The New Peasants Revolt

[tliouk]

it's all been said b4! but, this is a good article here just 4 the 
record:

ZNet | Global Economics
The New Peasants Revolt
by Katherine Ainger
May 11, 2003 

Everything in a supermarket has a story to tell, if only we could 
find it out. The produce defies seasons, geography, wars, distance, 
nature. It is winter outside, but inside the supermarket golden-shell 
pineapples from Côte d'Ivoire, still small and green, bathe in 
humming halogen light. There is civil unrest in the Côte d'Ivoire, 
but it does not seem to have disrupted the flow of tropical fruit to 
the cold North. Next to them are strange, knobbly bits of ginger dug
from Chinese soil. Gala apples from France, bagged up and reduced to 
half price. Avocados from Israel and Chile. Pale tomatoes from the 
Canary Islands, where it is always warm, but the fruit must be picked 
green. 'Ready-to-go' meals fill the chiller cabinets. Here, wrapped 
in plastic, are small clusters of perfect baby corn and mange tout 
from plantations in Kenya. Here is cod, pulled up by trawler from
the over-fished, churning cold sea of the northeast Atlantic. 

Though we can't hear their stories, what we choose to put in our 
supermarket baskets writes its own language upon our bodies and our 
moods, our families, our economies, our landscapes. It can mean life 
or death in some distant country whose name we can only vaguely 
discern printed on the packaging. We are, all of us, affected by 
trends in the global economy, in the most intimate and fundamental way
possible - through our food. 

Only rarely do these connections become visible, when the people who 
produce the food remind us of them. Those who work the countryside 
are a potent source of cultural identity, whether it's the campesinos 
of Mexico, the gauchos of Argentina, the paysannes of France, 
Australian conkies, or the flat-capped Yorkshire farmer. Their images 
are used to market food to us, because we associate them with rural
life, nature and rude good health. But the real people who produce 
our food are losing their livelihoods and leaving the land. 

Over the past two years British dairy farmers, in their grief and 
anger over plummeting prices, have blockaded supermarkets up and down 
the country, spilled their milk, boycotted suppliers. 

Why blockade the supermarkets? The average price British farmers 
receive for their milk is the lowest for 30 years. The bargaining 
power of the supermarkets is so great that prices for farmers are 
going ever downwards. In 2000, supermarket giant Tesco introduced 
international 'reverse' auctions for its suppliers all over the 
world. They were asked to bid against each other until Tesco got the 
lowest price. 

Supermarkets blame the consumer for wanting 'cheap food' - yet 50 
years ago farmers in Europe and North America received between 45 and 
60 per cent of the money that consumers spent on food. Today that 
proportion has dropped to just 7 per cent in Britain and 3.5 per cent 
in the US.1 

Even that ultimate symbol of rugged individualism, the cowboy, is an 
endangered species. Most of the ranchers of the Great Plains of 
Nebraska are permanently broke, mortgaging or selling off their land 
and cattle to survive. The cowboy is riding into the final sunset as 
the Great Plains become steadily depopulated. 

The details are specific to each country but the broad trends are 
international: the crisis in farming is global. 

The six founding countries of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy had 
22 million farmers in 1957; today that number has fallen to 7 
million. Just 20 per cent of the European Union's wealthiest and 
largest farmers get 80 per cent of EU subsidies. Canada lost three-
quarters of its farmers between 1941 and 1996 and the decline 
continues. In 1935 there were 6.8 million working farmers in the US; 
today the number is under 1.9 million - less than the total US prison
population. 

Suicide is now the leading cause of death among US farmers, occurring 
at a rate three times higher than in the general population. In 
Britain farmers are taking their own lives at a rate of one a week.2 

In poorer countries the situation is even worse. Half of the world's 
people still make their living from the land - and it is they who 
feed the majority of the world's poorest people. In South Asia and 
sub-Saharan Africa more than 70 per cent of the population makes a 
living from the land. Agriculture counts, on average, for half of 
total economic activity. 

In the Philippines the number of farm households in the corn-
producing region of Mindanao is set to fall by half. Between 1985 and 
1995 the number of people employed in agriculture in Brazil fell from 
23 million to 18 million. In China an estimated 400 million farmers 
are in danger of losing their livelihoods entirely. Everywhere small-
scale farmers are being 'disappeared'. 

All eaten up

Why is this happening? Somebody, somewhere, must be benefiting. The 
answer is not hard to discover. It lies not in the soil, but inside 
the corporations which have become known collectively as 
'agribusiness'. They traverse the planet buying at the lowest 
possible price, putting every farmer in direct competition with every 
other farmer. While the price of crops has been pushed down - often 
even below the cost of production - the prices of inputs such as seed,
fertilizers and pesticides have gone up. 

Control of the 'food-chain' is being concentrated in ever-fewer 
hands. According to Bill Hefferman, rural sociologist at the 
University of Missouri, in some cases there is 'seamless and fully 
integrated control of the food system from gene to supermarket 
shelf'.3 When the two giant corporations Monsanto and Cargill went 
into partnership they controlled seed, fertilizer, pesticides, farm 
finance, grain collection, grain processing, livestock-feed 
processing, livestock production and slaughtering, as well as several
processed-food brands. This system, developed in the US, is being 
exported to other countries in the name of globalization. 

This level of control is one of the reasons why genetically modified 
(GM) seeds are of such concern. They give agribusiness yet more 
weapons with which to enforce total dependency on their patented 
seeds. Some of them require own-brand herbicides and even own-
brand 'trigger' chemicals (known as 'traitor' technology) that the 
farmer has to apply for before the seed will germinate. 

This is the secret of the disappearance of the family farmer in the 
North - and the peasantry in the South. To disappear them, aside from 
killing them, you must turn them into vulnerable workers on an 
assembly line, without control over their own operations, and obliged 
to corporations. 

Agribusiness writes the rules of international trade. Cargill was 
largely responsible for the Agreement on Agriculture at the World 
Trade Organization (WTO), which liberalizes the global market in 
agricultural goods. Farmers, particularly in poor countries, find it 
impossible to compete with cheap imports. One James Enyart of Monsanto
said of the WTO's 'intellectual property' agreement (known 
as 'TRIPs') which makes its ownership of seeds and genetic material 
possible worldwide: 'Industry has identified a major problem in 
international trade. It crafted a solution, reduced it to a concrete 
proposal and sold it to our own and other governments.' 

Why does it matter that small, 'inefficient' producers are being 
eradicated by globalized, corporate agriculture? Free-trade theory is 
based on the idea that countries should specialize, produce the 
things that they make best and buy in everything else. But, as Kevan 
Bundell from Christian Aid says: 'It makes little sense for poor 
countries or poor farmers to put themselves at more risk if they have 
to rely on the efficient functioning of markets which all too often
fail or don't exist.'4 

How 'efficient' is a system of agriculture that ignores
('externalizes') the huge costs of removing chemical contamination 
from water or losing genetic diversity? How 'wholesome' is it to 
create new diseases in animals and antibiotic resistance in people? 
How 'cheap' is the expense of public subsidies to private 
agribusiness, of global transport or social breakdown in rural areas? 

Prevailing free-market thinking asks why we should provide support 
just to keep people in a state of 'backwardness' and rural poverty. 
But experience shows us that when these people lose their rural 
livelihoods, only a few will find better jobs in the city. Many will 
end up in enormous and growing urban slums. 

'The future for peasant incomes and employment is grim,' says Chen 
Xiwen, deputy director of the Chinese State Council's research 
centre. According to Chen, in 2001 over 88 million workers migrated 
from rural to urban areas in China, most of them employed in 'dirty, 
hard, dangerous and unsafe conditions'.5 

The question is not whether we have any right to condemn people to 
the difficult life of a poor farmer - an accusation often thrown at 
those who oppose the global-trade regime and the food cartel that 
runs it. The real question is whether vulnerable farmers themselves 
have meaningful choices. They need an international voice for their 
own priorities. 

Let them eat trade Nettie Webb, a Canadian farmer explains: 'The 
difficulty for us, as farming people, is that we are rooted in the 
places where we live and grow our food. The other side, the corporate 
world, is globally mobile.' 

To put it another way, global- trade rules might be fundamentally 
transforming agriculture, but as one sceptic asked: 'can one envision 
a coalition of Belgian, Dutch, French, Italian, Uruguayan, Brazilian 
and New Zealand farmers marching on a GATT (WTO) meeting in Punta del 
Este? And what could they demand to benefit them all, since they
are all in competition with one another?' 6 

In fact Via Campesina has been marching on every WTO meeting from 
1994 onwards. 'We will not be intimidated. We will not 
be "disappeared",' they have declared. This global alliance of small 
and family farmers, peasants, landless and indigenous people, women 
and rural labourers, has a membership of millions - the vast majority 
from poor countries - and they're putting an alternative agricultural
paradigm on the map. 

It's based on the idea of 'food sovereignty'. It is, they say, 'the 
RIGHT of peoples, communities and countries to define their own 
agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are 
ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to 
their unique circumstances.' 

They believe food is a human right, not a commodity, and that their 
job - the production of food - is fundamental to all human existence. 
This attitude is summed up by a food co-op member's retort to 
Brazilian President Cardoso when he said that agriculture had to 
submit to the law of the market: 'Very well, Mr President. When 
Brazil no longer needs food, then you can let agriculture go 
bankrupt.' 7 

The farmers of Via Campesina argue that nothing as important as food 
should be ruled by the WTO. They've been leading the campaign to take 
agriculture out of its remit entirely. This does not mean that they 
are 'anti-trade'. They believe in trading goods which a country 
cannot produce itself. Once a country has supported its own food 
needs and production it should be free to trade the surplus. 

I spent time with Via Campesina at the 2002 World Social Forum in 
Porto Alegre, Brazil, where they explained their vision in more 
depth. I'm in the courtyard of the Convent del Capuchino. There are 
mango and papaya trees hung with unripe green fruit. Via Campesina 
delegates - people of few words - sit on benches, sip sweet coffee 
and contemplate. 

José Bocquisso Jr explains the views of the National Peasants' Union 
in Mozambique. 'Mozambique was one of the largest cashew-nut 
processors in the world,' he says. 'But because of the IMF the 
industry was privatized and the processing plants were closed... 
People should concentrate on producing food for themselves, not 
products for export...  If we produce a lot of cotton the price ends 
up being below the cost of production, and people are stranded with 
piles of cotton, but with no food and no money. In our organization 
we concentrate on producing food, we encourage our members first to 
provide for their daily needs. Then it doesn't matter so much if they 
don't have money, because they are secure in food and have guaranteed 
the ability to feed their families.' His group is part of the 
expanding African contingent in Via Campesina. 'It is very
strengthening to feel part of a global movement. World powers have to 
be fought globally.' 

Via Campesina is not anti-technology. Its vision is, however, based 
on a model of agriculture built from the ground up, in which farmers' 
knowledge has a significant place. Indeed, all Via Campesina's 
arguments about food and farming - whether GMOs, access to land or 
markets - come down to one central issue: control. 

Indra Lubis, part of a coalition of 13 Indonesian peasant unions with 
900,000 members, explains that rejection of genetically modified seed 
and pesticides is about self-determination: 'With Monsanto, who have 
planted GM cotton in south Sulawesi, we'll have to depend on them for
seed. They want to control cotton and food production. As peasants, 
we'll be made dependent on multinational corporations. But we are 
independent when we develop our own agriculture. We use our own 
productive system, with no chemical fertilizer or herbicides. We use 
local seeds and local fertilizer. In Indonesia we have so many 
varieties of seed. It is a deep part of our culture.' 

Seventy per cent of the world's farmers are women - most of the 
people in this courtyard are men. Rosalva Gutierrez, from the Belize 
Association of Producer Organizations, tells me: 'It is always the 
women who take the hardest part as farmers, mothers, wives. We have 
many strong women but they have been abused for so many years, 
women's self-esteem is very low. So we give workshops and training... 
I'm co-ordinator of the women's project and on the international
co-ordination of Via Campesina - I try to ensure that what Via 
Campesina says on paper about gender equality becomes reality!' 

And she tells me: 'We don't see farmers as being from different 
countries. Farmers everywhere understand the same point.' 

Via Campesina argues that food production has a unique role to play 
in rural livelihoods, health, ecology and culture. 

Kanya Pankiti, a peasant from the south of Thailand - on her first 
trip out of the country - says the way her people grow food preserves 
the forest, the watershed and the soil. She thinks the Brazilians 
aren't growing enough trees. 'The way Brazilians do agriculture now 
will cause soil erosion,' she worries, picking and nibbling leaves 
she recognizes from home - it has never occurred to Brazilians to 
cook with them. 

Kanya knows a lot about trees. She says: 'The Thai forest department 
doesn't believe that people can live in the forest and preserve it. 
The reality is, we have lived in the forest for a hundred years. It 
is not the villagers who are destroying the forest, but the loggers 
clear-cutting. When the forest is clear-cut the land becomes less 
fertile.' Her house is outside a new National Park zone, her land 
inside it, and they want to clear her out. 'When they declare a
National Park,' she says, 'they sit in an air-conditioned office and 
look at a map.' 

What does she think of the World Social Forum? She's going back to 
tell her village 'that they are not alone in the world, struggling 
for land, and we can link up with those in other countries'. 

For anyone who eats, the question of who controls the food chain - 
farmers, or an ever-more powerful cartel of food corporations - is no 
less pertinent than it is for Indra, Kanya or José. At the very same 
time as consumers in the rich world are objecting more than ever to 
factory farming, to the use of antibiotics in livestock, to pesticide
residues in food, to the loss of biodiversity and to food scares such 
as BSE, this very same model is being set up for replication around 
the world, often disguised as 'development'. 

Mario Pizano, a member of the Confederación Campesino del Suerto in 
Chile, joins the conversation. 'The big companies are buying up all 
the land,' he complains. 'With contract farming, they tell us: "We'll 
buy your food only if you buy the chemicals you need from us." They 
give us chemicals that are forbidden in the US. Then we have to give 
them a section of our crop. If we can't, then they take our land.'

But he, and millions like him, refuse to become serfs on their own 
land. As we part, he takes off his green cap, emblazoned with the 
name of his organization, and gives it to me. 'This organization is 
part of me,' he says. 

1 'What's Wrong with Supermarkets', Corporate Watch, 2002. 
2 Bringing the Food Economy Home, Norberg-Hodge, Merrifield,
Gorelick, Zed Books 2002. 
3 'Where have all the farmers gone?', Brian Halweil,
WorldWatch 2000. 
4 'Forgotten Farmers: Small farmers, trade, and sustainable
agriculture', Kevan Bundell, Christian Aid 2002. 
5 'The Forgotten 800 Million: How Rural Life is Dying in the
New China', Guardian Newspapers, 18/10/2002. 
6 'The Via Campesina: Consolidating an International Peasant
and Farm Movement', Annette Aurelie Desmarais, Journal of
Peasant Studies, January 2002. 
7 Cutting the Wire, Branford, Rocha, Latin America Bureau
2002.