Returning from the fields of Gujarat, India.
Evolution of the percentage of agricultual workers.
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Agriculture
and
the World Trade Organization
The 1994 Marrakesh
accords setting up the WTO include an Agreement on Agriculture.
During the negotiations, the world’s two great food powers–the United States and
Europe–argued in favour of liberalization, as long as it protected their farmers’
interests. The Cairns group–14 of the world’s leading food exporters, including Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Brazil–took a hard line in defense of free
trade. Poor developing countries barely made themselves heard.
The final agricultural agreement contains three sections:
• Market access: tariffs on imported products must gradually decrease by 36 percent.
For each product, 5 percent of national consumption must be freely imported.
• Export subsidies must also be lowered by 36 percent (in value), but not export
credits, which are used extensively by the United States.
• Domestic price supports must be reduced: farm price subsidies must drop by 20 percent.
But member states have the right to subsidize their farmers’ income, which Europe
does.
Five years later, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says
that Europe and the United States have increased their aid to farmers, but 20 percent
of them receive 80 percent of the assistance. According to the FAO, developing countries
have barely increased their exports, while imports are much higher than before.
A new round of talks is scheduled in 2001.
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Cereal yields.
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The
secret of good policy is to make those who cultivate the land for the good of others
die of hunger.
Voltaire,
French philosopher
(1694-1778)
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The
Green Revolution
In the 1950s,
the Rockfeller and Ford foundations transferred farm technology to Asia, which was
suffering from chronic food shortages, and Latin America, which was ravaged by land
conflicts. Both areas were experiencing a rise in mass discontent, a concern in the
context of the Cold War.
The Green Revolution, which resulted from a massive outpouring of public funding
to small, owner-occupied farms, was based on the cultivation of high-yield crops
such as rice and wheat, the expansion of irrigation and the spread of agro-chemicals,
but without mechanization. Affecting approximately half the southern hemisphere’s
farmers, it boosted their yields and, especially in Asia, helped them achieve food
self-sufficiency.
But the Green Revolution had little impact on the most disadvantaged areas. Elsewhere,
this model is in crisis because of declining public aid in the wake of structural
adjustment, harmful effects on the environment caused by the use of chemical fertilizers
and pesticides, and the economic vulnerability of farmers who have shifted from mixed-crop
subsistence farming to single-crop cultivation for the market.
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Evolution of world grain prices.
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Globalization
could mean that the women who raise, feed and care
for our milk animals earn dividends for stockholders in Geneva.
Verghese
Kurien (1921-),
president of India’s National Dairy Development Board
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Free
trade threatens to drive half the world’s farmers off the land, even though they
hold the key to feeding the world and protecting the environment
In the 1950s, an African
farmer produced ten quintals of grain, says Marcel Mazoyer1, professor at the
national agronomical institute in Paris. He kept eight to feed his family, and had
two left over to sell on the market at $29 per quintal (at current rates). He thus
had $57 of income to cover basic expenses. Today, with a quintal fetching less than
$14, he must sell four to obtain the same amount and purchase vital necessities.
He can no longer feed his family, much less make a profit that would enable him to
invest in ways to increase production. His chances of living, or rather eking a living
off the earth dwindle with each passing day.
A farmer in the Punjab could “modernize” his farm thanks to the Green Revolution
(see box, p. 22). Fifteen years ago, he used $30 worth of fertilizers to harvest
a tonne of grain (see article, pp. 27-28). Today, soil depletion and the harmful
effects of uncontrolled irrigation force him to spend $80 for the same amount of
produce. Meanwhile, the market price has dropped and self-sufficiency has become
impossible. He must sell his harvests to purchase a good part of his food, seeds,
fertilizer and pesticides. The outcome is inevitable: this farmer will have to sell
his land to pay back his creditors.
These two case studies are not unusual among the world’s 1.3 billion farmers and
agricultural workers2. In the developed
countries, including eastern Europe, only 45 million farmers, or roughly seven percent
of the working population, are left. In the developing world, they account for over
half the working population, men and women combined. On average, each farmer cultivates
one hectare and harvests one tonne of produce. Almost none owns a tractor. Three-quarters
do not even own an animal to pull a plough. Over half of these southern farmers suffer
from chronic malnutrition: three-quarters of the 800 million human beings who go
hungry every day are impoverished farmers. The little that they manage to sell has
lost half its worth during the past 30 years.
“With such low income, they can afford neither tools, nor selected seeds, nor fertilizers;
they can barely survive,” says Dr. Mazoyer. And they must confront a growing threat:
the opening of borders, which puts them in direct competition with the northern hemisphere’s
industrial agro-businesses, whose productivity per farmer may be up to 1,000 times
higher.
“Agro-business” is relatively recent: it did not become widespread in developed countries
until after the Second World War. Until then, family farming had predominated since
the agrarian reform that followed the dismantling of feudal properties. Agro-business
relies on increasingly advanced technology based on mechanization, chemistry (fertilizers
and herbicides), the selection of seeds and ever-costlier investments. The results
are mixed.
Footing
the bill of a model stretched to the limits
On
the one hand, productivity has skyrocketed in the north. Grain yields per hectare
are an average of two-and-a-half times higher than they were 40 years ago; on the
most efficient farms, a single farmer working alone can cultivate 300 hectares. These
productivity gains have been higher than in manufacturing and services. They have
resulted in continuously dropping produce prices, and therefore in a steady decline
in the amount of income that consumers spend on food.
On the other hand, the limits of this model are increasingly obvious. The outbreak
of “mad cow” disease provides some idea of the ravages that high-yield, industrial
farming can cause. Environmental damage–polluted aquifers, soil depletion, decreasing
biodiversity–is on the rise. This form of agriculture guzzles 70 percent of potable
water consumed. And now it is suffering from a backlash, because yields and profitability
have hit a ceiling. That explains why spreading genetically modified organisms is
a central issue for industrial agriculture in search of a second wind.
This model’s expansion also comes with an economic and social cost. The former is
largely masked. Through a process that economists call “externalization,” society
as a whole foots a good part of the bill. “Externalization” will continue in the
future, because one day the bill for environmental damage will have to be paid. It
is already present in the form of taxes which citizens pay to subsidize farmers.
Most of this aid is allocated depending on production volumes and cultivated surface
areas, and benefits farms that are the best suited to agro-industry; the rest are
gradually sidelined. The major social cost results from the ongoing concentration
of land, which, according to Rolf Künnemann of the NGO Foodfirst Information
and Action Network, bears all the hallmarks of a “new feudalism.” In the United States,
50,000 farms vanish every year. Polish farmers’ organizations say that their country’s
membership in the European Union will spell the end of two-thirds of the country’s
farms, “in the best of cases.”
In the north, the casualties benefit or have benefited from social safety nets or
training programmes to learn skills for new jobs in other industries, which is what
approximately 50 million former farmers in the developed world did during the past
half-century. But how will southern cities absorb a massive influx of people leaving
the countryside when they already have 600 million inhabitants who are either unemployed
or scraping by on odd jobs in the parallel economy?
Yet this model in crisis is the one spreading across the planet, despite its clearly
identified negative effects, especially in terms of environmental and social repercussions
(see box p. 23). Agro-industry has a blatant interest in conquering new markets in
the south, because those in the north are saturated. But this development comes with
a price: 500 million farmers in the south will be driven off the land because they
lack the means to be or become competitive.
The planetary spread of agro-business is based on a binary postulate that has been
repeated so often it has acquired the force of truth: the only possible alternative
would be either the hopeless “archaism” and immobility that characterize southern
farming, or “modernization,” which would purely and simply graft the north’s industrial
agricultural revolution onto the south. But, observing the effects of this type of
modernization in the developing world, Ignacy Sachs and Ricardo Abromovay3 explain that “the
great landed estates inherited from colonial rule are turning into agricultural companies.
Their economic efficiency, assessed by macro-social standards, is questionable.”
They see a new paradigm emerging: “the production of wealth goes hand-in-hand with
the simultaneous reproduction of poverty.”
Time
to give a chance to family farming
Is
there a third way? Yes, replies a chorus of agronomists and farmers: family farming
which, when given a chance, breaks production records and enables farmers to earn
a decent livelihood.
Giving family farms a chance means first of all breaking with the urbanization policy
that most governments in the developing countries have adopted. Because cities are
more turbulent than the countryside, governments are trying to feed them at a lower
cost. The liberalization under way is exacerbating this situation, because world
farm prices are generally lower than local ones. What’s more, exports of cash crops
are becoming a priority to balance trade, which is kept under close watch by the
IMF and the World Bank. However, for farmers in poor countries to advance, “the fruit
of their labour must be remunerated at a price which allows them to purchase additional
means of production,” says Mazoyer. “Without protectionism, without trade barriers,
they will not be able to grow.”
The second obstacle is agrarian reform. In a recent study, Krishna Ghimire, a researcher
at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (Unrisd), said that
land ownership remains a hidden explosive issue. The best-known case is Brazil, where
20 percent of the landowners possess 88 percent of the land (see pp. 24-26). Only
a few countries have undertaken genuine agrarian reform, including Mexico in the
early days of the twentieth century; Japan, Taiwan and South Korea after the Second
World War; China and Cuba after their revolutions. Almost everywhere else, the laws
passed in the 1950s and 60s have not been applied. In southeast Asia, only India’s
West Bengal and Kerala states, where 10 percent of the region’s population lives,
have completed land redistribution.
Furthermore, says Krishna Ghimire, the major international organizations have come
round to the doctrine of “market-assisted agrarian reform,” which assumes that the
law of supply and demand can be fairly applied. But how could an Egyptian agricultural
worker acquire a feddan of land (0.42 hectare), which would cost him the equivalent
of an entire lifetime’s income?
To show the potential of the family farm, the fact that it is not a solvent market
for agro-industry has to be acknowledged. Instead, it must accomplish a scientific
revolution geared towards its needs and means. Only governments can undertake these
substantial research efforts, which must directly involve farmers and their know-how.
Between 1800 and 1940, family farms in the northern countries tripled their gross
production, then doubled it in the half-century that followed. Small farms do not
damage the environment. They stimulate the active use of the soil, mobilize reserves
of family labour and ensure high returns on investment. They benefit from subtle
knowledge of the natural environment, encourage diversification as opposed to rigid
specialization, and take a personal interest in quality because they consume the
same produce that they sell.
“The undernourishment of 800 million people is not related to insufficient world
production,” says Mazoyer. “The problem is insufficient production in the poor countries.”
Giving family farming a chance at last is the indispensable condition to eliminate
the scourge of hunger. Farmers who are fighting for their rights are also fighting
for everyone to be able to feed themselves decently and sufficiently.
1. Author of
Histoire des agriculteurs du monde (“History of the World’s Farmers”), Seuil,
Paris, 1997.
2. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics come from the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).
3. Nouvelles configurations villes-campagnes (“New town-country configurations”),
published by UNESCO’s Most programme.
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Krishna
Ghimire*: is there a future
in the countryside?
It would
seem that the rural population is ageing everywhere, isn’t it?
That’s something I observed while doing research on the beneficiaries of agrarian
reform in the Philippines several years ago. To be fruitful, access to land must
be accompanied by access to credit. Banks grant loans over 30-year periods. When
a farmer is over 50, he finds himself at a dead end.
Why do young people want to leave the land?
First, because they don’t own any, or very little. Rural poverty increased during
the 1980s as a result of structural adjustment plans that countries in debt negotiated
with the IMF. That is something I observed in three cases: the Madi valley in Nepal,
which opened up to agriculture in the 1960s; the Sinai desert in Egypt, which has
been farmed for a dozen years; and the state of Pernambuco in Brazil.
Are the three situations similar?
In Nepal, the plots are too small and there is no hope of enlarging them. The
future there lies in emigrating to India, where the Nepalese, who have a reputation
for integrity and bravery, have locked up the security-guard market, or to the Gulf
states. In Ras Sudr, Egypt, the government gives each family a plot of land where
it grows olive trees and vegetables. The nearby tourist resorts are an outlet for
their produce. These families had no hope of moving anywhere else in Egypt because
inequality of land ownership is still rife. There is one overriding feeling in Ras
Sudr: resignation.
Are the landless Brazilian farmers more determined?
Yes, the beneficiaries of agrarian reform know that in town their children will
spend more and be exposed to a crime-ridden environment. Most often, they are former
farm labourers who know a lot about soils and crops. But the other side of the coin
is that they were wage-earners who worked in mechanized agriculture, and lack the
savings mentality that characterizes farmers in Asia. I spoke with a farmer who sold
his corn harvest to purchase cornmeal in a store. For every $14 he earned, he spent
$13.90. Not producing the food you consume is incomprehensible to me.
* Researcher
and chief project manager on agrarian reform and civil society at the United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva.
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