The Globalization of Hunger
Posted by sky | Tags: World , agriculture , environment , poverty , trade-rules
From The Seoul Times by Yifat Susskind... Another paradox: the majority of the world's hungry people live in rural areas, where nearly all food is grown. World Food Day on October 16 is a good time to try and understand the conundrum of world hunger. The root of the problem is the inequitable distribution of the resources needed to either grow or buy food (also known as poverty). World Food Day is an equally good time to call out one of the main culprits of the crisis: industrial agriculture, the very type enshrined in the Farm Bill that's currently before the US Senate. The Farm Bill is set to perpetuate a process whereby heavily subsidized US factory farms overproduce grains that are dumped in poor countries, bankrupting local farmers, who can't compete with subsidized prices. We've begun to hear a bit about the plight of these farmers, but few people know that most of them are women. US Agribusiness: Swallowing Up Lands and Livelihoods Big Farming is part of a larger corporate economic model that prioritizes profit-making over all else, even the basic right to food. Around the world, agribusiness bankrupts and displaces small farmers, and directs farmers to grow export crops instead of staple foods. Not long ago, most farm inputs came from farmers themselves. Seeds were saved from the last harvest and fertilizer was recycled from animal and plant wastes. Farmers found innovative ways to control pests by harnessing local biodiversity, such as cultivating insect-repelling plants alongside food crops. While these techniques can produce enough food to feed the world and sustain its ecosystems, they don't turn a profit for agribusiness. That's why corporations developed genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides. These inputs are both expensive for farmers and highly damaging to the natural systems on which sustainable farming and, ultimately, all life depends. As the cost of farming has gone up, farmers' incomes have gone down due to trade rules that favor large-scale agribusiness over small farmers. Over the past 50 years, as much of the world's farmland has been consolidated in fewer and fewer hands, millions of people have been forced to abandon their rural homes. The same practices that have devastated women farmers and their communities worldwide have contributed to environmental destruction that impacts us all. Export agriculture is a major contributor to global warming because it requires huge inputs of petroleum: it takes 100 gallons of oil to grow just one acre of US corn. It also requires a massive global transportation infrastructure, including ports, railways, fuel pipelines, and superhighways, often built at the expense of local people and ecosystems. Trade rules have so distorted agricultural markets that almost anywhere you go, food from the other side of the world costs less than food grown locally. So people in Kenya buy Dutch butter, while those in the Big Apple buy apples from Chile. The good news is that our global food systems may be on the verge of a great transition. Although agribusiness has unprecedented control over the world's farmers and food supply, the realities of climate change, resource depletion, and the human suffering caused by industrialized farming have led more people to start thinking about the links between food, the environment, and social justice. The theme of this year's World Food Day is the right to food. Securing this basic human right for all people, including future generations, will require fundamental changes in the way we use the Earth's natural resources to grow and distribute food. As we face rising temperatures and declining supplies of cheap energy, change will come of necessity. It's up to us—working in partnership with small-scale farmers around the world—to demand a change for the better.Previous Post Next Post