Book Review
Introduction
In Part 4 of Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed we learn that: “This manifesto is the outcome of a joint effort among participants in the meetings of the International Commission on the Future of Food, held in late 2002 and early 2003 in Tuscany, Italy.” “We urge people and communities to translate it and use it, as appropriate to their needs, and to disseminate the principles and ideas it contains in as many ways as possible.” “The growing push toward industrialization and globalization of the world’s agriculture and food supply imperils the future of humanity and the natural world.” “Technological interventions sold by global corporations as panaceas for solving global problems of “inefficiency in small-scale production,” and supposedly world hunger, have had exactly the opposite effect. From the Green Revolution to the biotech revolution to the current push for food irradiation, technological intrusions into the historic and natural means of local production have increased the vulnerability of ecosystems. They have brought the pollution of air, water, and soil, as well as new and spreading genetic pollution from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These technology- and corporate-based monocultural systems seriously exacerbate the crisis of global warming because of their heavy dependence upon fossil fuels in all stages from production through distribution. Climate change alone threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture, bringing the likelihood of catastrophe to the near future.”
MANIFESTOS ON THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND SEED
EDITED BY VANDANA SHIVA
SOUTH END PRESS 2007
PART IV
THE MANIFESTOS
Chapter 5: Manifesto on the Future of Food.
- This manifesto is the outcome of a joint effort among participants in the meetings of the International Commission on the Future of Food, held in late 2002 and early 2003 in Tuscany, Italy.
- It is a synthesis of the work and the ideas espoused by hundreds of organizations around the world and thousands of individuals actively seeking to reverse the dire trend toward industrialization and globalization of food production.
- It sets out a practical vision and ideas and programs to move us toward ensuring that food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable, more accessible, and for putting food quality, food safety, and public health above corporate profits.
- We hope that this manifesto will serve as a catalyst to unify and strengthen the movement toward sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, biodiversity, and agricultural diversity, and that it will thereby help to alleviate hunger and poverty globally.
- We urge people and communities to translate it and use it, as appropriate to their needs, and to disseminate the principles and ideas it contains in as many ways as possible.
PART ONE
FAILURE OF THE INDUSTRIALIZED AGRICULTURE MODEL
The growing push toward industrialization and globalization of the world’s agriculture and food supply imperils the future of humanity and the natural world. Successful forms of community-based local agriculture have fed much of the world for millennia, while conserving ecological integrity, and continue to do so in many parts of the planet. But these practices are being rapidly replaced by corporate-controlled, technology-based, monocultural, export-oriented systems. These systems of absentee ownership are negatively impacting public health, food quality and nourishment, traditional livelihoods (both agricultural and artisanal), and indigenous and local cultures, while accelerating indebtedness among millions of farmers and their separation from lands that have traditionally fed communities and families. This transition is increasing hunger, landlessness, homelessness, despair, and suicides among farmers. At the same time, it is degrading the planet’s life-support systems and increasing, planetwide, the alienation of peoples from nature and the historic, cultural, and natural connection between farmers and all other people to the sources of food and sustenance. Finally, it helps destroy the economic and cultural foundations of societies, undermines security and peace, and creates a context for social disintegration and violence.
Technological interventions sold by global corporations as panaceas for solving global problems of “inefficiency in small-scale production,” and supposedly world hunger, have had exactly the opposite effect. From the Green Revolution to the biotech revolution to the current push for food irradiation, technological intrusions into the historic and natural means of local production have increased the vulnerability of ecosystems. They have brought the pollution of air, water, and soil, as well as new and spreading genetic pollution from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These technology- and corporate-based monocultural systems seriously exacerbate the crisis of global warming because of their heavy dependence upon fossil fuels in all stages from production through distribution. Climate change alone threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture, bringing the likelihood of catastrophe to the near future. Moreover, industrial agriculture systems have certainly not increased efficiency in production if one subtracts their ecological and social costs and the immense public subsidies they require. Nor do these systems reduce hunger – quite the opposite. They have, however, stimulated the growth and concentration of a small number of global agriculture giants who now control global production, to the detriment of local food growers, food supply, food quality, and the ability of communities and nations to achieve basic food self-reliance.
Already, negative trends of the past half century have been accelerated by the recent rules of global trade and finance from global bureaucracies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Codex Alimentarius. These institutions have codified policies designed to serve the interests of global agribusiness above all others, while actively undermining the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as the ability of nations to regulate trade across their own borders or to apply standards appropriate to their communities. Rules contained in the WTOs Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, for example, have empowered global agricultural corporations to seize much of the world’s seed supply, foods, and agricultural lands. The globalization of corporate-friendly patent regimes has also directly undermined indigenous and traditional sui generis rights of farmers, for example, to save seeds and protect indigenous varieties they have developed over millennia. Other WTO rules encourage export dumping of cheap subsidized agricultural products from industrial nations, adding to the immense difficulties of small farmers in poor countries to maintain their economical viability. And by invariably emphasizing export-oriented monocultural production, the explosive growth in the long-distance trade in food products has greatly increased the fossil fuels used for transport further impacting climate change. The expanding search for fossil fuels and fossil fuel alternatives has also resulted in ecologically devastating infrastructure developments in indigenous and wilderness areas, with grave environmental consequences.
The entire conversion from local small-scale food production for local communities to large-scale export-oriented monocultural production has brought the melancholy decline of the traditions, cultures, and cooperative pleasures and convivialities associated for centuries with community-based production and markets, diminishing the experience of direct food growing and the long celebrated joys of sharing food grown by local hands from local lands.
Despite all of the above, there are many developments that inspire optimism. Thousands of new and alternative initiatives are flowering across the world to promote ecological agriculture; defence of the livelihoods of small farmers; production of healthy, safe, and culturally diverse foods; and localization of distribution, trade, and marketing. Another agriculture is not only possible, it is already happening.
For all these reasons and others, we declare our firm opposition to industrialized, globalized food production and our support for this positive shift to sustainable, productive, locally adapted small-scale alternatives consistent with the following principles.