PARNET BLOG

17 OTTOBRE 2009 Manifestazione Nazionale Antirazzista

2009-10-12T00:31:00.000-07:00

http://fortresseurope.blogspot.com/

http://migrati.blogspot.com/

Public fury halts biofuel onslaught on farmers

2009-10-08T04:15:00.000-07:00

Tanzania has suspended investments worth millions of dollars after a storm of protest over the eviction of farmers to make way for biofuels. The country will not start any new agrofuel project before the government reviews the selection criteria for each investment.

The government has also halted allocation of huge chunks of land to biofuel investors. Under fire from international and local environmentalists, the government said it will stop further acquisition of land by biofuel investors pending clear procedures and policies on such investments.

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/667648/-/item/0/-/wst89uz/-/index.html

For Italian Scientist, Tobacco Means Cleaner Air

2008-06-20T04:37:00.001-07:00

He might not smoke, but an Italian geneticist is convinced that tobacco can make the world a cleaner place by helping to reduce air pollution.
After years of research, Corrado Fogher and his team has turned oil from the plant's seeds into a biofuel to run everything from water boilers to power generators.With this discovery, his biotechnology firm, Plantechno Srl, is contributing to a growing body of scientific research into clean and renewable sources of energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
One of the advantages of Plantechno's variant of the tobacco plant is that it would eliminate the need for farmers to displace food crops from their best land to grow it.
"The tobacco plant can grow on marginal land where you can't grow any other plants," said Fogher, 57.
Compared with other biofuel crops, tobacco is cheaper to grow and produces bigger yields, according to Fogher. For every hectare (2.5 acres) on which it is grown, two tonnes of oil can be extracted from its seeds, about twice as much as rape or soy.
Planet Ark

Don't panic - go organic.

2008-06-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

The Food, Climate, and Energy Crisis: From Panic to Organic
Keith AddisonMon, 16 Jun 2008 06:36:35 -0700
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/13/9601/

Published on Friday, June 13, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

The Food, Climate, and Energy Crisis: From Panic to Organic
by Ronnie Cummins

Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate
crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news.
While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the
table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions
from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting
the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding
future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other
grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and
misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted
their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable
resources.

The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis:
millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels;
corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from
maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food
production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a
misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers
off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and
transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a
growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most
ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests,
floods, and unpredictable weather.

Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis
to positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy
crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for
foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy
efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly
at local and state levels, are also waking up.

Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and
gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, "buy local"
networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of
organic-minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green
the economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas
pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it's
too late.

For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to
grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely
without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic
pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing,
and long-distance transportation.

In 1945 most of the U.S.'s six million family farmers were still
rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits,
grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural
compost, and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they
had learned from their parents and grandparents.

By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42
percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards,
and community Liberty Gardens.

The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for
their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who
stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items - typically grown
or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.

In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our
household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are
spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.

By today's standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy
in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart
disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and
learning disabilities.

Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at
least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized
world's cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control
politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on
corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a
multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.

The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to
the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and
farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health
of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to
heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become
the norm.

Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the
agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the
soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have
shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical
farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms
outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse
weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local
and regionally grown organic products means food doesn't have to
travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.

Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic
foods and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand
your garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and
over-consuming meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your
meals at home with healthy whole foods ingredients - vegetables,
fruits, beans and grains. If you're going to eat meat or animal
products, make sure they're both organic and grass-fed or free range.

Most important of all, get political. Demand an end to the war.
Demand healthy and sustainable food and farming, energy, and climate
policies from your local, state, and federal elected public
officialsÐor else vote them out of office. Don't panic - go organic.
To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org
Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Grassroots Netroots Alliance.

Jatropha biodiesel exports to begin

2008-06-20T04:15:00.001-07:00

Jatropha biodiesel exports to begin
India will begin to export jatropha-based biodiesel to Europe. As far as I know, this is the first commercial biodiesel made from jatropha. Article here.

Naturol to export biodiesel to Europe BS Reporter / Hyderabad June 12, 2008, 17:58 ISTHyderabad-based Naturol Bioenergy would export 10,000 tonne of biodiesel to Europe, marking its foray into the overseas market. The first shipment would leave from Kakinada in a fortnight, said managing director and chief executive officer Bhaskar Chalasani.

The company has a capacity to produce 30 million gallons per day of biodiesel and allied products at its Kakinada plant commissioned recently. "Biodiesel usage would increase with the rise in fossil fuels,'' he said, adding absence of a biodiesel policy was hampering the expansion plans of biodiesel companies. Naturol currently imports raw material and oil seed from Indonesia.

The company is exporting biodiesel at $1,350 per tonne (about Rs 54,000) as per the flat price quoted for ultra low sulphur diesel (ULSD) fuel. This works out to Rs 48 a litre excluding the freight charges. The government should provide subsidy to biodiesel on the lines of fossil diesel (Rs 35 to 40 per litre) to boost the industry, he said.Naturol is growing jatropha and other oil seeds in 5,000 hectare in the state under contract farming. It plans to use jatropha feedstock extensively and is looking at complete captive sourcing of the required feedstocks in future.The company will invest $40 million (Rs 160 crore) over the next two years for expanding its operations. "We are in talks with a few investors for raising this money,'' he said. It is awaiting approvals for domestic sales through oil majors.

More Studies Say Biofuels Have a Minor Impact on Food Costs

2008-06-20T04:11:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.
June 18, 2008

A new report from New Energy Finance concludes that biofuels are responsible for at most 8% out of the 168% rise in grain prices since 2004, and for at most 17% out of the 136% rise in global food prices. As a proportion of the total rise in prices, biofuels can take the blame for less than 5% of the rise in grain prices and at most 12.5% of the rise in global food prices. The report concludes that population growth placed the greatest pressure on grain prices, and that growth was not matched by increases in yields. The increasing price of fossil fuels also caused 35.2% of the increase in grain prices. See the New Energy Finance press release (PDF 16 KB).

Meanwhile, DOE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate that the United States would use an additional 7.2 billion gallons of gasoline in 2008 if there were no biofuels available. Ethanol production alone has moderated U.S. gasoline prices by an estimated 20-35 cents per gallon, saving a typical U.S. household as much as $300 per year. In addition, the price of food commodities has a limited impact on retail grocery costs in the United States, so ethanol and biodiesel consumption account for only about 3%-5% of the increase in U.S. retail grocery prices over the past year and a half. These statistics were included in a letter sent to Senator Jeff Bingaman by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer. See the DOE fact sheet and the full letter (PDF 922 KB).

Alexander Karsner, the head of DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), recently seconded that conclusion, while also noting the benefits of ethanol production. In testimony on June 12 before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Assistant Secretary Karsner reported that corn ethanol delivers 25% more energy than the fossil energy used to produce it, while resulting in 20% lower greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. He also noted that more efficient ethanol biorefineries fueled with biomass resources can cut life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 52% relative to gasoline. The next generation of ethanol, produced from "cellulosic" non-edible plants and trees, will reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 86% relative to gasoline. See a summary of Assistant Secretary Karsner's testimony on the EERE Web site, and see the full testimony on the committee's Web site.

EPA & agricultural sectors

2008-06-20T04:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/library/library_detail.php?doc_language=en&library_detail_id=4422

Presentation by John Olympio,Team Leader, EPA Technical Support Unit, ECOWAS Commission, Séminaire d'information sur l'APE UE-Afrique de l'Ouest, organised by the European Commission, the ECOWAS Commission and the UEMOA Commission, Bamako, 29-30 May 2008

DG Trade organised jointly with ECOWAS and UEMOA Commissions a 2-day EPA information seminar for state and non-state actors of the 16 countries of West Africa in Bamako from 29-30 May 2008. Together with West African regional organisations, DG Trade provided the participants with information on a wide range of issues related to the negotiation process, such as the state of play, the nature of the interim EPA, WTO compatibility, development cooperation, services and investment, trade related rules and agriculture.

Document (EN): Olympio_EN-FR_290508_CE_APE-et-secteurs-agricoles.pdf
Document (FR):Olympio_EN-FR_290508_CE_APE-et-secteurs-agricoles.pdfExternal link

(EN): http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2008/june/tradoc_139150.pdfExternal link (FR): http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2008/june/tradoc_139150.pdf
Author(s): John Olympio
Additional resources:
Plus de ressources sur le séminaire d'information sur l'APE UE-Afrique de l'Ouest sur la site internet de la CE

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

2008-06-20T01:40:00.000-07:00

Review of F. William Engdahl's book published by Global Research
By Arun Shrivastava
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9379
Global Research, June 19, 2008

Last three or four years have seen a number of books, documentaries and articles on the dangers of Genetically Modified (GM) seeds. Majority has focused on adverse health and environmental impact; almost none on the geo-politics of GM seeds, and particularly seeds as a weapon of mass destruction. Engdahl has addressed this issue but the crop seed is one of the many "Seeds of Destruction" in this book.

Engdahl carefully documents how the intellectual foundations of 'eugenics,' mass culling of the sick, coloured, and otherwise disposable races, were actually first established, and even legally approved, in the United States. Eugenics research was financially supported by the Rockefeller and other elite families and first tested on Jews under Nazi Germany.

It is purely by chance that world's poorest nations also happen to be best endowed with natural resources. These regions are also the ones with growing population. The fear among European ruling families, increasingly, integrating with economic and military might of the United States, was that if the poor nations became developed, the abundant natural resources, especially oil, gas, and strategic minerals and metals, may become scarcer for the white population. That situation was unacceptable to the white ruling elite.

The central question that dominated the minds of the ruling clique was population reduction in resource rich countries but the question was how to engineer mass culling all over the world without generating powerful backlash as it was bound to happen. When the US oil reserves peaked in 1972 and it became a net oil importer, the situation became alarming and the agenda took the centre stage. Kissinger, one of the key strategists of Nixon, nurtured by the Rockefellers, prepared what is known as National Security Study Memo (NSSM#200), in which he elaborated his plan for population reduction. In this Memo he specifically targets thirteen countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Thailand, and The Phillipines.

The weapon to be used was food; even if there was a famine food would be used to leverage population reduction. Kissinger is on record for stating, "Control oil, you control nations; control food and you control the people." How a small group of key people transformed the elitist philosophy, of controlling food to control people, into realistic operational possibility within a short time is the backdrop of Engdahl's book, the central theme running from the beginning till the end with the Rockefellers and Kissinger, among others, as the key dramatis personae.

He describes how the Rockefellers guided the US agriculture policy, used their powerful tax-free foundations worldwide to train an army of bright young scientists in hitherto unknown field of microbiology. He traces how the field of Eugenics was renamed "genetics" to make it more acceptable and also to hide the real purpose. Through incremental strategic adjustments within a handful of chemical, food and seed corporations, ably supported by the key persons in key departments of the US Government, behemoths were created that could re-write the regulatory framework in nearly every country. And these seeds of destruction of carefully constructed regulatory framework- to protect the environment and human health- were sown back in the 1920s.

Pause to think: a normal healthy person can at the most go without food for perhaps seven days but it takes a full season, say around four months, for a seed to grow into food crop. Just five agri-biz corporations, all US based (Cargill, Bunge, Archer Daniels, et al), control global grain trade, and just five control global trade in seeds. Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, and Dow Chemicals control genetically engineered seeds. While these powerful oligopolies were being knocked into place, anti-trust laws were diluted to exempt these firms. Engdahl writes, "It was not surprising that the Pentagon's National Defense University, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War, issued a paper declaring: 'Agribiz is to the United States what oil is to the Middle East.' Agribusiness had become a strategic weapon in the arsenal of the world's only superpower." (page 143)

The "Green Revolution" was part of the Rockefeller agenda to destroy seed diversity and push oil and gas based agriculture inputs in which Rockefeller's had main interest. Destruction of seed diversity and dependence on proprietary hybrids was the first step in food control. (See my notes, Box 1)

It is true that initially Green Revolution technologies led to spurt in farm productivity but at a huge cost of destruction of farmlands, bio-diversity, poisoned aquifers and progressively poor health of the people and was the true agenda of 'the proponents of Green Revolution.'

The real impetus came with the technological possibility of gene splicing and insertion of specific traits into unrelated species. Life forms could be altered. But until 1979, the US Government had steadfastly refused to grant patent on life form. That was changed [my comment: helped much by a favorable judgment in the US Supreme Court granting patent protection to oil eating bacteria developed by Dr Ananda Chakraborty]. Life forms could now be patented. To ensure that the world surrendered to the patent regime of the seeds corporations, the World Trade Organization was knocked into shape. How it conducted business was nobody's business, but it forced the world to accept intellectual property right of these corporations. There is opposition but these firms are too determined as Engdahl describes.

"The clear strategy of Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and the Washington Government backing them was to introduce the GMO seeds in every corner of the globe, with priority on defenceless ..African and developing countries," write Engdahl (page 270). However, Engdahl also describes how US and Canadian farmlands came under GMOs. It was suspected that GMO could pose serious threat to human and animal health and the environment, yet efforts at independent biosafety assessment were discontinued. Scientists carrying out honest studies were vilified. Reputed scientific establishments were silenced or made to toe the line that was supportive of the Rockefeller's food control and mass culling agenda. The destruction of the credibility of scientific institution is yet another seed of destruction in Engdahl's book.

Engdahl cites the example of a German farmer Gottfried Glockner's experience with GM corn. Glockner planted Bt176 event of Syngenta essentially as feed for his cows. Being a scientist, he started with 10% GM feed and gradually increased the proportion, carefully noting milk yield and any side effects. Nothing much happened in the first three years but when he increased the feed to 100% GM feed, his animals "were having gluey-white feaces and violent diarrhea" and "milk contained blood." Eventually all his seventy cows died. Prof Angelika Hilbeck of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found from Glockner's Bt 176 corn samples Bt toxins were present "in active form and extremely stable." The cows died of high dose of toxins. Not if, but when human food is 100% contaminated should be a sobering thought.

In the US unlabelled GM foods were introduced in 1993 and that 70% of the supermarket foods contain GMOs in varying proportions in what should rightly be called world's largest biological experiment on humans. While Engdahl has clearly stated that the thrust of US Government and the agi-biz is control over food especially in the third world, he has left it to the readers to deduce that American and European citizens are also target of that grand agenda. And there are more lethal weapons in the arsenal: Terminator seeds, Traitor seeds, and the ability to destroy small independent farmers at will in any part of the world, and these are powerfully presented in the book. Engdahl provides hard evidences for these seeds of final destruction and utter decimation of world civilizations as we have known.

It is a complex but highly readable book. It is divided into five parts, each containing two to four short chapters. The first part deals with the political maneuverings to ensure support to Seed and Agri-biz firms, the second deals with what should be widely known as 'The Rockefeller Plan', the third deals with how vertically integrated giants were readied for Washington's silent wars on planet earth, the fourth part deals with how GM seeds were unleashed on unsuspecting farmers, and the final part deals with how the elites is going on destroying food, farmers that would eventually cause mass culling of population. He does not offer any solution; he can't because it is up to the rest of the world, including Europeans and Americans, to wake up and take on these criminals head on. An essential read for anyone who eats and thinks.

Seeds of Destruction
The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, 2007 ISBN 978-0-937147-2-2
SPECIAL ONLINE AND MAIL ORDER PRICE US$17.00 (list price $24.95)

This skillfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. "Control the food and you control the people."
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Engdahl's carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and World peace.

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of "free markets", everything-- science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds-- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)

If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist... (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)

The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence... (Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria).
Order Now: Online or Mail Order
List Price US$24.95 plus taxes.
US$17.00 plus s and h (incl. taxes where applicable)

3 new UN reports on Africa development

2008-06-17T04:11:00.000-07:00

Trends in Sustainable Development - Africa report 2008-2009

Innovation for Sustainable Development: Local Case Studies from Africa

Trends in Sustainable Development: Agriculture, Rural development, Land, Desertification, Drought 2008-2009

Sustainable Biofuels Consensus

2008-06-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

Experts reach "Sustainable Biofuels Consensus", allows for global trade in green fuels

Globalization of Food and Agriculture and the Poor

2008-06-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

Globalization of Food and Agriculture and the Poor New book examines the way globalization of agri-food systems affects the world's poor and its impact on food and nutrition security in developing countries.
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/otherpubs/globalpoor.asp

MDG Targets: Misunderstood or Misconceived?

2008-06-17T02:11:00.001-07:00

Author: Hamid Tabatabai
Series: One Pager No. 33

Click here to download: http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager33.pdf

Local Economic Development Strategic Planning and Practice Casebook

2008-06-17T02:06:00.001-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/6n25wc
As a practical product of the World Bank program, this LED Strategic Planning and
Practice Casebook seeks to help the reader understand municipal approaches to LED
strategic planning by identifying good practice in strategic planning methodology. The
Casebook serves as a collection of six local economic development strategies that
provide examples of good practice from across Europe and from the Cities of Change
network. The Casebook also contains good practice notes and comments.

Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa

2008-06-17T02:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/reo/2008/AFR/eng/sreo0408.pdf
The region's prospects continue to be promising, but global developments pose
increased risks to the outlook. Growth in sub-Saharan Africa should again average
about 6½ percent in 2008 with oil exporters leading the way; meanwhile, growth in oil
importers is expected to taper off, though only modestly. With food and energy prices
still rising, inflation is projected to average about 8½ percent this year for
countries in the region, setting aside Zimbabwe. Risks in 2008 are tilted to the
downside, but the region is better placed today to withstand a worsening of the global
environment.

Stepping up the ladder: how business can help achieve the MDGs

2008-06-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

Business and development is the topic to watch and work on in 2008, as businesses
respond to sustained pressure to contribute to the MDGs. Maintain the pressure, manage
the engagement, and the prize is a new contribution by business to poverty reduction
and sustainable livelihoods: social welfare contributions and links to social
enterprises, yes, but also new procurement practices and new kinds of partnership with
local communities and local government. To understand the potential, think of business
engagement as a (short) ladder with three - possibly four - steps.
http://tinyurl.com/59asvl

Africa´s economic growth in 2007 again well above the long-term trend

2008-06-17T02:02:00.001-07:00

Africa´s average real GDP grew by 5.7 per cent in 2007. The 2008 African Economic
Outlook report , jointly published by the African Development Bank, the OECD
Development Centre and the UNECA expects the rate of GDP growth to strengthen to about
6 per cent in 2008 and in 2009. The 2008 African Economic Outlook focuses on Technical
Skills Development. It also presents a comprehensive analysis of the economic, social
and political developments on the continent. Now in its seventh year, the AEO is the
only report on Africa which applies a common analytical framework to every country,
every year. Produced by the OECD Development Centre, the African Development Bank and,
for the first time this year, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the
AEO is the essential reference on Africa. It benefits from the support of the European
Commission. http://tinyurl.com/5wyzzu

Development Gateway Highlight: Business for the Environment

2008-06-17T02:01:00.001-07:00

The human race is pushing our planet towards the edge of disaster by flooding land,
sea, and air with pollution and by over use of our natural resources. These issues
amount to one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. As the world
explores alternative growth paths, new ways of doing business are critical. Innovative
solutions are pointing the way to new business models and market opportunities.''

B4E, the Global Business Summit for the Environment, is the leading international
conference focusing on business and the environment. B4E 2008, held in Singapore on
April 22, highlighted the most urgent environmental challenges facing the world today
and discussed business-driven solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Important topics addressed include resource efficiencies, renewable energies, new
business models and climate strategies. Delegates shared best practices for
identifying and managing the risks posed by climate change and uncover opportunities
for developing competitive advantages.

During the Summit, CEOs and senior executives from leading global companies joined
leaders from government, international agencies, NGOs, and other organizations to
discuss the issues, forge partnerships and explore solutions for a greener future.
http://tinyurl.com/67nmfv

Sustainable Development Report on Africa (SDRA)

2008-06-17T02:00:00.000-07:00

The Economic Commission for Africa has released the second edition of its flagship
publication, the Sustainable Development Report on Africa (SDRA). This edition of SDRA
is devoted to a five-year review of the implementation of the World Summit on
Sustainable Development Outcomes in Africa (WSSD+5). Several African countries have
made progress in economic governance, public financial management and accountability
and the integrity of the monetary and financial systems. As a result, the situation in
Africa today is better than it was a decade or so ago. However, a great deal remains
to be done. In the area of corporate governance, countries have made efforts to
promote private sector-led growth and development.
http://www.uneca.org/eca_resources/Publications/books/sdra/index.htm

Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development: Guidelines and Methodologies (2005)

2008-06-16T06:36:00.001-07:00

Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development: Guidelines and Methodologies (2005)

Renewable Energy Toolkit (REToolkit)

2008-06-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

REToolKit provides a broad set of tools to assist Bank staff and country counterparts to improve the design and implementation of renewable energy (RE) projects, incorporates best practices and lessons learned from RE projects supported by the WBG and others, and is operationally oriented to address practical implementation needs at each stage in the project cycle.

REToolKit will help you to identify and design feasible RE projects, determine appropriate promotional policies, identify sustainable business models, finance mechanisms and regulatory frameworks - and utilize the best available project tools, including technical standards and generic terms of reference.

Innovation for Sustainable Development: Local Case Studies from Africa

2008-06-16T06:28:00.001-07:00

Innovation for Sustainable Development: Local Case Studies from AfricaDESAJune 2008

Trends in Sustainable Development Africa Report (full report)

2008-06-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Trends in Sustainable Development Africa Report (full report)

Agenda 21

2008-06-16T06:24:00.001-07:00

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED): Agenda 21 1992

World Bank: Energy and Development Report 2000: Energy Services and the World's Poor 2000

2008-06-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

World Bank: Energy and Development Report 2000: Energy Services and the World's Poor 2000

Sustainable Energy for Poverty Reduction: An Action Plan

2008-06-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

Greenpeace, ITDG: Sustainable Energy for Poverty Reduction: An Action Plan by Alison Doig and Paul Horseman2002

Producing Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources: Energy Sector Framework in 15 Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America

2008-06-16T06:19:00.001-07:00

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ): Producing Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources: Energy Sector Framework in 15 Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America by GTZ2002

Implementation of Renewable Energy Technologies: Project Opportunities and Barriers, Summary of Country Studies

2008-06-16T06:18:00.001-07:00

UNEP Collaborating Centre on Energy and Environment, Risø National Laboratory: Implementation of Renewable Energy Technologies: Project Opportunities and Barriers, Summary of Country Studies by Fenhann, J.; Painuly, J.P2002

Reducing Rural Poverty through Increased Access to Energy Services: A Review of the Multifunctional Platform Project in Mali

2008-06-16T06:15:00.001-07:00

United Nations Development Programme: Reducing Rural Poverty through Increased Access to Energy Services: A Review of the Multifunctional Platform Project in Mali 2004

Powering Poverty Reduction

2008-06-16T06:11:00.001-07:00

Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG): Powering Poverty Reduction 2004

From Fossil to Future Fuels

2008-06-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

British-German Environment Forum: From Fossil to Future Fuels 2004

The role of renewable energy in the development of productive activities in rural West Africa: the case of Senegal

2008-06-16T06:09:00.001-07:00

Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development (GNESD): The role of renewable energy in the development of productive activities in rural West Africa: the case of Senegal by Mr. Sécou Sarr, Dr. Jean Phillipe Thomas2005

Renewable Energy Technologies for Poverty Alleviation - Initial Assessment Report: South Africa

2008-06-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development (GNESD): Renewable Energy Technologies for Poverty Alleviation - Initial Assessment Report: South Africa by Gisela Prasad, Eugene Visagie2005

Promoting Renewable Energy Technologies in Developing Countries through the Clean Development Mechanism

2008-06-16T06:01:00.001-07:00

German Federal Environmental Agency: Promoting Renewable Energy Technologies in Developing Countries through the Clean Development Mechanism by Bernd Brouns et al.2007

Renewable Energy Technologies for Rural Electrification.

2008-06-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) published in 2007 a position paper on the role of the private sector in the deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies for Rural Electrification. The document presents renewable energy products and services for rural electrification, identifies challenges, and delivers recommendations on how to face the challenges ahead.

The Energy Challenge for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

2008-06-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

The Energy Challenge for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, published in 2005 by UN-Energy, renewable energy is also considered part of the solution to enables environmental sustainability. The report presents specific recommendations for linking production and access to energy services to poverty reduction programmes and national MDG strategies and campaigns. Leading agencies for that first publication of the collaborative UN effort were Worldbank and UNDP.

Energy for Development: the Potential Role of Renewable Energy in Meeting the MDGs

2008-06-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

Energy for Development: the Potential Role of Renewable Energy in Meeting the MDGs (pdf, 1.2 MB)
A REN21 Issue Paper

African Development Review

2008-06-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

African Development Review
April/Avril 2008 - Vol. 20 Issue 1 Page 1-162
Full text online
List of contents and downloads here

Food Policies Leave People Hungry

2008-06-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

by Yifat Susskind
Global Research, June 11, 2008 - The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) - 2008-06-10

Last week the U.N. convened world leaders in Rome to hammer out solutions to the food crisis.
Once again policy leaders are forgetting that food is about people. Over the past few months, 30 countries have been wracked by food riots. The government of Haiti has been toppled. Rice reserves in the Philippines are now under armed guard.

And U.S. corporate agribusinesses have a starring role in this disaster. Farmers in poor countries have gone broke by the millions because they can’t compete with the artificially low prices of U.S. food imports.

Take Mexico, for example. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. demanded that Mexico open up its markets to cheap U.S. corn. Since NAFTA took effect, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have tripled, flooding the Mexican market and causing domestic corn prices to drop by more than 70 percent. As a result, most of the country’s 15 million corn farmers have gone from being poor — but getting by — to watching their children go hungry. Mexican President Felipe Calderon explains the food crisis in his country as a direct outcome of U.S. food policy.

The same story is repeated in nearly every country where the food crisis is raging. Millions of rural families from Colombia to Cameroon have been forced to go from growing their own food to buying imported staple items, putting them at the mercy of global markets. In the past year, the cost of basics like corn, rice and wheat has doubled and tripled. Farming families whose livelihoods were destroyed by U.S. agribusiness can no longer afford to buy food from these same companies.

That injustice — not any absolute “food shortage” — is at the heart of today’s crisis.
Meanwhile, U.S. agribusiness is making a killing. Last month Cargill announced that its third-quarter profits were up 86 percent. They’ve already raked in over $1 billion this year, in about the same amount of time that another 100 million people were pushed into extreme poverty (surviving on less than $1 a day) because of rising food costs.

Clearly, our global food system is broken. So what would fix it?
It seems that small-holder, sustainable agriculture — precisely the type of farming that’s been devastated by agribusiness — has the best potential to resolve the global food crisis. That, in a nutshell, is the conclusion of a four-year United Nations study by 400 experts on agriculture and development released in April.

But if local, sustainable agriculture is the way to go, there’s another, overlooked dimension to solving the food crisis: The majority of the world’s small-scale farmers are women. In the poorest countries, where the food crisis is at its worst, women grow and produce 80 percent of all food.

That means that policies aiming to resolve the food crisis need to also weed out the widespread discrimination that bars women farmers from owning land and from accessing credit, seeds, tools and training. Agricultural subsidies were originally conceived to protect small-scale farmers from poverty. We still need to do that — and on a global scale. Today, subsidies can play a positive role in building the capacity of women farmers to grow food sustainably.

It’s high time to put the human rights and productive capacity of small farmers at the center of agriculture policy. The Rome summit presented us with an opportunity to rethink food policy.

Unfortunately the outcome continues the same misguided polices of free trade instead of investing in local food production. It’s time to realize that the world’s small farmers and especially women — are our best hope for feeding people and protecting the planet.
Yifat Susskind is communications director for MADRE: Rights, Resources and Results for Women Worldwide.

Poverty Reduction - Can Renewable Energy make a real contribution?

2008-06-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

The second thematic programme of the Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development (GNESD) focuses on renewable energy technologies and poverty. The aim of this activity is to identify the possible contribution of such technologies to poverty alleviation and to provide concrete policy guidance aimed at overcoming barriers to their dissemination and uptake.
Paper online at: http://www.gnesd.org/Downloadables/PovertyReductionSPM.pdf

Read the consolidated report from the Regional Workshops on Electricity and Development in Africa, Asia and Latin America

More GNESD publications

Hemp Biomass for Energy

2008-06-15T07:49:00.001-07:00

RV3

Tim Castleman
© Fuel and Fiber Company, 2001, 2006

Table of Contents
Table of Contents 2
Introduction 3
Ways biomass can be used for energy production 3
Burning: 3
Oils: 3
Conversion of cellulose to alcohol: 4
About Hemp 5
Hemp seed oil for Bio Diesel 5
Production of oil 5
Production of Bio-Diesel 5
Hemp Cellulose for Ethanol 6
Forest Thinning and Slash, Mill Wastes 6
Agricultural Waste 7
MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) 7
Dedicated Energy Crops 8
Barriers 8
Benefits 8
The Fuel and Fiber Company Method 9
Hemp Biomass Production Model Using the Fuel and Fiber Company Method 10
Economic Impact 11
Employment 11
Construction 11
Related agricultural activities 11
Environmental Impact 11
Endnotes & References 12

Full text online here: http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm
See also this: http://www.chanvre-info.ch/info/en/Natural-diesel-Examination-of-hemp.html

Global Limits Of Biomass Energy

2008-06-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=39803

Biomass energy—energy generated from agricultural waste or specially grown energy crops—has been widely touted as a clean, renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Research is booming to improve energy crops and methods of converting crops to fuel. Already, Brazil gets 30% of its automotive fuel from ethanol distilled from sugar cane. But critics warn that “energy farming” will gobble up land needed to grow food or will impinge on natural ecosystems, possibly even worsening the climate crisis.

In the February Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Global Ecology director Chris Field, with postdoctoral fellow Elliott Campbell and a colleague, took a sober look at the prospects for biomass energy. They found that while biomass has many benefits—in principle it can be carbon neutral—there are limits to the extent that it can sustainably contribute to global energy needs. For example, the total mass of carbon fixed by all croplands worldwide each year (about 7 billion tons) is still less than that released by fossil fuel emissions (7.7 billion tons). This fact, the authors write, “highlights the challenge of replacing a substantial part of the fossil fuel system with a system based on biomass.”

Globally, suitable abandoned cropland and pastureland amounts to approximately 1.5 million square miles. Realistically, energy crops raised on this land could be expected to yield about 27 exajoules of energy each year. This is a huge amount of energy—an exajoule is a billion billion joules, equivalent to 172 million barrels of oil. Yet the biomass yield could still satisfy only about 5% of global primary energy consumption by humans, which in 2005 was 483 exajoules.
Science Daily

Peasant farmers offer the best chance of feeding the world. So why do we treat them with contempt?

2008-06-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

by George Monbiot Published in the Guardian (June 10 2008)

I suggest you sit down before you read this. Robert Mugabe is right. At last week's global food summit he was the only leader to speak of "the importance ... of land in agricultural production and food security". {1} Countries should follow Zimbabwe's lead, he said, in democratising ownership. Of course the old bastard has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.

But he is right in theory. Though the rich world's governments won't hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen {2}, and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies.

There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield. In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares {3}.

Sen's observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere. The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There's a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land {4}.

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers {5}. Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don't have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher.

With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field. In the early days of the Green Revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself {6}.

If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms. There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for forty years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early 1980s {7}.

Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries {8}. Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranhao 2000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami Indians, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unshakeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize their land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them. In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are twenty times more productive than its large ones, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, "farm output ... remains low". {9}

The OECD states that "stopping land fragmentation" in Turkey "and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity". {10} Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well. Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them.

Last week's food summit agreed "to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets". {11} But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business {12}, while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won't reveal whether or not it supports the study {13}.

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won't breed true or which don't reproduce at all {14}, it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers' stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up.

The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world. This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive.

A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world. www.monbiot.com

References: 1. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/statements/zwe_mugabe.pdf 2. Amartya Sen, 1962. An Aspect of Indian Agriculture. Economic Weekly, Vol 14. 3. Fatma GÃ¼l Ãœnal, October 2006. Small Is Beautiful: Evidence Of Inverse Size Yield Relationship In Rural Turkey. Policy Innovations. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/policy_library/data/01382 4. Giovanni Cornia, 1985. Farm Size, Land Yields and the Agricultural Production function: an analysis for fifteen Developing Countries. World Development. Vol 13, pages 513-34. 5. For example, Peter Hazell, January 2005. Is there a future for small farms? Agricultural Economics, Vol 32, pages 93-101. doi:10.1111/j.0169-5150.2004.00016.x 6. Rasmus Heltberg, October 1998. Rural market imperfections and the farm sizeâ€” productivity relationship: Evidence from Pakistan. World Development. Vol 26, pages 1807-1826. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00084-9 7. See Shenggen Fan and Connie Chan-Kang , 2005. Is Small Beautiful?: Farm Size, Productivity and Poverty in Asian Agriculture. Agricultural Economics, Vol 32, pages 135-146. 8. Peter Hazell, ibid. 9. http://www.new-agri.co.uk/00-3/countryp.html 10. OECD Economic Surveys: Turkey - Volume 2006 Issue 15, page 186. This is available online as a Google book. I was led to refs 9 and 10 via Fatma GÃ¼l Ãœnal, ibid. 11. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration-E.pdf 12. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), 2008. Global Summary for Decision Makers. www.agassessment.org 13. IAASTD, viewed 9th June 2008. Frequently Asked Questions. www.agassessment.org 14. For example, Terminator seeds. Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/10/small-is-bountiful/

The Myth of 'Failed State' in Africa: A Question on Atomistic Social Ontology?

2008-06-14T07:32:00.001-07:00

(April 29, 2008)
Who is to blame for the plight of Africa's failed states? Author Caglan Dolek argues that richer nations created the concept of the "failed state" to avoid taking responsibility for political instability in Africa. This failed state "myth" de-contextualizes African countries from their historical and social circumstances. In reality, colonization, post-colonial dependency, and the imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustment programs contributed to Africa's struggles. And, blaming Africa for Africa's problems, allows richer countries to justify their own interventions, thus perpetuating the cycle of Africa's difficulties. (Journal of Turkish Weekly) http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/failed/2008/0429myth.htm

The World Food Summit: A Lost Opportunity

2008-06-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

(June 10, 2008)
The World Food Summit declaration neglects to address the root causes of global food insecurity. World leaders failed to reach a solution on biofuel production, even though the International Food Policy Research Institute calculated that "production of biofuel is responsible for 30% of the rise in food prices." Furthermore, the declaration urged governments to reduce trade restrictions, even though trade liberalization is one of the main causes of the food crisis. (openDemocracy) http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/general/2008/0610criticism.htm

How Europe Underdevelops Africa - And How Some Fight Back!

2008-06-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

By PATRICK BONDand RICHARD KAMIDZA

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.

In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil - one of Rodney's targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France's Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Across the continent, exploitation by other European capitalists and politicians has become so extreme that something has to break. Although it was six months ago that the European Union's ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships - including crisis-ridden Cote d'Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries - into the trap of signing interim "Economic Partnership Agreements" (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.

An Addis Ababa conference from June 9-11 brought officials from the African Union and a few African states together with critical academics and scholar-activists allied to the Council for the Development of Social Science Research (Codesria). It's extremely rare to find genuine coincidence of interests, and even possible strategic agreement, between these camps.

"We can't continue to deal with incompetent, weak, corrupt, supine governments," explained Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. "But these are not factors of the same order of magnitude. The domination of African countries by neocolonialism and the subordinate stance by African governments are not the same. We must be clear where the main driving force comes from: outside Africa. We have to tackle the source."

The conference host, Codesria director Adebayo Olukoshi, provided a visionary strategy in the spirit of Nkrumah, calling for a united Africa. Pretoria-based Nigerian academic Omano Edigheji insisted on this happening "in the context of transformative social policies" in the leading countries, in contrast to the Washington Consensus. Added Zambian trade union leader Austin Muneku, "This should be integration from below, by the people and their organisations, not from above by elites."

From above, many African elites have succumbed to what Olukoshi terms trade-balkanisation, following the lead set by colonial pigs in the 1884-85 Berlin conference that so irrationally carved up the continent. Since 2002, the EPAs have supplanted the agenda of the gridlocked World Trade Organisation, just as bilateral trade deals with the US, China and Brazil are also now commonplace.

A united Europe deals with individual African countries in an especially pernicious way, because aside from free trade in goods, Mandelson last October hinted at other invasive EPA conditions that will decimate national sovereignty: "Our objective remains to conclude comprehensive, full economic partnership agreements. These agreements have a WTO-compatible goods agreement at their core, but also cover other issues."

Those other "Singapore" issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don't hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like SA's affirmative action). These were removed from the WTO by African negotiators during the Cancun summit in 2003, but have reemerged through EPA bilaterals.

Says Zimbabwean anti-EPA campaigner Nancy Kachingwe, "These are not trade agreements, they're structural adjustment programmes. It's about policy and all sorts of other controls, and the impacts are the same."

Europeans' regular abuses of donor power include threats of trade preference withdrawal if EPAs are not signed. European capital has made its own needs clear: not only access to cheap commodities, as was enjoyed under the Lom?onvention, but also unrestricted African market access, protection from potential restrictive public policies, and a buffer from Chinese competition.

According to Gyekye Tanoh of Third World Network in Accra, "The key thing for Mandelson is to gain exclusive preferential market access. Europe is gaining 80% of our markets in exchange for what is effectively just 2% of theirs."

Already, says Tanoh, "The effect of trade liberalisation on African agriculture is a disaster, with only one sector anticipated to grow: agro-processing. That's the one that most easily invites European capital to scale up investments in joint ventures. Agricultural output would only increase by 1%, our studies show. But the big contradiction is in the export of cash crops, at a time of severe pressure on food products."

African farmers' ability to sell on the local market will be undercut by rapid trade liberalisation that opens the way to surges of cheap, often subsidised imports. Women are most adversely affected.

As Walter Rodney observed, "It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not - or are not allowed to - concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other."

Earlier allegedly "developmental trade" strategies, such as the EU's "Everything But Arms" deal, haven't worked, because of strict rules of origin and serious supply-side constraints. There is simply no capacity in African firms to penetrate Europe given this continent's small production runs and high transport costs.

As Keet suggested, it therefore may be time to question trade itself - not merely the mythical "export-led growth" shibboleth - in part because climate change will soon invoke hefty taxes on ships (whose dirty bunker oil sends vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere). Yet EPAs will require an even greater African investment in port infrastructure and other management costs necessary to facilitate trade.

Added Senegalese scholar Cherif Salif Sy, "Most of Africa has an electricity crisis, and yet to get economies of scale for European agro-processing companies if they locate in Dakar, they require vast amounts of electricity. And they come with the power to demand a lower price, which puts much more stress on our grid and causes the price to go up for local buyers, and the supply to be redirected."

African firms cannot compete in this sector, as they lack the brand names, skills and marketing structures that European companies enjoy. The same firms have also no access to EU support in the forms of straight subsidies, tax incentives, research and development funding or concessional credit.

As a result, African countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads and railways); rapidly fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation; labour productivity problems arising from poor education, health and housing provision; vulnerable market institutions (such as immature financial systems); and poorly-functioning legal frameworks. The EU has no interest in reversing such fundamental structural economic challenges.

From early on, African civil society movements - especially the African Trade Network - called on elites to halt the negotiations.
But it has not been easy to develop a strong coalition, as Third World Network director Yao Graham concedes: "Unions have been too syndicalist, while our justice movements have been exhausted fighting structural adjustment. The local private sector has been absent. But in some regions, like West Africa, agricultural producers have been well organised and opposed to EPAs.
Links to the Caribbean are weak. But we are working behind enemy lines with progressive allies in Europe, including within the Brussels parliament."

Graham points to the surprising resistance to EPAs from the South African government, especially deputy trade minister Rob Davies - in the wake of the 2004 departure for another ministry by former trade minister Alec Erwin (so effective a free trader that he was once endorsed for WTO director in Foreign Policy journal).

Nigeria is another crucial state, one which is publicly pro-EPA but nevertheless slowed the process down and refused Mandelson's pressure to sign an interim deal.
According to Graham, "It should be possible to shrink the EPA agenda to nonreciprocal market access to goods, and no more. This we can win in coming months."
His colleague Tanoh says that inspiration comes to the campaigners from Korea: "The Seoul government is backing down - and cabinet has resigned - when protesters attacked US beef imports, and they reversed their trade deal."

African social movements will have to strengthen considerably to have that degree of influence on elites. "Can a corrupt government represent you when it negotiates with outside actors?", asks Nairobi-based pan-Africanist intellectual Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. "In most cases their negotiating position is aimed at maximising their personal or familial interests."

Hence, remarks Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua of the World Forum for Alternatives in Dakar, "In these agreements there is inherent corruption, in their very substance. We don't want these."
Rodney might agree, as he criticised "the minority in Africa which serves as the transmission line between the metropolitan capitalists and the dependencies in Africa... The presence of a group of African sell-outs is part of the definition of underdevelopment. Any diagnosis of underdevelopment in Africa will reveal not just low per capita income and protein deficiencies, but also the gentlemen who dance in Abidjan, Accra and Kinshasa when music is played in Paris, London and New York." [And now, with EPAs and the WTO, add Brussels and Geneva.]

But because Mandelson is squeezing so hard, he may be single-handedly breaking the links between elites. Led by Senegalese and Malian politicians, most of the African officials at the conference agreed with the left intelligentsia that dangers now arise of:

* regional disintegration (due to EU bilateral negotiations and subregional blocs) and internecine race-to-the-bottom competition;
* threats of not only deindustrialisation but further EU penetration of the African services sector;
* increasing social polarisation (including along gender lines), and the rise of parasitical classes; and
* much greater gains for some sectors of the capitalist class: owners of plantations, mines and oil fields; commercial circuits of capital; and financial institutions.

Even Botswana's former (conservative) president, Festus Mogae, admitted in 2004, "We are somewhat apprehensive towards EPAs despite the EU assurances. We fear that our economies will not be able to withstand the pressures associated with liberalisation."

Moving from fear to confidence in rejecting the EU won't be easy. But a step was taken by Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua during his Cape Town visit last week, unilaterally announcing the end of Shell's hell in Ogoniland: "There is a total loss of confidence between Shell and the Ogoni people. So, another operator acceptable to the Ogonis will take over."

In Paris, Total's Christophe de Margerie reacted: "We have people who work over there...who are unfortunately more and more often subjected to major aggressions (or being) kidnapped. We are asking ourselves the question (about whether to follow Shell)."

MOSOP held a victory march in Port Harcourt, and its information officer, Bari-ara Kpalap, thanked Yar'Adua, yet also promised more agitation in the Niger Delta "until the government took more practical and sincere steps to genuinely address the problems of the area". As all agreed, booting European exploiters was the necessary first step.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban, where Kamidza is doing a doctoral degree.
This article orginally appeared as a ZNet commentary.

Destroying African Agriculture - by Walden Bello

2008-06-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

by Walden Bello
Global Research, June 5, 2008
Foreign Policy in Focus

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers.

Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

From Exporter to Importer
At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.

Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt.

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.
Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach.

In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture - to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity.

Moreover, the Bank’s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market.” 1 In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above.

These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up.

The Role of Trade
Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process.2

These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost.”3What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies now account for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States.

The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 - or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.”4

That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects.”5

The Case of Malawi
This stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi.
It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics.

The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About 1,500 people perished.

The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets…crowd out more productive spending.”

When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa.

But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director told the Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.”

Fleeing Failure
Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs.

Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economist acknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake.

In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan.

Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission:

Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions-reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially-mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival.

In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen.

Walden Bello is a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
Notes
1. Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87.
2. “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15
3. Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220
4. Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70.
5. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158.

Who's to blame for SKY-HIGH Food & Fuel Prices??? -- HINT: It ain't the Saudis or Iran!!!

2008-06-08T04:10:00.000-07:00

By: wakeupfromyourslumber on: 07.06.2008 [04:32 ] (231 reads)
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Who's to blame for SKY-HIGH Food & Fuel Prices??? — HINT: It ain't the Saudis or Iran!!! _ “Supply and demand” is irrelevant in this circus. The game is not about supply levels; it’s about betting on what the price will be in the future. It does not matter how much food or oil exists. All that matters is the price. If the price is too high, then ordinary people can’t eat, can’t drive their cars, and can’t heat their homes in winter. _ This is a follow-up to a comment I made last night at 2:00 am my time, regarding the reasons for the current food crisis and sky-high fuel prices, and what can be done about it.
(http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/7062#comment-29805 )

Let me simplify this matter, so WUFYS readers can have facts ready to go if this topic comes up in their conversations with friends or family. I want WUFYS readers to know exactly why the prices of food and energy are going through the roof. I shall go into depth, but at the end I’ll summarize the major points you must remember for the exam, so to speak. THE COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION (CFTC) Behold the center of the problem. The CFTC is not doing its job. Indeed, the CFTC is working hard to make the situation worse, in order to help rich people get richer. The CFTC is supposed to regulate futures exchanges, which look just like stock markets, but instead of trading stocks and bonds, people trade contracts to buy or sell something in the future at a specified price. People bet on the future prices of items such as food or oil. As with stocks and bonds, the game is based on human perception, which is easily manipulated. Hence the CFTC was established in 1974 to keep the game fair, just as the SEC was established in 1934 to keep stock exchanges fair. The CFTC oversees futures exchanges such as · Chicago Board Options Exchange Futures Exchange · Chicago Board of Trade · Chicago Mercantile Exchange · HedgeStreet · U.S. Futures Exchange · Kansas City Board of Trade · Minneapolis Grain Exchange · New York Mercantile Exchange · New York Board of Trade · OneChicago In addition, the CFTC oversees 360 public brokerage houses (futures commission merchants), plus 38,000 commission-registered futures industry salespeople and associated persons, plus 2,500 commodity trading advisers and commodity pool operators, plus 3,000 members (traders) of the main exchanges listed above.

All these people trade contracts that are connected with oil, food, metals — you name it. If an item has a fluctuating price, it can be traded. To keep track of all this, the CFTC (http://www.cftc.gov/ ) maintains large regional offices in Chicago and New York, plus smaller regional offices in Kansas City and San Francisco, plus a sub-office of the Chicago regional office in Minneapolis. In 1992 the CFTC had 600 staff members. However, since the CFTC no longer performs its function, it now has about 450 staff members that get paid $130 million per year from the government. These do-nothings are always whining for more money, and Bush wants to give them a $30 million raise as a bribe so they'll continue to uphold the current nightmare. Their job is to confuse the public and throw out lame excuses as to why they’re not doing their job. For example, they say, “There’s no single solution to the current price crunch,” or, “It has to do with the Federal Reserve,” or, “We’re studying the problem,” or “It’s peak oil,” or just simply, “It’s very complex.” These are all lies, as you will see below.

Whenever anyone asks the CFTC to do something about out-of-control prices, the CFTC says, “We are doing something. We’re investigating.” (When israelis commit atrocities, and get called on them, they say, "We're investigating.") Indeed the CFTC has been “investigating” sky-high oil prices for the last six months, during which time the CFTC has deliberately allowed oil prices to rise by another 42 percent. The CFTC’s 450 people work in secrecy. Their bosses are five commissioners appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Bush’s appointments are all greedy criminals (naturally). As President, Bush designates one of these five commissioners to be chairperson. Today the chairperson is a clown named Walter Lukken from Indiana, who has been with the CFTC since 2002, and was confirmed as Bush’s chairman yesterday (4 June 08). Since Bush handpicks the CFTC commissioners, the commissioners naturally claim that speculation, manipulation, and lack of regulation have nothing to do with the price of food and oil.

A NIGHTMARE IS BORN

The CFTC did its job more or less okay for its first fifteen years. In those days, speculators (including pension funds, mutual funds, endowments, and other investors not directly tied to the food industry) were limited in the amount of trading they could do in specific commodities. But starting in 1991, the CFTC embarked on a course of deregulation. It relaxed its rules, increasing limits for some of these investors, and exempting others altogether. The game was afoot. The real nightmare took off in 2000 when Bush seized power. That’s when large energy traders (notably Bush’s buddies at Enron) got Congress to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed oil futures to be traded electronically "over the counter" — that is, traded in unregulated markets outside the CFTC’s jurisdiction.

This trick became known as the “Enron Loophole,” and it allowed oil to be traded in a global free-for-all. A gigantic casino was born. Prices started to climb higher and higher, and became truly insane after the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. (More about that below.) After the Congress and the CFTC deregulated the trading of oil, the CFTC started deregulating all sorts of other commodities, especially food. On 22 April 08, CME Group Inc. (the world's largest grain exchange) requested CFTC permission to clear trades on over-the-counter grain swap contracts. CME wanted to play in the global casino.

The casino has pushed food prices so high that millions of people around the world now face death by famine. (Remember: famine kills more people than wars, disease, cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc etc etc) The more food and oil we produce, the more “gambling chips” are available for use in the casino, and the higher the prices rise. In other words, the more food we have, the more we starve, because of the global casino. “Supply and demand” is irrelevant in this circus.

The game is not about supply levels; it’s about betting on what the price will be in the future. It does not matter how much food or oil exists. All that matters is the price. If the price is too high, then ordinary people can’t eat, can’t drive their cars, and can’t heat their homes in winter. We can explore for more oil, or invest in “alternative fuels,” but this will only provide additional chips for the casino, and will therefore push prices even higher.

In the casino, trying to bring down prices by increasing supplies is like trying to put out fire with gasoline. Indeed, more and more farmland is being converted to grow corn for ethanol, instead of crops for food. It’s all about getting more chips (fuel commodities) to use in the fabulous casino, which sucks in more and more money. The casino is a black hole, draining the life of all mankind. And remember: speculation is one thing, but manipulation is another. Since a lot of this game is done secretly, the biggest traders manipulate the casino. Little or no information about their activities gets out to the public.

The fabulous casino has no windows. Because this game has nothing to do with supply and demand, any economist who attributes rising prices to things like “rising demand from China and India” is a paid liar. Plenty of food and oil exists. Big traders like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are hoarding oil, betting the prices will go even higher. Goldman Sachs holds far more crude than exists in U.S. Strategic Reserve, and is also hoarding heating oil.

That’s why the Saudis told Bush to get stuffed when he recently begged them to increase oil output. The Saudis told him what everyone knows: that production and supply have little to do with today’s prices. The culprits aren’t the grocers or the gasoline station owners. Their profits have shrunk as prices have risen.

Ten years ago, gas station owners made most of their money selling gas. Today they can only stay alive by selling snacks and drinks. High gasoline prices have put retailers near the limits on their lines of credit. Meanwhile, anyone who uses a lot of fuel (e.g. truckers, airlines, etc.) is now facing bankruptcy. The only people getting rich are the big traders on Wall Street, in London, and in Dubai. LONDON AND DUBAI Dubai (the UAE) has little oil. Wall Street and London have no oil. People in these places get rich by trading oil. The CFTC oversees the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) plus the Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange, but actual trading in these exchanges is done through London and Dubai, where the CFTC has no jurisdiction. It’s the same as U.S. businesses taking out post-office boxes in the Cayman Islands so they can avoid U.S. taxes and business laws.

The British Financial Services Authority is supposed to regulate the London Exchange, but it’s even worse than the CFTC. The Dubai Exchange is tied directly into the NYMEX, while the London’s International Petroleum Exchange is owned by the IntercontinentalExchange in Atlanta. The owners of these exchanges have become filthy rich. Naturally they insist that speculation has nothing to do with high prices, since they want their casinos to stay open. In 2007, Congress asked the CFTC to start regulating the markets in London and Dubai, since they are directly tied into the U.S. market. The CFTC refused, knowing that if it starts doing its job, the casino will be brought down to sane levels. Meanwhile the CFTC is pursuing plans to let even more hedge fund money pour into food and energy commodities.

BUY A CHAIR AT THE CASINO TABLE WITH LITTLE OR NO MONEY DOWN!
When you want to buy stocks, many brokerage firms require that you put up between 30 percent and 40 percent of the market value of the stock in your “margin account.” Thus, if you want to leverage a hundred dollars of stock, you must put up at least thirty dollars in cash, and you must take the hundred dollar hit if the stock tanks. By contrast, in the global food and oil casino, you only need to put up six dollars in cash. Suh-weeet! This attracts all kinds of gamers that otherwise couldn’t get into the casino. And the more people crowd in, the more they push up prices. If we force the CFTC to raise margin requirements for commodities futures to 30-to-40 percent, as occurs in the stock market, there would be a shakeout, since a lot of people could no longer play in the food / oil casino. Speculators would have to borrow more money to play the game, and would have to assume more risk. Since 30-60 percent of today’s food and oil prices are caused by sheer speculation, there would be a price drop of at least 30 percent.

Naturally Bush, the casino owners, the gamers, the regulators, and their paid media lackeys deny all these facts. They say they are being unfairly scapegoated, and that a curtailment of their theft would hurt consumers. (They said the same thing during the real estate bubble.) They say that increasing the margin requirements would have no effect on prices. Worse, it would drive trading away from regulated U.S. commodity exchanges, thereby causing prices to rise. But trading is already non-regulated, and prices are already rising unchecked. Prices keep going up because unregulated speculators keep betting that prices will keep going up. The scammers are getting rich off their casino, and they will do and say anything to keep getting rich. They’ll pay whatever it takes to keep the laws from being changed, and they offer crazy excuses to justify their theft Here’s another trick: rather than fix the problem, the CFTC is working on ways to improve risk-management choices for farmers and agricultural businesses, including developing alternative financial tools and a plan for the clearing of agricultural swaps. Translation: the CFTC’s solution for the nightmare (caused by so many people entering the nightmare) is to get more people into the nightmare.

Or here’s another trick, the oldest trick of all. Let’s call it the it-won’t-fix-every-problem-so-forget-it trick. (This is like sitting on the Titanic and saying we should plug the leak. “No,” the scammers say, “that won’t get us to shore, so forget it.”) Casino players say that increasing margin requirements, and re-regulating the markets, will not stop speculation, so it’s useless. Well of course it won’t “stop” speculation. We’ve always had speculation. What the world cannot tolerate is runaway speculation. Today there is no investment in the production of food. There is only price speculation. What we have is a bubble, as we’ve seen countless times before, from the Netherlands tulip craze in the 1600s, to the stock market crash of 1929, to “pet rocks” in the 1970s, to cabbage patch dolls in the 1980s, dot-coms in the 1990s, real estate in the 2000s, and so on. There is always a scam in which people seek to get-rich-quick at society’s expense. When the mortgage meltdown began, the culprits (banks, hedge funds, etc) moved into the food and oil casino to recoup their losses. And, just as regulators and rating agencies collaborated in the real estate scam, so does the CFTC “regulator” collaborate in the food and oil scam. Let the entire world perish, so long as WE insiders get rich! IS CONGRESS IN ON THE SCAM? Only those members who are tied directly into the Bush regime, and those who are players themselves. Other Congress members are focusing more and more on the CFTC, having realized that if we don’t re-regulate the casino, we're doomed. A strong proponent of re-regulation is Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash) who unfortunately is a mixed up bimbo that voted for the “Patriot” Act. She calls herself “pro-labor,” yet she voted for NAFTA and CAFTA. She’s an Irish Roman Catholic, yet she champions abortion. (In fact she was one of 34 senators to vote against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.) She calls herself “anti-war,” yet she voted against the Kerry-Feingold Amendment (2006) that would have set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Despite all this, she has recently made the CFTC her target, and with Sen.Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is now mounting a push in Congress to force the CFTC do its job. Cantwell has little power in Congress, but the heat on the CFTC is increasing. The day before yesterday, that heat caused the CFTC to drop a proposal that would have increased position limits once again (i.e., would have made it even easier for speculators to gamble). The CFTC also said it would not provide a blanket exemption for all index funds, and would not increase speculation limits on agricultural futures contracts.

Last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed a bill to prevent traders of U.S. crude oil from routing transactions through offshore markets to evade regulation. The bill would reduce the CFTC’s secrecy, and would require the CFTC to boost margin requirements for all oil futures trades. (If all this could be accomplished, it would bring food and oil prices back under control.) Also last month, senators Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein co-sponsored a bill called the Oil Trading and Transparency Act, which would close the "London Loophole."

In the meantime, the CFTC and its allies are using sly tricks to keep the casino running. Last month, for example, Congress passed the Farm Bill to close the Enron loophole, which has allowed food trading to be unregulated. The scammers agreed to this, but with a twist: the Farm Bill places the burden on the public to prove a trade needs regulation, rather than placing the onus on the trader to prove it does not need regulation. (Tee hee hee.) Ergo, the casino continues.

IS THERE NO HOPE?
The high price of food and oil is causing such massive problems for the entire world that more and more people are focusing on the nightmare of runaway speculation. More and more news stories mention the CFTC. More and more Congress people are paying attention, since their districts are sprialling into bankruptcy. There’s a chance (albeit a slim one) that enough people will wake up for us to come out of this alive.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR THE TEST --
The food and oil crisis is caused by runaway speculation. --Runaway speculation was caused by total de-regulation, and by the regulators (CFTC) being in on the scam. --After the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the criminals (banksters, hedge fund managers, etc) moved into the commodities markets. --To restore sanity, we must regulate all commodity exchanges worldwide, and we must increase margin requirements for commodity traders. (That is, we must demand that players put up a lot more money, and take on a lot more risk). --We need not discuss the weak dollar (which plays a role) or rising demand from China, India, etc. Our immediate priority is to re-regulate the commodities markets NOW, and stop this insane bubble from metastasizing further. We absolutely must get food and oil prices under control. Otherwise the USA is headed for a depression, and much of the world is headed for famine. Thanks for reading. Link

la Wto ed il Doha Round non serviranno a risolvere la crisi alimentare

2008-06-05T03:51:00.000-07:00

Fair e Tradewatch al vertice FAO assieme a Our world is not for sale:
la Wto ed il Doha Round non serviranno a risolvere la crisi alimentare

Chiudere il ciclo di liberalizzazioni commerciali in ambito agricolo, industriale e dei servizi promosso dall'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio (WTO) nel round negoziale lanciato a Doha nel 2001 non servira' a risolvere la crisi alimentare. Un duro documento di protesta e' stato lanciato dal network internazionale 'Our world is not for sale' e sottoscritto da 32 reti internazionali, 205 tra coordinamenti e ong di tutto il mondo tra i quali gli italiani Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale, Fair, Fondazione Zanchetta e Trade Watch, in occasione della seconda giornata di lavori della conferenza FAO sulla sicurezza alimentare.Nel testo, indirizzato al segretario generale ONU Ban Ki-moon, al Direttore Generale della FAO Jacques Diouf, Director General, al Direttore generale della WTO Pascal Lamy, ai presidenti della Banca Mondiale e del Fondo Mondiale Internazionale Robert Zoellick e Dominique Strauss-Kahn oltre che ad Angel Gurria, Segretario generale dell'Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), le organizzazioni dicono di essere convinte che le regole in discussione nel Doha Round ''intensificheranno la crisi rendendo i prezzi dei generi alimentari ancora piu' volatili, aumentando la dipendenza dei paesi in via di sviluppo dalle importazioni, e rafforzando il potere dell'agrobusiness nei mercati alimentari e agricoli''. A riprova portano i profitti delle principali imprese del settore in tempo di crisi: Cargill, che ha annunciato che i profitti del suo terzo quadrimestre sono cresciuti dell'86%, Bunge che nell'ultimo quadrimestre del 2007 aveva riportato un aumento del 77% rispetto al 2006, e Archer Daniel Midland's le cui entrate nel 2007 sono cresciute del 65%.Cinque le richieste delle ong - da Action Aid ad Attac, dalle ong cattoliche della CIDSE a Friends of the Earth, da Fair a CRBM a Focus on the Global South, a Oxfam alla Via Campesina - rivolte alle organizzazioni internazionali per risolvere davvero la crisi alimentare. Innanzitutto chiedono di mettere a disposizione di Governi e comunita' strumenti per rafforzare la loro sovranita' alimentare, sostenere l'agricoltura familiare, proteggere la produzione dal dumping anche attraverso meccanismi di dazi e tariffe.

In secondo luogo le ong pensano che la volatilita' dei prezzi agricole debba essere affrontata attraverso politiche nazionali e azioni internazionali che assicurino un reddito stabile ai produttori, a partire dalla creazione di nuove riserve strategiche e di misure di stabilizzazione dei prezzi e di controllo sui movimenti finanziari speculativi.

Al terzo punto le ong della campagna ''Our world is not for sale'' chiedono la costruzione di reti di salvataggio e di sistemi di distribuzione alimentare pubblica per impedire che i consumatori piu' poveri facciano la fame.

La quarta richiesta e' quella di una riforma del sistema di aiuto pubblico alimentare perche', invece di trasformarsi in una forma di importazione distorsiva della produzione e del mercato locale, garantisca fondi con i quali i Governi locali possano acquistare cibo dai produttori locali o dei paesi limitrofi, trasformandosi in un'ulteriore leva di sviluppo.

I paesi in via di sviluppo, infine, secondo le ONG, non dovrebbero essere coinvolti in negoziati di liberalizzazioni sul commercio di servizi finanziari nell'ambito del General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) o di altri negoziati multilaterali o bilaterali, perche' questo non potrebbe che avere un impatto molto negativo sull'accesso dei contadini al credito, alle assicurazioni o al risparmio, gia' oggi assai scarso.

Summit FAO: il grano alle stelle... di Monica Di Sisto (Fair) ed Antonio Onorati (Crocevia)
Abbiamo sentito ripetere in questi mesi che se i prezzi internazionali del grano sono in crescita vertiginosa, e le strade del mondo si riempiono di persone affamate e arrabbiate, questo è colpa di cinesi e indiani che mangiano di più. I più cattivi, però, come al solito sono i cinesi: il loro consumo di carne totale tra maiale, manzo e varia animalità è cresciuto dal 1990 del 142%.
Il bestiame mangia tanti cereali e il disastro, condito con qualche eccesso di entusiasmo sui biocarburanti, è così servito: ben 40 Paesi sono stati scossi negli ultimi mesi da vere e proprie rivolte di gente a stomaco vuoto, e ben 21 di essi si trovano in quell'Africa già tanto martoriata.
Daryll E. Ray, dell'Agricultural Policy Analysis Center dell'Università del Tennessee però non ha creduto ad una ricetta così semplicistica e si è messo a verificare da vicino questo fenomeno, diremmo, gastronomico quanto macabro, dati alla mano.

La prima sorpresa deriva dal fatto che se la Cina ha deciso di mangiare più carne, in realtà ne ha prodotta talmente tanta da rimanere saldamente un Paese esportatore netto. Ma c'è di più. Nel 1996 il USDA World Agricultural Outlook Board, la proiezione statunitense più autorevole sui mercati agricoli internazionali, aveva previsto che nel 2005, proprio per la crescita demografica e dei redditi incessante, la Cina sarebbe diventata un'importatrice netta di grano, con un flusso in entrata di almeno 10,7 milioni di tonnellate provenienti in gran parte dagli Stati Uniti stessi.

La Cina, in realtà, con un gioco sapiente di produzione, di protezione del mercato interno alla faccia delle richieste di maggiore liberalizzazione che le rivolge incessantemente l'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio, e di un buon utilizzo del meccanismo dello stoccaggio, non ha avuto bisogno di guardarsi intorno: nel 2005, infatti, risultava essere ancora un esportatore netto di grano, con ben 15,2 milioni di tonnellate in viaggio intorno al mondo. Dunque se il mondo soffre la fame, e se quegli 850 milioni di persone che nel mondo la patiscono probabilmente aumenteranno nei prossimi anni, non è proprio colpa dei cinesi. Che cosa sta succedendo allora?
Continua su www.faircoop.it/fairwatch.htm dove, cliccando su "ultime notizie" troverete approfondimenti sul Summit della FAO e il testo completo dell'appello delle Ong

Papers from the FAO High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy

2008-06-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

Papers from the FAO High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, Rome, 3-5 June 2008.

Here: http://www.fao.org/foodclimate/conference/doclist/en/?no_cache=1

Capitalismo, agro-industria e alternative per la sovranità alimentare

2008-06-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

di Ian Angus - da Socialist Voice (Traduzione di Curzio Bettio)

“In nessun luogo al mondo, in nessuna azione di genocidio, in nessuna
guerra, vi sono stati tanti ammazzati per minuto, per ora e per giorno come
quelli che sono ammazzati dalla fame e dalla povertà nel nostro pianeta.” —
Fidel Castro, 1998

Quando sono scoppiati i tumulti per la fame ad Haiti il mese scorso, il
primo paese a rispondere è stato il Venezuela. In pochi giorni, sono partiti
da Caracas, diretti ad Haiti, aerei da trasporto con 364 tonnellate di
derrate alimentari di prima necessità. Il Presidente del Venezuela Ugo
Chavez dichiarava: “Il popolo di Haiti sta soffrendo per le aggressioni del
capitalismo globale imperialista. Tutti noi siamo chiamati ad una genuina e
profonda solidarietà. È il minimo che possiamo fare per Haiti."
L'azione del Venezuela rientra nella più pura tradizione della solidarietà
umana. Quando la gente è affamata, dobbiamo fare del nostro meglio per
nutrirla. Dovremmo applaudire l'esempio del Venezuela ed emularlo.
Ma gli aiuti, comunque necessari, servono solo per tappare i buchi. Per
indirizzare in modo giusto la problematica della fame nel mondo, dobbiamo
capire e quindi cambiare il sistema che la provoca.

Nessuna carenza di cibo
Il punto di partenza della nostra analisi deve essere questo: attualmente
non esiste alcuna carenza di cibo nel mondo.
Contrariamente agli avvertimenti del 18.esimo secolo di Thomas Malthus e dei
suoi moderni seguaci, tutta una serie di studi dimostrano che la produzione
globale di cibo ha superato in modo consistente l'aumento della popolazione
e che vi è cibo più che sufficiente per dare da mangiare a tutti. Secondo
l'Organizzazione per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura (FAO) delle Nazioni
Unite, nel mondo viene prodotto tanto cibo da fornire più di 2000 calorie al
giorno per persona — in buona sostanza più del minimo richiesto per una
buona salute, ed un numero di calorie per persona superiore del 18% rispetto
agli anni Sessanta, malgrado una crescita significativa nella popolazione
locale.[1]

Come fa rilevare il Primario Istituto sull'Alimentazione, “è l'abbondanza,
non la scarsità, che meglio descrive attualmente la disponibilità di cibo
nel mondo.” [2]
Malgrado ciò, la soluzione più comunemente proposta per risolvere il
problema della fame nel mondo sta nelle nuove tecnologie per accrescere la
produzione di derrate.
L'“Alleanza per una Rivoluzione Verde in Africa”, creata dalla Fondazione
Bill e Melinda Gates e dalla Fondazione Rockefeller, punta allo sviluppo “di
varietà più produttive e resistenti di colture essenziali all'alimentazione
in Africa…per consentire ai coltivatori Africani su piccola scala di
produrre raccolti più considerevoli, diversificati e più affidabili.”[3]
Parimenti, l'Istituto Internazione di Ricerche sul Riso, con sede a Manila,
ha dato corso ad una collaborazione pubblico-privato “per aumentare la
produzione di riso in tutta l'Asia attraverso lo sviluppo accelerato del
riso e l'introduzione di tecnologie sugli ibridi.” [4]
E il Presidente della Banca Mondiale promette di favorire i paesi in via di
sviluppo nell'“accedere a tecnologie e conoscenze per incrementare i
rendimenti.”[5]

La ricerca scientifica è di vitale importanza per lo sviluppo in
agricoltura, ma le iniziative che vengono assunte per preparare il terreno
al fatto che siano necessarie nuove sementi e nuovi prodotti chimici non
sono ne' credibili e nemmeno tanto scientifiche. Il fatto che ci sia già
abbastanza cibo per alimentare il mondo dimostra che la crisi alimentare non
è un problema tecnico — invece è un problema sociale e politico.
Piuttosto di chiederci come aumentare la produzione, la nostra prima domanda
dovrebbe essere perché, visto che tanto cibo è disponibile, esistono più di
850 milioni di persone affamate e malnutrite? Perché muoiono di fame 18.000
bambini ogni giorno? Perché l'industria alimentare globale non può fornire
cibo agli affamati?

Il sistema dei profitti
La risposta può essere condensata in un'unica frase. L'industria alimentare
globale non è organizzata per fornire cibo agli affamati; è organizzata per
generare profitti per le imprese del settore agro-alimentare. Ed infatti, i
giganti del settore agro-alimentare stanno acquisendo il loro obiettivo.
Quest'anno, i profitti delle compagnie agro-alimentari hanno svettato ben
sopra ai livelli dell'ultimo anno, mentre la gente affamata, da Haiti
all'Egitto e al Senegal, è scesa per le strade per protestare contro
l'aumento dei prezzi degli alimenti. I dati seguenti si riferiscono ai primi
tre mesi del 2008.[ 6]

Commercio delle granaglie
- Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Profitto lordo: 1.15 miliardi di dollari,
più del 55% rispetto allo scorso anno
- Cargill : Guadagni al netto: 1.03 miliardi di dollari, più dell'86%
- Bunge . Profitto lordo consolidato: 867 milioni di dollari, più del 189%.
Sementi & erbicidi
- Monsanto . Profitto lordo: 2.23 miliardi di dollari, più del 54%.
- Dupont Agriculture and Nutrition . Reddito di esercizio al lordo di
imposta: 786 milioni di dollari, più del 21%
Fertilizzanti
- Potash Corporation . Reddito netto: 66 milioni di dollari, più del 185.9%
- Mosaic . Guadagni al netto: 520.8 milioni di dollari, più del 1200%

Le compagnie citate, più poche altre, vendono e comprano prodotti per
l'agricoltura in tutto il mondo in regime di monopolio e di quasi-monopolio.
Sei imprese controllano l'85% del commercio mondiale di granaglie; tre
controllano l'83% del cacao; tre controllano l'80% del commercio della
banana.[7] Sicuramente ADM, Cargill e Bunge controllano il mercato mondiale
del grano, il che significa che loro, da sole, decidono quanto raccolto
annuale deve essere destinato alla produzione di etanolo, di dolcificanti,
di mangimi per animali o di cibo per gli uomini.

Gli autori di “ Hungry for Profit – La fame di profitti” scrivono: “L'enorme
potere esercitato dalle più importanti corporations per la produzione di
cibo dall'agro-alimentare consente loro essenzialmente di controllare i
costi delle materie prime acquistate dagli agricoltori, ed allo stesso tempo
di mantenere i prezzi degli alimenti di uso generale a livelli abbastanza
elevati da assicurare loro larghi profitti.” [8]

Durante il corso degli ultimi tre decenni, le compagnie agro-alimentari
transnazionali hanno progettato una massiccia ristrutturazione
dell'agricoltura mondiale. Direttamente attraverso il loro potere sui
mercati, ed indirettamente mediante i governi, la Banca Mondiale, il Fondo
Monetario Internazionale e l'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio, hanno
cambiato le modalità di produzione dei raccolti ad uso alimentare e la loro
distribuzione in tutto il mondo. Questi cambiamenti hanno procurato effetti
meravigliosi sui loro profitti, mentre nel contempo sono stati la causa
della fame peggiore al mondo e dell'inevitabile crisi alimentare.

L'assalto all'agricoltura tradizionale
L'odierna crisi alimentare non si regge da sola: è una manifestazione di una
crisi dell'agricoltura che è stata organizzata da decenni. Come abbiamo
analizzato nel precedente articolo, negli ultimi tre decenni i paesi ricchi
del Nord del mondo hanno costretto i paesi poveri ad aprire i loro mercati,
quindi hanno inondato questi mercati di derrate sovvenzionate, con
devastanti risultati per l'agricoltura del Terzo Mondo.
Ma la ristrutturazione dell'agricoltura mondiale a vantaggio delle imprese
giganti dell'agro-alimentare non si ferma qui. Nello stesso periodo, i paesi
del Sud del mondo sono stati convinti, persuasi con lusinghe, costretti con
la prepotenza, ad adottare politiche agricole che promuovevano colture di
prodotti da esportazione, più che per ottenere cibo per il consumo interno,
e favorivano una agricoltura su larga scala industriale, che obbliga a
produzioni di monocoltura, ad un pesante uso di acqua, e a quantitativi
massicci di fertilizzanti e pesticidi. Per di più, l'agricoltura
tradizionale, organizzata da e per comunità e nuclei famigliari, è stata
spazzata via da una agricoltura industriale organizzata da e per gli
interessi delle imprese agro-alimentari.

Questa trasformazione costituisce l'ostacolo principale ad una agricoltura
razionale che possa eliminare la fame.
L'interesse per una agricoltura di prodotti da esportazione ha causato
l'assurdo e tragico risultato che milioni di esseri umani stanno patendo la
fame nei paesi che esportano derrate alimentari.
In India, ad esempio, oltre un quinto della popolazione è cronicamente
affamato e il 48% dei bambini sotto i cinque anni sono malnutriti. Ciò
nondimeno, nel 2004 l'India ha esportato negli Stati Uniti 1.5 miliardi di
dollari di riso brillato e 322 milioni di dollari di grano.[9]

In altri paesi, le terre da coltivare che erano utilizzate per far crescere
cibo per uso domestico ora servono per coltivare prodotti rari e squisiti
per il Nord. La Colombia, dove il13% della popolazione è malnutrita, produce
ed esporta il 62% di tutti i fiori recisi venduti negli Stati Uniti.
In molti casi, il risultato della conversione a prodotti da esportazione
rasenterebbe il ridicolo, se non fosse la causa di disastri. Il Kenya aveva
una auto-sufficienza alimentare fino a circa 25 anni fa. Oggi importa l'80%
del suo bisogno alimentare — e l'80% delle sue esportazioni consiste in
prodotti agricoli diversi. [10]

Lo spostamento ad una agricoltura industriale ha allontanato dalla terra
milioni di esseri umani e li ha gettati nella disoccupazione e nella povertà
in immense baraccopoli che attualmente circondano molte delle città del
mondo. La gente che aveva un buon rapporto con la terra è stata separata da
essa; i suoi contadini sono rinchiusi in gigantesche industrie all'aperto,
che producono solo per esportare. Centinaia di milioni di persone ora devono
dipendere da cibo che viene prodotto migliaia di miglia lontano, visto che
la loro agricoltura casalinga è stata trasformata per incontrare le
necessità delle grandi compagnie dell'agro-alimentare.

Come è stato dimostrato negli ultimi mesi, l'intero sistema è fragile: la
decisione dell'India di ricostituire le sue riserve di riso ha fatto in modo
che milioni di persone di mezzo mondo non possano permettersi di mangiare.
Se lo scopo dell'agricoltura è quello di dar da mangiare alla gente, i
cambiamenti nell'agricoltura mondiale degli ultimi 30 anni sono privi di
senso. Le coltivazioni industriali nel Terzo Mondo hanno prodotto
quantitativi di cibo sempre crescenti, ma al costo di allontanare milioni di
individui dalla terra e di portarli a vivere perennemente affamati — e al
costo di avvelenare aria e acqua, e di far diminuire in modo costante le
potenzialità del suolo ad erogare il nutrimento di cui abbiamo necessità.

Contrariamente alle assicurazioni delle imprese agro-industiali, le più
recenti ricerche in agricoltura, comprese quelle in corso da un decennio di
esperienze concrete a Cuba, provano che piccole e medie aziende agricole,
utilizzando metodi agro-ecologici sostenibili, sono molto più produttive e
di gran lunga meno inquinanti dell'ambiente, rispetto alle gigantesche
aziende agricole di natura industriale.[11]

L'agricoltura industriale continua non perché è più produttiva, ma perché,
fino ad ora, è stata in grado di fornire prodotti uniformi in quantità
prevedibili, condizionati nello specifico a resistere al deterioramento
durante il trasporto verso mercati lontani. È questo che genera il profitto,
ed è il profitto quello che conta, non contano gli effetti sulla terra, aria
ed acqua — o tanto meno quello di affamare i popoli.

Lottare per la sovranità alimentare
I cambiamenti imposti dalle imprese transnazionali dell'agro-alimentare e
dalle loro agenzie non sono rimasti privi di sfide. Uno dei più importanti
sviluppi negli ultimi 15 anni è stato l'emergere della “Via Campesina”
(Peasant Way), una struttura di difesa che comprende più di 120
organizzazioni di agricoltori e contadini di 56 paesi, e che allinea dal
Landless Rural Workers Movement – Movimento dei Lavoratori Rurali Non
Proprietari (MST) del Brasile alla National Farmers Union – Unione Nazionale
dei Coltivatori in Canada.

All'inizio, la “Via Campesina” aveva presentato il suo programma nel 1996,
come una sfida al “World Food Summit – Congresso Mondiale
sull'Alimentazione”, una conferenza organizzata dall'ONU sulla fame nel
mondo, che vedeva la partecipazione di Rappresentative ufficiali di 185
paesi. I partecipanti a questo incontro si ripromettevano (comunque, in
seguito, non fecero nulla per conseguire questo obiettivo!) di eliminare la
fame e la malnutrizione, assicurando “la sostenibile piena disponibilità di
cibo per tutti i popoli.” [12]

Come è tipico di questi eventi, la gente che lavora, che dovrebbe
effettivamente essere coinvolta, veniva esclusa dalle discussioni.
All'esterno del convegno, la “Via Campesina” proponeva la sovranità
alimentare come alternativa alla sicurezza alimentare, ed argomentava: “Non
è sufficiente il solo accesso al cibo, quello che è necessario è l'accesso
alla terra, all'acqua e alle materie prime e la gente interessata a queste
problematiche deve avere il diritto di sapere e di decidere sulle politiche
alimentari. Il cibo è troppo importante per essere lasciato ai
condizionamenti del mercato globale e alle manipolazioni delle imprese del
settore agro-industriale: la fame nel mondo può avere termine solo con il
reinsediamento di piccole e medie aziende a conduzione famigliare, come
elementi chiave della produzione di derrate alimentari.” [13]

La richiesta centrale del movimento per la sovranità alimentare è che le
derrate devono essere considerate prima di tutto come una fonte nutrizionale
per le comunità e le regioni dove sono coltivate. In opposizione al libero
mercato e alle politiche delle agro-esportazioni, è urgente focalizzare
l'impegno sui consumi interni e sull'autosufficienza alimentare.
Contrariamente alle asserzioni di molti critici, la sovranità alimentare non
fa appello all'isolazionismo economico o al ritorno ad un passato contadino
idealizzato. Piuttosto, si tratta di un programma per la difesa e
l'estensione di diritti umani, per riforme agrarie, e per la protezione
della terra contro il capitalismo ecocida, distruttore dell'ambiente.

Inoltre, nel proclamare l'autosufficienza alimentare e il rafforzamento
delle aziende agricole a conduzione famigliare, nell'appello originale della
“Via Campesina” per la sovranità alimentare venivano sottolineati i seguenti
punti:
- Garantire ad ognuno l'accesso al cibo sicuro, nutriente, e culturalmente
appropriato, in quantità e qualità sufficiente a sostenere una vita salubre
in piena dignità umana.
- Fornire alle persone contadine e senza proprietà terriera — specialmente
alle donne — la proprietà e il controllo della terra che loro lavorano ed
assicurare il ritorno alla terra ai popoli indigeni.
- Assicurare la protezione e l'uso delle risorse naturali, specialmente
della terra, dell'acqua e delle sementi. Mettere fine alla dipendenza dai
prodotti chimici, alle monoculture di prodotti agricoli destinati ai mercati
e alla produzione intensiva ed industrializzata.
- Fare opposizione alle politiche dell'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio
(WTO), della Banca Mondiale (World Bank) e del Fondo Monetario
Internazionale (IMF), che agevolano il controllo delle imprese
multinazionali sull'agricoltura.
- Regolare e tassare il capitale speculativo e rafforzare un rigido Codice
di Condotta per le corporations transnazionali.
- Cessare l'uso del cibo come arma. Mettere termine allo spostamento,
all'urbanizzazione forzata, e alla repressione dei contadini.
- Garantire ai contadini e ai piccoli coltivatori, e in particolare alle
donne lavoratrici della terra, l'accesso diretto alla formulazione delle
politiche agricole a tutti i livelli.[14]

La richiesta della “Via Campesina” per la sovranità alimentare costituisce
un potente programma agrario per il Ventunesimo secolo. I movimenti
sindacali e di sinistra di tutto il mondo dovrebbero fornire tutto
l'appoggio a questo programma e alle campagne dei contadini e dei lavoratori
della terra per le riforme agrarie e contro l'industrializzazione e la
globalizzazione del cibo e dell'agricoltura.

Basta con la guerra ai contadini del Terzo Mondo
All'interno di questo progetto strutturato, noi del Nord del mondo possiamo
e dobbiamo domandare che i nostri governi mettano fine a tutte le attività
che indeboliscono o pregiudicano l'agricoltura del Terzo Mondo.
Basta usare cibo come carburante.
La “Via Campesina” ha affermato semplicemente e con chiarezza: “Gli
agrocombustibili industriali sono un nonsenso economico, sociale ed
ambientale. Il loro sviluppo dovrebbe essere bloccato e la produzione
agricola per la produzione alimentare dovrebbe costituire l'oggetto primario
dell'attenzione.” [15]

Cancellare il debito del Terzo Mondo.
Il 30 aprile, il Canada ha annunciato un contributo speciale di 10 milioni
di dollari Canadesi per soccorrere Haiti dal punto di vista alimentare.[16]
Questo è positivo – ma nel corso del 2008 Haiti pagherà cinque volte di più
in interessi relativi al suo debito estero, pari a 1,5 miliardi di dollari,
la maggior parte del quale contratta durante la dittatura di Duvalier,
appoggiata dall'imperialismo. La situazione di Haiti non è unica, e non è
nemmeno un caso estremo. Il debito estero complessivo dei paesi del Terzo
Mondo nel 2005 era di 2,7 mila miliardi di dollari, e quell'anno i loro
pagamenti del debito totalizzavano 513 miliardi di dollari.[17] Mettendo
fine a questo drenaggio di cassa, immediatamente e senza porre condizioni,
verrebbero fornite risorse indispensabili, ora, per alimentare gli affamati,
ed in seguito per ricostruire una agricoltura di natura domestica.
Impedire al WTO di interessarsi di agricoltura.

Le politiche alimentari regressive, che sono state imposte ai paesi poveri
dalla Banca Mondiale e dal Fondo Monetario Internazionale, sono state
codificate ed applicate in modo forzoso dall'Accordo sull'Agricoltura
dell'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio. L'Accordo sull'Agricoltura, come
scrive Afsar Jafri su Focus on the Global South – Centro di Attenzione sul
Sud del Mondo, è “predisposto in favore di una agricoltura intensiva di tipo
capitalistico, manovrata dalle imprese del settore agro-industriale ed
orientata verso le esportazioni.” [18] Questo non fa sorpresa, dato che il
funzionario Statunitense che ha congegnato e quindi negoziato questo Accordo
è stato un ex vice-presidente del gigante del settore agro-industriale
Cargill.

L'Accordo sull'Agricoltura dovrebbe essere abolito, e i paesi del Terzo
Mondo dovrebbero avere il diritto di cancellare unilateralmente le politiche
di liberalizzazione imposte attraverso la Banca Mondiale, l'IMF e il WTO, ed
attraverso accordi bilaterali di libero commercio come il NAFTA e il CAFTA.
Autodeterminazione per il Sud del Mondo.

Gli attuali tentativi da parte degli Stati Uniti di destabilizzare e di
rovesciare i governi del gruppo ALBA — Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua e
Grenada — proseguono una lunga storia di azioni da parte dei paesi del Nord
ad impedire ai paesi del Terzo Mondo di rivendicare il controllo sui loro
propri destini. Organizzarsi contro tali interventi “nella pancia del
mostro” è allora una componente cruciale della lotta per conquistare la
sovranità alimentare in tutto il mondo.

* * *

Più di un secolo fa, Karl Marx scriveva che, malgrado il suo contributo al
progresso tecnologico, “il sistema capitalistico lavora contro una
agricoltura razionale…una agricoltura razionale è incompatibile con il
sistema capitalista.” [19]
Le attuali crisi alimentari ed agricole confermano in pieno questo giudizio.
Un sistema che pone il profitto al di sopra dei bisogni delle persone ha
spinto milioni di coltivatori e produttori lontano dalla terra, ha
indebolito la produttività dei terreni, ha avvelenato aria ed acqua, e ha
condannato quasi un miliardo di persone alla fame cronica e alla
malnutrizione.

Le crisi alimentari ed agricole hanno messo le radici in un sistema
irrazionale, anti-umano. Per nutrire il mondo, i lavoratori delle città e
delle campagne devono stringere le loro mani, unire le loro forze per
spazzare via questo sistema.

Note
[1] Frederic Mousseau, Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? Ending World Hunger in
Our Time – Sussidi alimentari o Sovranità alimentare? Oakland Institute,
2005. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/fasr.pdf.
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology
for Development (Valutazione internazionale su conoscenza, scienza e
tecnologia in agricoltura). Global Summary for Decision Makers – Sommario
globale per i produttori di decisioni .
http://www.agassessment.org/docs/Global_SDM_210408_FINAL.pdf
[2] Francis Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset. World Hunger: Twelve
Myths – La fame nel mondo: dodici miti . (Grove Press, New York, 1998) p. 8
[3] “About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa – Intorno
all'alleanza per una rivoluzione verde in Africa.”http://www.agra-alliance.org/about/about_more.html
[4] Comunicato stampa IRRI, 4 aprile 2008.
http://www.irri.org/media/press/press.asp?id=171
[5] “Il Presidente della Banca Mondiale chiede un piano per combattere la
fame.” Comunicato stampa, 2 aprile 2008
[6] Questi dati sono rilevati da rapporti trimestrali più recenti delle
compagnie, rilevati dai loro siti web.
[7] Shawn Hattingh. “Il liberismo del commercio alimentare alla fine.”
MRzine , 6 maggio 2008. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hattingh060508.html
[8] Fred Magdoff, John B. Foster e Frederick H. Buttel. Hungry for Profit:
The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment – La fame di
profitti: la minaccia del sistema industriale agro-alimentare ai
coltivatori, al nutrimento, all'ambiente . Monthly Review Press, New York,
2000. p. 11
[9] Organizzazione per l'alimentazione e l'agricoltura (FAO) dell'ONU. Dati
statistici fondamentali sul commercio estero di alimenti e prodotti
agricoli.
http://www.fao.org/es/ess/toptrade/trade.asp?lang=EN&dir=exp&country=100
[10] J. Madeley. Hungry for Trade: How the poor pay for free trade – La fame
di traffici: come i paesi poveri pagano per il libero mercato . Cited in
Ibid
[11] Jahi Campbell, “Shattering Myths: Can sustainable agriculture feed the
world? – Infrangere i miti: può l'agricoltura sostenibile alimentare il
mondo?” e “Editorial. Lessons from the Green Revolution – Editoriale.
Lezioni dalla Rivoluzione Verde.” Food First Institute. www.foodfirst.org
[12] Congresso Mondiale sull'Alimentazione.
http://www.fao.org/wfs/index_en.htm
[13] La Via Campesina. “Food Sovereignty: A Future Without Hunger – La
sovranità alimentare: un futuro senza fame.” (1996)
http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/1996%20Declaration%20of%20Food%20Sovereignty.pdf
[14] Parafrasi e compendio da Ibid
[15] La Via Campesina. “A response to the Global Food Prices Crisis:
Sustainable family farming can feed the world. – Una risposta alla crisi
mondiale dei prezzi alimentari: le coltivazioni sostenibili a conduzione
famigliare possono dar da mangiare al mondo.”
http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=483&Itemid=38
[16] A titolo di confronto, quest'anno il Canada spenderà 1 miliardo di
dollari per l'occupazione e la guerra illegale in Afghanistan.
[17] Jubilee Debt Campaign. “I fondamentali sul debito”
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=98
[18] Afsar H. Jafri. “WTO: l'agricoltura alla mercè delle nazioni ricche.”
Focus on the Global South , 7 novembre 2005.
http://www.focusweb.org/india/content/view/733/30/
[19] Il Capitale, Volume III . Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Opera Omnia ,
Volume 37, p. 123
Ian Angus è collaboratore assiduo di Global Research. Global Research
Articles by Ian Angus
© Copyright Ian Angus, The Bullet, Socialist Project , 2008
L'indirizzo url di questo articolo a:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8949
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Manufacturing A Food Crisis - By Walden Bello

2008-06-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

17 May, 2008 - The Nation
When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on US imports in the first place?

The Mexican food crisis cannot be fully understood without taking into account the fact that in the years preceding the tortilla crisis, the homeland of corn had been converted to a corn-importing economy by “free market” policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and Washington. The process began with the early 1980s debt crisis. One of the two largest developing-country debtors, Mexico was forced to beg for money from the Bank and IMF to service its debt to international commercial banks. The quid pro quo for a multibillion-dollar bailout was what a member of the World Bank executive board described as “unprecedented thoroughgoing interventionism” designed to eliminate high tariffs, state regulations and government support institutions, which neoliberal doctrine identified as barriers to economic efficiency.

Interest payments rose from 19 percent of total government expenditures in 1982 to 57 percent in 1988, while capital expenditures dropped from an already low 19.3 percent to 4.4 percent. The contraction of government spending translated into the dismantling of state credit, government-subsidized agricultural inputs, price supports, state marketing boards and extension services. Unilateral liberalization of agricultural trade pushed by the IMF and World Bank also contributed to the destabilization of peasant producers.

This blow to peasant agriculture was followed by an even larger one in 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Although NAFTA had a fifteen-year phaseout of tariff protection for agricultural products, including corn, highly subsidized US corn quickly flooded in, reducing prices by half and plunging the corn sector into chronic crisis. Largely as a result of this agreement, Mexico’s status as a net food importer has now been firmly established.
With the shutting down of the state marketing agency for corn, distribution of US corn imports and Mexican grain has come to be monopolized by a few transnational traders, like US-owned Cargill and partly US-owned Maseca, operating on both sides of the border. This has given them tremendous power to speculate on trade trends, so that movements in biofuel demand can be manipulated and magnified many times over. At the same time, monopoly control of domestic trade has ensured that a rise in international corn prices does not translate into significantly higher prices paid to small producers.

It has become increasingly difficult for Mexican corn farmers to avoid the fate of many of their fellow corn cultivators and other smallholders in sectors such as rice, beef, poultry and pork, who have gone under because of the advantages conferred by NAFTA on subsidized US producers. According to a 2003 Carnegie Endowment report, imports of US agricultural products threw at least 1.3 million farmers out of work — many of whom have since found their way to the United States.

Prospects are not good, since the Mexican government continues to be controlled by neoliberals who are systematically dismantling the peasant support system, a key legacy of the Mexican Revolution. As Food First executive director Eric Holt-Giménez sees it, “It will take time and effort to recover smallholder capacity, and there does not appear to be any political will for this — to say nothing of the fact that NAFTA would have to be renegotiated.”

Creating a Rice Crisis in the Philippines
That the global food crisis stems mainly from free-market restructuring of agriculture is clearer in the case of rice. Unlike corn, less than 10 percent of world rice production is traded. Moreover, there has been no diversion of rice from food consumption to biofuels. Yet this year alone, prices nearly tripled, from $380 a ton in January to more than $1,000 in April. Undoubtedly the inflation stems partly from speculation by wholesaler cartels at a time of tightening supplies. However, as with Mexico and corn, the big puzzle is why a number of formerly self-sufficient rice-consuming countries have become severely dependent on imports.
The Philippines provides a grim example of how neoliberal economic restructuring transforms a country from a net food exporter to a net food importer. The Philippines is the world’s largest importer of rice. Manila’s desperate effort to secure supplies at any price has become front-page news, and pictures of soldiers providing security for rice distribution in poor communities have become emblematic of the global crisis.

The broad contours of the Philippines story are similar to those of Mexico. Dictator Ferdinand Marcos was guilty of many crimes and misdeeds, including failure to follow through on land reform, but one thing he cannot be accused of is starving the agricultural sector. To head off peasant discontent, the regime provided farmers with subsidized fertilizer and seeds, launched credit plans and built rural infrastructure. When Marcos fled the country in 1986, there were 900,000 metric tons of rice in government warehouses.

Paradoxically, the next few years under the new democratic dispensation saw the gutting of government investment capacity. As in Mexico the World Bank and IMF, working on behalf of international creditors, pressured the Corazon Aquino administration to make repayment of the $26 billion foreign debt a priority. Aquino acquiesced, though she was warned by the country’s top economists that the “search for a recovery program that is consistent with a debt repayment schedule determined by our creditors is a futile one.” Between 1986 and 1993 8 percent to 10 percent of GDP left the Philippines yearly in debt-service payments — roughly the same proportion as in Mexico. Interest payments as a percentage of expenditures rose from 7 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1994; capital expenditures plunged from 26 percent to 16 percent. In short, debt servicing became the national budgetary priority.

Spending on agriculture fell by more than half. The World Bank and its local acolytes were not worried, however, since one purpose of the belt-tightening was to get the private sector to energize the countryside. But agricultural capacity quickly eroded. Irrigation stagnated, and by the end of the 1990s only 17 percent of the Philippines’ road network was paved, compared with 82 percent in Thailand and 75 percent in Malaysia. Crop yields were generally anemic, with the average rice yield way below those in China, Vietnam and Thailand, where governments actively promoted rural production. The post-Marcos agrarian reform program shriveled, deprived of funding for support services, which had been the key to successful reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. As in Mexico Filipino peasants were confronted with full-scale retreat of the state as provider of comprehensive support — a role they had come to depend on.

And the cutback in agricultural programs was followed by trade liberalization, with the Philippines’ 1995 entry into the World Trade Organization having the same effect as Mexico’s joining NAFTA. WTO membership required the Philippines to eliminate quotas on all agricultural imports except rice and allow a certain amount of each commodity to enter at low tariff rates. While the country was allowed to maintain a quota on rice imports, it nevertheless had to admit the equivalent of 1 to 4 percent of domestic consumption over the next ten years. In fact, because of gravely weakened production resulting from lack of state support, the government imported much more than that to make up for shortfalls. The massive imports depressed the price of rice, discouraging farmers and keeping growth in production at a rate far below that of the country’s two top suppliers, Thailand and Vietnam.

The consequences of the Philippines’ joining the WTO barreled through the rest of its agriculture like a super-typhoon. Swamped by cheap corn imports — much of it subsidized US grain — farmers reduced land devoted to corn from 3.1 million hectares in 1993 to 2.5 million in 2000. Massive importation of chicken parts nearly killed that industry, while surges in imports destabilized the poultry, hog and vegetable industries.

During the 1994 campaign to ratify WTO membership, government economists, coached by their World Bank handlers, promised that losses in corn and other traditional crops would be more than compensated for by the new export industry of “high-value-added” crops like cut flowers, asparagus and broccoli. Little of this materialized. Nor did many of the 500,000 agricultural jobs that were supposed to be created yearly by the magic of the market; instead, agricultural employment dropped from 11.2 million in 1994 to 10.8 million in 2001.

The one-two punch of IMF-imposed adjustment and WTO-imposed trade liberalization swiftly transformed a largely self-sufficient agricultural economy into an import-dependent one as it steadily marginalized farmers. It was a wrenching process, the pain of which was captured by a Filipino government negotiator during a WTO session in Geneva. “Our small producers,” he said, “are being slaughtered by the gross unfairness of the international trading environment.”

The Great Transformation
The experience of Mexico and the Philippines was paralleled in one country after another subjected to the ministrations of the IMF and the WTO. A study of fourteen countries by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization found that the levels of food imports in 1995-98 exceeded those in 1990-94. This was not surprising, since one of the main goals of the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture was to open up markets in developing countries so they could absorb surplus production in the North. As then-US Agriculture Secretary John Block put it in 1986, “The idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on US agricultural products, which are available in most cases at lower cost.”

What Block did not say was that the lower cost of US products stemmed from subsidies, which became more massive with each passing year despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase them out. From $367 billion in 1995, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed-country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Since the late 1990s subsidies have accounted for 40 percent of the value of agricultural production in the European Union and 25 percent in the United States.

The apostles of the free market and the defenders of dumping may seem to be at different ends of the spectrum, but the policies they advocate are bringing about the same result: a globalized capitalist industrial agriculture. Developing countries are being integrated into a system where export-oriented production of meat and grain is dominated by large industrial farms like those run by the Thai multinational CP and where technology is continually upgraded by advances in genetic engineering from firms like Monsanto. And the elimination of tariff and nontariff barriers is facilitating a global agricultural supermarket of elite and middle-class consumers serviced by grain-trading corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland and transnational food retailers like the British-owned Tesco and the French-owned Carrefour.

There is little room for the hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor in this integrated global market. They are confined to giant suburban favelas, where they contend with food prices that are often much higher than the supermarket prices, or to rural reservations, where they are trapped in marginal agricultural activities and increasingly vulnerable to hunger. Indeed, within the same country, famine in the marginalized sector sometimes coexists with prosperity in the globalized sector.

This is not simply the erosion of national food self-sufficiency or food security but what Africanist Deborah Bryceson of Oxford calls “de-peasantization” — the phasing out of a mode of production to make the countryside a more congenial site for intensive capital accumulation. This transformation is a traumatic one for hundreds of millions of people, since peasant production is not simply an economic activity. It is an ancient way of life, a culture, which is one reason displaced or marginalized peasants in India have taken to committing suicide. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, farmer suicides rose from 233 in 1998 to 2,600 in 2002; in Maharashtra, suicides more than tripled, from 1,083 in 1995 to 3,926 in 2005. One estimate is that some 150,000 Indian farmers have taken their lives. Collapse of prices from trade liberalization and loss of control over seeds to biotech firms is part of a comprehensive problem, says global justice activist Vandana Shiva: “Under globalization, the farmer is losing her/his social, cultural, economic identity as a producer. A farmer is now a ‘consumer’ of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful global corporations through powerful landlords and money lenders locally.”

African Agriculture: From Compliance to Defiance
De-peasantization is at an advanced state in Latin America and Asia. And if the World Bank has its way, Africa will travel in the same direction. As Bryceson and her colleagues correctly point out in a recent article, the World Development Report for 2008, which touches extensively on agriculture in Africa, is practically a blueprint for the transformation of the continent’s peasant-based agriculture into large-scale commercial farming. However, as in many other places today, the Bank’s wards are moving from sullen resentment to outright defiance.

At the time of decolonization, in the 1960s, Africa was actually a net food exporter. Today the continent imports 25 percent of its food; almost every country is a net importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the past three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and Southern and Central Africa.

Agriculture in Africa is in deep crisis, and the causes range from wars to bad governance, lack of agricultural technology and the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, as in Mexico and the Philippines, an important part of the explanation is the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs imposed as the price for assistance in servicing external debt.

Structural adjustment brought about declining investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption and low output. Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced fertilizer use, lower yields and lower investment. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector, which correctly saw reduced state expenditures as creating more risk, failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. Where private traders did replace the state, noted an Oxfam report, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable international aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

The support that African governments were allowed to muster was channeled by the World Bank toward export agriculture to generate foreign exchange, which states needed to service debt. But, as in Ethiopia during the 1980s famine, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into less suitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the World Bank’s encouragement of several economies to focus on the same export crops often led to overproduction, triggering price collapses in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s expansion of cocoa production triggered a 48 percent drop in the international price between 1986 and 1989. In 2002-03 a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in Mexico and the Philippines, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply about underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Africa the World Bank and IMF micromanaged, making decisions on how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired and even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom.

Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair EU and US trade practices. Liberalization allowed subsidized EU beef to drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO, US growers offloaded cotton on world markets at 20 percent to 55 percent of production cost, thereby bankrupting West and Central African farmers.

According to Oxfam, the number of sub-Saharan Africans living on less than a dollar a day almost doubled, to 313 million, between 1981 and 2001 — 46 percent of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.”

In 1999 the government of Malawi initiated a program to give each smallholder family a starter pack of free fertilizers and seeds. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after is a story that should be enshrined as a classic case study of one of the greatest blunders of neoliberal economics. The World Bank and other aid donors forced the scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the food crisis turned into a famine in 2001-02, there were hardly any reserves left. About 1,500 people perished. The IMF was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets… [are] crowding out more productive spending.”

By the time an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government had had enough of World Bank/IMF stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy, enabling 2 million households to buy it at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The result: bumper harvests for two years, a million-ton maize surplus and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to Southern Africa.

Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today, since structural adjustment has been discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments and NGOs that used to subscribe to it have distanced themselves from the Bank. Perhaps the motivation is to prevent their influence in the continent from being further eroded by association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions when Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to World Bank, IMF and Western government aid programs.

Food Sovereignty: An Alternative Paradigm?
It is not only defiance from governments like Malawi and dissent from their erstwhile allies that are undermining the IMF and the World Bank. Peasant organizations around the world have become increasingly militant in their resistance to the globalization of industrial agriculture. Indeed, it is because of pressure from farmers’ groups that the governments of the South have refused to grant wider access to their agricultural markets and demanded a massive slashing of US and EU agricultural subsidies, which brought the WTO’s Doha Round of negotiations to a standstill.

Farmers’ groups have networked internationally; one of the most dynamic to emerge is Via Campesina (Peasant’s Path). Via not only seeks to get “WTO out of agriculture” and opposes the paradigm of a globalized capitalist industrial agriculture; it also proposes an alternative — food sovereignty. Food sovereignty means, first of all, the right of a country to determine its production and consumption of food and the exemption of agriculture from global trade regimes like that of the WTO. It also means consolidation of a smallholder-centered agriculture via protection of the domestic market from low-priced imports; remunerative prices for farmers and fisherfolk; abolition of all direct and indirect export subsidies; and the phasing out of domestic subsidies that promote unsustainable agriculture. Via’s platform also calls for an end to the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights regime, or TRIPs, which allows corporations to patent plant seeds; opposes agro-technology based on genetic engineering; and demands land reform. In contrast to an integrated global monoculture, Via offers the vision of an international agricultural economy composed of diverse national agricultural economies trading with one another but focused primarily on domestic production.

Once regarded as relics of the pre-industrial era, peasants are now leading the opposition to a capitalist industrial agriculture that would consign them to the dustbin of history. They have become what Karl Marx described as a politically conscious “class for itself,” contradicting his predictions about their demise. With the global food crisis, they are moving to center stage — and they have allies and supporters. For as peasants refuse to go gently into that good night and fight de-peasantization, developments in the twenty-first century are revealing the panacea of globalized capitalist industrial agriculture to be a nightmare. With environmental crises multiplying, the social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life piling up and industrialized agriculture creating greater food insecurity, the farmers’ movement increasingly has relevance not only to peasants but to everyone threatened by the catastrophic consequences of global capital’s vision for organizing production, community and life itself.

Walden Bello is senior analyst at and former executive director of Focus on the Global South, a research and advocacy institute based at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He is the author or co-author of many books on politics and economic issues in the Philippines and Asia, including, most recently, Deglobalization (Zed), and recipient of the 2003 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” In March he was named Outstanding Public Scholar for 2008 by the International Studies Association.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation

Un hambre infame - Por Boaventura de Sousa Santos *

2008-06-02T03:59:00.000-07:00

Conocido hace tiempo por los que estudian la cuestión alimentaria, el escándalo finalmente estalló en la opinión pública: la sustitución de la agricultura familiar, campesina, orientada a la autosuficiencia alimentaria y a los mercados locales, por la gran agroindustria, orientada al monocultivo de productos de exportación (flores, soja, etc.), lejos de resolver el problema de la alimentación mundial, lo agrava.

Habiendo prometido erradicar el hambre del mundo en veinte años, hoy nos enfrentamos con una situación peor de la que existía hace cuatro décadas. Cerca de un sexto de la humanidad pasa hambre: según el Banco Mundial, 33 países están al borde de una crisis alimentaria grave; aun en los países más desarrollados los bancos de alimentos están por perder sus reservas; y volvieron las revueltas del hambre, que en algunos países ya causaron muertes.

Mientras tanto, la ayuda alimentaria de la ONU hoy está comprando a 780 dólares la tonelada de alimentos que en marzo pasado compraba a 460 dólares. La opinión pública está siendo sistemáticamente desinformada sobre este tema para que no se dé cuenta de lo que está pasando.

Es que lo que está pasando es explosivo y puede ser resumido del siguiente modo: el hambre del mundo es la nueva gran fuente de lucro del gran capital financiero, y sus ganancias aumentan en la misma proporción que el hambre.

El hambre en el mundo no es un fenómeno nuevo. Desde la Edad Media hasta el siglo XIX fueron famosas en Europa las revueltas del hambre (con el saqueo de comerciantes y la imposición de la distribución gratuita del pan). Lo que es nuevo en el hambre del siglo XXI son sus causas y el modo en que las principales son ocultadas.

A la opinión pública se le ha informado que el hambre está ligado a la escasez de productos agrícolas, y que ésta se debe a las malas cosechas provocadas por el calentamiento global y las alteraciones climáticas; al aumento del consumo de cereales en la India y en China; al incremento de los costos de los transportes debido a la suba del petróleo; a la creciente reserva de tierras agrícolas para producir agrocombustibles.

Todas estas causas han contribuido al problema, pero no son suficientes para explicar que el precio de la tonelada de arroz se haya triplicado desde el inicio de 2007.
750) this.width=750" border=0>Estos aumentos especulativos, como los del precio del petróleo, son el resultado de que el capital financiero (bancos, fondos de pensiones, fondos hedge de alto riesgo y rendimiento) ha comenzado a invertir fuertemente en los mercados internacionales de productos agrícolas, tras la crisis de la inversión en el sector inmobiliario.

En articulación con las grandes empresas que controlan el mercado de semillas y la distribución mundial de cereales, el capital financiero invierte en el mercado de futuros con la expectativa de que los precios continuarán subiendo y, al hacerlo, se refuerza esa expectativa.

Cuanto más altos sean los precios, más hambre habrá en el mundo, mayores serán las ganancias de las empresas y los retornos de las inversiones financieras. En los últimos meses, los meses en que aumentó el hambre, las ganancias de la mayor empresa de semillas y cereales aumentaron un 83 por ciento. O sea, el hambre de lucro de Cargill se alimenta del hambre de millones de seres humanos.

El escándalo del enriquecimiento de algunos a costa del hambre y la subnutrición de millones ya no puede ser disfrazado con "generosas" ayudas alimentarias. Tales ayudas son un fraude que encubre otro mayor: las políticas económicas neoliberales que hace treinta años vienen forzando a los países del Tercer Mundo a dejar de elaborar los productos agrícolas necesarios para alimentar a sus propias poblaciones y a concentrarse en productos de exportación, con los cuales ganarán divisas que les permitirán importar productos agrícolas... de los países más desarrollados.

Quien tenga dudas sobre este fraude, que compare la reciente "generosidad" de los Estados Unidos en la ayuda alimentaria con su consistente voto en la ONU contra el derecho a la alimentación reconocido por todos los demás países. El terrorismo fue el primer gran aviso de que no se puede continuar impunemente con la destrucción o el robo de la riqueza de algunos países para beneficio exclusivo de un pequeño grupo de países más poderosos. El hambre y la revuelta que acarrea parecen ser el segundo aviso.

Para responder eficazmente será necesario poner fin a la globalización neoliberal tal como la conocemos. El capitalismo global debe volver a sujetarse a reglas que no sean las que él mismo establece para su beneficio. Debe exigirse una moratoria inmediata en las negociaciones sobre productos agrícolas en curso en la Organización Mundial del Comercio. Los ciudadanos tienen que comenzar a privilegiar los mercados locales, a rechazar en los supermercados los productos que vienen de lejos, a exigir del Estado y de los municipios la creación de incentivos a la producción agrícola local, a exigir que las agencias nacionales de seguridad alimentaria, donde las haya, entiendan que la agricultura y la alimentación industriales no son el remedio contra la inseguridad alimentaria. Bien por el contrario, son su causa.

* Doctor en Sociología, catedrático de las universidades de Coimbra (Portugal) y de Wisconsin (EE.UU.).
Fuente: http://www.geocities.com/economistas_de_izquierda/