Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
er food and its declining share within household expenditure, and increasing consumption of
'high-quality' foods, especially animal-derived protein' (Weis, 2010, p315-6).
26.
Thus the opening paragraph of the World Bank's
World Development Report 2008
(2007, p1),
reads: 'An African woman bent under the sun, weeding sorghum in an arid field with a hoe,
a hild strapped on her bak - a vivid image of rural poverty … But others, women and men,
have pursued different options to escape poverty. Some smallholders join producer organiza-
tions and contract with exporters and supermarkets to sell the vegetables they produce under
irrigation. Some work as laborers for larger farmers who meet the scale economies required
to supply modern food markets. Still others, move into the rural nonfarm economy, starting
small enterprises selling processed foods'.
27.
Especially England and the US, the two states from whose development experience 'develop-
ment theory' was derived, despite the current process of 're-peasantization' in Europe (Van
der Ploeg, 2009).
28.
As argued elsewhere, the WTO's export regime has accelerated de-peasantization (McMi-
hael, 2005; Araghi, 2000), for example, contributing to the transformation of Africa into a
food importer, importing 25 percent of its food, and exporting high-value crops suh as green
beans, coffee, flowers, and biofuels. While economic theory postulates that high-value exports
can assist in financing staple food imports, the food crisis revealed the limits of this scenario
(McMihael, 2009c).
29.
Whether agrofuels account for up to 75 per cent of food price inflation, as the World Bank
reports, or somewhat less, the point is clear: that crop-derived fuels directly or indirectly con-
tribute to rising prices. Either way, the corporate mediation of supply and demand conditions
the inflation of prices. Between 2006 and 2007, US ethanol distillery corn demand increased
twice as muh as the increase in global demand for corn (Holt-Giménez and Kenield, 2008,
p3). The US Renewable Fuels Standards legislation (2007) empowers 'ADM, Bunge and Cargill
to diversify their monopsonistic purhases to include corn for fuel as well as corn for food'
(Holt-Giménez and Kenield, 2008, p2). US corn diverted to fuel feedstok puts pressure on
world grain markets, since the US produces 40 per cent of global corn supplies.
30.
hus, while Arher Daniels Midland (ADM) proits from the diversion of corn to ethanol
(away from food, and from exporting to Mexico), it also profits from rising tortilla prices,
since it owns a 27 per cent share of Gruma, Mexico's largest tortilla manufacturer. Further,
'ADM also owns a 40 per cent share in a joint venture with Gruma to mill and refine wheat
- meaning that when Mexican consumers are forced by high tortilla prices to swith to white
bread, Gruma and ADM still win' (Philpot, 2007). In fact, the 2007 'tortilla crisis' was a con-
sequence of the diversion of white corn to catle feed to make up in turn for the diversion of
yellow feed-corn to agrofuels - with tortilla consumers forced to pay more to sustain meat
consumption elsewhere (Holt-Giménez and Kenfield, 2008, p4).
31.
he conversion of rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce agrofuels in Brazil,
Southeast Asia and the US 'creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more
