[Reader-list] RTF (Right to Food) Articles - 5

[Rakesh Iyer]

 ------------------------------
 [image: Frontline]  *Volume 19 - Issue 13, Jun. 22 - Jul. 5, 2002*
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

Home <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/index.htm> *•*
Contents<http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1913/index.htm>

 <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1913/index.htm>
------------------------------


 EVENTS

 Profits over people

*How the World Food Summit in Rome last fortnight buried food rights, and
clearly laid the contours of the future the powerful of the world are
designing.*

*VANDANA SHIVA*

THE "World Food Summit: 5 years later" which concluded in Rome on June 13
was supposed to address the most important human rights violation of our
time - the denial of the right to food to millions. Many of the delegates
found football more important than hunger. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian
leader, wrapped up the so-called "Summit" two hours ahead of schedule so
that everyone could watch the World Cup of football. Nero fiddled while Rome
burnt. Leaders watch football while their people starve. In any case, while
serious commitments were being made, no serious analysis was attempted to
address the growing crisis of hunger and malnutrition.

PIER PAOLO CITO/AP
*The opening session of the World Food Summit in Rome.*

While the Summit was a total failure in addressing the hunger issue, it did
become a launching pad for the biotechnology industry. The hunger for food
was neglected. The hunger for profit was fully attended to. It was used to
put the stamp of approval on genetically engineered seeds and crops which
have been at the centre of controversy over the past decade.

As is becoming the trend, the World Food Summit was not negotiated. A text
was ready before the leaders arrived. The leaders came only came from the
countries of the South. Rich country leaders were absent. The United States
government was conspicuous by its influence. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann
M. Veneman, who used to be with Calgene, now a company under Monsanto, held
a press conference to announce how biotechnology would save people and the
rainforests. (A U.S. journalist who interviewed this writer commented that
the current U.S. government is in fact a "Monsanto administration". Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to be president of Searle, which merged with
Monsanto. And Attorney-General John Ashcroft had received campaign funds
from Monsanto.)

While no financial commitment was made on the hunger front, the head of
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced
biotechnology aid of $100 million to Third World countries over the next ten
years for transfer of biotechnology. With and tied to trade and commercial
interests, it is possible that poor countries which have been resisting
genetic engineering will now open their doors to it.

The Summit seemed to have moved from addressing the problem of hunger of the
poor to hunger for profits and control of corporations. It conveyed the
impression of being more a sale-show for the biotechnology industry than a
serious gathering of leaders seeking to find collective ways and make
collective commitments to address the biggest human rights disaster of our
times - more than a billion people going hungry in a world with abundant
food and wealth.

The Summit was to have been organised before the Doha Ministerial Meeting of
the World Trade Organisation (WTO). However, because of protests in Genoa at
the time of the G-7 summit when the police killed a youth, the Italian
government had made Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) postpone the
Summit since it was worried about protests. A peaceful protest by more than
20,000 people did take place on June 8, an indication that for citizens food
and agriculture is a major concern. In countries of the Third World it is a
concern because most people of the South are peasants and farmers, because
most people who are growing hungry are in rural areas and could be producing
enough food for their needs had they not been displaced and had not their
resources and assets been alienated, and had not their food sovereignty been
destroyed by non-sustainable capital-intensive technologies and unfair terms
of trade between rural and urban areas, between agriculture and industry,
and between North and South.

Reform of the global agriculture system was the most important issue for
debate and negotiation at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Doha. The most
significant failing of Rome was that it made no effort to contribute to
reform of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture with people's food rights as the
defining imperative for reform.

Starvation is the inevitable result of policies of globalisation which are
transforming food from a basic need, to which everyone has a right, to a
globally-traded commodity. Most hungry people are rural producers who are
hungry either because their resources have been ecologically degraded or
alienated, or because they are too deeply in debt to buy costly inputs for
Green Revolution-style industrial agriculture. They cannot consume the food
they grow. This is the story of Kalahandi and Kashipur in Orissa. People
starve because of erosion of entitlements, not lack of food. And
entitlements are being eroded by globalisation in four ways.

First, capital-intensive systems of agriculture rob peasants of incomes and
push them into debt and penury. The epidemic of farmers' suicides is a
reflection of this growing crisis of increasing costs of production.

Secondly, as markets get integrated globally and import restrictions
(quantitative restrictions or QRs) are removed, the artificial prices set by
the monopoly control of agribusiness and the $400 billion-worth subsidies in
rich countries depress domestic prices, robbing farmers of markets and
incomes.

The recently announced U.S. Farm Bill increases U.S. subsidies to $18
billion over the next few years. This will depress further the prices
farmers receive worldwide, making agriculture non-viable for small and
marginal producers. It also throws to the world the oft-quoted justification
for globalisation and WTO rules - that it would create a level playing field
and force rich countries to reduce subsidies. The WTO is clearly helpless in
disciplining rich countries like the U.S. Its discipline seems to be imposed
only on countries like India which has been forced to change its patent laws
under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime and to
remove QRs for agricultural imports.

The third level at which food entitlements of the poor are eroded is by the
shift from "food first to export first" policies. India's new agriculture
policy as well as the last two Union Budgets made this shift evident.
Export-oriented agriculture policies divert scarce land and water from
meeting local food needs to providing for export markets thus creating
hunger and conditions for famine for the most vulnerable and marginal
communities. This is what happened during colonialism and is happening under
the recolonisation of globalisation.

The inverse relation between increasing exports and declining food
consumption locally and nationally has been exhibited under export-led
strategies of World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). In
Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Zaire, which account for 60
per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a 33 per
cent decline in cereal output per head and 20 per cent decline in overall
food output per head in less than a decade. All the countries saw rising
agricultural exports per head along with declining food output or food
consumption per head.

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP
*At the venue of the NGO Forum session held parallel to the Food Summit.*

Finally, hunger is a result of policies linked to structural adjustment and
globalisation which promote sudden withdrawal of the state and reckless
dependence on markets. The dismantling of the public distribution system
(PDS) has destroyed India's food security.

The 1943 Bengal famine forced intervention by government to ensure the
supply of food to people facing famine. A rationing system was introduced.
The first Foodgrains Policy Committee appointed in 1943 recommended
procurement of foodgrains from surplus areas, rationing for equitable
distribution and statutory price control to check price rise.

The Foodgrains Policy Commission, appointed to draft a foodgrains policy for
independent India, recommended the abolition of food controls, rationing and
the necessity of imports to maintain central reserves. Between 1957-58 and
1966-67, the PDS was dominated by imports from the U.S. under the PL 480
scheme.

The creation of artificial profitability for the production of Green
Revolution wheat and rice was based on the creation of centralised
institutions for the control of farm economies. Two central bodies related
to food production, procurement and distribution were established in 1965 on
World Bank advice. One was the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which was
responsible for procurement, import, distribution, storage and the sale of
foodgrain. The other was the Agricultural Prices Commission (APC) which
determined minimum support prices for foodgrains, and through it, controlled
cropping patterns, land use and profitability. Through food price and
procurement, the Central government now controlled the economics of food
grain production and distribution. The profitability of foodgrain production
in this centralised, subsidised and enclavised form could not be maintained
over time. In the 1980s, subsidies became a drain on the government budget.

In 1991, the World Bank, which had earlier designed the centralised system,
called for its dismantling through its SAPs. The Bank demanded the
dismantling of the PDS, the removal of the Essential Commodities Act, the
removal of price and inventory control and deregulation of agricultural
trade. It recommended the corporatisation of agriculture and a shift from a
state-centred to a corporate-centred food system.

RADICAL restructuring of the PDS and withdrawal of food subsidies was an
important aspect of India's structural adjustment. The revamped PDS (RPDS)
was supposed to target vulnerable regions better and reduce public
expenditure. However, all that it did was to increase hunger while adding to
government expenditure. In 1997, the RPDS was replaced by the Targeted PDS
(TPDS). It provided 10 kg of wheat or rice a month to families below poverty
line (BPL) at highly subsidised prices and withdrew all subsidies for
families above poverty line (APL). As a result, food prices increased,
off-take fell, and stocks grew.

The TPDS artificially divided the population into BPL and APL categories.
Those who access food from fair price shops are those who cannot buy it from
the market. The APL category has been defined as those earning above
Rs.1,500 a month, which is barely enough to meet basic needs. Those in the
APL category have also to bear 100 per cent of the procurement and
distribution costs, which places foodgrains far above their reach. In fact,
the government committee formulating the long-term grain policy has
recommended that the price of grain for the APL category be slashed by 25
per cent.

There were major problems with the TPDS. First, the BPL/APL categories were
arbitrary and the BPL beneficiaries who were to be targeted were
artificially reduced. The whole exercise of targeting BPL families was
exposed as a farce when 12 States informed the Supreme Court that they could
not identify people in the BPL category. Instead of targeting the poor, the
World Bank-driven policies made the poor and their food entitlements
disappear.

Further, the quantum of allotment of 10 kg of wheat or rice for a family at
best meets only 12 per cent of the nutritional requirement, forcing the poor
to depend on high markets for 88 per cent of their requirements and consume
less, thus reducing off-take from the PDS.

The decline in off-take is the main reason for the growing stocks. Fifty
million tonnes of foodgrains are rotting while people cannot afford to buy
food. Stocks of rice have increased from 13 million tonnes to 22 million
tonnes, while wheat stocks have gone up from 872 million tonnes to 2,411
million tonnes. While the conditionalities set by global trade and financial
institutions prevent the government from supporting the poor to have access
to adequate and nutritious food, they promote the diversion of subsidies
from people to corporations. While people have been forced to buy wheat and
rice at Rs.11.30 a kg following the withdrawal of subsidies, corporations
get wheat and rice at subsidised prices.

It is trading giants such as Pepsi and Cargill that have benefited from the
withdrawal of food subsidies to the poor and redirection of subsidies for
exports. Trade liberalisation is a recipe to starve the poor and feed the
corporations.

WHILE the World Food Summit totally failed to address the crisis of hunger
and the increase in hunger due to globalisation, or find effective solutions
to the problem of starvation, movements and non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) gathered at the Forum parallel to the Food Summit presented exciting
experiences and research. The theme of the NGO Forum was "Food Sovereignty"
and it had a broad-based participation of peasants, women, seed saver
movements and ecological and organic movements.

Studies show that organic/ecological agriculture produces more food, while
protecting livelihoods and the environment. At a session organised by Bread
for the World at which this writer spoke, the results of a study of 89
projects worldwide showed that sustainable agriculture can lead to
substantial increases in per hectare food production. The proportional yield
increases are generally 50 per cent to 100 per cent for rainfed crops and 5
per cent to 10 per cent for irrigated crops.

At the same session, Greenpeace presented a study that showed that in
Argentina, the country in the South with the highest acreage of genetically
engineered crops, farm incomes had declined, chemical use had increased and
yields of GM crops had decreased.

However, none of the studies which showed that neither GMOs nor chemicals
are necessary to produce more food informed the official Summit. It blindly
promoted biotechnology. The declaration states: "We call on the FAO, in
conjunction with the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research) and other international research institutes, to advance
agricultural research and research into new technologies, including
biotechnology... We are committed to study, share and facilitate the
responsible use of biotechnology in addressing development needs."

At a major session on Women and Agriculture in the FAO which this writer was
asked to address, links were made between the Food Summit in Rome and the
Earth Summit in Johannesburg, organised 10 years after Rio. The challenge
from Rome to Johannesburg is to make sustainable agriculture the cornerstone
of food and agriculture policy. The evidence and practices are there to
prove that the sustainable solutions are also the solutions that promote
equity and justice. However, one can already predict that the World Summit
on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will be another non-negotiated declaration
promoting the interests of global corporations.

The trends are clear - a redefinition of globalisation as sustainable
development and biotechnology as sustainable agriculture; the replacement of
legally binding (Type I) agreements with voluntary partnerships between
corporations and governments (Type II) agreements; and the relaunch of the
biotechnology agenda through the new economic partnership for Africa
(NEPAD).

One could ignore these global circuses. However, they redefine our rights
and restructure governance to transform our democracies into corporate rule.
The Food Summit buried food rights. The WSSD will try to bury people's right
to resources.

However, the right to food and sustenance is a natural right. Governments
can be blind to them. They cannot extinguish them. And people will find new
ways to liberate their food systems from corporate control and liberate the
poor from hunger. The Rome Summit has clearly laid the contours of the
future the powerful are designing. However, history shows us that the future
does not always unfold on the design of the powerful. No regime that rests
on denying people their right to food lasts. The fall of the Roman Empire is
a lesson from the past. The rise of movements like Tebhaga after the Great
Bengal Famine is a more recent reminder from history. In spite of millions
facing starvation, all that the World Food Summit could offer those who
faced hunger and starvation was an "invitation" to FAO "to elaborate, in a
period of two years, a set of voluntary guidelines to support
members-states' efforts to achieve the progressive realisation of the right
to adequate food in the context of national food security".

The legally binding obligations of states have been replaced by "voluntary
guidelines". At a time when globalisation has more to do with whether people
get food or die of hunger, instead of focussing on global trade issues and
WTO rules, "national contexts" are all that is addressed.

It is clear that it is not the World Food Summit of June 2002 but the
struggle of people for their food rights and food sovereignty which will
determine the future.

*Vandana Shiva is Executive Director, Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology, New Delhi. *

 ------------------------------
 [ Subscribe <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/flnsub.htm> | Contact
Us<thehindu at vsnl.com?Subject=%27Frontline%20Feedback%27>|
Archives <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/archives.htm> |
Contents<http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1913/index.htm>]

------------------------------
[ Home <http://www.flonnet.com/> | The Hindu
<http://www.hinduonnet.com/> | Business
Line <http://www.blonnet.com/> | Sportstar <http://www.tssonnet.com/> ]
------------------------------
Copyright © 2002, Frontline.

 Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are
expressly prohibited
without the written consent of Frontline
------------------------------