Healthy animals - healthy people
VETAID, currently active in Africa, promotes animal health and welfare and improved husbandry to enhance living conditions for both animals and the people who depend upon them for their survival.
From: VETAID
http://www.vetaid.org/contents/index.htm" ..
7 February 2000
Somaliland
Somaliland is the country to the North West of Somalia which declared itself independent in 1991, but which is yet to be recognised by the United Nations. The country had suffered years of violent conflict before separating from Somalia. The legacy of this division is a country with very few resources, still heavily dependent on livestock for its economy. Refugees are continuing to return from neighbouring Ethiopia, many of whom have lost everything and have no means to restart their lives. The government cannot provide the support services the people need to look after the livestock they have.
VETAID has been working in Somaliland for the past five years though the current programme has been running since late 1997. The current programme has three main projects as outlined below, namely the Pastoralist Project; the Agro-Pastoral project and the Advocacy and Networking project. This programme is due to be completed early in 2001.
Pastoral project
This part of the programme is working in the driest areas of Somaliland where extensive pastoralism is practiced mainly with sheep, goats and camels and some cattle. In these areas, the project has provided training and a basic start up kit of veterinary drugs and equipment, to male and female community animal health workers. Alongside this, herder information and animal treatment days have been run to provide direct information to herders, particularly on the correct use of veterinary drugs. Also, training and advice has been provided to members of private veterinary associations with the aim of encouraging them to provide an advice and drugs sales service to the trained community animal health workers.
Agro pastoral development project
This project is working in the areas of Somaliland where there is slightly more rain and some rain-fed agriculture is practiced. The work of this project is similar to that of the pastoral project but in addition to the work outlined above, in the agro-pastoral areas, VETAID has been involved in a number of agricultural initiatives. These have included training a number of demonstration farmers how to use donkeys for draught power (to improve the timeliness of cultivation when it rains) and introducing the growing of fodder crops for animals and leguminous crops for human consumption. Also, the project has provided training, both to demonstration farmers and through open days for farmers, on use of manures and other agricultural inputs. Women extension workers have been trained to provide training to pastoralist women on a range of topics including dairy hygiene and cooking using introduced leguminous crops.
Advocacy and Networking project
In addition to the above two projects and to strengthen the sustainability of their work, the programme has also been involved in networking with the Ministry of Livestock, local NGOs and other international NGOs. VETAID has developed good links with the Ministry of Livestock and has had input to the initial drafting of legislation to legitimise the role of community animal health workers and veterinary associations. VETAID has facilitated workshops between the Ministry of Livestock and Vet Associations to try and improve relationships and look at the development of an improved system for licencing vet associations to sell drugs though considerable work still needs to be done to achieve this. VETAID has also organised a workshop on the sensitive issue of land enclosures (people illegally enclosing land for fodder production with the knock on effect of blocking pastoralists from accessing traditional dry season grazing land) to encourage dialogue between the government, pastoralists and land owners to resolve this issue. Work on both these issues (legislation recognising community animal health workers and vet associations and the land enclosures issue) is on-going.
Participative Pastoral Development Programme
This project encompasses three different but related components; animal health, development of suitable cropping practices within the system, and pastoral research, networking and advocacy. Again the project works with a large number of local partner organisations to ensure that the effects of the project can be sustained in the future.
The project assists partner veterinary groups and the Ministry of Livestock Forestry and Range to provide animal health services. Communities also select interested people for training as Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs), and in conjunction with the partner veterinary groups the project provides training for them.
The project has links with an existing Ministry of Agriculture and Extension project in agro pastoral areas. Again in these areas the project works in conjunction partner veterinary groups to provide training for CAHWs. There is also training for women’s groups on smallholder dairy development, forage development and nutrition for both dairy and draught cattle.
Through two local partners, the project is carrying out field studies on:
*the role of women in livestock development
*pastoral ethnoveterinary practices and indigenous knowledge
*pastoral coping strategies
*changes in range ecology
*land degradation and resource use
*alternative pastoral livelihoods.
The knowledge gained through these studies will be shared through all the partner organisations and at workshops and seminars and in publications, to help inform future development initiatives.
The future
Somaliland will continue to have development needs for some time to come. The country receives less foreign aid than it could because of its lack of recognition by foreign powers. As one of the few countries in the world where a significant proportion of the population are totally dependent upon livestock, and in which the livestock sector is a major contributor to the economy, Somaliland is one of the countries in which VETAID will continue to have work to do for years to come.
December 28 08:31 AM EST
Food Security Hits Africa's Rural Airwaves
By Penny Dale, OneWorld Africa
Community radio broadcasters are getting together to set up a news agency aimed at providing rural people in Africa with practical information about farming methods to help boost food security and health in hard-to-reach areas of the continent.
"We must bring food security information to the grassroots, to the people who need it," says Martin Sanaingo'o Kariongi Ole Sanagao, a rural radio broadcaster with Olkonerei FM in northeast Tanzania, which is one of the key players in the project launched last week by the United Nations (Food and Agriculture Organization ((FAO).
"Community radio is Africa's Internet," says Jean-Pierre Ilboundo, an FAO education and communication expert working on the food security project. "It reaches our most important audience - the illiterate and hungry."
Broadcasters from four rural radio stations including Olkonerei--Radio Anfani in Niger, Mali's Radio Djamena Foko, and South Africa's Radio Turf--plan to build up a network of African journalists who specialize in food security issues.
The World Association of Community Broadcasters (Amarc) and the Developing Countries' Farm Radio Network will provide training on how to get the message across and the FAO will provide information about food security tailored to meet the needs of communities.
Programs will focus on limiting environmental damage to the land, looking after sick livestock, and selecting the best seeds for particular soils and climates.
The project--which will also make use of local knowledge on farming practices--is part of a growing number of development initiatives using community radio as a medium for reaching people cut off from other sources of information.
Amarc has broadened its mandate to include the right to be informed and heard on the issue of food security. But, says Michelle Ndiaye Ntab, who heads the association's Africa programs, "It is a right that needs to be supported with legislation and money, not just words."
Governments often pay only lip service to community radio because they fear the empowerment of previously voiceless groups, says Ntab. In Zimbabwe and Botswana, for example, there is no legislative framework on community radio broadcasting.
Other broadcasters say a similar view sometimes prevails among men in communities which are supposed to benefit from rural radio projects.
Men are often reluctant to allow women, Africa's main food producers, to voice their opinions, says Kady Souley Boncano of Radio Anfani.
"When I interview women, [we] often have to hide because the men don't want them to stand up and be heard," she says.
"But women are the ones who produce the food. Most of them are illiterate, and if they can't be told which seeds are good, they will simply plant bad seeds again and again."
Africa Recovery, 24 Dec 2001
Shea nuts: making trade work for poor women
Villagers in Burkina Faso discover an opening in the global market
By Ernest Harsch
They call it "women's gold." When crushed and processed, the nuts of the shea tree yield a vegetable fat known as shea butter. It has long been a common ingredient in local foods and soap, but its qualities also make it a valuable export, for use in the manufacture of chocolate and cosmetics. The tree grows throughout the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, but the largest concentration is in Burkina Faso, where exports of shea butter and unprocessed shea kernels brought in CFA5 bn ($7 mn) in 2000, making it the country's third most important export, after cotton and livestock.
The harvesting and processing of shea is primarily an activity of rural women, between 300,000 and 400,000 in Burkina alone. So its earnings directly benefit some of the poorest villagers, in a country classified as one of the poorest in the world.
Not many other developing-country exports can make a similar claim. Even when their prices are not depressed in world markets, coffee, cocoa, cotton, copper and other primary commodity exports yield benefits mainly to governments, corporations and middlemen, along with some producers -- most of whom are men and few of whom are among the very poor.
Visiting shea butter projects in Burkina in February 2001, Ms. Noleen Heyzer, executive director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), emphasized the importance of consciously trying to counter global trade's inclination to further marginalize the poor. "Our support for shea butter producers," she told local reporters, "reflects our determination to increase women's access to the world market and to reverse the prevailing tendencies of globalization, in order to make it work for women and the poor."
A neglected treasure
Shea -- known in the local Dioula language as karité ("life") -- generally grows wild, with little need for any special cultivation or nourishment. Almost all parts of the tree have some practical use. The bark is an ingredient in traditional medicines against certain childhood ailments and minor scrapes and cuts. The shell of the nuts can repel mosquitoes. Above all, the fruity part of the nut, when crushed, yields a vegetable oil that can be used in cooking, soap-making and skin and hair care. Harvesting the nuts and making the butter have traditionally been women's work. Men usually are involved only in transport and marketing.
Pounding shea nuts: exports of shea products can boost women's incomes.
Photo: ©International Development Research Centre
Unprocessed shea nuts have been exported to Europe for decades, primarily for the manufacture of chocolate in Switzerland and the UK. During the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, Burkina's earnings from shea exports came in second, after cotton. But the world price for shea nuts plunged in 1986-87, and the quality of Burkina's output declined as well, bringing a reduction in its share of the world market. By 1990, Burkina was exporting only 22,000 tonnes, just a tiny fraction of the shea nuts grown each year.
The government's adoption of structural adjustment policies in the early 1990s further disrupted the harvesting of the nuts and the marketing of shea products. Liberalization of agricultural marketing, through elimination of the price stabilization board, brought considerable instability to domestic trade and left the sector as a whole poorly organized.
Theoretically, the devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994 might have made it possible for local producers of shea nuts and butter to earn more from exports. But Burkinabè women were in an especially weak position to take advantage of any new economic opportunities. An estimated 88 per cent of rural women are illiterate, and have limited technical skills to improve the quality of their butter or acquire information about market trends. Even when they do have the skills or knowledge, few women have access to formal credit to purchase shea butter presses or to better promote their products.
Burkina's structural adjustment programme placed a heavy emphasis on exports, but throughout the 1990s the main focus was on cotton. With support from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), major investments were made in reorganizing the sector and providing new seed varieties and other support services. Producer prices for cotton were raised and cotton farmers received credit to purchase fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, cotton production mounted, from 117,000 tonnes in the 1993/94 season, to a projected 400,000 tonnes in 2001/02.
The benefits of cotton -- Burkina's "white gold" -- are not negligible. The crop bolsters the overall trade balance and provides livelihoods directly to about 2 million of the country's 11 million people. But cotton also brings some costs. When world prices are low, as they currently are, the government may actually take a financial loss by trying to maintain a producer price that is attractive to farmers. The chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in cotton's cultivation tend to damage the soil. And the expansion of land area devoted to cotton sometimes comes at the expense of cereals, further undermining food security in a country of periodic drought and hunger.
In Burkina's cotton-growing zones, according to numerous field studies, social and economic inequalities also have tended to widen. Since the very poor do not have access to much land or credit for inputs, successful cotton farmers often come from the better-off layers of rural society. And hardly any of them are women.
NGOs and donors take an interest
In 1994, as living conditions worsened for many Burkinabè under the impact of structural adjustment and devaluation, the government announced "six commitments" to help the poor and ensure environmental sustainability. One of the commitments specifically highlighted the potential for promoting women's economic empowerment through development of the shea sector.
In response to government appeals for assistance, a number of external non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and bilateral donors began to support various projects. One of the first initiatives was the Projet national karité (PNK, National Shea Project), launched in 1995 with financial and technical assistance from the Centre canadien d'étude et de coopération internationale (CECI), a Canadian NGO. Then Taiwan came in with major funding, about CFA1 bn ($1.4 mn) up to the end of 1999.
UNIFEM's West Africa regional office, headquartered in Dakar, Senegal, sent a mission to Burkina at the government's request. It found that despite the PNK and other shea projects, women still did not have secure access to means of production. So in 1997 UNIFEM became directly involved, specifically to help women's groups bolster their ability to produce shea butter and to link them up with potential export markets.
Because of the proliferation of shea projects, the government decided the following year to establish a coordinating committee to ensure that the different donor institutions did not operate at cross-purposes or duplicate efforts. The committee enjoys a high political profile, functioning directly under the authority of Ms. Gisèle Guigma, the minister of women's advancement.
Exploring new markets
UNIFEM researchers confirmed that for women producers, the greatest potential income lies in the production and marketing of shea butter, rather than the raw nuts. In 1997, a tonne of unprocessed shea nuts sold domestically for CFA70,000 and externally for CFA100,000. But the same tonne, when processed into shea butter, fetched CFA148,000.
Several foreign cosmetics firms already have begun to use shea butter in their lotions, creams, soaps and other products, including L'Oreal and the Body Shop. UNIFEM helped broker a particularly important deal with L'Occitane, a French cosmetics company. Unlike most firms, L'Occitane does not use intermediaries, but buys its shea butter directly from the Union des groupements Kiswendsida (UGK), a network of more than 100 shea groups. This ensures that a greater share of the revenue goes to the producers, instead of middlemen. In 2001, L'Occitane contracted for 60 tonnes of shea butter, and will likely increase the amount to 90 tonnes in 2002. In addition, it provides the women with training in quality control and pays for the shea butter in advance, giving them greater economic security during the production phase.
"Our support for shea butter producers reflects our determination to increase women's access to the world market and to reverse the prevailing tendencies of globalization, in order to make it work for women and the poor."
-- Ms. Noleen Heyzer, executive director, UNIFEM
"It is important for women to have a partner like L'Occitane," says Ms. Félicité Yaméogo, president of the UGK, "because it is they who enable us to sell our products at a higher price." Earning regular incomes, she observes, "helps these women producers earn the respect of their family and the right to speak out in the community."
Until such cosmetics companies took an interest, most exported shea nuts or butter went into the manufacture of chocolates. That market may expand considerably in the near future, following the European Union's decision in 2000 to allow up to 5 per cent of non-cocoa vegetable fats in chocolate manufacturing. Despite its cost, shea butter is particularly favoured because it complements cocoa very well.
According to Ms. Antoinette Ouédraogo, a shea producers' representative, the women's groups can also conquer new markets closer to home, within Burkina and in neighbouring countries. She notes that Burkina's annual shea nut output may be around 850,000 tonnes (the highest anywhere in the world), but only some 50,000 tonnes are currently being harvested.
Skills and sustainability
"Linking women producers to global markets of shea butter is one way to strengthen and build women's economic security," notes Ms. Heyzer. Their economic position is enhanced not only through the additional income they earn, but also through the technical skills and organizational capacities they acquire.
All assistance to the women flows through their own local associations. As of November 2000, there were estimated to be more than 1,300 women shea producers' organizations, covering about half the country's provinces. In some areas, a very sizeable proportion of women belong to such groups -- in Sissili, for example, fully one-third of rural women are now engaged in shea production.
Through these producers' groups, women are able to pool their resources to purchase simple presses, greatly reducing the amount of time and labour required to crush the shea nuts. They receive technical training to achieve the standards of quality for shea butter required by foreign buyers, and are able to make marketing contacts through periodic trade fairs.
According to Ms. Fati Bougouma, head of the PNK project, women participating in the shea groups also attend literacy classes, especially in Mooré and Dioula, two of the most widely spoken indigenous languages. This has made it possible to train some of the women to themselves train other shea producers. "With literacy," she says, "women are able to manage better, they understand more."
Along with practical instruction, the various shea projects also seek to educate the general public about environmental sustainability. The shea tree is a protected species. It is illegal to even pick unripened nuts (mature nuts fall to the ground). But the scarcity of other cheap sources of energy often leads to abusive cutting of the trees for firewood, while farmers sometimes burn them to clear land for farming.
The shea tree flourishes best in the wild, and is not easily cultivated. Generally, planted seedlings, even if they grow into trees, tend not to produce usable nuts. However, Mali has had some success in replanting certain varieties of shea trees on a wide scale, and an experimental shea plantation has been started in Burkina, near the town of Nongremassom, with some initially encouraging results.
The most immediate challenge, though, is to protect the existing trees. Says Ms. Bougouma, "Every day, we explain to the people that the shea tree is one of our country's greatest riches."
Africa Recovery.Room S-931,United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA,Tel: (212) 963-6857
Fax: (212) 963-4556,Email: africa_recovery@un.org
Earth Island Institute Winter 2001-2002 Vol. 16, No. 4
Are Genetically Altered Foods The Answer to World Hunger?
The Monsanto Roundup - Book Excerpt: The Food Revolution
by John Robbins
Biotechnology is one of tomorrow's tools in our hands today. Slowing its acceptance is a luxury our hungry world cannot afford. - Monsanto advertisement Genetically engineered crops were created not because they're productive but because they're patentable. Their economic value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich. - Amory and Hunter Lovins, Founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute The global acreage planted in genetically engineered foods grew nearly 25-fold in the three years after 1996, the first year of large-scale commercialization. Yet this enormous growth took place almost entirely in only three countries.
In 1999, the United States by itself accounted for 72 percent of the crops. Argentina was responsible for another 17 percent and Canada weighed in with another 10 percent. These three countries together accounted for 99 percent of the entire planet's genetically engineered plantings.
Monsanto and other proponents of biotechnology continually tell the public that genetic engineering is necessary if the world's food supply is to keep up with population growth. But even with nearly 100 million acres planted, their products have yet to do a thing to reverse the spread of hunger. There is no more food available for the world's less fortunate. In fact, most of the fields were growing transgenic soybeans and corn that are destined for livestock feed. One of the clearest independent voices in the sometimes raucous debate about genetically modified foods is Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly [Environmental Research Foundation, Annapolis, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036, (888) 272-2435, fax: (410) 263-8944, www.rachel.org
http://www.rachel.org"].
In 1999, the journal noted that "Neither Monsanto nor any of the other genetic engineering companies appears to be developing genetically engineered crops that might solve global food shortages." If genetically engineered crops were aimed at feeding the hungry, Rachel's noted, Monsanto would be developing seeds with certain predictable characteristics including: able to grow on substandard or marginal soils; able to produce more high-quality protein with increased per-acre yield, without the need for expensive machinery, chemicals, fertilizers or water; engineered to favor small farms over larger farms; cheap and freely available without restrictive licensing; and designed for crops that feed people, not meat animals. "None of the genetically engineered crops now available, or in development (to the extent that these have been announced) has any of these desirable characteristics," Rachel's reports. "The genetic engineering revolution has nothing to do with feeding the world's hungry."
If genetically engineered (GE) plants were designed to reverse world hunger, you would expect them to bring higher yields. But there is increasing evidence that they do just the opposite. Ed Oplinger, a professor of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin, has been conducting performance trials for soybean varieties for the past 25 years. In 1999, he compared the soybean yields in the 12 states that grew 80 percent of US soybeans and found that the yields from genetically modified soybeans were 4 percent lower than conventional varieties.
When other researchers compared the performance of Monsanto's transgenic soybeans (the world's number-one GE crop in terms of acreage planted) with those of conventional varieties grown under the same conditions, they found nearly a 10 percent yield reduction for the genetically engineered soybeans. And research done by the University of Nebraska in 2000 found the yields of GE soybeans were 6 to 11 percent lower than conventional plants.
Not that this research has hampered Dick Goddown, vice-president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, from repeating the refrain that genetic engineering "is the best hope we have, as denizens of this planet, of being able to feed the people who are going to be on it."
If genetically modified foods really were an answer to world hunger, it would be a powerful and persuasive argument in their favor. How could anyone stand in the way of feeding desperate and starving people? But Dr. Vandana Shiva, one of the world's foremost experts on world hunger and transgenic crops, claims that the argument that biotechnology will help feed the world "is on every level a deception... Soybeans go to feed the pigs and the cattle of the North. All the investments in agriculture are about increasing chemical sales and increasing monopoly control. All this is taking place in the private domain, by corporations that are not in the business of charity. They are in the business of selling. The food they will produce will be even more costly."
Similarly, delegates from 18 African countries at a meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization responded to Monsanto's advertisements with a clear statement: "We... strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us. We do not believe that such companies or gene technologies will help our farmers to produce the food that is needed... On the contrary... it will undermine our capacity to feed ourselves."
In 2000, a coalition of biotech companies began a $50 million media campaign to keep fears about genetically altered foods from spreading through the US.
Bankrolling the campaign (which included $32 million in TV and print advertising) were Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Swiss-based Novartis, the British Zeneca, Germany's BASF and Aventis of France. The ads, complete with soft-focus fields and smiling children, pitched "solutions that could improve our world tomorrow" and could help end world hunger.
John Robbins is the author of Diet for a New America and founder of EarthSave International. Excerpted with permission from Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Save your Life and the World [Conari Press, 2550 Ninth St., Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710, (510) 649-7175].
01/09/2002
Sustainable Agriculture Seven Dimensions of Sustainable Agriculture
by Nicanor Perlas.
Almost everybody talks about sustainable agriculture as an alternative to the outworn “green revolution” agriculture. However, the term has quickly become an empty phrase meaning almost anything including such oxymoron terms as “safe pesticides” and “environmentally friendly” biotechnology.
Even WTO advocates use sustainable agriculture to justify corporate control of the food chain. It is important for civil society, which originated the idea, to concretely articulate what it understands by the term “sustainable agriculture.”
In 1983, the author and two other friends coined the term, “sustainable agriculture.” Together they co-founded the International Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture (IISA), which spearheaded a global discussion on a widened view of “sustainability.” In recent years, by viewing sustainability from the perspective of the farming family, the author has articulated seven dimensions of sustainability in agriculture, which have been receiving national and international acceptance. Because sustainability immediately brings into focus a temporal consideration, these dimensions have to be understood also as including intergenerational concerns. (For details, see Perlas, N. (1993)
The Seven Dimensions of Sustainable Agriculture, Manila: CADI)
In the Philippines, this view of sustainable agriculture is widely accepted-- having emerged from numerous dialogues, conferences, workshops and consultations with farmers, farmer organizations and civil society organizations. The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (composed of around 300 organizations) for instance embraces this SA framework for advocacy and project implementation.
At the household level, farmers, by the very nature of their profession, have a direct relationship with Nature. (I avoid the term “natural resources” because the term immediately prescribes a limited, narrow, and utilitarian view of and relationship with Nature.) To be sustainable at this level, the relationship with Nature has to be ecologically sound. Concretely this means the following:
a) Instead of pesticides we use ecological pest management;
b) instead of chemical fertilizers, integrated soil fertility management;
c) instead of monocultures, the harnessing of biodiversity to create polycultures;
d) instead of creating chemically addicted seeds, alternative breeding strategies which produce species adopted to ecologically sound practices;
e) instead of erosion and water depletion, soil and water conservation;
f) instead of mass production or factory farming of animals, “humane” animal raising methods; and,
g) instead of a fixation on genes and chemical substances, we work in partnership with the living formative energies of Nature through, for instance, the use of bio-dynamic preparations and other bio-dynamic practices.
In the picture at right, rice farmers preparing biodynamic compost.
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Environmentally sound technology is not enough to ensure SA (even if most technocrats have a fatal attraction for technological fixes). Farmers do not exist in a vacuum. Economic, political, and cultural developments, even if far removed from the farm and village level, either nurture or oppress the life of farmers and the farming community. (See Figure above.) In the age of globalization and often mindless industrialization, subsistence farming today is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Interaction of farmers with the local, national and global economy produces the widespread phenomenon of poverty. Both socialist and capitalist economies have become engines of poverty creation. To be sustainable, agriculture has to move beyond these limited economic ideologies and seek creative solutions to the questions of fair pricing, cost internalization, food security, the right to an adequate livelihood, and the multifunctional role of agriculture. One such approach is associative economics. This will be a potent antidote for the WTO machine and for incipient commercialism in the organic farming movement.
Policies promulgated far away in imperial Manila and other cities often do very little to support farmer initiatives at the community level. Poverty can only worsen if farmers are not protected by a proper policy environment that insulates them from destructive technologies, abusive creditors, exploitative traders, usurious land tenure arrangements, gender bias, and disempowerment.
Sustainable agriculture advocates therefore have to ensure that social justice and equity prevail all the way to the farm household level.
Can farming be sustainable when indigenous knowledge and values are dominated and marginalized? The rural youth are voting with their feet, and the answer is a resounding, NO! The young are migrating away in droves from rural settlements. They leave behind the old who have no choice except to farm. They also say goodbye to the children who have no capability for an independent choice. Modernization has created a social “black hole,” mindlessly destroying anything that smacks of rural culture. To be sustainable, agriculture has to be culturally sensitive and empowering and should nurture the cultural renaissance of the countryside.
In the picture at right, rice farmers display pesticide-induced lesions on the feet during the CADI advocacy to ban hazardous pesticide formulations.
Science is often portrayed as our salvation from backwardness especially in agriculture. There is an element of truth in this. But the issue is not whether we should have science or not. Rather the key question is: What Science? We have seen the damage that “green revolution” agriculture has forced upon farmers. No one can defend as “progress” a P6700 health bill imposed on farmers every 6 months by the science of pesticides. Despite good intentions, conventional science is far too reductionist. The wholeness of living Nature disappears as scientists focus on mere parts, often at the molecular level. The salvation for sustainable agriculture lies in the pursuit of holistic science.
Technology development is another favorite activity of larger society that seems far removed from the realities at the household level. But since fundamentally the farmer's relationship with Nature is directly mediated by technology, it is clear that appropriate technology has to be one of the dimensions of sustainability in agriculture.
Agricultural biotechnology is particularly alarming. The concerns for the potential adverse effects of genetic engineering have already been the subject of dozens of workshops sponsored by government agencies and scientific associations, and of published journal articles involving hundreds of scientists. From the many years of research and analyses conducted by the scientific community, there has emerged a growing consensus on the ecological, health and socio-economic risks associated with genetic engineering, as well as the neglect of adequate safety measures and policies, not to mention the moral and ethical questions. Ecological problems, economic challenges, oppressive policies, cultural degeneration, reductionist science, double-edged technology-all these are clarion calls to awaken, to redefine the meaning of human existence, and move away from the disempowering illusion of daily routines.
To awaken, however, means that all of us who advocate for sustainability in agriculture must develop our individual and universal human potentials and capacities to the fullest. The problem here can be defined as one of deep sustainability. Transformation at the different levels of sustainability requires being able to enter our inner sanctum, our “sacra,” our inner source of creativity, dedication, and courage. Only then can we avoid "burnout," overcome hardship and enter into the creative realm of creating alternative futures.
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In the picture at right, visitors examine Ikapati Farm, the first and largest commercial operation to produce biodynamic and organic vegetables through sustainable agricultural practices. CADI established the farm to demonstrate the viability of alternatives to conventional and chemically intensive vegetable production.
Well-meaning efforts that balk at a serious consideration of these dimensions of agricultural sustainability and their strategic challenges are ultimately doomed to failure. (See Table below.) And millions of lives and the bounty of Nature will continue to be wasted, all in the name of progress.SA Dimensions and Strategic ChallengesDimensionStrategic ChallengeEcological Soundness"Safe Pesticides", chemical fertilizers, monoculture, chemically addicted seeds, soil erosion and water scarcity, factory farming, methodological materialism (nature as a biological machine)Associative EconomicsWTO. Agreement on Agriculture. "Organic Commercialism." Lack of integration. Commodity-based polyculture.Social Justice/EquityTraditional politics of exploitation.
Appropriation. Disempowerment.Cultural Sensitivity Neglect and collapse of indigenous knowledge systems and farming culture.Holistic and More Spiritual ScienceReductionism, Materialism, Fragmentation Appropriate TechnologyCommodification and molecular reduction of humans and living nature by "environmentally friendly" biotechnology. Non-diffusion of good technologies.Development of Full Human PotentialAttaining "deep sustainability," Overcoming gender bias© CADI, 2000-2001
Posted: December 10, 2001
Excerpt from the VIllage Voice "Favorite Books of 2001 List"
Views From the South , a splendidly constructed anthology of essays by leading third-world critics of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, is a book to break your heart. You want to cry when you read about the feisty tools the United Nations' poor majority forged for themselves in the '60s and '70s to achieve record levels of economic growth, only to see them crushed as "protectionist" by nations superciliously demand-ing a "level playing field" for first-world products. Learning how the WTO makes its rules, by a process it calls "census" -- which better resembles the techniques of a street-side bunco artist -- a sensitive soul might just blubber uncontrollably.
The Effects of Globalization and the WTO on Third World Countries, Book Review of Views from the South By Amitabh Pal The Progressive April 1, 2001 Views from the South: The Effects of Globalization and the WTO on Third World Countries, edited by Sarah Anderson, Food First Books & International Forum on Globalization. 195pages. $12.95.
In the years immediately following India's independence, poverty was so abject in my part of the country that poorer people could not afford to buy wheat to satisfy their hunger. Instead, they bought coarser and less nutritious grains like millet. The subsequent years have seen an improvement in the purchasing power of the average person to the extent that millet and other coarse grains have almost disappeared from the local marketplace. But hunger has not quite done the same disappearing act all over India or in the rest of the world. About 800 million people are hungry worldwide--more than 200 million of them from India. In such countries as Somalia, Afghanistan, and Haiti, the vast majority of the population is underfed. Two new books, one by former Senator George McGovern and the other by Food First and the International Forum on Globalization, attempt to trace the causes of global hunger and propose solutions -- albeit from different perspectives. McGovern takes the title of his book from the "Four Freedoms" enunciated by President Franklin Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union address. FDR'S Third Freedom referred to freedom from want. McGovern thinks that, with the right measures, hunger can be halved within fifteen years and eliminated by 2030. He rightly points out that there has been progress in reducing world hunger, noting that by the late 1990s it had been reduced by 50 percent over the past quarter-century. He cites polls to show that a vast majority of Americans think it should be a top priority of the U.S. government to end hunger at home and abroad. The 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate has a long history of trying to end hunger, a record he emphasizes with justifiable pride. He headed the Food for Peace program under President Kennedy. He was instrumental in getting the U.N. World Food Program started with crucial financial support from the United States. He also helped set up the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. He is currently the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. agencies on food and agriculture in Rome. He accepted the post under President Clinton and was reappointed to it by President George W. Bush. But his long and close association with government makes him place too much faith in the benign intentions and overall efficacy of U.S. programs abroad, a faith that is debatable, at best. For instance, he extols the virtues of the Alliance for Progress and Food for Peace programs that the United States set up: "I shall always be proud to have been the Food for Peace director in the Kennedy Administration during 1961 and 1962. In his soon-to-be-published biography of me, Professor [Thomas] Knock concludes that I had coordinated the feeding of more hungry people than any other individual in American history.
But as Stephen G. Rabe points out in The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John E Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (University of North Carolina, 1999), the Alliance for Progress was by most accounts a failure, with per capita agricultural production falling and little progress being made on other social indicators. One of the reasons for the failure of the program was its timidity on land reform, a subject that McGovern neglects. McGovern also praises the Public Law 480 program passed by Congress to send farm aid to other countries. But as even he points out, the program was often perverted to suit U.S. ends. When the United States offered aid to India in the mid-1960s under this program, it stipulated that India adopt free market policies. Make no mistake, McGovern believes in free trade and free markets. He sees the World Trade Organization as a way for the developing world to lessen poverty and hunger, provided they are given able advice by "experts" on how to navigate the system in the best way. He lauds Clinton's Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin: "I wish he were still in government. But perhaps he and others would be willing to give some of their time and counsel to developing countries." I hope not.
It was Rubin's "counsel" to several Asian countries to open up their currency markets that helped bring on their currency and economic crises a few years ago. This, in turn, led to a big increase in poverty and hunger in the region. McGovern is also credulous when it comes to biotechnology and genetically modified crops. He cites approvingly the creation of a variety of rice called Golden Rice, which is genetically modified to provide Vitamin A to the Third World. But critics have questioned the efficacy of Golden Rice, pointing out that there are better means than the rice to deliver Vitamin A to people, since the Vitamin A amount in the rice is not enough to remedy Vitamin A deficiency. Some of the Vitamin A dissolves in oil.
And the availability of this rice depends on its acceptance by farmers and the efficiency of the public distribution system--problems plaguing the availability of food in the first place. The subject of biotechnology is a tricky one and, to his credit, McGovern acknowledges the criticisms. But, in the end, he pulls out a tattered trump card to end the discussion. "Some would be so cruel as to suggest that my grandchildren [who oppose biotechnology] are smarter than their grandfather--that they might even be smarter than Dr. [Norman] Borlaug [Nobel Prize-winner and the father of the Green Revolution]. I come back at them with the eternal response of old people to young people: 'Where is your respect for the wisdom of us old guys?' But usually I reply with an answer that carries more weight with grandchildren: 'The jury is still out on genetic farming. Let's wait for the final verdict.' I don't add what I'm thinking: 'And then you'll see that I am right and you are wrong!'" McGovern's bias stops him from deeply exploring other causes of global hunger, such as the unequal distribution of resources and the subversion of the food system to profits. Curiously, he heaps encomiums on Dwayne Andreas, head of the giant and felonious agribusiness company Archer Daniels Midland. "Few, if any, Americans have a wiser view of the themes treated in this book than does Dwayne Andreas." (ADM and several high-ranking executives, including Andreas's son, were convicted in the 1990s of international price-fixing.) McGovern does criticize U.S. policy on occasion. He disapproves of the Clinton Administration's decision to dismantle welfare and blames that, along with the Reagan Administration's curtailment of food stamps, for widespread hunger in this country. "This is the first time in American history that hunger and poverty have not significantly diminished during a sustained period of economic growth," he writes. "The problem is that most of this new wealth has gone to the wealthiest Americans. While unemployment is low, many jobs do not pay a wage adequate to feed a family. Indeed, the degree of income disparity in America--the gap between the rich and the poor--is the largest in any Western industrialized nation and is comparable to that of many Third World countries.... We are also the only industrial nation that permits millions of its poor to go without adequate food." McGovern's heart is in the right place, and many of his proposals are unassailable.
He desires an increase in the aid of developed nations to the rest of the world, citing with concern the 16 percent decline in aid-giving in the last decade. And he wants the United States to contribute $ 1.2 billion annually to a $ 5 billion global program to combat world hunger. He also wants the United States to invest $ 5 billion each year to tackle the problem of the thirty-one million inadequately fed people in this country. He aims to extend worldwide the programs he helped establish in this country. He wants to set up a universal school lunch program to feed the 300 million hungry school-age children and replicate the U.S. nutritional program for low-income women, infants, and children. He wants the United States to establish an organization of retired farmers, modeled on the Peace Corps, that can advise farmers in other countries. He asks that the United Nations establish food reserves and that developing countries improve their agricultural and food distribution practices. He also says that war is a significant cause of large-scale hunger and calls for strengthening of global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Court. He seeks a reduction of 10 percent by governments in their spending on weapons.
In addition, he advocates more democratic participation and self-governance by local communities around the world as a way to counter inefficient and corrupt Third World governments. And McGovern rightly places a lot of emphasis on female empowerment and education, noting that it reduces the birthrate and leads to better-fed children. "If we can find ways of persuading our Third World brothers to undo the bonds now blocking the potential contributions of their girls and women, we can end hunger in our time," he says. "If these bonds are not loosened, then world hunger will linger on, taking its terrible toll on men and women, boys and girls, for generations to come." In doing so, he follows the lead of Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, whose work, including that on discrimination against girls, he quotes repeatedly. McGovern also has an enlightened view of population growth and its contribution to the hunger problem: "Some will contend that poverty is caused by excessive population growth. But high fertility rates in poor countries are at least as much a reflection of poverty and inequality as the cause of them. So long as the financial security of the mother is dependent largely on her surviving children, she will agree to have or seek to have more children as her old-age insurance. If an uneducated woman has few or no opportunities for paid jobs, and her power and influence are based on the number of her offspring, especially males, then the birthrate will be high for both social and economic reasons." But a major problem with McGovern's book is his unwillingness to think through the implications of his own observations. For instance, he says that there's enough food to provide a healthy diet to everyone on this planet and that 78 percent of the world's hungry children live in food-surplus countries. But he fails to call for a fundamental redistribution of resources in order to feed the hungry. If the substantial majority of hungry kids live in countries having food surpluses, what chance is there of a serious reduction of hunger just through tinkering with market mechanisms and providingsome government programs? McGovern does acknowledge that "a keener sense of social and economic justice across the whole spectrum of society in the developing countries is crucial to ending poverty and hunger." He also cites a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization study that in thirty-nine of fifty-five countries surveyed small landholders produce more food per acre than larger landholders. But he doesn't go any deeper. He says East Asia's export-oriented growth was responsible for its rapid development.
But he also mentions the state's protectionist and interventionist role--including radical land reform--in the region's success, though he says that this isn't a viable long-term strategy for countries. Again, he is not willing to consider the efficacy of land reform (admittedly unlikely in this neoliberal era) in lessening the numbers of destitute and hungry landless peasants in developing countries. McGovern ends with a plea to the readers to do their utmost to end global hunger. "No war in all of history has ever killed so many humans and spread so much suffering and disease in any year as world hunger now does annually," he writes. "So if we cannot resolve all of humanity's problems, let us resolve to end at least one by the year 2030--human hunger. If we fail to do this, we will stand condemned before the bar of history. In that case, shame on you and shame on me. If there is a scale of divine justice in the universe, we would deserve to choke on our food even as we listen to the cries of the starving." McGovern does not seem to be familiar with the work of Food First (also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy), an Oakland, California-based organization, since he doesn't cite it even once in his book. This is a pity because he could use the group's work and perspective to enlarge his own. Views from the South offers a collection of essays from scholars and activists around the world, and it serves as a necessary complement to McGovern's way of dealing with the problem of hunger. One of Food First's basic positions is that the world has enough to feed everyone and that what is needed to feed the hungry is a redistribution of resources. The organization also sees the global economic system as an unjust one, operated by the rich countries to serve the interests of the dominant lobbies and corporations in their countries. The essays in this book, which deal with the World Trade Organization and its effects on the developing world, including agriculture, offer variations on this perspective. The collection is a bit rigid, though, since alternative perspectives on how to end hunger are not considered. The arcane nature of the WTO makes the book heavy going, and the writing is top-loaded with acronyms and details. But the book lays bare the workings of the WTO and its detrimental effects on the poor. An important point made in these essays, one that McGovern hardly refers to, is that agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill have been major backers of the WTO process and stand to benefit hugely from its implementation. The WTO's protection of intellectual property rights also could potentially force farmers to pay for using everything from seeds to indigenous herbs and plants, enriching the transnational corporations that have been granted the patents on these products. In one essay, Filipino economist Walden Bello argues that only the largest farmers in the Third World will stand to gain from the access to Western markets that the WTO facilitates. "The vast majority of unorganized small farmers specializing in corn, rice, and other food crops are hurt by the trade-off, for the quid pro quo is precisely the liberalization of their markets for staples and other basic foods," he writes. Vandana Shiva, an agricultural expert from India, has perhaps the most forceful essay in the book and the one that deals most directly with the WTO's impact on agriculture and hunger. She sometimes goes overboard with her rhetoric, calling the system "robbery" and "economic hijack" and the "equivalent to the ethnic cleansing of the poor, the peasantry, and small farmers of the Third World."
She accuses agribusiness corporations of practicing "genocide" in their pursuit of profits and of being "peddlers of death." She says: "Free trade is not leading to freedom. It is leading to slavery. Diverse life forms are being enslaved through patents on life, farmers are being enslaved into high-tech slavery, and countries are being enslaved into debt and dependence and destruction of their domestic economies." But Shiva argues persuasively that the process of globalization has led to a shift from the production of food for domestic consumption to export crops. This has resulted in a rush of imports that have hurt local farmers. She cites how importing subsidized soybeans has destroyed Indian soybean farmers by crashing the market. She gives the example of the suicides of hundreds of farmers a few years ago in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, many of whom grew pesticideladen cotton crops and then committed suicide when the crops failed to produce expected yields. She also refers to the ecological and social damage done by commercial shrimp farming in the coastal regions of India. Shiva, however, paints too rosy a picture of the current state of small farmers in India, which isn't exactly ideal. What the WTO will do is to probably make a bad situation even worse. Anuradha Mittal, policy director of Food First, shows in her essay how free trade has led to increased immiseration, inequality, and hunger in the United States. As she puts it, trade agreements "have created a globalized South. The world is becoming one--characterized by increasing income inequalities, poverty, and hunger." Mittal proposes a host of measures to reform the global food system, including debt cancellation and making trade agreements subordinate to human rights and national constitutions. She ends by calling for a new ethic grounded in the "universalism set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." These two books offer different approaches to the problem of global hunger. But the real question is whether the political will exists to implement the solutions offered in these books. At present, the answer seems to be no. But that shouldn't stop us from working toward a time when hunger, like millet from my village's marketplace, will have disappeared from the face of this Earth. Amitabh Pal is Editor of the Progressive Media Project.
Review of Views from the South by the San Francisco Bay Guardian THE BAY GUARDIAN (SAN FRANCISCO), November 2000 Edited by Sarah Anderson. Food First Books/International Forum on Globalization, 195 pages, $12.95. The day before the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization ministerial collapsed, trade delegates from Third World countries stormed out of the negotiating rooms, complaining that the United States and its allies had hijacked the negotiating process and were cutting deals in secret.
"This should not be a time when big countries, strong countries, the world’s wealthiest countries, are setting about a process designed to enrich themselves," Sonny Ramphal, chief negotiator for Caribbean countries, said in a press conference that day. The revolt of developing countries in Seattle was a major embarrassment to the Clinton administration and trade officials from rich nations, who continue to defend the free trade agenda by saying that they are motivated by helping the poor. Views from the South offers a very different perspective. Copublished by Food First Books and the International Forum on Globalization (my former employer), the book exposes how the corporate globalization agenda, pushed by institutions like the WTO, amounts to a new kind of colonialism for Third World countries (now commonly referred to in development circles as the "global south"). Global economics is a hot topic, and experts on all sides of the debate claim to speak for the oppressed in the Third World. Contributors to Viewsfrom the South include scholars and activists who actually work in the developing world, including Martin Khor of the Malaysia-based Third World Network, Walden Bello from Focus on the Global South in Thailand, Sara Larrain of the Chilean Ecological Action Network, and Oronto Douglas of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria. In his essay "How the South Is Getting a Raw Deal," Khor reveals the WTO’s "rule-based" system to be undemocratic, untransparent, and dominated by a handful of major industrial nations. For example, the US was essentially able to handpick the current director general, despite opposition from developing countries. Rather than break down trade barriers overall, Khor writes, the WTO’s Uruguay Round, completed in 1994, resulted in "the northern countries obtaining liberalization in areas where it would benefit them and protectionism in areas where it would not," such as technology and intellectual property rights. But as Khor and other Views from the South contributors point out, developing countries will not be the only victims of the WTO and corporate-driven globalization. "People everywhere will suffer as this trend further widens the gap between rich and pour and between weak and powerful; undermines environmental protection; channels control over biodiversity, food, and natural resources to a few transnational corporations; and erodes economic and social sovereignty," he writes. Daniel Zoll FAIR USE NOTICE.
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The Meaning of Doha By Walden Bello,
Focus on the Global South and Anuradha Mittal, Food First The results of the WTO Ministerial in Doha, Qatar, have elicited some confusion among many of those following the events.
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A New Round? Something was launched at Doha, but to call it a "round" of trade negotiations might be stretching the concept of a round. A round means negotiations on a broad range of issues directed at trade liberalization. What was agreed at Doha were: a) negotiations to clarify or revise some existing agreements, e.g., anti-dumping rules; and b) eventual negotiations for new agreements, e.g., transparency in government procurement, investment, and competition policy. Getting immediate negotiations going on investment, competition policy, government procurement and trade facilitation was at the top of the agenda of the trading powers in Doha. They fell short of this objective, being able to secure a commitment for negotiations on these issues only after the fifth ministerial in 2003, and only with a "written consensus" from member countries. Doha and the Developing Countries What is clear is that, contrary to the claims of European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, Doha did not launch a "development round." The key points of the Doha Declaration, in fact, contradict the interests of the developing countries. For example, There is only a perfunctory acknowledgement of the need to review implementation issues, which was the key agenda of the developing countries coming into Doha; The language on the phasing out of agricultural subsidies is watered down owing to the strong objections of the European Union; There is no commitment to an early phase-out of textile and garment quotas because of the strong resistance of the United States; The demand for a "development box" to promote food security and development which was being pushed by a number of developing countries was completely ignored; There is no commitment to change the wording of the TRIPs (Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement to accommodate developing countries' overriding of patents for public health purposes; There is no commitment to change the TRIPs agreement to outlaw biopiracy and patents on life, which was a key developing country concern coming into Doha; The declaration eliminates the reference in the draft to the International Labor Organization (ILO) being the appropriate forum for addressing labor and trade issues, which leaves the door open for the WTO to assert its jurisdiction in an area where it has no authority or competence. The resolution of the TRIPs and public health issue is being trumpeted as a victory for developing countries. This is exaggerated. While an attachment to the declaration does recognize that there is nothing in TRIPs that would prevent countries from taking measures to promote public health, there is no commitment to change the wording of the TRIPs agreement. This is a serious flaw since TRIPs as it is currently written can serve as the basis for future legal challenges to countries that override patents in the interest of public health. A Defeat for Democracy and Development In fact, Doha was a defeat for the developing countries, notwithstanding the resistance they--and in particular, India--put up against arm-twisting, blackmail, and intimidation from the big trading powers. Those of us in Doha were witness, as the Equations team puts it, "to the highhanded unethical negotiating practices of the developed countries - linking aid budgets and trade preferences to the trade positions of developing countries and targeting individual developing country negotiators." Doha was a victory for the forces with a strong interest in subverting the interests of the developing countries that form the majority of the membership of the World Trade Organization by keeping the decision-making process non-transparent and undemocratic. Why Doha will Backfire This is why this victory may well be a Pyrrhic one for the big trading powers. The combination of developing country resentments inflamed by the Doha process, a deep global recession brought about by the indiscriminate locking together of economies by accelerated trade and financial liberalization, and reinvigorated civil society resistance to corporate driven globalization, cannot but erode the credibility and legitimacy of the institutional pillars of free trade like the WTO. And without credibility and legitimacy, institutions, no matter how seemingly solid they may seem, eventually unravel.
At the conclusion of the Fourth Ministerial, Director General Mike Moore thanked the delegates for "saving the WTO." The end result may well be, instead, the accelerated decline of the WTO. ###
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