A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

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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
Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com Air Short –haul 1580 Long-haul 570 Road Van 97 Medium truck 85 Large truck 63 Ship Roll on/Roll-off 40 Bulk 10 (grammes CO2 / tonne-kilometre) Rail * 15 Sources: Sustain report – Eating Oil - Food supply in a changing climate. And *Freight on Rail Partnership Poor countries need foreign currency. But some trade may harm their economies and their people, especially their small farmers, and have an adverse effect on the world’s sustainability. Often the financial benefits never reach the farmers simply because commodity prices are very low, compared to the profits from export/import trading, distribution and retail. Potential benefits to farmers and the general population are frequently siphoned off through corruption. According to Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, trading in commodities, like food, rarely brings benefits to poor countries. A high FEET rating shows when a product is very beneficial in the contribution to currency relative to CO2 emissions. The figures compare food with Software, Wind-up Baygen radios and tourism: Foreign Exchange Earnings per Transport tonne Software - by electronic mode Extremely high Wind- up Baygen radios - by road/sea Very high Good quality wine – by road/sea High Apples – road/sea Medium Grapes – road/ sea Very low Tourism – return air Very low The general message is clear: the lighter, less bulky the product and the more sustainable the mode of transport, the better it is for the planet; the small farmer and local people will usually benefit more from local production and sale. In general, that is a win/win everywhere. It makes more sense to have international trade in high value, low weight items like software and other expensive products rather than charcoal and other cheap, high weight and bulk or high CO2 items. Despite the insistence of politicians to the contrary, international trade needs to be the exception rather than the rule. That is a difficult adjustment to make but we must make it if the human species is to survive. We also need to introduce the notion of “Work and Enterprise Sovereignty” so that nations are not powerless to protect work and jobs in the face of global sourcing for lowest cost and least protection for 167
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