Jose Bove

[The Land Is Ours]

The little man from the Massif Central brings his battle to Britain
By Michael McCarthy
14 June 2001
Late last night, as far as one could tell, all the branches of McDonald's 
in London were still intact, and José Bové had been in the capital for more 
than 24 hours.
Maybe we should double-check today, just to be sure, but the radical French 
farmer and campaigner against globalisation, who rose to world fame by 
trashing one of the ubiquitous hamburger joints two years ago, has more 
ways of making an impact than by swinging a sledgehammer. He started off a 
day in Britain yesterday by laying straight into British agricultural 
policy, proclaiming the industrialisation of farming produced by 
free-market economics had been directly responsible for the outbreaks of 
BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.
"Absolute rubbish," riposted Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers' 
Union, in a testy two-way BBC Radio 4 exchange that ended with Mr Bové 
lumping the NFU with the Government as the villain of the piece. It was 
riveting radio but you only got half the value of José. You have to see the 
guy.
Just as appearance did for William Hague, there is no doubt the huge 
moustaches that droop from the Bové upper lip, not to mention the 
magnificent pipe that hangs down between them, big as a sock, have helped 
to glorify the legend of the little man from the Massif Central who is 
taking on the transnational corporation. He seems the perfectly designed 
French peasant farmer, like something out of Balzac or Clochemerle: his 
entire aspect proclaims Sturdy Son of the Soil.
Appearances are deceptive. This is a sophisticated political radical in the 
great French tradition, the son of left-wing university lecturers who, just 
too young to be a protesting student in the revolt of May 1968, brought his 
school out on strike and then engaged in a long career of radical activism. 
He is a genuine farmer now, producing ewe's milk cheese, pork and veal from 
his land near Millau in the Aveyron, the most remote of the French 
départments, but his decision to take up farming was a political act.
The fortuitous combination of appearance and reality have made him the most 
visible of all the growing band of campaigners against the takeover of the 
world economy by huge multinational companies, and his voice is being 
increasingly heard. He was in London for the launch of the English edition 
of his polemic against international industrialised agribusiness, entitled 
The World Is Not For Sale. More than 700 people attended the launch party 
on Tuesday night.
Yesterday he joined a lobby of Tony Blair and the new Secretary of State 
for the Environment and Rural Affairs, Margaret Beckett, calling for 
Britain's small and family farmers to be given priority in the 
post-foot-and-mouth restructuring of British agriculture that the 
Government has promised. He didn't get to see either, being kept at the 
gates of Downing Street, and meeting only Lord Whitty, a junior minister in 
the new department.
Mr Bové didn't mind: he energetically proclaimed his vision for more than 
an hour at a press conference in his punchy if rusty English (the legacy of 
his parents' tenure at the University of California when he was a child). 
The essence is simple: in agriculture, small and local are good, normal and 
natural, while giant and international ­ the way the world is increasingly 
going ­ are ruinous. He hit straight out, and hard, at British agricultural 
policy.
"The model you have here for agriculture is the destruction of the small 
farm," he said, between puffs of his pipe. "In 1992 when they decided to 
change the European policy for agriculture, we were 11 million farmers all 
over Europe; now we are only seven million, and in '92 they said this 
policy was going on until we should be only five million. They want to go 
on with the destruction of family farms."
Most analysts of British agricultural policy would say that was quite 
accurate. But this was no way forward, he said, for farming, for consumers 
or the environment. Large-scale industrialised agriculture was responsible 
for the disease outbreaks of the past 10 years and he prophesied the next 
crisis would be over the large-scale use of antibiotics on animals.
With its exports of cheap produce, agribusiness was also helping drive 
farmers to the wall in poorer countries all around the world, he said. "In 
the European Union we are exporting milk to India. India is the biggest 
milk-producing country in the world, and we are exporting this milk at a 
lower price than it can be produced in India, so we are dumping on Indian 
farmers. This is incredible. We are killing everything with our export 
subsidies. We have to destroy export subsidies."
What had to happen, he said, was that food production be taken out of the 
control of the World Trade Organisation. "We want food sovereignty for 
everywhere in the world, not only for Europe, but also for Africa, Asia, 
South American and everywhere else. People should be able to eat food 
produced by their own agriculture. Eighty per cent of food exports in the 
world come from the US and Europe, so it is we who are destroying other 
farmers in the world." Each region of the world should have tariffs to 
protect its agriculture, he said ­ a thought that would give the WTO apoplexy.
He believes fiercely that the march of globalisation is not unstoppable. 
The economic bottom line does not necessarily govern all, he says: people 
will be prepared to pay more for food produced with less harmful results, 
people can change in what they want, and he gives an example that could 
only come from France.
"Things have changed with veal. Before, people when buying veal they wanted 
white veal, the meat should be white. This is crazy. When veal meat is 
white, it means the animals see no light, they're not outside. But in 
France, since 10 years, people, they want pink meat. That means the animal 
has been outside. So you can change habits if people are understanding 
what's happening with agriculture."
He is quite unperturbed about the three-month prison sentence hanging over 
him from the attack he and colleagues launched on the half-built McDonald's 
site in Millau two years ago. He has just lost one appeal; the final one, 
to France's highest court, will probably be heard early next year and, if 
he loses, he's in the slammer. "Well, it's not a problem for me," he says. 
"I already went there. But if I have to go again it's going to be a big 
mess." A deep revolutionary chuckle comes from under the magnificent 
moustaches. "It's going to be a decision for the French government. They're 
gonna have problems, not me."






The Land Is Ours
... A Landrights Movement for All

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