While there has been widespread reporting of the riots that have broken out around the world as a result of the global food crisis, little attention has been paid to the way forward. The solution is a radical shift in power away from the international financial institutions and global development agencies, so that small-scale farmers, still responsible for most food consumed throughout the world, set agricultural policy. Three interrelated issues need to be tackled: land, markets and farming itself.
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Despite the fanfare about soaring yields, hybrid rice has not been a successful crop. Three decades of subsidies and research have failed to bring it into mass production, except in China. But now, with the world facing a serious rice crisis, hybrid rice is back on the agenda. It is being strongly pushed as the only way of boosting rice production. The consequences of a large-scale shift from conventional rice to corporate-friendly hybrids would be devastating not only for small farmers but also for future world rice production.
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Why Bush is wrong to blame Indians for the rise in food prices
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Professor of Food Policy at City University in London, Timothy Lang is a leading authority on food. He has written extensively on issues such as food security, food inequalities, nutrition and the tension between food democracy and food control. The steep rise in the price of basic food commodities on the world market this year came as no surprise to him, for he has been warning for some time that the world is “sleepwalking into a crisis”.
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A highly pathogenic variety of the H5N1 type of avian flu was first reported in the West African country of Benin in December 2007. Even though this type of flu has been known for more than four years, the authorities in Benin, rather than learning from others’ experiences, have repeated many of their mistakes: they have dealt with the outbreaks secretively; they have blamed wild birds, with no supporting evidence; they have failed to ban the import of poultry. Worse still, they are refusing to pay compensation and thus causing huge economic problems for thousands of small farmers who have lost their livelihoods.
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As the push toward neoliberalism advances, and quantitative measures to protect local markets, such as tariffs and quotas, disappear, industrial powers are turning to qualitative measures such as food safety regulations to further skew trade in their favour. In the food safety arena, both the US and the EU are pressing their standards on other countries. For Washington, even though its own food safety system is widely criticised as too lax, this means getting countries to accept GMOs and US meat safety inspections. For Brussels, whose food safety standards have a much better reputation, it means imposing high standards on countries that cannot meet them. Bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a tool of choice to push through the changes.
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Au fur et à mesure des avancées de l’offensive néolibérale et de la disparition des mesures quantitatives de protection des marchés locaux, comme les droits de douane et les quotas, les grandes puissances industrielles ont recours à des mesures qualitatives comme les réglementations sur la sécurité sanitaire des aliments pour continuer à fausser le jeu de la concurrence à leur avantage. Sur la scène de la sécurité sanitaire, les États-Unis comme l’UE tentent de faire adopter leurs normes par les autres pays. Pour Washington, dont le propre système de sécurité sanitaire est souvent accusé de laxisme, c’est une manière d’amener les pays à accepter les OGM et les inspections sur la sécurité sanitaire des viandes. Pour Bruxelles, dont les normes de sécurité sanitaire ont bien meilleure réputation, cela se traduit par l’imposition de normes très strictes à des pays qui ne peuvent les respecter. Les accords de libre échange (ALE) bilatéraux sont devenus un instrument privilégié pour faire passer les changements.
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A medida que la ofensiva del neoliberalismo avanza y se eliminan las medidas de protección para los mercados locales tales como los aranceles y los cupos de importación, las potencias industriales ponen la mira ahora en medidas cualitativas tales como las reglamentaciones relativas a la inocuidad de los alimentos para continuar sesgando así el mercado a su favor. En materia de sanidad animal y vegetal, tanto Estados Unidos como la Unión Europea están tratando de imponerle sus normas a los demás países. Para Washington eso significa conseguir que otros países acepten los transgénicos y sus normas de inspección de sanidad animal e inocuidad de la carne, a pesar del hecho que el sistema regulatorio estadounidense de sanidad animal y vegetal es ampliamente criticado como demasiado laxo. Para Bruselas, que se rige por normas de inocuidad de los alimentos que gozan de mucha mejor reputación, significa imponerle normas de alta calidad a países que no pueden satisfacerlas. Los tratados de libre comercio (TLC) bilaterales son hoy la herramienta predilecta para forzar esos cambios.
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