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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Coming Global Food Fight
  • Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:13:01 -0700


The Coming Global Food Fight
As aggression mounts with the rise of food prices worldwide, small-scale
farms rooted in local markets could avert international disaster—and lead the
way to "food democracy."
http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-broad/the-coming-global-food-fight
Mar 15, 2011

Food prices around the world are surging. Between July of last year and this
January alone, the price of wheat has doubled. Indeed, the cost of food has
now passed the record levels of 2008, when angry citizens staged huge
protests in dozens of countries. Currently, protesters across the Middle
East include lowering food prices among their demands. When prices go up
even a bit, millions more people starve.

The local organic farmers with whom we have been spending time in the
Philippines and elsewhere are less affected by these price swings precisely
because they consume much of what they harvest, and they sell the rest to
local markets. These farmers have achieved at the household level what
Frances Moore Lappé terms “food democracy,” and what the small farmer
coalition, Via Campesina, calls “food sovereignty” at a national level.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the average person spends more than a third of their
household budget on food, and thus more people feel food price hikes daily in
the pits of their stomachs.

A country has “food sovereignty” when its people consume safe and nutritious
food largely grown by their own small farmers. Significantly fewer countries
sustain this sovereignty today than a generation ago. The reigning
development model pushed by World Bank and other experts has left many
countries exporting more cash crops like flowers and gourmet vegetables, and
importing more of their staple foods.

But there is more to food sovereignty than freedom from imports. In richer
countries, food purchases make up a relatively small percent of household
budgets. Here in the United States, we spend an average of only seven
percent of our budgets on food, although that number rises in poor urban
neighborhoods.

As in most countries, Egyptians used to grow what they ate domestically.
Today, Egypt is one of the world’s largest wheat importers— bringing in over
half the wheat it consumes from elsewhere. As a result, ordinary Egyptians
are now extremely vulnerable to catastrophic global weather events and
manipulative trading by speculators on commodity futures markets. Wheat
prices are spiking in part because of recent droughts in China and flooding
in Australia. The food markets in poorer nations feel the consequences of
these price hikes immediately.

Worldwide, the majority of people get the bulk of their calories from basic
grains. In almost all countries, this means wheat, rice, or corn. We
decided to look at the degree to which countries have become dependent on
importing these critical foods. We were stunned by the results.

Haiti imports more than 80 percent of its number one grain: rice. Tunisia
and Morocco both import about three-quarters of the wheat their people
consume. In Mexico, the birthplace of corn, the North American Free Trade
Agreement ripped open the market. Mexicans now buy most of their corn from
the United States.

Rice-eating nations are usually more resilient. They tend to grow the vast
majority of this staple, making import dependence low.

But in the Philippines, where we have spent considerable time on local farms,
imports account for as much as a sixth of rice consumption. In 2008, rising
rice prices set the entire nation on edge. Responding to citizen concerns
about such intense vulnerability to global markets, the new government has
set ambitious goals on eliminating rice imports within three years. They
project much lower rice imports this year.

Big-Picture Solutions from Small-Scale Farming

While millions are suffering as the result of volatile development models,
the food emergency of 2011 can convince more countries to reject conventional
“wisdom” that says exporting and importing more is the right path to food
security.

There are food sovereignty lessons to be learned from sub-Saharan Africa,
made up of those countries that lie south of the protest belt in Egypt,
Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Most of these nations are less
import-dependent when it comes to food than nations in Latin America and
Asia, and so are less affected by spiraling prices. In addition, there is
evidence that, as food costs have risen in several of these sub-Saharan
countries, people are returning to native-grown cassava and sorghum in place
of expensive imported food.

But mainstream pundits are now counseling these countries to further enmesh
themselves in the global economy. While the World Bank continues to push
trade-dependent agriculture, hundreds of groups from ActionAid to the Oakland
Institute and Food First are promoting alternatives.

The UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food has been gathering evidence from 57
poorer nations where innovative non-chemical techniques have been used to
boost food production. Special Rapporteur Olivier de Schutter sums up the
findings: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial
farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale
farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of
smallholders so as to contribute to rural development."

Rooted Agriculture:
5 Ways Governments Can Help Build Food Sovereignty

There is a ray of hope that penetrates the crisis for import-dependent
countries: While millions are suffering as the result of volatile development
models, the food emergency of 2011 can convince more countries to reject
conventional “wisdom” that says exporting and importing more is the right
path to food security.

In many countries like the Philippines, local farmers growing healthy and
chemical-free foods are on the rise and are taking over increasing shares of
local and national markets.

There is a great deal that governments can do to boost such rooted,
sustainable farms, from investing in irrigation and retraining agricultural
extension workers, to rejecting trade agreements that pry open food markets.

Today, thousands of people in the streets of Morocco and other Middle Eastern
nations are demanding lower food prices as well as democracy. It is time to
say “no” to food vulnerability and to reinvigorate rooted farms all over the
world.

John Cavanagh and Robin BroadJohn Cavanagh and Robin Broad wrote this article
for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses
powerful ideas with practical actions. Robin is a Professor of International
Development at American University in Washington, D.C. and has worked as an
international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S.
Congress. John is on leave from directing the Institute for Policy Studies,
and is co-chair (with David Korten) of the New Economy Working Group. They
are co-authors of three books on the global economy, and are currently
traveling the country and the world to write a book entitled Local Dreams:
Finding Rootedness in the Age of Vulnerability. Over the decades, this
husband and wife team has worked in a number of countries, including the
Philippines, where Robin first lived in 1977-78.

Interested?

* Read more about finding rootedness from John Cavanagh and Robin Broad.
* Food Rebellions: 7 Steps to Solving the Food Crisis
Resistance to the trade and “aid” policies that displace farmers and
increase hunger.
* Tunisia, Egypt, and the Big Picture
Egypt lies on the fault lines of the convergence of global ecological,
energy, and economic crises—and thus, on the frontlines of deepening global
system failure.








  • [Livingontheland] The Coming Global Food Fight, Tradingpost, 03/16/2011

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