STOLEN HARVEST

THE HIJACKING OF THE GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY

VANDANA SHIVA

SOUTH END PRESS           2000

PART 1I

Chapter 1: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Cont.)

Creating hunger with monocultures

Global chemical corporations, recently reshaped into “life sciences” corporations, declare that without them and their patented products, the world cannot be fed.

• Industrial agriculture has not produced more food. It has destroyed diverse sources of food, and it has stolen food from other species to bring larger quantities of specific commodities to the market, using huge quantities of fossil fuels and water and toxic chemicals in the process.
• Green Revolution varieties produced more grain by diverting production away from straw. This “partitioning” was achieved through dwarfing the plants, which also enabled them to withstand high doses of chemical fertilizer.
• Less straw means less fodder for cattle and less organic matter for the soil to feed the millions of soil organisms that make and rejuvenate soil.
• Since cattle and earthworms are our partners in food production, stealing food from them makes it impossible to maintain food production over time, and means that the partial yield increases were not sustainable.
• The increase in yields of wheat and maize under industrial agriculture were also achieved at the cost of yields of other foods a small farm provides. Beans, legumes, fruits, and vegetables all disappeared both from farms and from the calculus of yields.
• More grain from two or three commodities arrived on national and international markets, but less food was eaten by farm families in the Third World.
• As more grain is produced and traded globally, more people go hungry in the Third World.

Productivity in traditional farming practices has always been high if it is remembered that very few external inputs are required. While the Green Revolution has been promoted as having increased productivity in the absolute sense, when resource use is taken into account, it has been found to be counterproductive and inefficient.

A study comparing traditional polycultures with industrial monocultures shows that a polyculture system can produce 100 units of food from 5 units of inputs, whereas an industrial system requires 300 units of input to produce the same 100 units. The 295 units of wasted inputs could have provided 5,900 units of food. Thus the industrial system leads to a decline of 5,900 units of food. This is a recipe for starving people, not for feeding them.

The insecurity of imports

As cash crops such as cotton increase, staple-food production goes down, leading to rising prices of staples and declining consumption by the poor. The hungry starve as scarce land and water are diverted to provide luxuries for rich consumers in Northern countries. Flowers, fruits, shrimp, and meat are among the export commodities being promoted in all Third World countries.

• It is neither efficient nor sustainable to grow shrimp, flowers, and meat for export in countries such as India. In the case of flower exports, India spent Rs. 1.4 billion as foreign exchange for promoting floriculture exports and earned a mere Rs. 320 million.
• Our food security has declined by 75%, and our foreign exchange drain increased by more than Rs. 1 billion.
• In the case of meat exports, for every dollar earned, India is destroying 15 dollars’ worth of ecological functions performed by farm animals for sustainable agriculture.
• In the case of shrimp exports, for every acre of an industrial shrimp farm, 200 acres of productive ecosystems are destroyed. For every dollar earned as foreign exchange from exports, 6 to 10 dollars’ worth of destruction takes place in the local economy.

In India, intensive shrimp cultivation has turned fertile coastal tracts into graveyards, destroying both fisheries and agriculture. In Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, women from fishing and farming communities are resisting shrimp cultivation through satyagraha. Shrimp cultivation destroys 15 jobs for each job it creates. It destroys $5 of ecological and economic capital for every dollar earned through exports. Even these profits flow for only 3 to 5 years, after which the industry must move on to new sites. Intensive shrimp farming is a non-sustainable activity, described by United Nations agencies as a “rape and run” industry.

Since the World Bank is advising all countries to shift from “food first” to “export first” policies, these countries all compete with each other, and the prices of these luxury commodities collapse. Trade liberalization and economic reform also include devaluation of currencies. Thus exports earn less, and imports cost more. Since the Third World is being told to stop growing food and instead to buy food in international markets by exporting cash crops, the process of globalization leads to a situation in which agricultural societies of the South become increasingly dependent on food imports, but do not have the foreign exchange to pay for imported food. Indonesia and Russia provide examples of countries that have moved rapidly from food-sufficiency to hunger because of the creation of dependency on imports and the devaluation of their currencies.

Staling nature’s harvest

Global corporations are not just stealing the harvest of farmers. They are stealing nature’s harvest through genetic engineering and patents on life forms.

Genetically engineered crops manufactured by corporations pose serious ecological risks. Crops such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, designed to be resistant to herbicides, lead to the destruction of biodiversity and increased use of agrochemicals. They can also create highly invasive “superweeds” by transferring genes for herbicide resistance to weeds. Crops designed to be pesticide factories, genetically engineered to produce toxins and venom with genes from bacteria, scorpions, snakes, and wasps, can threaten non-pest species and can contribute to the emergence of resistance in pests and hence the creation of “superpests.” In every application of genetic engineering, food is being stolen from other species for the maximization of corporate profits.

To secure patents on life forms and living resources, corporations must claim seeds and plants to be their “inventions” and hence their property. Thus corporations like Cargill and Monsanto see nature’s web of life and cycles of renewal as “theft” of their property. During the debate about the entry of Cargill into India in 1992, the Cargill chief executive stated, “ We bring Indian farmers smart technologies, which prevent bees from usurping the pollen.” During the United Nations Biosafety Negotiations, Monsanto circulated literature that claimed that “weeds steal the sunshine.” A worldview that defines pollination as “theft by bees” and claims that diverse plants “steal” sunshine is one aimed at stealing nature’s harvest, by replacing open, pollinated varieties with hybrids and sterile seeds, and destroying biodiverse flora with herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup.

• This is a worldview based on scarcity. A world view of abundance is the worldview of women in India.
• This view of abundance recognizes that, in giving food to other beings and species, we maintain conditions for our own food security.
• It is the recognition of the Isho Upanishad that the universe is the creation of the Supreme Power meant for the benefits of all creation.

In the ecological worldview, when we consume more than we need or exploit nature on principles of greed, we are engaging in theft. In the anti-life view of agribusiness corporations, nature renewing and maintaining herself is a thief. Such a worldview replaces abundance with scarcity, fertility with sterility. It makes theft from nature a market imperative, and hides it in the calculus of efficiency and productivity.

Food democracy

What we are seeing is the emergence of food totalitarianism, in which a handful of corporations control the entire food chain and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to diverse, safe foods produced ecologically. Local markets are being deliberately destroyed to establish monopolies over seed and food systems. The destruction of the edible-oil market in India and the many ways through which farmers are prevented from having their own seed supply are small instances of an overall trend in which trade rules, property rights, and new technologies are used to destroy people-friendly and environment-friendly alternatives and to impose anti-people, anti-nature food systems globally.

The notion of rights has been turned on its head under globalization and free trade. The right to produce for oneself or consume according to cultural priorities and safety concerns has been rendered illegal according to the new trade rules. The right of corporations to force-feed citizens of the world with culturally inappropriate and hazardous foods has been made absolute. The right to food, the right to safety, the right to culture are being treated as trade barriers that need to be dismantled.

This food totalitarianism can only be stopped through major citizen mobilization for democratization of the food system. This mobilization is starting to gain momentum in Europe, Japan, India, Brazil, and other parts of the world.

We have to reclaim our right to save seed and to biodiversity. We have to reclaim our right to nutrition and food safety. We have to reclaim our right to protect the earth and her diverse species. We have to stop this corporate theft from the poor and from nature. Food democracy is the new agenda for democracy and human rights. It is the new agenda for ecological sustainability and social justice.

Chapter 2: Soy Imperialism and the Destruction of Local Food Cultures