The market is not sovereign
Let us imagine for a moment to be a member of a family from any poor country in the South of the world. We live in a house without any comfort, but at least we’ve managed to put together four walls and a roof. We get by performing some piece-work and we cultivate a small plot of land, whose products we use not only to partially feed the family, but we also sell them to earn some money to buy other food, medicines, clothes and various equipment.
Around a third of our expenditures are for food.
The price of what we buy keeps increasing, but we are being paid less and less. They call it the market, but it seems rather like a scam to us.
Last year, during the food crisis caused by the hike of prices (see “Manitese” n. 457, October 2008) our family was brought to its knees. They say all over the world the prices of wheat and rice have risen up to 150%, just like those of all agricultural raw products. Now they remain high, even though it seems the crisis has partly receded. Let’s imagine now to be a member of a family migrated to join the woeful outskirts of a big city (Sao Paulo, Manila, Nairobi…) because it could no longer live off agriculture. At least before we still managed to eat something, while now we don’t even have that. Why are we the only ones to pay, why we who are the ones cultivating the land, and counting up to almost half of the world population?
Is there food for all?
It is a key issue for Mani Tese. It is our starting point, it’s what has been motivating us for the past 45 years to intervene in the countries of the South of the world (“global South” as we call it today), but also to work in the “North” in an effort to remove the causes of hunger and poverty. Jean Ziegler, the former Special Rapporteur to the United Nations on the Right to Food, told us that in the world there is enough food to feed 12 billion people, almost twice the number of the current inhabitants of the planet. Since the Seventies the yearly availability of cereals is between 300 and 350 kg per person, a little less than a kilo of cereals a day for each human being, productively increasing essentially in parallel with the demographic trend.
That is to say: there are more people, but we are also capable of producing more food. But out of the 2.232 million tons of cereals produced all over the world in 2008, less than a half (around 1.000 million tons) has been used for human consumption, whereas most of it has been used to fatten animals and to produce agro-fuel. This competition is better known as food-feed-fuel. It is the skeleton of the injustice developed by the global food system. It’s nothing new, but it’s not stopping either: US citizens consume on average 123 kg per capita of meat a year, while Indians barely 5.
The links in a chain of profits
The world food system concentrates resources, power and profits in a few hands. Let’s make some names. Few private enterprises (Cargill inc, USA; Bunge Ltd, Bermuda; Archer Daniels Midland, USA; Louis Dreyfus, France; Marubeni, Japan) control 90% of the world trade of cereals. The first 30 retail trade chains control a third of the world total sales of consumer goods (Wal-Mart, USA, 10%; Carrefour, France, 6%; Tesco, UK, 4%, just to mention the first three). Six corporations (Bayer, Germany, 19%; Syngenta, Switzerland, 19%; BASF, Germany, 11%; Dow AgroScience, USA, 10%; Monsanto, USA, 9%; DuPont, USA, 6%) control three quarters of the global market of pesticides. The market of seeds is by now filled for 82% by patented products and around 70% of them are sold by 10 enterprises, with Monsanto and DuPont (USA) covering alone 40% of the total market. The first ten enterprises control 26% of the market of packaged food products (Nestlé, Pepsi, Unilever, etc…). Their wallets grow bigger and bigger: during last year’s food crisis, for instance, Cargill’s net profits grew by 86% in few months, going from 553 million dollars to 1.030 million dollars; those of Archer Daniels Midland grew by 42%, going from 363 million dollars to 517 million dollars. They have the power to fix prices, being often the only buyers; they have familiarity with the financial world and are able to affect the trend of the stock exchange where speculations are made on agricultural raw products; they have a considerable influence even on governments’ decisions both at national and international level.
Who influences the market
Despite these financial actors, operating in the international markets, are estimated to control only 14% of the world commerce, they have a great capacity of setting prices. Prices are being determined in the Chicago stock exchange, the greatest food marketplace. The causes of the price hike of agricultural raw products, and of all byproducts, and the causes of last year’s subsequent food crisis are all well known, even if there isn’t unanimous agreement on the role each of them has played. Factors like the reduction and privatization of food “stocks”, the expectations on the increase of the demand due to the development of big emerging countries, the slowdown of the increase of the supply caused by a slowdown in of the investments in agriculture over the past few years and the financial speculation have worsened an already critical situation of hunger. Furthermore there have been other economic factors that have led to smaller harvests in recent years, such as the reduction of land destined to food cultivation due to the increase of the cultivation of agro-fuels, and the increase of the costs of production and transportation due to the price hike of oil (to an in-depth view, see Manitese n. 457, 2008 and 461, 2009). Leaving aside all the extremely complex causes of the food crisis, it is important to stress a key aspect: prices aren’t growing because the demand is greater than the supply; in other words, it’s not a problem of availability of food. Besides, local and regional trade supply around 86% of the food requirement, but the dynamics of prices, which are valid also on local markets, depend on the activity of big enterprises. Which, as we have seen, have excessively increased their profits.
Food, land, people at the core
For these reasons food, land and people must once again be the focus of the attention, and public policies must have the function of protecting people as producers and consumers, and of defending the land. Around food a huge battle of civilization is being played: how natural resources will be managed (water for example, which amounts to 70% of agricultural needs), the value that work in the fields will be rewarded, the sustainability of the primary sector in energetic and environmental terms, the defense of traditional cultivations and culture, of land and biodiversity, most of all in indigenous territories and natural reserves, the role of governments and of all international players. Defending food is a way of protecting both men and women. Putting these elements back at the core amounts to giving people a future, also and specially to those living in countries already hit by a growing impoverishment, as we have imagined at the beginning of the present article.
On food depend the fate of democracy, which is a matter of sovereignty of the people and not only of few. Food sovereignty, as a matter of fact.
Quote
“The essential aim of food, feeding people, has been subdued to the economics goals of a handful of multinational corporations monopolizing all aspects of food production, from the seeds to the major distribution chains, and they are the first beneficiaries of the world crisis. A look at the 2007 data, when the food crisis started, shows that corporations like Monsanto and Cargill, controlling the cereals market, have seen their profits grow by 45% and 60% respectively, while the leading society of the fertilizers’ market, the Mosaic Corporation, a branch of Cargill, has doubled its profits in just one year.”
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Campaign “I eat local. No speculation added”
On the occasion of the World Food Day of the 16th October 2009, Mani Tese launches the campaign: “Io mangio locale. Senza speculazioni aggiunte.” (I eat local. No speculation added)
It is a campaign conceived to sustain the right of all people to food sovereignty, that is the right to decide their own agricultural and food policies and to fight hunger and poverty through the strengthening of their own local markets.
Mani Tese will organize some events in public squares all over Italy to reaffirm the effectiveness of behaviours and choices that can guarantee the right to food to the whole planet. These choices often start with small everyday actions, that all of us consumers can adopt for our daily food consumption.
The goals of the “Io mangio locale” campaign are:
- to reaffirm and sustain the right of all people to decide their agricultural and food policies and to fight hunger and poverty through the strengthening of their local markets;
- to reassert the power that consumers and producers have all over the world in determining social behaviours and economical choices linked to production and distribution, in a framework of global justice and social and environmental sustainability;
- to actively support the work of our partners towards food sovereignty;
- to promote and strengthen consumers’, producers’, institutions’ and citizens’ networks which, through behaviours aimed at justice, sobriety, responsible consumption and solidarity, can share good practices, adopt new life styles and promote concrete patterns of change of the present development model.
