A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
www.brucenixon.com
Can huge transnational organisations be allowed to dominate food production? One of the most
telling accounts of corporate domination of world food, supported by government subsidies, our money, is
given in The Institute of Science in Society Sustainability report The Food Inc. Horror Movie.
Big food, drink, agribusiness and agrichemical businesses, often combined into conglomerates, bear heavy
responsibility for poor diet and ill health all over the world. They have resisted change for a very long time
and continue to do so, spending vast sums on PR, advertising and lobbying. The power wielded by large
corporations, used unscrupulously, disempowers communities and erodes their autonomy. It creates clone
towns and clone countries. It diminishes local initiative and localisation which we are now learning that we
need. They undermine democracy. Supported by unfair world trade policies and governments, they expand
into poor countries without considering the adverse consequences. These approaches have diminished food
security, local resilience and seed and crop diversity. They contribute to the shift of population from rural
areas to large cities where the poverty of landless people is extreme. They damage local food production,
push people off their land and increase poverty. The imposition of large-scale western agriculture
undermines self reliance, self respect and traditional agriculture based on generations of experience. Old
knowledge and expertise is lost.
A global food system dominated by a few corporations is dangerous. The system is designed to maximise
the power and profit of a few enormous food, seed, and agrichemical and retail corporations. Too much
power corrupts. Can we entrust our food supply to such companies? Can we rely on them to tell the truth?
Do we really want to leave ourselves, exposed like this? What if they collapsed like the banks? All l of us are
extremely vulnerable. In his book, The End of Food, Paul Roberts says: “Since the Thatcher Revolution in
England in the 1970s and the Reagan era, what is called "free market" economics has been raised to the level
of religious dogma in the industrial world, starting with Britain and the U.S. With the spread of GM seeds, this
"marketization" process has taken on a dangerous new dimension” (Roberts, R, 2008).
The Organic Consumers Association says that fewer than half a dozen giant multinational companies control
the world market in GM seeds—Monsanto, Cargill and DuPont of the USA, Syngenta of Switzerland and one
or two other smaller players. Monsanto is by far the dominant player, selling some 91 per cent of all GM
seeds and most herbicides, with a total monopoly of GM seeds for certain crops like soybeans. Monsanto has
been at the very heart of the bio fuels lobby. Cargill is one of three companies controlling nearly 90% of
world grain trade. According to Food and Water Watch, Cargill contributed to the 2008 food crisis through its
dominance in the cereal market and trading in food and energy futures markets.
The size and market share of big food corporations must be limited. The domination of supermarkets equally
needs to be limited and a fair playing field created for small farmers and shop keepers. In North and poor
countries alike, this is needed in the interests of security, diversity, the ecological system and communities.
What is the future of international trade? What are the implications for food and poor countries?
It’s clear that the current level of international trade is unsustainable. The FEET index throws light on what to
do. Transport Emissions are measured in grammes CO2 / tonne-kilometre and then Foreign Exchange
Earnings per Transport tonne known as the FEET index.
Freight Emissions
166