Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Agriculture without Farmers
*********************

The WTO and EU agricultural policies are sweeping farmers
off the land in droves and threatening world food security.
Rhea Gala

References to this paper are posted on ISIS members’ website
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Farming has evolved over thousands of years with the farm as
the basic unit of local community and culture. Its practice
was shaped everywhere by geography and the creative skills
of the farmer to be optimally productive. Since the arrival
of the tractor and the industrial ‘green revolution’ of the
1940s, small family farms have lost out to big industrial
farms, and much of the local knowledge accumulated over the
millennia has disappeared


Trade policies benefit agribusiness: Small farmers
everywhere are impoverished


In industrialized countries like the UK where the population
is largely urban, 200 000 farms have disappeared between
1966 and 1995 [1]. The annual UK Common Agricultural Policy
budget of £3bn gives 20 percent of farmers (large
agribusinesses) 80 percent of subsidies. Government figures
show that 17 000 farmers and farm-workers left the land in
the year 2003, having failed to make a living [2].



While only 5 percent of the population in the European Union
(EU) are still farming [3], at least half a million farm-
workers were still leaving the land annually before the EU
was enlarged by 15 new members in May 2004. It is now likely
that Poland alone will lose up to two million agricultural
livelihoods as a result of joining the EU [1]. EU figures
suggest that half of north European agriculture will
disappear within a generation [4], as it continues to be
squeezed out by the institutions that claim to give it
support.



In the US, between 1950 and 1999, the number of farms
decreased by 64 percent to less than two million, and farm
population has declined to less than 2 percent. Ninety
percent of agricultural output is produced by only 522 000
farms [5]. Canadian statistics similarly reveal that farm
numbers have decreased by 10 percent between the 1996 census
and 2001; there were less than 247 000 farms in the country
in 2001 [6].



This relentless process of consolidation drives the heart
out of the countryside, causing social and economic decay,
and replaces it with an intensive industry that cares
nothing about plant or animal diversity, quality or
compassion in farming, but is solely interested in bringing
down prices [1,7].



‘Free trade’ policies made by and for the rich countries of
the North not only destroy the livelihood of small-farmers
at home, they also encourage the dumping of subsidized goods
(selling at less than the cost of production) from the North
onto the markets of the poor South, distorting local
markets, and leaving farmers in developing countries also
unable to compete [1, 7, 8].



This has become a global scandal, as 75 percent of the
population in China, 77 percent in Kenya, 67 percent in
India, and 82 percent in Senegal still depend on farming for
their living [3]. These numbers are plummeting, however, as
families dispossessed of their land are driven to the
cities, where they may find themselves unable to afford to
pay for the food they used to grow.


Agribusiness degrades the environment while governments do
nothing


‘Free trade’ policies of World Trade Organization (WTO)
promote overproduction of agricultural commodities causing
damage to wildlife, depleting soil, water, and fossil fuels;
and at the same time compromising food quality, with
substantial repercussions on public health [1,7]. They also
greatly exacerbate global warming in many ways, not least
the millions of unnecessary food-miles added to agricultural
commodities. Professor Jules Pretty of Essex University
estimated that the total external costs for conventional
agriculture in the UK, paid for by the taxpayer, added up to
£2.34bn for the year 1996 [9].



The UK government remains a chief obstacle in the fight
against international poverty and environmental degradation,
despite its seemingly green credentials on climate change,
and its recent high profile in tackling poverty in Africa.
That is because the UK continues to espouse an economic
model that promotes privatisation and trade liberalisation
as the key to reducing poverty and protecting the
environment, although that model has proved to have the
opposite effects. The UK has been at the forefront of EU
efforts to push through an aggressive ‘free trade’ agenda at
the WTO [10].



Transnational corporations (TNCs) have been allowed to gain
control of supply chains and exert a stranglehold on global
food security through a process of ownership of seed,
proprietary chemicals, and other inputs, as well as virtual
monopoly of food processing and retail outlets [2,7,11]. Yet
our governments are refusing to rein in the increasing power
of TNCs that have been swallowing each other up until only a
handful remain.



The Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO and the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union are largely
responsible for precipitating this global catastrophe in our
food production system.


The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union


When the EU introduced the CAP in the early 1960s, it struck
a deal with the US under the framework of the General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) negotiations. The US
accepted the new border protection mechanisms put in place
by the EU for food, in return for a commitment by the EU to
allow unlimited import of feedstuffs from the US at zero
tariff. The EU agreed because it was still a net importer of
food and feedstuffs; but only 15 years later, the EU itself
was producing large surpluses of grain and animal products
as a direct result of this deal [12].



The zero tariff for feedstuffs enabled Europe’s huge
surpluses of the 1970s to be dumped on developing countries,
creating a major global problem. Feedstuff imports from the
US had led directly to the industrialization of animal
production in the EU and its associated environmental
problems [12].



The CAP, which aimed to "ensure a fair standard of living
for the agricultural community" [2], has for many years
provided direct aid to farmers based on area, production,
and number of livestock units (animals) [13]. This policy
gave large monocultural farms enormous subsidies, caused
massive overproduction that lowered prices, drove small
farmers out, and consolidated the power of agribusiness.
TNCs have become vast selling seed, pesticide, machinery etc
to farmers at great profit, buying produce at below the
costs to farmers, and selling it on to consumers on a huge
scale and at enormous profit [7,14].



The CAP reform of 2003 introduces a new system of single
farm payments that ‘decouples’ the link between support and
production. It comes into force in 2005-6 except for new
member states, and its stated aim is to ensure greater
income stability for farmers, leaving them free to decide
what they want to produce in response to demand, without
losing their entitlement [13]. However, this is not the
effect it will have.



Farm business consultants Andersons and the National Farm
Research Unit predict a further 30 percent decrease in
British cereal growers and another 35 percent decrease in
dairy farmers when the new single farm payments kick in.
These payments will be lower than the previous payments made
to smaller farms; yet prices for produce currently remain
near or below the cost of production [14].



A survey of English farmers showed that 87 percent did not
want subsidies, only a fair return on their costs of food
production. DEFRA figures showed average farm income in 2002
at £10 000; with farm-gate prices having risen just 2
percent in the last seven years. Meanwhile, supermarket
prices have risen by 21 percent, and in 2002-3, Tesco’s
profits were 60 percent of total UK farming income [2].



CAP reform was also greeted with dismay abroad. NGOs such as
the Catholic aid agency CAFOD and Oxfam said it would mean
"dumping as usual" for developing countries [15].


CAP has positively encouraged the most senseless and
environmentally destructive "food swaps" Britain imported 61
400 tonnes of poultry meat from the Netherlands in the same
year that it exported 33 100 tonnes of poultry meat to the
Netherlands. Britain imported 240 000 tonnes of pork and 125
000 tonnes of lamb, while it exported 195 000 tonnes of pork
and 102 000 tonnes of lamb [16] In 1997, 126 million litres
of liquid milk were imported into the UK and at the same
time 270 million litres of milk were exported out of the UK.
Twenty three thousand tonnes of milk powder were imported
into the UK and 153,000 tonnes exported out [17] In 1996 the
UK imported 434 000 tonnes of apples, nearly half of which
came from outside the EU. Yet over 60 percent of the UK’s
own apple orchards have been grubbed up since 1970, largely
as a result of EU subsidies [18]

The WTO Agreement on Agriculture


US agricultural policy has traditionally promoted cumulative
growth [19] and privatisation of seed at taxpayer’s expense
[20]. That has wrung all the profit out of farming and into
trading, processing, and retailing, controlled by a few TNCs
[11,19, 21]. Research shows the share of the US agricultural
economy going to farmers declined from 41 percent in 1910 to
9 percent in 1990, while farm input and marketing
industries’ shares increased by a similar amount [21].



As small farmers are pushed out, others enlarge their
operation, for example, in the US pig industry a quarter of
all producers went out of work between 1998 and 2000,
leaving just 50 businesses controlling 50 percent of all US
production. Yet, independent pig farmers produce more jobs,
more local retail spending, and more local per capita income
than larger corporate operations; and profits generated by
small producers (of any commodity) are more likely to remain
in the community and benefit the local economy [21].



As in Europe, these policies have led to low plant and
animal genetic diversity, low prices, many failing small
farms, and environmental degradation, and because they are
geared towards maximising export, similar effects are
spreading all over the world. Seventy percent of the world’s
poorest people, who directly depend on the land, are forced
to compete with the rich nations [11].



The 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill followed by the 2002 US Farm
Bill produced a vast structural price-depressing oversupply
of major agricultural commodities in an attempt to comply
with WTO rules [19, 22]. The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)
came out of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations between the US and the
EU (1986-94) that led to the founding of the WTO [12]. It
provides the rules governing international agricultural
trade and, by extension, agricultural production [8].



The AoA is based on the firm ideological belief that trade
liberalization brings net benefits to all participants. By
removing barriers to trade, regional specialization will
increase and regions will specialize in whatever their
agriculture can produce more cheaply than others. It
dictates that when products are exchanged, everybody gains
because the combined cost of production is less than if each
region had produced its own. In practical terms, this means
promoting exports and limiting the right of countries to
follow a policy of food self-sufficiency [12].



The aim of the AoA is to reduce the use of the following
three methods that favour domestic production

Border protection against imported products (the cheapest
and most widespread method used) Internal support measures
for domestic producers (mainly used by developed countries
with taxpayers money) Export subsidies (used exclusively by
developed countries) [12]


But the US negotiating position claims the right to spend
tens of billions of dollars to compensate farmers for market
failures rather than addressing those failures directly [8,
19]. In 2003, over half of the compensation went to less
than 2 percent of farmers, again benefiting only very large
businesses [23]. Furthermore, developed countries maintain
the right to continue with several forms of support that are
now illegal for any other country to introduce [12].



The US, with its chronic overproduction in major
commodities, always needs new export markets, and its
policies therefore affect production everywhere. For
example, rice, the staple of most of the poor nations, is
grown on around 8 000 farms in the US; half of it in
Arkansas where the biggest 332 rice farms, each over 400
hectares in size, produce more rice than all the farmers of
Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and Senegal combined
[24].



In 2003, the US’s crop of 9m tonnes of rough rice cost
farmers $1.8bn to produce. Farmers received only $1.5bn from
rice millers, but were sustained by government subsidies,
which totalled $1.3bn. Between 2000 and 2003 it cost on
average $415 to grow and mill one tonne of white rice in the
US, but that rice was exported around the world for just
$274 per tonne and dumped on developing country markets at a
price 34% below its true cost [24].



Surpluses may also be designated ‘food aid’ and monetized,
i.e., sold on the recipient country’s market to generate
cash. Most US programme food aid is sold to recipient
countries through concessional financing or export credit
guarantees. The US is nearly the only country that sells
‘food aid’ to recipient countries; other donors give it in
grant form [25], but both strategies reduce prices both for
developing country exporters and for smallholders in
importing countries, and deepen and prolong the depression
in world market prices [24].


Current agriculture policies undermine human rights


The WTO’s stated aims are to raise living standards, ensure
full employment, and raise incomes; and the AoA is
specifically meant to further the WTO’s aims by
"establishing a fair and market oriented agricultural trade
system". But a report by the Institute for Agriculture and
Trade Policy released in March 2005 accused WTO agriculture
policies of undermining human rights; by promoting a trade
liberalization agenda that overrides efforts to improve
livelihoods in four ways [26].



Promote the ‘right to export’ over human rights Fail to
tackle corporate control Allow export dumping at
artificially low prices to continue Lock developing
countries into an uneven playing field


Using data from the US Department of Agriculture and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(2003), the report describes how exports from US-based
global food companies were dumped onto world agricultural
markets [22].



Wheat exported on average 28% below cost Soybeans exported
on average 10% below cost Corn exported on average 10% below
cost Cotton exported on average 47% below cost Rice exported
on average 26% below cost


This dumping has greatly increased since the inception of
the AoA [22], and prices have dropped to new lows [12]; but
as all WTO members have ratified at least one of the
international human rights treaties, these instruments could
be used when designing trade policies [26].


The policies of international agribusiness


The laws that bind international trade derive from the
ideology of international agribusiness whose common interest
lies in opening up developing country markets. Close links
with governments and academia are exploited to persuade
policy-makers and the public that trade liberalization is
clearly in the best interest of developing countries [24].



Agribusiness is at the heart of creating US trade policy,
thanks to the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committees for
Trade. Members appointed in 2003 were selected, according to
former US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick [24], to
"coincide with the continuation of the Bush Administration’s
aggressive push to open foreign markets to US agricultural
products.... Coordinating with our agricultural community
will continue to be important as the tempo of negotiations
for global, regional, and bilateral trade agreements
intensifies."



In the US, as in many countries, there is a fast-revolving
door between top posts in agro-industry and government; and
agribusiness sits in the top ten of industry donors to
candidates and political parties in US elections,
contributing over $340m to campaign funds since 1990 [24].


Policies reinforce industrial agriculture at the expense of
sustainable agriculture


During this multinational bonanza, industrial agriculture
and its policies are placing enormous stress on the world’s
small farmers and the renewable resource base, especially
water and soil. Moreover, the local knowledge and plant
genetic diversity most needed to truly sustain the world are
being lost. Recent research has demonstrated the resilience
and productivity of many traditional agricultural practices
that have withstood the test of time [7, 21,27, 28].



It has also documented the damage done when small, diverse
organic farms, that have only one third of the hidden costs
of non-organic agriculture [29], are pushed off the land by
distorted markets, and replaced with large monocultures
oriented towards export production [8]. But government
policies tend to emphasize a handful of major crops that
require large fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and ignore
resource conserving crop rotations for which farmers receive
no government incentives, or sustainable practices such as
growing clover or alfalfa to enhance soil fertility. They
also perpetuate chemical-intensive agriculture by funding
research on chemical fixes for agricultural problems, to the
exclusion of research on more sustainable options [21].



Sustainable systems are especially able to compare favorably
with conventional systems when the comparison includes a
full cost accounting of the environmental and public health
harms and benefits of each system; but these costs are
usually externalized, or paid by society rather than the
polluter [21].



There needs to be dedicated support for sustainable food
production by small farmers who have served us well for
thousands of years; and a curbing of the power of
multinationals who serve only themselves. In spite of spin
from politicians about ‘making poverty history’, their trade
liberalisation policies can only continue to ruin local
economies everywhere while serving the global elites.



The International Commission on the Future of Food and
Agriculture suggests the following changes to agricultural
trade policy that would help make the world a much fairer
and healthier place [7]:



Permit tariffs and import quotas that favour subsidiarity.
This means that whenever production can be achieved by local
farmers using local resources for local consumption, all
rules and benefits should favour that option; thus
shortening the distance between production and consumption.
Trade should be confined to whatever commodities cannot be
supplied at the local level, rather than export trade being
the primary driver of production and distribution. Reverse
the present rules on intellectual property and patenting.
These strongly favour the rights of global corporations to
claim patents on medicinal plants, agricultural seeds, and
other aspects of biodiversity, even when the biological
material has been under cultivation and development by
indigenous people or community farmers for millennia.
Localize food regulations and standards. Rules that benefit
global food giants, such as irradiation, pasteurization, and
shrink-wrapping also negatively affect taste and quality;
and industrial processing has led to an increased incidence
of food poisoning and diseases in farm animals. Each nation
should be allowed to set its own high standards for food.
Allow farmer marketing/supply management boards. These let
farmers negotiate collective prices with domestic and
foreign buyers to help ensure that they receive a fair price
for their commodities. Less than two years after the North
American Free Trade Area (that dismantled the government
price regulation agencies) went into effect, Mexican
domestic corn prices fell by 48% as a flood of cheap US corn
exports entered the country. Thousands of farmers have been
forced to sell their lands Eliminate direct export subsidies
and payments for corporations. Although the WTO has
eliminated direct payment programmes for most small farmers,
they continue to allow export subsidies to agribusinesses.
For example, the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation
funded by US taxpayers, provides vital insurance to US
companies investing overseas. Even loans from the IMF to
Third World countries have been channeled into export
subsidies for US agribusiness Recognize and eliminate the
adverse effects of WTO market access rules. Countries need
new international trade rules that allow them to re-
introduce constraints and controls on their imports and
exports. These would prevent heavily subsidised Northern
exports from destroying rural communities and self-
sufficient livelihoods throughout the South. Many people now
working, for example, for poverty wages at Nike and other
global corporate subcontractors are refugees from previously
self-sufficient farming regions. Promote redistributive land
reform. The redistribution of land to landless and land-poor
rural families is a priority. This has promoted rural
welfare at different times in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and
China. Research shows that small farmers are more productive
and more efficient, and contribute more to broad-based
regional development than do the larger corporate farmers.

Come and have your say at our Sustainable World Conference
in Westminster, London July 14-15, 2005

Details: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SWCFA.ph