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Global Farming Monopolies: Why More Food Means More Starvation, Not Less - More CAPITALIST L-I-E-S FROM THE RIGHT - RI10 - Part II of II
Global Farming
Monopolies: Why
More Food Means
More Starvation,
Not Less - More
CAPITALIST L-I-E-S
FROM THE RIGHT -
RI10 - Part II of II
Above TEXT reprinted below:
The Active Opposition: Broken Heart/Land - The Demise of the Family Farm
Host Peter Coyote joins musician/activist Willie Nelson and panel of farmers, activists and agricultural experts to explore the plight of a dying breed: The Family Farmer. Family farms in the US have foreclosed and vanished at the alarming rate of 500 per week as a corporate agricultural industry, which often wields monopolistic control over commodity prices, has been firmly established throughout the U.S.
Millions of dollars in US government subsidies go to only ten percent of American farmers, while the remaining 90 percent are left to fend for themselves. Increasingly, they’re giving up. Unable to compete with falling commodity prices while their costs to raise a harvest far exceeds any possible return, they migrate by the millions to urban areas. More distressingly, suicide rates among American farmers now stand at five times the national average.
Program host Peter Coyote begins “Broken Heart/Land” with excerpts from an exclusive interview he conducted with country music icon and Farm Aid founder Willie Nelson:
“When five family farmers go under, one business in that community goes under.
So it’s like the domino effect. You lose all the farmers, and then go the schools and the hospitals, all the businesses in that town. Everybody folds up. You got a ghost town, every body moves out and goes on to the next big town and become a problem over there”.
The problem is not just American, as surprisingly similar economic and political pressures are affecting small farmers throughout the world. Europe and the US are now in conflict over GMO food and labeling, while cotton farmers in Mali and elsewhere in the developing world cannot compete with cotton prices from subsidized large-scale American farmers. The Active Opposition explores some of the human and social costs of this transformation.
“Broken Heart/Land” asks if the demise of the American family farm serves as a metaphor for the end of a healthy, rural society in America? The program also examines the quality of the food on our tables, as well as the environmental consequences of large-scale factory farming, including nitrate poisoning from unmanageable quantities of manure runoff and animal waste. Guests on this Active Opposition not only identify some of the contributing factors to this problem, but offer a number of potential solutions.
Guests include:
ANURHADA MITTAL – Co-director of Food First
GARY GRANT - North Carolina farmer and Director of Black Farmers Association.
MARK RITCHIE - President, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
MONA LEE BROCK – Suicide hotline counselor
FRED KIRSCHENMANN – Iowa Farmer. President of Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
Rhonda Perry – Missouri Farmer and Activist.
To view a streamed version suitable for broadband connections, click here; and for dialup connections click here. <Go to Website
http://www.worldlinktv.org/programming/programDescription.php4?code=active_farm
Also read the following Article, published October 3, 2005
World Hunger Myth: “More Food & Corporate Agriculture Are Essential To Feed The World”
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/world_hunger_myth_more_food__corporate_agriculture_are_essen.htm
It is a myth that world hunger
is due to scarcity of food
(Based on an article by Danielle Knight, Washington, Oct 16 1998 (IPS))
Increased food production is not the solution according to recent book
World hunger is extensive in spite of sufficient global food resources. Therefore increased food production is no solution. "The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food". Therefore measures, solving the poverty problem, are what are required to solve the world hunger problem according to this book.
Summary
The food resources of the world are abundant rather than scarce according to Peter Rosset, director of Institute for Food and Development Policy in California. Even in countries with excess food production millions are starving. This is explained in detail in the recent book by Lappe, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset; "World hunger: Twelve Myths", New York: Grove Press. Second Edition 1998.
- The belief that world hunger can be solved by increasing food production is an unsubstantiated myth. It has lead to policies by international organs that have supported farming policies that in practice have boosted production of expensive export foods on the expense of production of basic foods for the population.
The real problem is poverty. As the market responds to money and not to actual need, it can only work to eliminate hunger when purchasing power is widely dispersed according to Rosset. As the rural poor are increasingly pushed from land, they are less and less able to demand for food on the market. Promoting free trade to alleviate hunger has proven to be a failure. In most developing countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened according to the book.
Link to Conclusion
(from blogsite, listed at end of Article, you can link)
Introduction
It is a myth that world hunger is the unavoidable result of food scarcity due to the population explosion aggravated by weather changes. It prevents decision-makers from taking appropriate actions.
"The way people think about hunger is the greatest obstacle to ending it", says Peter Rosset, director of Institute for Food and Development Policy, California, USA, in a book released on World Food Day October 15, 1998.
"As millions of people starve, powerful myths block our understanding of the true causes of hunger and prevent us from taking effective action to end it." Rosset says.
According to his book "World Hunger: Twelve Myths", these myths prevent a correct understanding about the reasons why millions of people are starving.
"The true source of world hunger is not scarcity but policy; not inevitability but politics"...."The real culprits are economies that fail to offer everyone opportunities, and societies that place economic efficiency over compassion".
World food supply is abundant
The world's food supply is abundant, not scarce. The world production of grain and many other foods is sufficient to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day, according to the book. Even in countries that have excess food, large numbers are starving. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 78 percent of all malnourished children aged under five live in countries with food surpluses (in 1997).
"The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food" ...''Even though 'hungry countries' have enough food for all their people right now, many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products".
Because they believe that lack of food is the problem, the World Bank and many governments - put their efforts on increasing food production.
"But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food". For example, the "Green revolution" sponsored by international support organs increased grain production significantly. Still the book notes that "in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes -India, Mexico, and the Philippines for example - grain production and in some cases exports, have climbed while hunger has persisted".
Natural catastrophes not a cause
(The “Natural catastrophes” myth would explain why there could be a decrease in food production, which in turn would imply that a lack of food production is the cause of world hunger. But that is not the case. Therefore the argument that “natural catastrophes” are the root of world hunger is invalid also. If A does not imply C
C),then A implies B implies C is invalid logic! The world becomes much simpler when you think logically!)
Another popular hunger myth is that natural catastrophes are to be blamed. "It's too easy to blame nature; food is always available for those who can afford it while starvation during hard times hits only the poorest". "Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid". Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over this brink.
Overpopulation not a cause
Population growth is another mythical cause of hunger, says the book. "Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger"....''For every Bangladesh - a densely populated and hungry country - we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia where abundant food resources coexist with hunger". In Costa Rica, that only has half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, the life expectancy is 11 years longer than in Honduras, which put it to that of developed countries, according to the book.
Large farms no solution
Several of the myths, revealed by the book, are unsubstantiated assumptions used to argue for the current food, land and agriculture policy. These myths include, according to the book, the belief that large farms, the free-market, free trade and more aid from industrialized countries will solve the hunger problem.
Large landowners commonly control most of the best land but leave much of it idle, according to the book. - "By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable, production systems".
Redistribution of land would give millions of small farmers in developing countries the incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops and leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility, according to the book.
Comprehensive land reforms have markedly increased food production in for example Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. According to a World Bank study of northeast Brazil it is estimated that redistributing farmland into smaller units would increase the output by 80 percent.
Free-markets and lifting tariffs on trade
are no solutions
"Such a 'market is good, government is bad' formula can never help address the causes of hunger", ...''Such thinking misleads us into believing that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines market and government in allocating resources and distributing wealth”.
As the market responds to money and not to actual need, it can only work to eliminate hunger when purchasing power is widely dispersed, says the book. As the rural poor are increasingly pushed from land, they are less and less able to demand for food on the market. Promoting free trade to alleviate hunger has proven to be a failure. In most developing countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened according to the book.
"While soybean exports boomed in Brazil to feed Japanese and European livestock - hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population"...."Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad".
Pro-trade policies like that of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) promote export crop production and suppress basic food production. Foreign aid from industrialized countries has supported such free trade and free market policies.
Foreign aid counterproductive
"Foreign aid works directly against the hungry". U.S. aid in particular is used to promote exports and food production -not to increase the poor's ability to buy food. ''Even emergency, or humanitarian aid, which makes up five percent of the total, often ends up enriching U.S. grain companies while failing to reach the hungry".
World hunger can be eliminated
"Hunger is caused by decisions made by human beings, and can be ended by making different decisions".
Rosset concludes: "The scientific evidence shows it is possible to eliminate hunger..... As societies we have to decide that it is a priority".
Conclusion
The world could feed itself if food policies were based on facts and not on myths as presently. The fact is that there is no scarcity of food. The real reason for the world hunger problem is poverty. This requires political and not agro-technical solutions.
http://www.psrast.org/nowohu.htm
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