"Responding to the Global Food Crisis: A Challenge for All"

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Dec 13, 2011 at 21:05:45 PM PST

• Asmita Tiwari, Risk Management Specialist at the World Bank
  
• Gawain Kripke, Director for Policy at Oxfam America
  
• Devry S. Boughner, Director of International Business Relations for Cargill

The event was hosted by the Bretton Woods Committee. I was not there, but I do have the video of it.

Dual Book Review: Making Poverty and ...And the Echo Follows

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Mar 14, 2011 at 00:27:17 AM PDT

More below.

As the Biotech Lobby Spins

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Jan 26, 2011 at 14:41:52 PM PST

More on what the report actually says and the media coverage of it below.

Book Review: Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Sep 25, 2010 at 16:46:23 PM PDT

He describes the global food system using a diagram shaped like an hourglass. At the top are the very many farm operators (3 million in the U.S. as of 2007). The diagram narrows as he names off the number of farm proprietors (just over 2 million), and farm product raw wholesale (7563). Then the diagram widens again with food manufacturers (27,915), grocery and related products wholesale (35,650), food and beverage stores (148,804), and consumers (300 million). He shows a similar diagram for several European countries, with an even skinnier middle of the hourglass. The point here is that food wholesalers and manufacturers create a bottle-neck in between the many farmers and consumers, and they hold all of the power. Patel says that it's no accident that many of the poorest and hungriest people in the world happen to be farmers and farmworkers.

Now, this much you could get from just listening to one speech by Patel (which I highly recommend doing), but the book goes on to elaborate with chapters telling about the decimation of rural communities, the role of free trade on Mexican farmers, how U.S. food aid has often done more harm than good, corporate consolidation, the Green Revolution, and more.

I am writing this review now, on the brink of my trip to Bolivia, for a reason. First of all, so much of this book is so overwhelmingly relevant in Bolivia, a country that has been a recipient of enormous amount of U.S. food and agricultural aid and yet still faces staggering poverty. In the coming weeks, you'll read the micro account of how these concepts play out in one specific country - Bolivia - on this blog. But don't forget the global context that that needs to be put in, and for that, I highly recommend checking out Stuffed and Starved.

Much more specifically, my favorite chapter in Patel's book was on the Brazilian soybean industry, and it turns out that Bolivia has a large and equally tragic soybean industry. In brief, the industry involves growing soybean as a monoculture on land that was once (recently) Amazon rainforest. Imagine how many environmentalists in the U.S. rail about saving the rainforest as they drink their soymilk (although, better that than eating burgers made from cows fed soy grown on destroyed rainforest land). This will be a part of Bolivia that I won't see, as it takes place in the eastern lowlands of the country, far from where I am visiting. But it's a part of the overall story in a big way. Patel does a brilliant job shedding light on the growth of the soy industry in Brazil. (He also tells about the MST, the Landless Rural Workers Movement, in Brazil, which he calls "the world's most important social movement".)

There's a quote out there of Sen. Chuck Grassley ranting that there's no way what he grows on his farm in Iowa will impact what a farmer grows in South America. And that's sadly mistaken. As more American land is devoted to corn when world corn prices go up due to American demand for ethanol, then the U.S. grows fewer soybeans, and soybean prices tend to go up too. This gives a greater incentive for a South American farmer to plow up more rainforest and grow more soybeans.

There have been movements in the past to get companies to shun beef fed with soybeans grown in the rainforest. But you'd have to mobilize a worldwide boycott of Amazonian soy to have any effect. If McDonald's only buys meat from cows fed U.S.-grown soy, then guess what? Someone else will buy the Brazilian stuff. It's one big global market.

All in all, this book is truly a masterpiece, and it should be mandatory reading. Especially the soybean chapter.

USAID's Feed the Future Frankenfoods Initiative

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 05, 2010 at 08:32:52 AM PDT

New Acronym: GAFSP

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 08:44:48 AM PDT

GAFSP is Financial Intermediary Fund set up at the World Bank to respond to a request from the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009 to establish a financial coordination mechanism to operationalize the commitments to agriculture and food security in poor countries made by the G8+ at L'Aquila in July 2009. The vehicle is a multilateral trust fund under external governance, designed to scale-up agricultural assistance targeted to the food security of low income countries.

And here it is in the words of Bill Gates and Tim Geithner in their Wall Street Journal op ed:

Today, the United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are making a commitment to fight the threat of global food insecurity. Together we are launching the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a new fund to help the world's poorest farmers grow more food and earn more than they do now so they can lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.

As you can see, this is a relatively new fund. They are still fleshing out its details. More below.

What?!?

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 16:06:01 PM PDT

Let me summarize the article for you: Bla bla bla... drought-tolerant corn... global warming... Africa really fucked... feed 9 billion people... bla bla bla... Gates Foundation.

There. Now you don't have to read it. It says nothing new and contains zero critical thinking or alternate viewpoints. There was one section of the piece that was right on:

Charles Godfray, a professor at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University who recently co-authored a paper in the journal Science  about the challenges of feeding 9 billion people, said that the impact of climate change on agriculture will be negative. Although warming will open up lands in cooler regions for cultivation, it will not compensate for the loss of water and land in areas near the tropics, he said.

"The current system of agriculture is not sustainable," he said. "Water is arterial. We will run out of water in parts of the world."

Yep. The Africa-is-fucked-if-things-don't-change meme is correct. And the African-corn-production-is-in-trouble idea is also correct:

But the continent is drought-prone, with millions of farmers relying on rainfall for their crops grown in small land holdings. Corn is most widely grown, with almost 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa using it as the main source of food. And it is grown in rain-fed regions prone to crop failures.

Riiight. So how about we grow something other than corn? I'm very disappointed at the New York Times failure to only present one side - a side that is opposed by scientists world wide - on this matter.

Book Review: Food Rebellions!

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 23:59:45 PM PDT

That said, the book is quite academic, and reading it does not compare to the transformative experience of hearing the authors speak. (Patel and Holt-Gimenez can go head to head in a public speaking contest any day and I really don't know who would win. Both are amazing.) But the book does provide all of the facts underlying the amazing speech in a logical and readable format.

Haiti and the Global Food Crisis

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Jan 14, 2010 at 18:39:43 PM PST

Right now our immediate goal should of course be aid to the people of Haiti. First, emergency medical help as well as whatever is required to dig people out of the ruins and clothe, feed, and house everyone who is now without basic needs. Food First calls on us to support grassroots organizations as we do this, recommending that we donate to Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health for the short term, Haiti Action and Grassroots International for help to Haiti once the emergency medical needs die down, and Agricultural Missions for the long term. A friend of mine is a "doctor without borders" - so involved in the organization, in fact, that she and her husband personally received the 4am phone call alerting them that Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize... followed by a congratulatory call by President Clinton. She's told me quite a bit about the work she's done overseas in numerous warzones and disaster situations and I'm a strong supporter of her work and her entire organization. I'd also like to add the International Rescue Committee as a wonderful organization I've had some contact with here in San Diego that also does work in Haiti. The IRC's work is vast and multi-faceted, but among the things that they do in San Diego, they are a leader in food system reform, food justice, and urban agriculture. If I had any money, I'd be delighted to give it to them, knowing that they would put it to fantastic use to help the victims of the quake.

After the immediate earthquake aftermath dies down, we should then give thought as to how humans played a role in increasing the tragedy of this quake. What has the world done, economically and politically, that contributed to the suffering?

Going back a century, in 1910-11, the U.S. State Department backed a group of American investors in gaining control of the Banque National d'Haïti, Haiti's only commercial bank and the government treasury. When Haiti wound up deeply in debt to American banks, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson occupied Haiti - and we stayed there until 1934. In 1917, FDR (yes, the future U.S. president) wrote a constitution for Haiti that took away a very pesky (to us) law that prohibited foreign ownership of Haitian land. The Haitian government refused to approve it so we dissolved their government and had the constitution approved by an election in 1919 in which under 5 percent of the population actually voted.

While in Haiti, we behaved very much like the British in India. We built roads (well, actually we made the Haitians do it with what was basically slave labor) to serve our own purposes and introduced export cash crops instead of promoting Haitian food sovereignty. We even one-upped the British by introducing Jim Crow laws in Haiti, which was founded as a black republic. The Haitians didn't accept this lying down - the period was marked with revolts - and the U.S. left during the Great Depression but kept control over Haiti's external finances until 1947.

After another coup or two, Haiti elected "Papa Doc" (Dr. Francois Duvalier) in 1957. He carried out a brutal rule and proclaimed himself president for life, which turned out to be until 1971. He was succeeded by his son, "Baby Doc," a 19-year-old playboy and kleptocrat. The U.S. had cut off aid to Haiti during the Kennedy Administration, but they restored it in 1971. Still, Baby Doc's time in office was no picnic for Haitians, and he was forced into exile by the Haitian military in 1986.

Haiti has not exactly lived without turmoil since then, with at least a few coups in between democratically electing its leaders. Here's an excerpt from a very significant report I found from the period of the food riots back in 2008:

The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures. This is a concrete example of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence"-the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.

Many people in Haiti point to the first trigger being the USAID eradication of the Haitian pig population following an outbreak of swine fever. Peasants counted on pigs as "bank accounts" so the action amounted to Haiti's "great stock market crash, contributing to Duvalier's ouster on Feb. 7, 1986. Under U.S. military supervision, Duvalier was replaced by an army junta, the CNG, whose finance minister Delatour imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and opening Haiti's agricultural markets to U.S. producers. Today, Haiti is the most "open" economy in the hemisphere.

In the 1990s, responding to humanitarian crises following the violent 1991-4 coup period, USAID gave millions of dollars in direct food aid. The implementation of this aid weakened Haiti's economy, with free or heavily subsidized U.S. rice underselling the local peasantry; with the grains and the food-for-work programs arriving during the peak of harvest season, when farmers sold their crops and needed hired help the most; and with conditionalities such as still lower tariffs and further trade advantages for U.S. businesses.

While it can be argued that Haitian governments can choose to refuse this aid, the majority of their funding comes from international institutions. People in Haiti call this dependency on foreign aid a "politics of the stomach." Not surprisingly, U.S. assistance to Haiti is still laced with conditionalities that benefit U.S. corporate interests. For example, the HOPE Act passed in December 2006 was designed to create jobs and cut tariffs on sub-contracted textile productions. While the estimates are way lower than projections, 2-3,000 instead of 50,000 jobs according to an industry lobbyist, the rationale is that saving $1.50 on a pair of pants spurs foreign investment, sorely lacking in Haiti. Nonetheless, the strings attached to HOPE give even more benefits to U.S. business. HOPE contains a condition that Haiti must not "engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests." In order for private, often foreign, companies to receive tax benefits in the bill, the Haitian government must establish or make progress toward "elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment."

In addition to bilateral aid, international agencies also imposed neoliberal conditions on Haiti through negotiations on foreign debt. By 1991, when Aristide - Haiti's first democratically-elected president - took office, the official debt was $785 million, more than half of what was claimed in 2006 of $1.463 billion.

Debt drains resources that could otherwise be invested in national production. For example, in 2003, Haiti's scheduled debt service was $57.4 million, whereas total foreign pledges for education, health care, environment, and transportation added up to $39.21 million. The scheduled debt service for 2009 is $78.7 million. Debt also is the leverage for imposing what used to be called "structural adjustment programs" (SAPs), including privatization, trade liberalization, and forced reduction in services such as health care, education, or rural credit.

Some argue that competition and free trade bring prosperity to all. In this logic, barriers to trade such as protective tariffs need to be removed. Many of the proposals to respond to the crisis still depart from this logic.

But Haitian peasants cannot "compete" with the United States under a free trade system. First of all, under the U.S. Farm Bill, U.S. agribusiness and some individual farmers15 received $13.4 billion in subsidies in 2006, a total of $177 billion over the previous decade. At the same time, the World Trade Organization (WTO) repeatedly strikes down tariffs and other subsidies in Southern countries as "impediments to free trade." Even without the subsidies, the average U.S. farm - individual or corporate - benefits from what we now take for granted as public responsibilities: building and maintaining roads, irrigation canals, water treatment, pumps and pipelines, and federally-insured credit, etc. These public investments cost money, which high debt payments and reduction in social spending mandated by structural adjustment programs have prevented in Haiti.

Occasionally, international institutions directly contribute to the increase in prices, as in January 2003, when the IMF demanded that the government stop subsidizing the cost for fuel, triggering immediate hikes in taptap fares as well as protests. Very efficient in economic terms because timachann (street vendors) operate on very slim profit margins, the informal market immediately saw a rise in prices for staple goods as a result.

As a result of all these factors, Haiti is almost entirely dependent on foreign food production. Once an exporter of rice, now Haiti imports an estimated 82% of total consumption, $200,000,000 per year. Haiti has lost its food security and food sovereignty. As Préval recently stated in his effort to calm the populace: "In 1987, when rice began being imported at a cheap price, many people applauded. But cheap imported rice destroyed [locally grown] rice. Today, imported rice has become expensive, and our national production is in ruins. That's why subsidizing imported food is not the answer."

It is therefore not surprising that prices for basic foodstuffs in Haiti are tied to the global market where rising petroleum costs and inflation in grain prices because of its increasing use as biofuel have driven up prices. Thirty-seven year old community leader and timachann Linda Thibault explains, "You have to buy Miami rice. Do the math: if a bag of Haitian rice costs 150 goud, and a bag of U.S. rice costs 65 goud, I can buy two bags of U.S. rice and still have money left over for the cost of one bag of Haitian rice. I am forced to fill my body with U.S. rice. My children can eat more." [emphasis mine]

Interestingly enough, in 1995, Haiti refused to sign a World Bank loan that required it to accept a "Structural Adjustment Program." These SAPs are typically the tools of the World Bank for extracting "a pound of flesh" from its loan recipients (as you can see in the excerpt above). Upon Haiti's refusal to sign the loan agreement, the U.S. announced we would withdraw our aid to Haiti. Sure enough, as a result of the earthquake, the World Bank is offering Haiti more money.

There's a lot more to be said about this, and much of it can be found in four books:

1. Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
2. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
3. Food Revolutions! by Eric Holt-Gimenez and Raj Patel

The gist of what these three books say is that:
1. Multinational corporations use institutions like the World Bank and the U.S. government to trap developing nations in debt and then force unfair trade policies on them and sell their natural resources for pennies on the dollar to multinational corporations.

2. Often, in order to do this, they take advantage of natural or manmade disasters, in which people are desperate for anything that resembles help.

3. This is all very much tied in with agriculture and global food security. The solution is "food sovereignty," which Via Campesina defines as:

Food sovereignty is the peoples', Countries' or State Unions' RIGHT to define their agricultural and food policy, without any dumping vis-à-vis third countries. Food sovereignty includes :

   * prioritizing local agricultural production in order to feed the people, access of peasants and landless people to land, water, seeds, and credit. Hence the need for land reforms, for fighting against GMOs ((Genetically Modified Organisms), for free access to seeds, and for safeguarding water as a public good to be sustainably distributed.

   * the right of farmers, peasants to produce food and the right of consumers to be able to decide what they consume, and how and by whom it is produced.
   * the right of Countries to protect themselves from too low priced agricultural and food imports.
   * agricultural prices linked to production costs : they can be achieved if the Countries or Unions of States are entitled to impose taxes on excessively cheap imports, if they commit themselves in favour of a sustainable farm production, and if they control production on the inner market so as to avoid structural surpluses.  
   * the populations taking part in the agricultural policy choices.  
   * the recognition of women farmers' rights, who play a major role in agricultural production and in food.

Food Security for All? Not So Much

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 10:29:20 AM PDT

What is being pitched as a new agricultural revolution under these forms of investment will look very much like the colonial model of exploitation with the exception that the output will meet commodity demand in high growth countries versus demand in the colonizing nation.

A well coordinated strategy would use the WTO, not to police nations to reduce barriers to trade uniformly, but to coordinate international agricultural policy to ensure food security for all, particularly ensuring short-term efforts to address food security by dumping excess commodities on low income country markets do not crowd out domestic production of agricultural crops in the medium to long-term.

Why aren't we seeing true change in global policies to ensure food security for all? I did a recent follow the money piece on Alternet asking just that. Our global food security policy seems to be entirely driven by the interests of our largest multinational corporations, plain and simple.  

Breaking: Gates Foundation Does Something Good

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Jul 08, 2009 at 12:50:45 PM PDT

Worldwatch Institute will assess the impacts of a range of farming techniques on the environment and agricultural productivity. The project will provide stakeholders, including policymakers, farmer and community networks, and international donors, with research on practical solutions for creating sustainable food security.

In other words, they are going to try some sustainable agriculture and see what happens. Nice. Here are the specific things they say they will try:

• Adding nitrogen-fixing plants into crop rotations as a low-cost solution for enriching soils and breaking weed and pest cycles;

• Overcoming freshwater shortages with rain harvesting, efficient irrigation, micro dams, and cover cropping;

• Strengthening local breeding capacity, including the use of farmer-run seed banks and genetic markers of important crop traits;

• Tapping international carbon-credit markets to reward farmers for enriching their soils and planting carbon-sequestering tree crops;

• Involving women farmers in decision-making at all levels.

Better yet? They are partnering with groups like World Neighbors, Ecoagriculture Partners, Heifer International, Rodale Institute, Slow Food International, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Global Water Policy Project. Very exciting! The end result of the project will be the Institute's 2011 annual report "World 2011: Nourishing the Planet," which will share the project's findings.

Don't Be One of Nero's Guests

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 13, 2009 at 14:02:33 PM PDT

Here is a story he ends with, and I will share it with you as a way of encouraging you to listen to the full speech. Back in ancient Rome, the Emperor Nero held a great party. To provide light for the party (as this was before the age of electricity), he hauled prisoners out of the jails and set them on fire one by one. Sainath points out that it's not terribly impressive that Nero was so cruel - we already knew that - but he wants to know "Who were Nero's guests?" Who were the guests at the party that could sip their wine, glass by glass, as human beings were burned alive? And as he makes the point that extreme wealth does not exist without extreme poverty, he encourages each of us, don't be one of Nero's guests.

If you are interested in more information from Palagummi Sainath, I recommend his book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, and I also recommend another book referenced in this podcast, Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis.

Kenyans Speak Out About World Hunger

by: Jill Richardson

Mon May 11, 2009 at 13:00:00 PM PDT

Producers of genetically modified foods talk a great deal about feeding the world. However, cumulatively, food shortages don't exist in the world. For example, has anybody ever heard the UN World Food Programme complaining about food shortages? It complains about lack of money to buy it. That goes for the hungry. They've got no money.

For Monsanto et al to proclaim from mountains tops about feeding the world, is rubbish. Growing food for sale yes! Creators of the 3-Vitamins maize say their operation is humanitarian.

Presumably, someone somewhere will dish out free seeds to farmers in sub-Sahara Africa. More rubbish.

From an economic point of view, the hungry will remain hungry, with or without genetically modified food. It's up to governments to rid their countries of causes of poverty and to fight monopolies like Monsanto.

Vilsack and USDA Update

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Apr 24, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PDT

Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan officially kicked off the Earth Day event at the Whitten Building with Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Brings Plenty who performed a traditional song and planted seeds at a ceremonial Three Sisters Garden to celebrate American Indians' contribution to American agriculture... Eventually, the garden will include organic raised vegetable beds, organic transition plots, an organic urban container garden, an organic kitchen pollinator garden, rain gardens and a bat house.

In addition to Earth Day celebrations, Vilsack has also been thinking about hunger in the U.S. and abroad by writing an op-ed (at the link) and participating in the recent G8 summit. Although Vilsack and I no doubt differ in how we think global hunger should be handled (I tend to side with organizations like Via Campesina that poor countries' need to be leaders in the decisions made around helping their starving populations), it's wonderful that he cares about hunger and he's dedicated to doing something about it. Unfortunately, he came out against grain reserves as a means of controlling price volatility. I hope that in the coming months he will discover the work of people like Molly Anderson and Frances Moore Lappe and that he will consider their views on how we might feed the world's hungry.

Vilsack was also quoted supporting cap and trade efforts that might compensate farmers for sequestering carbon. Big Ag wants to allow farmers to pollute for free while getting paid for any positive contributions to the climate crisis, and my hunch is that Vilsack will go to bat for them on the issue. I hope that some day, when the Rodale Institute delivers compost for the USDA's garden, Vilsack stops to chat with the folks from Rodale about their methods of sequestering carbon with agriculture. I would love to see a major shift in our policy that would lead to widespread use of cover crops as fertilizer, mulch, carbon sequestration, oil use reduction, and weed control by utilizing Rodale's methods.

A few more quick announcements:

• USDA gives $170 mil to rural communities
• The USDA is reviewing civil rights complaints (not exactly news but the article has the latest on the story)
• Vilsack is holding listening sessions around the country with groups opposed to the National Animal ID System (NAIS) over the next several months
• Vilsack appointed Doug Caruso as the Farm Service Agency Administrator (Russ Feingold sent around a very positive statement about Caruso, so that's a good sign about this pick)
• Vilsack picked Kevin Concannon as Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services. Concannon was the head of Iowa's Health and Human Services department.
• Last (for now), Vilsack appointed Robert Bonnie of the Environmental Defense Fund as his Senior Advisor for Environment and Climate.

The Future of Global Food and Agriculture

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Apr 24, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

Here's what happened. The countries of the world came together and accidentally did something REALLY good. Well, not quite so accidentally. For some it was on purpose. But I think those who are usually in power actually let it happen by accident (those are my words, not Molly's). After all, the result was what Al Gore might call "An Inconvenient Truth." So inconvenient that the U.S. (under Bush), Canada, and Australia did not approve the report. Every other country involved did.

As it turned out, Molly was doing a presentation on the report at the conference I was at. The report is a look back over the past 50 years in agriculture and at the next 10 years. In looking at agriculture, the goal of the report was to improve poverty, hunger, nutrition, health, and environmental and social sustainability. It covers the entire world in one section, and then breaks up the world into 5 separate regional reports. And - here's the real surprise - it calls for sustainability! REAL sustainability, not greenwashing. That might be common sense to us but it's a MAJOR shift from current U.S. agricultural policy or from the policy of most of the powerful entities that set the course for agriculture around the world.

So here's what Molly had to say...