Last week a study commissioned by the United Nations and World Bank reported that 850 million people in the world were not getting enough to eat. (Published by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)), The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes said:

Food and fuel prices have risen 40% on average globally since last summer. Staple foods have seen price increases of 80% in three years. Climate Change has doubled the number of global disasters from an average of 200 a year to 400 a year, which is exacerbating food shortages.
In the last three months, rising food prices have spawned riots and protests in Egypt, Haiti, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia.
According to the World Bank, 33 countries face unrest due to increasing food prices.

Market analysts continue to talk of supply and demand assigning one of the causes of the shortage to the increase in demand for food and different kinds of food from growing economies like China and India. It was also clear that the possibilities of increasing production were hampered by many factors the most popular culprit being the amount of arable land given over to raising bio-fuel crops.

In reality the causes of the crisis are much more basic and have been clear for some time. The UN report seemed to be coming to that knowledge as well. In a remarkable change from the usual World Bank view, the report noted the global agriculture system will have to change radically if the world is to avoid future environmental and social problems. The IAASTD director, Professor Robert Watson, in launching the report, questioned the usual doctrine, “The price of food in real terms has gone down” he declared, “so what’s the problem?” Obviously, he concluded, “Agriculture is far more than the production of food and that is what we have to recognize.” (Report of launching of the report in BBC News, 4/15/08 ”Global Food System Must Change”)

But economists continue to look at the production facilities and the lack of technology. Assuming that as demand increases farmers will grow more. Lawrence Haddad, director of Britain’s Institute of Development Studies, said the likely impact of food price increases should have been anticipated he said. “The fact that no one has previously made the link between agriculture and poverty is quite incredible.” (As reported in www.washingtonindependent.com/view/soaring-food-prices.)

This extraordinary statement made by the director of one of the most prestigious centers of development studies in the north, is mind boggling to say the least. Since the 1980’s a worldwide movement has spoken, written, toured, organized, and generally made a racket explaining exactly why the world was headed for a global food crisis. Citing as causes the policies of the World Trade organization, the GATTS agreement, and the agriculture policies of the northern industrial states. In short the movement has called for the creation of a sustainable agriculture based on local resources, knowledge, and needs and the end to the agri-business model, that sees food, as simply another commodity. Mass demonstrations at every World Trade Organization ministerial meeting at every world bank and International Monetary Fund meeting have brought together farmers under threat from U.S. and European farm subsidies, immigrant workers already chased off their land by IMF demands for export economies and the World Trade Organization’s deregulation and privatization of everything, an indigenous people seeking to save something of their heritage. Along with scientists, academics, journalists and all sorts of folks committed to social justice, these meetings have seen the launching of global campaigns to turn these policies around.

Amazing women have led much of this action, consistently citing the effect of these policies not only on food security but also on the health and nutritional needs of people and the degradation and destruction of the planet, the forests and the water that sustains our lives.

The campaigns launched by these activists have impacted local thinking about food, where it comes from, its nutritional value and what it costs the planet to produce. The spread of organic food, of farmers markets community sustained agriculture, buy local movements are traceable to this movement that Mr. Haddad did not know about.

The industrialization of agriculture began with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s approach to the capital needs of the global south. Arranging loans and aid programs for the south took on the
Orientation and economic needs of the north: Big dams, big power projects, funded by loans from northern financial institutions with substantial input from the local country’s development banks reoriented the developing countries priorities away from locally based planning.

But most of these projects hung up on one issue or another. For example the nuclear power plant built in the Philippines was built on a =known fault and was prevented form going on line long enough so that when a local volcano erupted it was abandoned. Nonetheless the Philippine government (and their counterparts in other parts of the world) still owed the loan. Further interests rates were raising and indebtedness increased exponentially. (A feature not unknown to U.S. citizens presently caught in the mortgage disaster.)

In response to this expanding dept the IMF created a set of conditionalities that would accompany any loan. The overall impact of these conditionalities was labeled structural adjustment, and it was just that, orienting and tying the country concerned to the world trade system emerging from the activities of the G7 (later 8) the 7 wealthiest nations on earth. Developing countries seeking loans and financial help out of the indebtedness they were in (courtesy of the earlier loans,) were required to convert their economies concentrating on exports, not on responding to local needs. Further they were to follow the neo liberal mandate to the government out of the economy. This would end any social services or food subsidies or anything that could be called an entitlement. No one was to be entitled to anything from the government.

The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and WTO further pushed in this direction tying aid and support directly to the opening of markets and privatizing resources and publicly owned enterprises. Which meant that public utilities land and water were sold to the highest bidder who then ran them as a profit making enterprise. Any regulations whether for safety, health, environmental protection or local needs were to be considered restraints on free trade and removed.

Privatization, deregulation and the imposition of Intellectual Property Rights in the form of patents destroyed the possibility of any national agriculture policy, which would benefit and support local small farmers instead huge transnational agri-businesses moved in. Oriented to producing products for the northern markets. Mexican farmland traditionally growing corn and beans for the local market became huge mechanically farmed strawberry fields. Environmentally protected and other forested lands in South America were cleared and made into pastures for Burger Kings hamburgers. African land grew green beans and cut flowers for the European market. When faced with food shortages or natural disasters United States provision of food aid meant flooding local markets with grains heavily subsidized by the American people. Further undercutting local farmers market access already under threat from the low priced subsidized farm commodities.
These policies pushed hundreds of thousands of southern farmers off their land and into the steady stream of labor seeking entry into the global north to find work to feed their families. Many died, many others were deported sometimes whole families were split up and lost to each other.

Meanwhile down on the ranch the farming practices of the agri-business were pouring pesticides and commercial fertilizer on the land polluting the rivers, lakes, and streams and taking control of large parts of the potable water of the south.

That the end of this was clear to many people and was the subject of many conferences, demonstrations marches and even the suicide of Mr. Lee from Korea at the Cancun ministerial of WTO is not a secret.

These realities, clearly the fundamental cause of the present crisis are nowhere mentioned in the reports of food shortages in the big western media.

That treating food as just another commodity meant that making it profitable would be the key value. Unhealthy food products fill our grocery shelves. Huge advertising budgets convince us these foods are both convenient and good for us.

Increasingly the dedicated work of my comrades in struggle is making an impact. More people question this food and more evidence of its impact on our health turns us away.

The question is how do we regain control of our food? How can change take place in this corporate controlled world where governments have become weak enablers of the corporate values?

On May 12 in Bonn Germany, women from all over the world who have been working against these policies for years will gather under the banner Planet Diversity to demonstrate once again our commitment to destroying industrial agriculture and replacing it with sustainable food security. We will talk and argue together about strategies to protect the environmental, biological and cultural diversity of our planet.

Sustainable agriculture, locally grown and produced food, organic healthy food, that does not destroy the planet, that keeps our local communities together has found a root in our countries, the present crisis will only double the push for change.

It will be a hell of a task to find ways out. The powers of the corporations and the weakness of our governments are real. This has gone on far too long has engaged too much of the planets wealth to be overturned rapidly. We need to find political leadership with the will to move in that direction. The mobilization for such a move is already there brought to you by the passion, energy, imagination and the sheer will of the women who will be meeting again in Bonn.

Jean Grossholtz
Professor Emeritus Politics
Mount Holoke College
South Hadley, MA 01075