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Food Sovereignty, StrugglesAgainst GMOs, Climate Changeand Small versus Large Farms in

the South Indian Context

What is happening to world agricultureand what kind of an example has theUS set for developing nations such as

India and China?

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Eminent Domain and the destruction ofexcellent, double and triple cropped farmland or the cementing over Farm Land

• The relationship between the increased power ofelites and their corporations to destroy the veryland used to grow food for most people.

• Often the government will attempt to claim thatthe land is simply waste land, even though itmight be used for grazing, as part of rotationalfallows, routes through which cattle are moved,or places kept for the landless poor to growsomething to eat.

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Food Sovereignty-Food SecurityBrief Definitions for Discussion

• Food security [is] a situation that exists when allpeople, at all times, have physical, social andeconomic access to sufficient, safe andnutritious food that meets their dietary needsand food preferences for an active and healthy

life.(FAO 2001 cited in FAO 2003)

• Food Sovereignty as a concept has engenderedmuch discussion but for this talk will simply relyon the one first promulgated by La ViaCampesina:

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Definitions continued:

• Food sovereignty is the right of each nation tomaintain and develop its own capacity toproduce its basic foods respecting cultural andproductive diversity. We have the right toproduce our own food in our own territory. Foodsovereignty is a precondition to food security.(Via Campesina1996).

• This means the right to secure land rights whicheven the State cannot take away in the name of“Economic Development.”

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Change in Focus of my talk

• Not only talking about south India, but also Indiaas a whole, its relationship to the globaleconomy

• And the role of the US both officially and throughthe influence of middle class and well-to-doIndians living in the US in influencing Indianelites thinking about food and agriculture.

• All in face of growing protests by small farmersall over the country.

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GMO Brinjal and wider issues

• Currently hold on authorizing BT Brinjal

• Wide range of diverse experimental and research basedreports relevant to GMOs as well as wider issuesaffecting world agriculture and climate change including:

– Report by UN Special rapporteur for Food SecurityIssues

– A Report by the Norwegian Govt.’s Aid Agency

– A Report by the Oakland Institute dealing with Landgrabs

• And numerous other reports.

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India in mid-20th century vs. Indiatoday

• In mid 20th century (when I first went to India)despite farm crises there was a strongcommitment to social justice, and to selfsufficiency in basic food grains and tomeaningful land reform (though both werestrongly fought by well-to-do elites)

• A commitment on the part of even the CongressParty to work on poverty elimination directly andto set up grain banks and rations shops for thepoor to make purchases for day-to-dayfoodstuffs

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What changed this?!

• Green revolution (at least in irrigated areas of thecountry) sparked by a strong US influence

• A switch to neoliberalism by the ruling classes instead ofan earlier commitment to a just society and land reform

• A growing admiration of US agriculture by middle-classes (who want their food in plastic wrap), along withsigning of Knowledge Agreement between Pres. Bushand Manmohan Singh (India’s Prime Minister) whichallowed multinational corporations into India includingMonsanto and Walmart.

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“Being Modern” and “EconomicGrowth”

• Buying up of especially fertile farm land for 8lane highways, potential factories, enormousresidential complexes for well-to-do, upper-middle classes, and politicians, pushing the poorfarmers off their land and urban poor far fromtheir places of work, etc.

• On local level, destroying rivers and streams byremoving all the sand to make concrete, orremoving the soil itself to make bricks for luxuryhomes.

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Continued

• Why India like China needs farm land in Africa,in India’s case in Ethiopia and its relationshipwith land confiscation throughout India, land thathas been being used to grow basic foods to feedIndians of all classes!!

• India and China lead the land grabbing by“developing countries”. 80 Indian companies arealso involved in this. According to Third WorldRes. India’s total investment in Ethiopia by nowis 4.3 billion, a country with severemalnourishment where the biggest greenhousefarming operation is kept hidden from hungryeyes. (ref. TWR,ww2.mcleans.ca/2010/08/19/out-of-africa)

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What good have the protests doneso-far in both India and China?

• Sharma’s quote of a Chinese small farmer inGuangxi whose payment for his land was noteven enough to buy an apartment: Thegovernment cheated away our land and now Ihave little confidence but a lot of anger andresentment.” Sharma goes on to state thatmuch of China and India, the two giants, is beingrendered landless.

• The profits the rich get is considered “economicgrowth.”

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• Rural NGOs, working with small farmersand like-minded people are slowlyorganizing to fight for the poor, the middleclasses, for a truly secure food system thatcan provide enough food for everyone(though not for the export of exotic fruitsetc. to Europe and the Middle East).When this will grow into a large scalemovement or if it ever will remains to beseen?

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Major tension growing betweenCorporations and Corporate Agriculture and

Family Farming, especially smaller farms

• On one side: Most of thecorporate and BusinessCommunity World wide, theUS, MultinationalCorporations, some of the EU,other Corporate owners in“developing countries andstates such as China, WorldBank and its affiliates and IMFand its affiliates, and G20.

• On the other side: Rest of UNincluding the Human RightsCommission, UN Rapporteuron Food Security and GeneralAssembly, Scand. Countries,Holland (though it is in themiddle), a vast body of non-establishment scientific data(which is replicable) and smallcommunities the world-over.Organizations in the globalFood Movement like ViaCampesina, Slow Food andmany smaller or more regionalorganizations.

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Alternative New Technologies (1)

• For example SRI rice production and relatedproduction schemes for other grains

• Crop diversification, intercropping, croprotations, combining field and tree crops

• Return to traditional crops that use less waterand are very nutritious

• Tools to help with direct marketing includingCSAs, Farmer’s markets in local areas,marketing directly to schools, factories,government Institutions, marketing within localareas through other small businesses, etc.

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2. What Else?

• A revived interested in land reform and the“Right to Land that is secure against governmentseizure”

• Tying small scale farming with the maintenanceof bio-diversity and the use of the wide range oftraditional seeds as well as local farmer crosses.

• Getting boosts from the growing food movement• Some local experiments by state governments in

India focusing on organic foods, range of waterconservation methods, for ex. India’s first aquiferproject involving 29 villages in a dry part ofMaharasthra working with the Dept. of Geologyand using rural appraisal by talking with farmersof all sizes, that has led to villagers harvesting 3crops a year instead of going dry.

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Question Corporations always Raise: Howcan the World Feed the 9 billion people

projected for 2050?

• Norwegian AID report : meat consumption inUSA: 120 kg/year/person, world average: 43 kgand India 5 kg. Corporate agriculture is talkingabout producing grain to feed animals, nothumans. (Do humans need that much to keephealthy?) “Agribusiness corporations, backed bymassive subsidies and government support,have ramped up global industrial meatproduction . . . With devastating consequencesfor people, animals, and the environment.

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Continued

• . . . In the South. . . A rising group of home-grown transnational corporations (TNCs) isjoining ranks with …firms from the North to pushBig Meat into every corner of the planetincluding China, Thailand and Brazil, and inIndia they are the ones who are building chickenCAFOs as I saw outside of Hyderabad in thesouth.

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Pre and Post-harvest losses, and otherforms of waste

• Studies show enormous pre and post harvestlosses: ETC groups has shown food waste in US28% of total food supply in 1974, 40% in 2009 –an average of 1400 kcal/day. More than half thecalories needed for an adult. Yet, we facesignificant hunger and malnutrition even in theUS.

• How much food will be needed depends on howmuch waste can be avoided. But, rememberwaste can be profitable for companies.

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Concepts of food Sovereignty andecologically based production systems vs.

large corporate farms• Altieri notes:

– Smallest two hectare farms in US produced$15,104/hectare and netted $2,901/hectare

– Largest farms averaging 15,581 hectaresyielded $249 / hectare and netted$52/hectare.

Small farmers have less environmental impact.Inverse relationship between farm size andoutput to more efficient use of land, water,biodiversity and other agricultural resources.

.

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Land Reform in India

• Even in Kerala, land reform which was passedwith great fanfare when I was working in villagesended up meaning land to the tenant, not land tothe tiller.

• Clearly land reform has gone the way of land tothe elite, and elite definitions of economicgrowth. In one village I lived in in 1967 and haveworked in with assistant recently, someincredibly good triple cropped paddy land is nowbeing dug up to make bricks for movie stars’houses.

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Sustainable Agriculture, Structural Changes,Definitions of Economic Growth:

• Increasing the scope and extent ofsustainable agriculture, food security for all(including the rural and urban poor) alongwith their sense of human dignity andmeeting their basic human needs which Ihave spelled out elsewhere clearlydepends on social movements, both inIndia and the rest of the world.

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continued

• When I first started to work in India, I wasmore hopeful that the poor would be ableto get their basic needs met, along withelectricity, running water, etc. And stillhave a place with some dignity in theirvillages and a sense of independencerelated to their way of work. Yet, the waypeople were moved around, lost theirhomes for the Asian games and things likethat leaves me distressed.

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What happens in the US and itsimplications for India

• India’s Fascination with US and US Life

• If somehow a strong movement developedhere that supports the majority of people intheir quest for a better life with moresecurity, etc. then it might have a betterchance in India. The two are intertwined invery complex ways with a long history.

• But, certainly these are important issuesfor Anthropologists to study.

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What do the global peasantmovements mean?

• That the right to food must also include the right todetermine how food is produced.

• Presently as noted by Third World Resurgence, thepower to determine food production resides with largeagribusiness or with governments. As they state both arefocused on growing “more food’, one for profit and theother for political power.

• TWR suggests that along with laws that govern fooddistribution, we need laws that prevent profiteering fromfood and land and from vesting all food-related decisionswith corporations.

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• And there is a strong need to legally andenforceably remove food from bank andhedge fund speculation so that theirgambling cannot raise fears of one afteranother global food crisis.