Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
in increasingly few hands. Indeed, critics of the Green Revolution assert
that it was supported by international lending agencies and U.S. founda-
tions as a technical alternative to social movement efforts to create land
reform (Rosset, Patel, and Courville 2006; Holt-Giménez 2006). Efforts
toward land reform, however, continued, and by the 1990s, organized
grassroots land occupations had occurred in places as varied as Brazil,
Zimbabwe, Thailand, and South Africa. These actions pressured the
World Bank to pursue its own version of land reform.
The World Bank's land reform policies are led by the market rather
than the state or social movements, and emphasize productive effi ciency
rather than justice (Deninger 1999). They are based on the assumption
that rural agrarian poverty persists because individuals do not have clear
and suffi ciently secure property rights (Borras 2006; Borras and Saturnino
2004). Rather than expropriating privately owned land as demanded by
social movements, this approach mandates that landless peoples pay
market prices to willing sellers (Borras 2006). Loans are available for such
purchases, but often not for infrastructure improvements necessary to
make such lands productive. This is one key reason why Brazil's program,
for example, had high dropout rates. Sauer's (2006) study of its benefi cia-
ries revealed that many formerly landless people abandoned the program
because they could achieve neither subsistence nor profi t. They were once
again landless, and were now also mired in debt. Scholars studying
market-led agrarian reform efforts often argue that they are not a means
toward greater food sovereignty (Rosset, Patel, and Courville 2006).
Purchasing Replacements
Unlike many goods, food is essential to human life, and those without
access to land must purchase it. In the United States, low-income com-
munities and communities of color often live in so-called food deserts
replete with liquor stores and fast-food establishments, but containing
few or no grocery stores. Poor rural communities are often located far
from supermarkets, and the nearest are generally high priced and lack
variety and quality (Jackson 2005). Moreover, U.S. commodity subsidies
guarantee that processed foods will be more affordable than fresh
produce (Pollan 2006).
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Poor communities often depend on government
commodity foods, which tend to be low in nutrients (Pollan 2006). For
food justice advocates, the inability to purchase food is rooted in U.S.
policies such as urban renewal, the federal highway program, and the
farm bill (McClintock 2008; Pollan 2006; Guthman 2007).
