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In today’s day and age, our global economy indicates and showcases food as becoming the main objective of neoliberal practices, which have equally altered the way in which farmers grow crops or foods and the methods they used to cultivate the land for growing. The worlds food supply completely relies on large transnational corporations and have always favored a more industrialized practice of agriculture rather than traditional knowledge. Currently, family and subsistence farmers are in danger due to the rapid growth of industrial agriculture and with it new sciences and technologies, which has distorted how the world’s historic agriculture as it evolves into large ‘corporate farms , followed by the mass production of cash crops. The industrial agriculture corporations have confiscated the worlds food supplies and put them on the global market, to sell and bring revenue, all because of the policies created by neo-liberalism. The consequences of industrial agriculture have been detrimental and long-lasting. It caused the rural population to shift to metropolitan areas, an increase in poverty and famine, and the continued damage being done to the environment.
Due to the animosity of the policies of industrial agriculture, there is also heavy resistance that has resulted towards globalization and its related ideologies. This form of intense resistance is seen in many various facets throughout society and takes into consideration movements such as the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, La Vía Campesina, and Slow Food. The foregoing are just a small fragment of the movements that oppose the regulations that surround today’s globalizing agriculture and the food policies. In the end, majority of these movements form as one towards the injustices of global food requirements and have allowed a voice of reason for those who have been criticized or treated unfair.
Globalization
Globalization has many various definitions, some say that it refers to the process of geographical movement while others may consider it to be a process that allows businesses to create international allies to help increase their success1. One thing that can be agreed upon is how important globalization is in today’s economy. It has helped to better the economy of many nation states through interactions and the spread of goods across boundaries2. It has been proven that globalization has benefited the world’s economy however it has also had an adverse effect on various other economies that may not even be prevalent to the people. After World War II the process of globalization unquestionably gathered momentum. The United States took advantage of their place in the war and projected growth towards a more globalized process and economy, by initiating organizations and influencing mindsets that would assist in this venture. After the war, Europe needed to be restored, and in order to advocate more trade globally; The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were conceptualized. The next institution created was The Tariffs and Trade, which was made to create and depict the various requirements and regulations intended for trading and creating a better global relations. It is obvious that globalization has had an everlasting effect on today’s economy. It has ultimately helped develop the world and its economy, however, with the good, there was also damage done to the ecosystem and the communities that reside there.
Introductions of Industrial Agriculture
Agriculture is the process of cultivating food for consumption or distribution by humans3. It can involve the cultivations of various plants, animals or even energy sources and can done on land or even in water, and is a very important source of economic advancements. Agriculture, just like the global economy has changed drastically with time and with the creation of new practices, technologies, and ideologies. Many families that rely solely on the income they obtain from their farms are now struggling financially. Small family farms, which were once considered to be a fruitful trade is now being threatened by large multinational corporations. This struggle has led many subsistence farmers to give up their land to large corporations where they can produce a great volume of goods to be later sold to the global market. These large corporate farms are known as industrial agriculture, and the ethics and values that subsistence farmers used to cultivate their crops is no longer considered viable. Pesticides/insecticides, hybrid seeds and genetically modified seeds, new technologies, and the manufacturing of monoculture for export heavily rely upon industrial agriculture4. Small subsistence farmers never had a chance against the industrial farms and it caused the small farmers to sell out to large businesses and grow crops for export. Everything became about the money when industrial agriculture became dominant mainly because it became an export and import business and the touch of family farming was lost. Large agricultural companies insisted that this type of agriculture would be advantageous for the economy and the people, they also claimed that it would eradicate poverty and world hunger. The production of food has since then increased rapidly, but it has also caused increased poverty and has profoundly damaged our ecosystems4.
World War II Role in the demise of small farms
One of the main reasons that the change from small subsistence farms into large multinational farms arose could be due to World War II5. Scientific advancements that were conceptualized and achieved during WWII, led to technological advancements and were later implemented to itemize technologies made specifically for agriculture. The new technologies that were made available after WWII were quicker and able to cultivate a great deal of produce in a short period of time, and were favored by the corporations. Small farmers were forced to deal with problems that they may have come across but at a larger scale. Insecticides and pesticides were most commonly used After WWII, this was the time when DDT rose to popularity. DDT was a widely used insecticide, which is now banned, but had a very negative effect on the environment and on many animal species and was favored by industrial agricultural technologies6. DDT was primarily used because it was efficient and it got rid of insects that was injurious to human life. With high exposure to DDT over time, it became obvious that it had a very negative effect on the environment and living species. The connection between DDT use and disease was not made, until a few years after initially using them, when researchers finally figured it out while doing tests on laboratory animals7.
The Green Revolution
On top of the various advancements that were being made, post-WWII era, researchers also began working on and increased research on plant hybridization, which was known as The Green Revolution8. The main objective of The Green Revolution was to increase the production of foods and eliminate hunger worldwide by introducing new technologies like hybrid seeds9. Hybrid seeds were high-yielding seeds, in one case study it was found that production increased 208% for wheat, 109% for rice, 157% for maize 78% for potatoes, and 36% for cassava8. This is one of the biggest benefits that occurred throughout The Green Revolution; it helped put an end to hunger in many regions, by producing much more food per year. However this food did not nourish the people from the communities it was grown in, it was transported all across the world. The Green Revolution model slowly changed completely and become more of an import and export model10. The World Bank encourages countries to transform from food first to export first 10. The Green Revolution had replaced the older ways of farming, while also raising the cost of farming significantly due to the new technologies involved in industrial agriculture. With support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, large corporations provided farmers with their hybrid seeds, in order for them to convert from subsistence farmers to industrial farmers. This caused many farmers to desert their land, which was their main source of income. Vandana Shiva, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, founder of the Navdanya movement, and author of The Hijacking of The Global Food Supply: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, mentions in her article:
While the Green revolution has been promoted as having increased productivity in the absolute sense, when resource use is taken into account, it has been found to be counterproductive and inefficient. Perhaps one of the most fallacious myths propagated by Green Revolution advocates is the assertion that high-yielding varieties have reduced the acreage under cultivation, therefore preserving millions of hectares of biodiversity &Industrial breeding actually increases pressure on the land, since each acre of a monoculture provides a single output, and the displaced outputs have to be grown on additional acres10.
The fundamental concern that many people would agree on is that The Green Revolution was an institution that was mainly concerned with getting power over countries and did not take into consideration the driving force of world hunger and how to fix it for the long run.
Genetically Modified Organisms and Seeds
Food is a basic necessity of life that all organisms require. Obtaining a clean and healthy source of food is difficult for people who live in third-world countries, however, more developed nations are also facing these challenges due to genetically modified organisms (GMO) and seeds. GMOs are organisms whos genes have been altered to appeal to the human populations11. One of the major contributors of GMO research was the Monsanto company. Monsanto is a large corporation responsible for producing a herbicide called Roundup – containing an ingredient called glyphosate12. They also created genetically modified seeds that were completely resistant to the Roundup herbicide. This meant that the herbicide containing glyphosate, kills everything except for the seeds engineered by the Monsanto company, and when the seeds are harvested they contain a prominent amount of this herbicide12.
Does a persistent question arise as to why Monsanto is considered the threat to small family farmers? To answer and evaluate this, we can begin with why Monsanto tried to get rid of family farms and is getting them to comply with practices/techniques of farming, even if the practices are unethical. Farmers and their families go through so many hardships when cultivating the genetically modified seeds. For example, when the crop yields proved to be unsuccessful due to either pest infestation or major seed failure, many of the individuals working there committed suicide by consuming the exact same pesticide that had led them to debt initially10. Next, Monsanto has banned saving seeds. Seed saving is a routine practice family farmers have used that dates back to the stone age, where they simply saved their seeds from one year to the next. One of the many reasons that this is an important practice is because it allows the farmers to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on other to find seeds that may be hard to come across13. The regulations under the Monsanto company require farmers to buy costly new seeds every year and if farmers do not abide by the rules, they can face penalties. Additionally, Monsanto sues farmers who go against the rules and save seeds. Approximately $24 million dollars in fines have been payed by farmers to the Monsanto company because of these allegations14. The Monsanto company is simply a small part that arose in response to the globalizing world, however, the impact of it is still prevalent in today’s society, as the pesticides and seeds have left a lasting mark on the way food is grown globally. In order to change these policies, farmers, community members and families need to stand up together and bring these issues into light so that people who are not aware of the way that there food is cultivated can really see what is happening behind the scenes.
Resistance Against Globalized Agriculture
Globalization has gathered a lot of momentum over the years and trying to overthrow it may seem challenging or even intimidating. However, millions of people each day are standing up for their rights and demanding change. Everywhere around the world, we see resistance toward corporate globalization. Not only by farmers, but activists, conservationists, and youth, are all getting together to finally make their voices heard about unethical farming practices. This type of resistance appears in all different forms all around the world, but all amalgamate into one in the injustices of neo-liberal policies.
Starting off with, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which is a form of resistance, that took place due to current policies regarding food which need it to be imported in from many miles away. This concept was first originated in Switzerland but really took off when it was introduced in Europe in 1980s and was adopted in the United States later on15. CSA is a program in which community members register with a local farm and pays a set amount of money, and in exchange they get an array of different produce, benefitting both the consumers and the farmers16. The consumers obtain natural and fresh produce while simultaneously learning about the process of sustainable farming. The farmers on the other hand get an annual income from the community by removing the middleman, which helps them grow the crops they choose in a sustainable fashion.
Another type of resistance movement toward industrial agriculture is the Via Campesina movement. The Via Campesina movement that brings together people of various ranks, ages ethnicities, and genders, in order to fight for our agriculture and the food we consume, and as a way to advocate for fairness and equality for all, as well as to protest against the corporate-focused agriculture that damages most social relations and the environment17. This movement strives to achieve numerous goals, one of them being to go against the industrial system by promoting agroecology, which puts people before money. Another goal of this movement is to advocate for the peasants to have equal rights17. Laborers, globally, are affected by the daily injustices they face, corruption of businesses, and various losses of their homes, that has arisen due to globalization. Many transnational corporations still continue to violate people and their rights, while individuals who work hard to defend the rights of their communities end up criminalized or even killed. The La Via Campesina movement encourages individuals to advocate a Universal Declaration for the rights of labourers, farmers, and other people working in similar in farming areas. This movement also takes into consideration the right to life, the right to a respectable standard of living, the right to land, to seeds, justice, and equality among all17.
Another form of resistance is the Slow Food Movement, which was founded by an individual named Carlo Petrini and was started in Italy when a McDonalds was opened for business and concern set in as to what would happen to local and traditional foods18. The name slow food came into place in order to reject the popularity of fast foods and a fast lifestyle. This movement basically pushes toward a relaxed life, where you put thought into what you are consuming and not supporting large food chains that promote overindulgence and irresponsible agricultural practices. The snail represents this movement because of the obvious reason that a snail moves very slowly, but also because the snail is a delicacy in the Italian town where this movement was originally established in. The threats that communities are facing because of the vast depletion of local food practices is what the slow food movement is trying to fight against. It is a non-profit organization that protests the fast food chains directly. Good, clean, and fair food is what the slow food movement advocates for. It believes that the food we consume should taste great, it should be cultivated in a sustainable manner, and the farmers that produce this food should be paid fairly for all their work. This movement recognizes the relationship between our earth and the food that we consume and is committed to conserving traditional foods that are falling out of existence due to multinational food corporations.
Conclusion
Overall, globalization is a very broad subject matter and agriculture is a very mere aspect of it, however, food being the basic need of living species, its a topic that needs to be handled cautiously. Due to the establishment of neoliberal policies, many people across the globe have gathered together in passion-fuelled resistance, based in solidarity. Farmers, activists, students, and community members have taken globalization into their own hands and have stood up to the big agricultural companies. They have worked hard to create movements within their communities and across the world, to prevent further damage that can be done to our planet and its people.
Over the years globalization has become an issue that is freely examined in many communities and currently, we can clearly see that globalization is no longer an issue or taboo subject matter. With the globalization of agriculture, we saw many farming families and other rural families being stripped of their land and their farms when they did not comply to the rules and regulations of large corporate businesses. Globalization of agriculture not only impacted the way in which food grew, but it also had a direct impact on our ecosystem and environment. The movements that arose because of this allowed people to voice their opinions and take action against agricultural globalization. Community Supported Agriculture, La Via Campesina, and Slow Food were the three movements mentioned above however there are a multitude of movements all across the world that are fighting in opposition to the globalizing world. In order for a country to fully harvest the profits that come with globalization, they need to have a level of openness to import and export (trade), and they also need to have the ability to embrace new technological changes and advancements. However, this is very challenging for most countries as they are rooted in traditional forms of agriculture and ways of handling business. Not only did industrial agriculture effect the way in which food in grown, but it also impacted the farming families and the members of communities. Overall, it is important for the world to know and understand the damage that is being done and that has already been done to the planet and the people that reside on it because of industrial agriculture. Action needs to be taken and issues need to brought into the light so that alternatives can be created and implemented.
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