from the EU market have destroyed milk farmers in Jamaica and Brazil. Subsidized beef exports from Europe have disrupted the cattle trade in West Africa. In East Europe countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic farmers have filled the streets protesting against surplus pig meat from EU that is flooding their markets.

Chile is the largest supplier of off-season fruit and vegetables to Europe and North America. Still it is a very poor country. The reason for this is partly because five transnational companies control the fruit export. The production is located on large plantations where the local population work as wage laborers. They have few other choices as many have been forced to give up their land and with it any opportunity for self-efficiency. They work offered is only on a temporary basis with no welfare benefits or union protection.

Industrial Food Production and its Effects

Because farmers are encouraged to specialize they also become more vulnerable to the market. If they cannot sell their product they have no money to buy food for themselves. While when they had a more diversified production they could feed their own families and sell the surplus on the local market.

The green revolution encouraged farmers to use more pesticides which had devastating effects on the environment and also detrimental to the health of many farmers working in the field. Even though for instance rice crops were created that gave better yield it was also made more vulnerable because only one single variety was promoted. The Green Revolution also created a greater gap between the poor and the rich, it benefited the rich who could afford to buy the new technology and who also were eligible for loans.

In Indonesia the Green Revolution was aimed at converting as many people as possible into rice eaters. According to the local farmers the Indonesian army was called out to implement the Green Revolution by forcing the farmers to destroy their local crops. The traditional Indonesian agriculture had been very divers growing cassava, sago, corn and other local roots. This has left many farmers in Indonesia, like so many other places, dependent on expensive imported seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. It became very common that farmers had to leave their land when they could not repay the debt they accumulated in buying the imported seeds, pesticides etc.
Shiva describes in her book, The Violence of the Green Revolution, how the Green Revolution was based on the replacement of diversity to a system of uniformity and with the focus on external inputs rather than internal, changed the entire structure of social and political relationships. It created a great dependency on outside forces and the corporations possessing this new technology of seed manipulation and chemical production. [Shiva, 1991:171]

Another problem for farmers in developing countries is to follow the universal standard required for trading with Western countries. This means that anything that is fresh, and handmade is a potential health hazards. Work by human hands is being outlawed in favor of machines and chemicals.

In 1998, small scale processing of edible oil was banned in India because of a "packing order" that made sale of open oil illegal. It was required that all oils were packaged in plastic or aluminum. This was the end of the local small cold pressed mills.

The Mexican government decided in 1982 to stop supporting its own farmers and instead import less expensive corn from the US in an attempt to improve the economy.

It is another example where small-scale farmers and the country as a whole are losing in trying keep up with the industrialized and expensive high-tech system used in developed countries, in this case the US. Particularly Mexico's domestic production of corn has been destroyed by the import of yellow corn form the US. "One out of every two Mexican peasants does not have enough to eat." [http://www.corporatewatch.org/ magazine/issue7/cw7f5.html].

The subsidized corn that enters Mexico from the US has resulted in loss of markets for the Mexican farmer and forced many to finally leave farming all together. The situation can be directly correlated to the increased immigration to the US. Another consequence is that the US also has dumped genetically manipulated corn in Mexico designated only as animal feed and declared within the US to be unfit for human consumption. The health risks and the environmental implications are yet to be sufficiently investigated.

In Mexico corn is not just another food product. It also plays a vital part in Mexican history and culture. Indigenous farming communities have cultivated and preserved hundreds of different local varieties, which existence is now being threatened.

The farmers have had no say whatsoever on the policy that so severely has affected their livelihood.

Vertical integration is yet another system used by transnational cooperation, where buying land does not seem to be an attractive choice. A contract is signed between the company and the farmer. The farmer has a checklist of conditions that needs to be fulfilled. It includes the methods of preparing the soil, pesticide and fertilizer usage, planting, and harvesting procedures. The contractor still reserves the right to reject the food if the inspector considers it not living up to the set standard. The farmer then gets paid only for the products the company decides it wants to buy.

Due to the demands on quality and method of cultivation the farmers can still get indebted in his/her efforts to modernize the farming practices to meet the conditions set by the company. If the contract farmers are getting credit from the company they also risk losing their land if the debt is not paid according to the signed agreement.
Contract farming leaves all the risks of production in the hands of the farmer. Weather conditions, insect attacks or disease etc., could all be a potential loss for the farmer. The companies also do not have any social welfare responsibilities or provide any health care. There is no limit on working hours, minimum wage, vacation time etc. The pressure to meet deadlines and successfully go through the production process is turned away from the contractor and put on other family members instead. "Thus, while they own their own land, growers are effectively deskilled agricultural laborers working for a piecework wage for the contractor." [Cook et al. 1994:234]

Genetic Engineering

The new biotechnology of genetically engineered seeds and patent of life organism by the larger companies have been pivotal in gaining control over farmers in developing countries. The seed companies together with finance and trade organizations have the power to decide what farmers grow, when to sell their products and to what price, as well as how much information they want farmers and consumers to have.

Because this new technology gives such power to whoever controls it, it makes the ones forced to use them even more powerless of their own situation. As profit is the driving force it means that one group will become increasingly richer at the expense of the other. The biggest warning sign being seeds that are privatized through an intellectual property right system.

The agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights [TRIPs] under the auspice of WTO was introduced during the Uruguay Round Table of GATT. It enforces global rules relating to patents, copyrights, and trademarks. This includes genes, cells, seeds, plants and animals. Living resources in other words could then be claimed as intellectual property. Shiva says, "Living organisms and life forms that are self-creating were thus redefined as machines and artifacts made and invented by the patentee. Intellectual property rights and patents then give the patent holder a monopolistic right to prevent others from making, using, or selling seeds. Seed saving by farmers has now been redefined from sacred duty to a criminal defense of stealing 'property'." [The Ecologist Report, September 2000, p.42]

The fear is that intellectual property rights is only the beginning of marginalize poor countries even more and take away from them their own heritage and culture. One example is Jasmine rice that is very familiar to all of us. It is a crop that has been grown by Thailand farmers for generations, but has recently been patented by an American company and farmers are now forced to buy the seeds form the company every time they want to plant the rice. [Inter Press Service, July 31, 1999]. Today about 43% of the Thailand farmers live below the poverty line. This is despite the fact that the export grew 65% from1985 to 1995. [The Ecologist Report, September 2000].

Many farmers, environmental groups and human rights activists are opposing the concept that these corporations were the so called creators of these organisms an therefore this idea has been coined as "biopiracy." It prevents the rightful cultivators of these life forms to share the profits they produce.

Shiva gives an example of how two non-resident Indians together with and American colleague was granted a patent by the US government for the anti-diabetes properties of karela, jamun and brinjal. These are substances that have been in practice to control diabetes for many centuries and existed as general knowledge among Indians. She goes on to say that Neem, haldi, pepper, harar, bahera, amla, mustard, basmati, ginger, amaltas to mention a few have all been patented too.
The terminator seeds that are being developed get increasingly more sophisticated. It is at the stage now where there is the opportunity by companies to load a number of characteristics to the seed that then can be activated or de-activated at or after the point of sale. Depending on what the farmer can afford external chemical sprays would then activate the purchased feature.

The US Secretary of Agriculture pretty much sums it up himself by what he said at a speech held at the Indian Institute of Agricultural Research, "There would be very few inventions of anything, particularly in agriculture, without patent protection because it is a fundamental fact of nature that people will not go through the expense of development of new ideas just for the altruistic benefit of the human race." [Multinational Monitor, June 1996:27].

The Farmer

Farmers want to be ensured that their heritage and livelihood connected with the land will not be taken away from them. The new agricultural system has taken away that security from farmers and the threat of separation from their land and water rights are growing increasingly larger. It also has threatened the biodiversity of entire communities by moving away from the needs of the local societies to satisfy the export markets.

It is clear that the farmers in third world countries have been marginalized in so many ways. Even if they are able to make their voices heard there are external forces that speak louder and the government remains un-swayed to their own constituents. According to Jørgenson, "Culture indicates not only what is right or wrong but also who has the right to decide in these matters." [Jørgenson, 1996:46] The farmers who previously would have a rather influential role in their societies as the food providers in their communities have through the globalization of the world and food production have been marginalized. Autonomy, resources and recognition have been taken away from them.

Farmers in particular have a much closer relationship to the land as they labor it and depend on it directly on an everyday basis. I believe this is an important aspect to consider in terms of the affect it must have on the farmer on an individual level. The land they are being estranged from may have been their ancestors and cultivated many generations back. This emotional aspect is not sufficiently understood or considered by those who are imposing their ways through the vehicle of trade and global economic market systems.

Poverty, Land Loss and Water Issues

The competition among farmers to become even more efficient, by increasing the size of their farms, becoming more specialized and use the newest technologies are alienating more and more small farmers that cannot keep up.
Due to the increasing expansion of land ownership by large companies there has been a demand for domestic laws to prevent further take over by foreign capital. The farmers in India were very upset about the dissolve of the land reform policies that enables multinational corporations to buy agricultural land for growing luxury crops such as for example flowers and shrimp for the exporting market. However, there was nothing they could do as their vigorous protests were simply ignored by their government.

It is estimated, according to the Indian government, that more than two million farmers lose their land every year. Many of these farmers have had to take to daily-wage labor jobs. Others have tried to find a livelihood in the large cities, often separated from their family and with a small chance to find anything that can provide sufficient income. Their children are subjected to becoming beggars to add to the family income.

Some of the land is used to grow feed for cattle. "While 60% of all grain production in the US goes to feed animals, In India only 2% is used for animal feed." [www.twnside.org.sg/title/pro-ch.htm]. The worry is that more of industrialized farming will be introduced to poor countries, diverting crops from human consumption to feed the animals, and those ways create an even more critical food scarcity.

Guatemala is another example where institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank gave cheap loans to transform Guatemala's economy into a more efficient export producing agribusiness country. The effect however was a society where big landowners grabbed all the territory and the majority of small farmers were forced to leave their land.

Less than 2% of the landowners control 65% of the farmland. It is also estimated that about 65% of the original forests have been destroyed. The huge plantations that produce for the export industry mainly concentrate on products like cotton, sugar and coffee, using pesticide intensive techniques that which poison the field workers and contaminates the drinking water and aqua life when the pesticides are flowing into rivers during the rain periods.

In the 60s and 70s the cattle ranchers would expropriate land accompanied by armed escorts which escalated the conflict on the countryside as peasants started to protest. Peasants were thrown off the most marginal lands because cattle could graze were the land was not as suitable for crops to grow. During a peaceful march to the Ministry of Agrarian Transformation to appeal for help, more than a 100 Kekchf people were killed.

Conglomerates like R.J. Reynolds own lots of land through subsidiary companies. The banana plantations for instance are held under complete monopoly. Voices are raised in Guatemala that the people of the country need to get the land back in order for peace and democracy to take place. Due to the situation of displaced small farmers resulting in an extreme poverty level, there are currently 46,000 Guatemalans living in Mexican refugee camps.

In many countries big agribusiness has been able to buy up 'water equity shares' from various water user associations. This way monopoly on water has become the result. An example of where this has happened in a larger scale is Sri Lanka where many farmers have been displaced from their lands because they no longer can access water sources. Indian farmers as well have been fighting polices of the World Bank to privatize water resources; trying to protect what they feel is a common resource that should not be privatized.

The focus on the export market has also resulted in cultivation of products that have no domestic use, such as floriculture. In order to cultivate flowers to the export market pesticides are widely used and many people have suffered from chemically related symptoms. The water use for this industry is also very high. This has lead to water scarcity for farmers who cannot afford to buy water rights for their crops. A company cultivating flowers can use as much water as is needed to supply a settlement of 20,000 people.

Pesticides

In industrial food production pesticides play a significant role. Many of the World Bank contracts in the Third World avidly support the use of chemicals. Applying pesticides often requires the use of protective gear, which in reality means that the poorest farmers in developing countries do not have access to this protection and therefore never use it.

Paraquat is an example of one toxic chemical that was used in a World Bank contract in Nigeria. A French and German company got contracted to procure $120,000 worth of the substance. It is a poison that is banned in nine countries and can only be used in the US by trained applicators or under strict supervision of a trained person. DDT is another chemical that is banned in 49 countries, but was contracted by the World Bank for $880,000 for a project in Madagascar. [Kleiner and Ishii-Eiteman, April 1997].

In developing countries, this is a great health concern. Of all deaths stemming from pesticide poisoning, 99% are in developing countries, according to the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Farmers and agriculture workers will frequently experience nausea, headaches, skin irritations, tiredness and generalized muscle ache. It also leads to reproductive disorders, genetic mutations etc.

The reasons for this unhealthy, and many times unnecessary, exposure are several. As mentioned before the cost of protective gear is a major concern. Also many chores are made by hand, like mixing pesticide formulations. People also work in the field bare foot, farmers have to re-enter the field after they are sprayed to tend to harvest, there are inadequate storing facilities and containers are reused without appropriate sanitation. Another disturbing effect is the contamination of water resources.

Women are often at particular risk. For one, they are involved in the daily farming activities and are carrying yet unborn children particularly susceptible to harm. Rural women are also not encouraged by their communities to discuss any illnesses they might have, especially not identify it as pesticide related. Another concern is that internationally financed training programs will teach men about pesticide hazards but rarely reach the women. The system basically relies on the men to in turn to inform the women. Another grave obstacle is the limited ability to read or understand warning labels, as women are often the last group to be provided education.

Case Study: India

The Indian government has become increasingly dependent on the international policies set by WTO. In the race for economic development they have also become avid promoters of US agribusiness as the solution for increased wealth.

The head of the Agricultural and Processed Food Export Development Authority of India has stated that by 2001, "Indian agriculture would be fully corporatized - in the process explicitly admitting that this would imply the destruction of small farmers." [Multinational Monitor, June 1996, p.27]

The World Bank for example gave India a loan for $150 million in 1988 aimed specifically at privatizing the seed industry and opens the door for large international seed companies. Another loan had been given about 10 years before that for $41 million, with the intention to create a new infrastructure in India of homogenized and corporatized agricultural systems.

The mutual obligations traditionally expressed within communities started to break apart as villagers would turn directly to seed and fertilizer agencies, irrigation organizations etc. It also contributed to increased conflict and competition between classes and regions, as the external inputs were scarce. In 1980 the belief of the Green Revolution had severely started to relapse in India and the blame was directed toward the politicians that had allowed this to happen. Conflicts erupted with farmers against the government and different religious groups against each other as well as between class systems and rich vs. poor.

Suicide

This constantly deteriorating situation for the small Indian farmer has resulted in an outbreak of suicides which is perceived as the only way out when they have lost their security blankets due to failed crops or whatever other reasons there might have been for failing to repay a debt which inevitably will result in losing their piece of land. Ironically the pesticides used for the crops have become a very handy assistance in committing the suicides.

The rural credit by the public sector has dropped to only 10%. The other 90% is from private moneylenders; these people are often seed and agri-chemical agents that charge interest rates as high as 450%. The really poor farmers cannot get proper loans so they have no other choice than to go to these moneylenders. Some of the moneylenders are also in liaison with shady business people that will sell watered down pesticides and bad seeds. Creating a hopeless situation for the farmer to get out of their debt situation.

Between the year of 1997 and 1998 approximately 400 Indian farmers have taken their own lives, mostly in Andhra Pradesh but also in Karnataka and Punjab. The farmers are in such despair that they see suicide as the only way out from huge debts and loss of dignity. In 1999 more than 500 cotton farmers took their lives [The Ecologist Report, September 2000, p.44]

The green revolution shifted the use of indigenous varieties of seed controlled by the peasants to genetically modified seed that is controlled by the agribusiness leaving few options for the farmer to continue farming if there is no money left to buy new seeds. It has resulted in an increasing demand among farmers groups to strengthening farmers' rights, in particular the right to save and exchange seeds and the freedom from debt that this unsustainable system has been perpetuating.

Other demands by the farmers groups are to establish an insurance system for farmers to be financed through a liability payment by seeds and pesticides corporations and the creation of a proper marketing and storage system that will prevent money lenders to force farmers to sell cheap at harvest time and then have to buy expensively for their own needs at a later time. They also want to improve landowner rights among other things to strengthen their position.

Protests

The farmers in India have been particularly vocal and active in their opposition. As they feel they are being colonized anew by corporatization of the Indian agriculture.
Cargill has played a major role in the green revolution of India in taking over the seed industry and with it the independence of the Indian farmers. The company promised a great future using their seeds. It turned out these hybrid seeds are sterile so every year the farmer has to come back to the company and buy new seeds. This has lead to wild protests. In 1992 farmers invaded the head office in Bangalore and set fire to stacks of their documents. In 1993 an entire seed plant, owned by Cargill, was destroyed. Farmers using crowbars dismantled the building.

In the fall of 2000, thousands of Indian farmers gathered together to demand that agriculture be taken out of the World Trade Organization [WTO]. They complained about the increased prices of power and water, due to the pressure put on the Indian government by the World Bank via their privatization policies. They want to do away with the hybrid seeds that trap the poor farmers in endless circles of sterile seeds and pesticide use. This leads to higher cost of production while the prices for the products are plummeting. The deregulation of imports have led to domestic products like coconut, milk, coffee, tea, pepper etc is flooding the market. Indian farmers who are growing sesame, linseed and mustard are going under due to cheap imports of Soya from the US.

The Future

It is a widely held belief among activist that there is no food scarcity but a scarcity in good food policies. The real problem is that many people cannot afford to buy the food that does exist. Meanwhile seed companies and financial institutions like the World Bank insists that genetic engineering methods to increase and make the food production process more effective is the answer.

However in practice the green revolution, even though it did increase grain supplies, did still not benefit the poor people as most of it went to export and what was left was not affordable for the poor. What the small farmers themselves seem to want most of all is a redistribution of land to help them gain back their sense of belonging, livelihood and dignity, but will that ever be possible to achieve?

In all fairness, how much are the governments in third world countries adding to the plight of their own people by agreeing to the dissolve of the protection blanket shielding their own people for the exchange of a miniscule role in the global arena? Are the external pressures so strong that these governments truly cannot see any other outcome?

Vandana Shiva has said that greed will become dominant in a society only if the society rewards it. The consequences of this is certainly felt in developed countries like the US as well where family farmers are fighting an upstream battle to preserve their local economies and markets against the spread of corporate factory farming.
It is ironic that the rich diversified and sustainable systems are threatened to be destroyed for the sake of increased food production. Even though from a biodiversity perspective, the growing of a diversity of crops will yield a higher productivity than monoculture, not per crop but as an output on a whole. Diversity is also the best way to prevent drought and desertification.

The Mayan peasants in the Chiapas for instance are considered to be unproductive due to their production of only 2 tons of corn per acre. Yet their overall food output is 20 tons per acre when their other crops like squashes, vegetables and fruit trees are taken into account as well. [http://platon.ee.duth.gr/data/maillist-archives/deukalion/ msg00113.html].

Shiva also points out that the paradox of the Green Revolution that "modern plant improvement has been based on the destruction of the biodiversity which it uses as raw material." [Shiva, 1996: 251]

Activist groups have requested that agriculture should be kept out of trade liberalization all together. This I believe is key. There is great concern that if trade and profit making continue to be the dominant factor that control food systems it will completely demolish biodiversity, environmental sustainability, peoples basic human right to food, food safety concerns etc.

There is enough proof around the world that the direction and focus of globalism, the way it looks today, is not going to last if we look for peaceful co-existence on a healthy planet. There are enough people in the world that are realizing this through observation of events or their own experiences, it is therefore a matter of channeling that energy to find an alternative direction that will benefit a majority of people in a environmentally sustainable way.

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