PULSE of the PLANET
Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity
The Human Right to Eat
By JOAN P. MENCHER
Somini Sengupta's front-page article, "India's Growth Outstrips Crops" (New York Times, June
22, 2008) points out various reasons for the current shortage of staple foods in India-- including
rapidly sinking water tables, inadequate government investment in agriculture and especially in
irrigation and access to loans for farmers, agricultural land being sold for residential use since
the profits from agriculture were so poor. Between 1968 and 1998 India's production of cereals
had doubled, but between 1998 and 2008 it has gone down due to the cancellation of
government support prices, which followed the advice of the World Bank and the United States
economists. Based on my own field research on agricultural issues in India over the last fifty
years I have always been surprised by the disconnect between what farmers tell me and what I
hear from economists (most of whom rarely visit many farms). I see a very different picture.
Starting with the colonial occupation of India, the government's agricultural policies have
focused on the accumulation of money by the well-do-do farmers and the government at the
expense of those who tilled the land. Instead of focusing on increasing the production of multiple
crops, grown in tandem either through crop rotations or by intercropping (such as the
intercropping of trees and field crops), the focus was from early on, and more so during the last
10 years, on crops for export (for example bananas and other fruits to Europe) rather than on
feeding its own population. The journal Seedling, published by an NGO named GRAIN, points
out that all of the largest grain traders in the world have greatly increased their profits during the
past two years; Cargill, for example, announced that its profits from commodity trading for the
first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than for the same period of 2007. It is not surprising that
the poor do not have enough to eat. See: www.grain.org
While many of us would consider the right to food to be a fundamental human right, the concept
of "rights" has paradoxically been appropriated by multinational corporations, as well as
governments, to expand the philosophy of neoliberalism. For example, recent changes in
Mexican law have elevated the "right" of private ownership over the communal ownership of
common lands, water resources, etc., traditionally observed by indigenous communities
(Seedling, Oct. 2007, pages 6-7.) And we are all familiar with the use of the "right" to individual
(or corporate) ownership to steal traditional products of nature from local traditional societies,
including not only indigenous tribal groups but also many preparations used by our
grandmothers, by patenting them in a slightly modified form. Seedling quotes a Canadian farmer
saying: "farmers all over the world need to start thinking once again of food as a source of
nutrition and sustenance and to re-connect with old ideas about fertility, knowledge, labour and
community. . . awareness that the corporate strategy for world domination is unsustainable and
ultimately self-defeating." Not only in some parts of rural India, but the world over, people's
"rights " and their advocates are increasingly being heard, and people are beginning to look to a
new pattern of agriculture that will be directed toward feeding people rather than toward profit.
After the dry spell in the mid 1960s-early 1970s, making India self-sufficient in food became a
rallying call. But instead of basing the methods for accomplishing this on land reform (along
with really well informed, ecologically sound extension), the politically driven emphasis on
mono-cropping, export for profit, and complex market chains led to an adoption of the U.S.
model of agriculture based on a limited number of commodities. This approach relied on an
extensive use of artificial petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, with a strong emphasis
on the large and very large farmers (size defined in locally relevant terms). With the so-called
"liberalization" of the economy in the last 10 years, there has been a large emphasis on export
crops, based on the views of economists who believed that it would be good for trade if India
were to import many of its basic grains, taking advantage of what economists call "economies of
scale", a concept borrowed from industry which ignores the realities of rural/agricultural life. As
George Mombiot recently pointed out, it has been known since the 1960's that small farms
produce greater yields per acre than large farms, sometimes as much as 20 times greater. (The
Guardian, London, 10 June 2008). In the 1950s WalterGoldschmidt's work, as well as the
political reaction to it, made it clear that industrial agriculture is less a matter of efficiency
(productivity, energy, or capital usage) than of political power.
In any case, food is not simply a product, like a piece of cloth or a machine, though food
companies have tried to turn it into commodities like pieces of cloth.. The growth of plants and
animals is part and parcel of local communal life, of the quality of rural day-to-day existence and
the local exchange of goods. The current policy also makes people dependent on the
transportation of food and food products over long distances (using large amounts of
petrochemicals), as well as on petrochemicals for fertilizers, herbicides, and enormous quantities
of pesticides which are destructive of the soil, apart from having numerous health impacts.
In addition, the central and state governments have chosen to focus on larger size dams and
irrigation projects, while neglecting local-level water conservation and water harvesting along
with small household level ponds, the recycling of semi-contaminated water at the local level
(such as bath water etc.) and failing to employ the most ecologically sound methods of water use,
which has inevitably had a negative impact on agriculture.
In 1995, an important conference organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute
based in Washington, D.C. concluded that with existing technology, along with new methods
already being tried out--such as the SRI (System of Rice Intensification, developed in
Madagascar), India would be able to feed itself for the next 25 or more years. Yet the significant
increase in export farming, the continual neglect of small farmers, the belief held by the urban
elite that basically nobody wants to farm, the rapid increase in the price of oil and other
petrochemical products, has made it extremely difficult for poor farmers and even middle-sized
ones. The failure of various south Indian state governments (where I have been working) to
support the use of (formerly) common lands by self-help groups of landless women which were
producing vegetables both for their own consumption and the local market is one of the pieces of
a broader failure to see sustainable agriculture by villagers as a meaningful alternative to socalled "modern" agriculture.
The tendency among the elite, and this includes many (though not all) economists, to belittle
small farmers, those that grow for the local community and perhaps the nearby city, encourages
farm policies that make rural people more dependent on importing foods from longer and longer
distances, and that fail to meet the needs of local farmers and consumers both. The government's
downplaying of procurement policies, buying of grains and basic foodstuffs at lower than market
prices, only exacerbates food crises, and may even create them.
I have seen NGOs struggling to obtain funds to help with programs that assist small farmers
having to fight both their local government policies as well as those of the central government. I
have also witnessed farm after farm obtaining high yields of multiple crops when they are given
not only financial support but also technical advice and examples to follow as well as
community support. The focus of these groups is clearly at variance with most government
policies.
Agricultural changes in the US today also reflect a rejection of centralized agricultural policies.
We are experiencing a major change as more and more people turn to Community Supported
Agriculture associations (CSAs), farmers' markets, and small-scale urban agriculture, which is
creating a significant though still small movement which may well transform the way we eat.
Even though this movement is against the interests of large corporate interests, it continues to
grow. The movement in the US is starting from a very different place compared to the situation
we find in India. While the gap between urban elites and food cultivators is every way as great
in India as in the U.S., perhaps even greater because of issues of caste in India, it is still possible
for Indian farmers to be weaned away from export crops, and to return to production for local
and regional markets. For example, in Bangalore I have seen how organic food brought in to a
city market usually sells out in a few hours--even in poorer neighborhoods. People want
healthier foods. Even urban people are beginning to grow their own vegetables and fruits
(though not yet grains), as well as keeping a few hens to provide their families with fresh eggs.
For a number of reasons, the increasing cost of food may serve to send more people back to local
consumption. The real problem in India and elsewhere are the really poor, in rural areas the
landless, in urban areas the homeless or the slum dwellers, who lack even tiny amounts of space
to grow food, or to innovate on water conservation, etc. At this moment in many countries of the
world, these people are barely able to afford the minimum nutrition their bodies need. This is
fine for the commodity traders, who are in a perfect position to profit from other people's hunger.
Is a trader's "right" to obscene levels of profit more sacred than a poor person's right to eat?
Which brings us back to the question of human rights--the right to land, to housing, to water, to
food and to a decent quality of life for everyone. With a recognition of these rights most of the
people reading this will have the chance to gain more autonomy over their own lives. The
struggle for this is essential for both human survival and the survival of all types of life on this
planet. .
Joan P. Mencher is an Emerita Professor of Anthropology from the City University of New
York's Graduate Center, and Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the
chair of an embryonic not-for-profit called The Second Chance Foundation,which works to
support rural grassroots organizations in India and the United States who work with poor and
small farmers on issues of sustainable agriculture. She has worked primarily in South India but
also in West Bengal briefly, on issues of ecology, caste, land reform, agriculture, women, and
related issues over the last half century, and has published widely both in the United States and
in India on all of these subjects, primarily in academic journals. For comments or questions,
write JMencher@TheSecondChance.org.