Stuffed and Starved

According to the South African Sunday Times, the World Bank and IMF have declared an international food emergency.  However, the Sunday Times does not trace the origins of the present food crisis. For that kind of analysis, one must turn to the book entitled 'Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the hidden battle for the World Food System' by Raj Patel, first published in 2007 by Portobello Books.

According to Patel, the world produces more food than ever before, yet more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. "The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight (p. 1)."  Patel explains that global hunger and obesity are symptoms of the same problem. The root of the problem lies in the chain of production that brings food from the fields to our kitchens. Put another way, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat.

For instance, Patel argues that the choice of apples in North America and Europe is limited to half a dozen varieties including Fuji, Braeburn, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious. The reason that these types of apples dominate the market is because they can stand transportation over long distances. Their skins do not get damaged if they are knocked about travelling many kilometres from orchard to aisle. In addition, these apples are easy to harvest and they respond well to pesticides and industrial production.

Patel adds that even most ingredients in a modern chocolate bar are not really there for the taste. They have been added to make it easier to manufacture the bar, store it, ship it and keep it on shelves.  The ingredients are designed to raise "the melting pot of the chocolate, stabilise the flavours, prevent the ingredients from rotting for months, stop the bar absorbing water or bind together the ingredients so that they don't separate in the packet before you open it (p. 166)."

To keep the food market the way it is, the global economic system has a web of different treaties and organisations that help to shape it, writes Patel. North America has the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The rest of the world is subjected to the policies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank and the IMF's structural adjustments policies.

According to Patel, in Mexico, NAFTA was extended to cover agriculture. Mexico has been a pioneer in experiments with free trade, and trade in food in particular. By including trade in agriculture, NAFTA effectively pitted Mexico's poorest against the most productive and highly subsidised agricultural sectors in the world. Patel points out that it was clear from the outset that corn farming would be hard hit by trade liberalisation.

"The price at which US farmers sold their corn was much lower than the cost to produce it. In 2002, for instance, US corn cost US$1.74 per bushel to buy but US$2.66 for US farmers to produce. This, because the United States had long supported its farmers and had made a range of subsidies available to them for machinery, fertiliser, credit and transport. With the advent of trade liberalisation, it was clear that US corn, subsidised by the US government, would destroy the livelihoods of the poorest in the Mexican rural economy. The cost of producing corn in Mexico was far higher than the subsidised US level (p. 49)."

Furthermore, as soon as  NAFTA began, the Mexican Peso crashed, with a 42 percent devaluation of the peso against the dollar. And the real price of corn for Mexican farmers has fallen continuously since NAFTA began. 

The effect of international trade has been so powerful that eating and drinking would be unimaginable without it. In 2005, the world consumed 1.47 trillion litres of soft drinks, about 227 litres per person. Patel explains that it is through tea and sugar that many of today's soft drinks trace their ancestry. "To grow tea and sugar required industrial agriculture's single most bloody innovation – the plantation (p. 78)." The agricultural technology of advanced and permanent monoculture came with its own social technology, of soil tilled, cane hacked and leaves plucked by an endless supply of almost disposable people from the Global South, he argues. For companies to supply tea and sugar, imperial power was necessary.  Imperialism brought with it slavery and colonialism. Modern imperialism entails NAFTA, structural adjustments and wage slaves.

According to Patel, modern imperialism enables transnational agricultural corporations to control 40 percent of world trade in food, with 20 companies controlling world coffee trade, six controlling 70 percent of wheat trade and one controlling 98 percent of packaged tea.  The way this control is exercised differs. For example, in the fields, corporations offer advice and credit; and when foreclosure threatens, these companies offer farming contracts. Consequently, when farmers and corporations deal, farmers submit to the will of the companies. "Once secured for the company, the food is trucked nationally and internationally, with internal trade within the corporation used to minimise its tax burden (p. 100)."

The extent of concentration of the food market that is in the hands of a few corporations is simply astounding.  The ten largest companies control half the world's seed supply. Ten companies control 55 percent of the US$20 billion veterinary drug market. Ten firms control 84 percent of the nearly US$30 billion pesticide markets, "with analysts pointing to a trend in concentration that will see, by 2015, only three major players in that sector (p. 104)."

This monopolisation of the food markets has produced a situation whereby a quarter and half a million children go blind each year due to deficiency in vitamin A. Patel writes that the United Nations Development Programme estimated in 2000 that 35 percent of the people in the famine region were undernourished, with 54 percent of Mozambique's population undernourished. And, the most vulnerable people to chronic hunger are women, children and the elderly.

However, there are people organising and resisting this enforced poverty and the monopolisation of the food markets. Patel looks at the struggles of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, a movement which began in Southern Brazil and which has developed farms for people, livelihoods, healthcare and education. Furthermore, its agrarian policies have proved to be superior to those of the Brazilian government.

The story of the Landless Rural Workers Movement shows that it is not enough to resist neoliberal agenda, the point should be to imagine and propose news ways of farming and an alternative, better system to the current one.

That is the challenge facing activists today.