Please find below the notes on the relocalisation and deindustrialisation of agriculture from my recent term paper. In the end, I had to cut few thousand words of arguments surrounding the potential positive impacts of relocalisation from the paper. Therefore, I have put them below. I must warn you that not only are they in note form but that almost all of the points made below are extremely contested within their respective literatures. I have not presented the arguments from the other sides here.
Introduction
There is a vast literature that states that a relocalisation and deindustrialisation of agriculture is needed to reduce carbon emissions. For the purposes of this blog, I will touch briefly on the work of Dr. Vandana Shiva, Jules Pretty, Via Campesina, Tim Lang, Caroline Lucas and Mike Woodin. I will also outline some of the authors other arguments used, many of which are similar, for a relocalisation and deindustrialisation of agriculture. I will only be able to mention a few different areas which these authors cover: environment, concentration of power and ownership (and the importance of local communities), output efficiency of smaller farms, protection against fluctuating global prices, domestic food security and reconnecting people with land and nature.
Environment
Vandana Shiva outlines the scale of the problem of industrialised agriculture:
“Industrial agriculture, with its chemical intensive and fossil fuel intensive inputs is responsible for large contribution to greenhouse gases. It is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60 per cent of methane gas emissions and 80 per cent of nitrous oxide, all powerful greenhouse gases.
“Nitrous oxide is 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is produced by the use of nitrogenous fertilisers. Around 70 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilisers are used in agriculture, contributing to 22 million tonnes of annual nitrous oxide emissions.”
“Emissions of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels for agricultural purposes in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per ha, while they are only 0.007 i.e. roughly seven time slower in non-industrial agriculture.
“Atmospheric pollution due to greenhouse emissions has aggravated drought and floods. This climate instability is a threat to agriculture and food security. A shift to ecological agriculture and organic farming is therefore an ecological, economic and security imperative.”(Shiva 2004: 69)
She argues that a relocalisation and deindustrialisation (or a reintroduction of organic) of agriculture is necessary not just to reduce greenhouse gases, but to prevent other negative environmental externalities such as:
- Destruction of biodiversity
- Toxic pollution
- Pollution and depletion of water resources
- Erosion of soil and soil fertility
- Emission of greenhouse gases, including climate change (Shiva 2004: 65)
Concentration of Power
Tim Lang often concentrates on the unprecedented changes in how food is produced, distributed, consumed and controlled, especially focussing on the high levels of concentration of market share in these areas. As he points outs:
“In the period 1993-9, the aggregate concentration of the top 10 grocery retailers in the EU grew by 24.9%, whereas the market share of the bottom 10 companies in the EU Top 50 declined by 72.2%. The larger are getting larger and the small (even though historically large in relative historical terms) are being squeezed.” (Lang 2004: 7)
The food sector has been concentrating and expanding rapidly. There has been integration of various levels of the food chain, the introduction of global control or 'just-in-time' distribution systems and astonishing leaps in productivity. Tim Lang recognises that concentration "is strongly linked to power, and the concentration of power over the food system is now remarkable, whether one looks nationally, regionally or globally. A web of contractual relationships turns the farmer into a contractor, providing the labour and often some capital, but never owning the product as it moves through the supply chain.” (Lang 2004: 9). As a result, farmers and consumers have less and less power, and both are often at the whim of transnational corporations.
Vandana Shiva puts this very powerfully:
“the new trade liberalisation and globalisation policies are not reducing the centralised control of agriculture; they are increasing it. Part of the reason this concentration is not being perceived, and the process of trade liberalisation being misconceived as a new freedom for farmers, is because power is shifting from the nation-state to transnational corporations (TNCs)...As the state withdraws from agriculture, it is not handing over to farming communities and autonomous producers, the functions and power it took away from them. It is, instead, facilitating the handing over of control over natural resources, production systems, markets and trade to global agribusiness, and further disempowering and dispossessing small farmers and landless labour in India, in the process.”
“The Indian farmers do need liberation, but trade liberalisation does not imply farmers' liberation. It is creating new forms of slavery and bondage. Trade liberalisation is leading for external liberation, or liberalisation for global agribusiness.” (Shiva 2002: 12)
Both authors call for a relocalisation which gives farmers and the poor more power over the decisions that affect their lives, the land they live on (or have been dispossessed from) and the livelihood strategies that they wish to pursue.
Output efficiency of smaller farms (and inefficieny of industrialised agriculture)
Extensively quoting the FAO's Report on the 1980 World Census of Agriculture, Vandana Shiva argues that small farms can be “thousands of times more productive than large farms.” (Shiva 2002: 53). See below for examples:
(Shiva 2002: 54-55)
As pointed out above, the globalisation of agricultural markets has often resulted in the concentration of land and farm ownership, which supposedly increases efficiency and productivity by enabling the introduction of large-scale mechanisation. However, as Shiva argues, it is actually productivity that justifies equity of land distribution and the need to maintain and protect small farmers and peasants.
As Jules Pretty points out, consumers pay three times for our food – once at the till, a second time through taxes that are used to subsidise farmers or support agricultural development, and a third time to clean up the environmental and health side effects (such as water pollution). (Pretty 2002)
Vandana Shiva claims that without these two extra subsidies (after the consumer pays for a product at the till), “non-local supply of food controlled by Transnational Corporations and produced with capital intensive methods would not be able to displace local food production produced sustainably with low energy inputs.” (Shiva 2002: 24)
The polluter or farmer often does not pay for the environmental and health externalities of industrialised agriculture. If the total costs are taken into account, both authors argue that sustainable and organic agriculture is both cheaper, more efficient and more productive.
Protection against fluctuating global prices
Farmers, especially small and poorer ones, are often very vulnerable to volatile currency and commodity markets. As Woodin et al quote in their book, even the World Bank now recognises that the price of globalisation is paid disproportionately by the poor.:
“The costs of adjusting to greater openness are borne exclusively by the poor, regardless of how long the adjustment takes. In addition, the consequences of terms of trade changes are far greater for the poor than for the middle or wealthy classes. The poor are far more vulnerable to shifts in relative international prices, and this vulnerability is magnified by the country's openness to trade” (Woodin et al 2005: 56 quoting Lundberg et al 1999)
While farmers in industrialised countries are often directly paid by governments under the concept of “decoupled income support”, the income of third world farmers remain vulnerable to changes in global trade patterns and international prices of agricultural commodities. As Shiva points out, “While rich countries can afford to give this decoupled income support as state welfare to the 1-2 per cent of their populations still engaged in agriculture, Third World countries cannot avail of these provisions since 70-80 per cent of their populations are engaged in agriculture.” (Shiva 2002: 17-18)
Relocalising agriculture, it is argued, would help shelter farmers from globalised price shocks and strengthen ties with local communities.
Domestic food security and food sovereignty
Vandana Shiva also believes that a relocalised and deindustrialised agricultural system is key to ensure food and land security for peasants. According to Shiva, trade liberalisation leads to food insecurity at four levels:
- A transfer of resources from peasants to industry
- A shift of land use from the production of staple goods to luxury and non-food crops (cash crops) such as shrimp and flowers for exports.
- Diversion of cereals from domestic markets to exports, creating domestic scarcity and rising prices.
- Removal of food subsidies, thus reducing domestic consumption and increasing food exports. (Shiva 2002: 24)
The diagram below further illustrates her position:
FIG: Trade Liberation and the Erosion of Food security
(Source: Shiva 1996: 7)
She goes onto argue that under under free trade and free mobility of capital, “comparative advantage of countries transforms into absolute advantage for transnational corporations, and countries are pushed into a downward spiral of food insecurity through a fallacious logic of competitiveness.” (Shiva 2002: 23)
Woodin et al. argue a similar point:
“In some poorer countries where millions are landless and hungry, this situation is compounded by the large scale-cultivation of cattle feed for export. It is estimated for example that for every acre farmed in the UK, two more are farmed overseas in order to meet the feed requirements of our intensively farmed livestock. Imported feed, such as casava, soya beans and soya cake, makes up about 30 per cent of all European animal feed. An estimate 5.6 million acres in Brazil and around 1.2 million acres in Argentina are devoted to soya bean production for export – land that would be better used by local people to grow food for local needs.” (Woodin et al 2004: 154)
This is complemented by the idea of food sovereignty, where individuals, communities and nations have the right to determine their own local food and farm policy. The idea of food sovereignty is rooted in the work of some civil society organisations that were active in the 1996 and 2002 World Food Summits. Via Campesina claims to have developed and promoted the concept during the 1996 summit (Via Campesina 2005). Via Campesina defines food soverignty as "the peoples', the countries', states'/unions' right to define their agricultural and food policy, without any dumping vis-a-vis third countries." Along with other organisations, such as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Via Campesina has put forward the concept of food sovereignty as a counterpoint to agricultural trade liberalisation. Food sovereignty accents the need to protect and promote small-scale sustainable agriculture. This can be done by protecting national food markets from unfair trade associated with, for example, food dumping, by improving access for farmers to inputs such as land and credit, and by preserving farmers' rights – as opposed to corporate rights – to genetic, land and water resources. By fostering small-sale agriculture and protecting national markets, food sovereignty is seen as a means to build healthy farm communities to foster food security.
Agri-Culture: reconnecting people, land and nature
Jules Pretty argues for a sustainable agricultural revolution by indicating that agricultural and food systems, and the landscapes they shape, are a common heritage to us all (Pretty 2002). For all our human history, we have been shaped by nature, while shaping it in return. In recent times Pretty argues that the shaping has been destructive, with food seen as a commodity and no longer part of culture. As Jules Pretty points out, Roman agricultural writers spoke of agriculture as two things: “agri and cultura (the fields and the culture). It is only very recently that we have filtered out the culture and replaced it with commodity.” (Pretty 2002: 7) In our modern and industrial ages, we are losing languages, memories and stories about land and nature. These disconnections matter because they serve to promote a persistent dualism – that nature is separate from people, that nature can be conserved in wildernesses, and that economies can succeed without regard to the fundamental significance of agricultural and food systems.
A conclusion of relocalisation and deindustrialisation claims
Many of these claims are contested, especially within the development literature, and I have tried to address some of them briefly in my term paper. Not only are they contested, but they are often combined together to make an argument for relocalisation. The England & Wales Green Party policy on agriculture and relocalisation is a good example of this (Green Party 2006: AG102):
AG102 Current industrialised, intensive farming methods are not sustainable in that they:
a)deplete non-renewable resources through intensive use of machinery, encouragement of long haul transportation and the use of non-organic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides etc.
b)pollute the soil, air, surface and ground water and consequently the marine environment through the use of the substances and practices mentioned above
c)destroy soil structure through use of chemicals and heavy machinery and the loss of topsoil
d)destroy rural communities through amalgamation of farms, mechanisation and loss of jobs and have a devastating impact on the farming community
e)cause the depletion of wildlife and loss of biodiversity (poisoned food and water and loss of habitat)
f)cause unacceptable suffering to animals which are intensively reared and transported unnecessarily
g)lead to massive imports of food, animal feed and other materials which cause suffering in other countries where productive land is used for exports
h)lead to the outbreak of diseases such as BSE and foot and mouth disease
i)cause severe deforestation, thus disrupting the carbon cycle and reducing biodiversity
j)produce unhealthy food due to use of harmful chemicals in production and storage
k)harm the health of growers who have to apply the chemicals
l)cause land which could be used as "wilderness" or for food production to be devoted to animal fodder
m)fail to make the best use of our own land for meeting our needs
n)force reliance on a small number and narrow genetic range of food plants, causing loss of essential genetic diversity
o)lead to overproduction of particular crops and food dumping
The manifesto recommends: “Massive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are needed to stem climate change. Current agricultural practice makes a substantial contribution to emissions through food miles, production and transport of animal feed and the use of fossil fuels in the manufacture of agrochemicals.” (Green Party 2006: AG206)
The Green Party’s long-term policy aim is to “To be able to fulfil all our basic food needs locally” (Green Party 2006: AG500) and “To grow as many other products as we can to meet our basic needs (e.g. for textiles, fuel, paper) on a local or regional basis” (Green Party 2006: AG501). This position is reflective of the position upheld by many localists, including Shiva, Lang, Pretty and Woodin.
However, what percentage of the UK's workforce would be needed to do this and if they would want to be "reconnected" to the land is a whole other question. As noted by Teddy Goldsmith, "during the war, 40 percent of Britain's food and vegetables were derived from just over 300,000 acres of vegetable gardens and allotments. Unfortunately most of these allotments were situated close to urban centres and have since been "developed"." Whether this could be done again, and if people would want to do this again, is well beyond this blog post to answer.
Bibliography
Green Party (2006) Manifesto for a Sustainable Society: Section on Agriculture http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/Agriculture.html
Lang, Tim (2004) Food Industrialisation and Food Power: Implications for Food Governance, Gatekeeper Series No.114, International Institute for Environment and Development.
Lundberg, M. amd Squire, L. (1999), The Simultaneous Evolution of Growth and Inequality, Washington DC: World Bank.
Pretty, Jules (2002) Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature, Earthscan Publications, London.
Shiva, Vandana (1996) Globalisation of Agriculture and the Growth of Food Insecurity: A Report of the Intellectual Conference on Globalisation, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture.
Shiva, Vandana and Gitanjali Bedi (eds.) (2002) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: The Impact of Globalisation, Sage Publications, London
Shiva, Vandana (2004) "The ecological costs of industrial agriculture and the economic imperative to shift to organic farming" Published in National Bank news review / National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, 20,nos.2-3 (2004)
Woodin, Michael and Caroline Lucas (2004) Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto, Pluto Press, London
Via Campesina (2005) Statement on Food Soverignty
http://www.aseed.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=153&Itemid=35
Posted in Environment | Politics ed's blog | 1695 reads
Submitted by ed on Sat, 2007-01-27 14:38.
