Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
• redesigning the international trading system to be compliant with human rights
(including the regulation of agricultural commodities trading).
On the issue of prioritization of smallholder farmers, it is important to under-
stand that poor rural families represent 75 per cent of the people suffering from
structural hunger (Ivanic and Martin, 2008). They also suffer from increases in world
food prices. Via Campesina (2008), the World Movement of Peasants' Organization,
explains that:
we also suffer from the food crisis as most small producers also have to buy food
to survive. We are not the ones beneiting from the high food prices as the price
at the farmgate is muh lower than the price paid by consumers. Large retailers,
food traders and agri-business companies are the ones profiting from the current
situation.
5
Via Campesina is right: the current food crisis not only deprives vulnerable
people of their right to food, but it also benefits huge transnational corporations that
monopolize the food hain, from the production, trade, processing, to the marketing
and retailing of food, narrowing hoices for farmers and consumers. Just ten corpor-
ations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, not only control one-
third of the US$ 23 billion commercial seed market, but also 80 per cent of the US$
28 billion global pesticide market (Ziegler
et al.
, 2011). Another ten corporations, in-
cluding Cargill, control 57 per cent of the total sales of the world's leading 30 retail-
ers. In the United States, for example, 60 per cent of terminal grain-handling facilit-
ies are owned by four companies - Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, ADM and General
Mills - and 82 per cent of corn exporting is concentrated in three companies - Car-
gill, ADM and Zen Noh (FAO, 2003).
In order to hange the situation for smallholder farmers, the Breton Woods in-
stitutions and the World Trade Organization need to hange the global paradigm for
agricultural policy-making and give absolute priority to investments in subsisten-
ce agriculture and local production, including irrigation, infrastructure, seeds, pesti-
cides and the like. Peasant farmers and subsistence agriculture have been neglected
for too long. The issue of the exclusion of peasants from the development process,
and the neglect of their rights, should be immediately addressed. National govern-
ments, international organizations and bilateral development agencies, should give
absolute priority to investments in subsistence agriculture and local production.
