NDNdancer
04-17-2008, 02:58 AM
The politics of food security are frightening.
April 16, 2008
DemocracyNow!
Stuffed and Starved: As Food Riots Break Out Across the Globe, Part II of Raj Patel on “The Hidden Battle for the World Food System”
RAJ PATEL: There are two kinds of stories that we can tell about the food prices. One is an economic story, and that’s a story about a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain, and the high price of oil, which is driving up food—farm inputs, and at the same time, the biofuels boom, the process of growing fuels in order—sorry, growing food in order to burn it rather than eat it. All of these are economic factors that are driving up the price of food.
But at the same time, there’s a political story here, and it’s a longer-term political story about how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. And this is a longer-term story, and it involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have a fairly iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world. And what the World Bank and what the WTO and, to some extent, the International Monetary Fund have done is force these countries to tie their hands behind their back, effectively, and to bind them very firmly to an international economy in food. And the consequence of that is that when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically.
AMY: Raj, you worked at these institutions that you’re now critiquing. You worked at the World Bank. You worked at the World Trade Organization. How much contact do you have with people at the other end—for example, the people who are now rising up all over the world, the most destitute?
RAJ: Well, I mean, I certainly don’t have any contact with anyone at the World Bank or the World Trade Organization. I was there when I was doing my doctoral work. I did some research for the World Bank. It was a disaster. And I interned at the World Trade Organization just to find out what it was like.
But my allegiances are and always have been with the people on the streets. And I’m working right now with shack dwellers in Durban in South Africa. But also I’m connected to groups of peasants and of landless people around the world by occasionally doing some research for Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, that by some estimates has over 100 million members. So I’m definitely more connected and more supportive of their efforts to develop a more positive and more genuine food democracy.
AMY: In your work there, even as a researcher, what was—how much understanding did people who work there have of what was going on and what their institutions were doing?
RAJ: I mean, to some extent, there’s a lot of creative denial about the suffering that these organizations cause. I mean, certainly within the World Bank, when I worked there, there was a banner, sort of five stories high, as you enter into the World Bank building, with a beautiful African child on it and beneath it the slogan, “Our dream is a world free of poverty.” And certainly, there’s a sort of myth-making enterprise within the World Bank that everything they were doing was for the benefit of the poor, whether the poor liked it or not. So I certainly think that there’s a sense that when things are tough, it’s tough love that comes from the World Bank.
But I don’t think that they’re terribly connected to the movements of poor people around the world, who are very articulately saying that what the World Bank is doing is actively destructive. And that’s, in fact, one of the reasons that Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, started, was because the World Bank was introducing agricultural policy throughout the developing world, but they were doing it without any reference to the farmers’ movements that existed or the movement of landless people that existed. And those movements got together to fight back against the World Bank. And they continue to fight back against the World Bank, and the World Bank has very little, if any, contact with them at all.
AMY: Raj, talk about coffee.
RAJ: The price of coffee is absolutely a function of the way the food system works today. If you look at the path that coffee takes from the field to our cups, you will see that the farmers get paid a pittance. The processors get paid a little bit more, sort of twenty, thirty cents a kilo. The grain exporters get paid a little bit more, sort of fifty, sixty cents a kilo. But by the time it gets processed and turned into instant coffee, it’s nearer $30 a kilo. And the people who make the most money out of that process are the coffee processors, the big international coffee traders, companies like Nestle, for example. And that’s indicative of the way the food system works in general.
I mean, if you imagine a sort of hourglass, at the top there are the millions of farmers who grow the food that we eat, and at the bottom there are billions of us consumers, and in the middle there are just a handful of corporations that mediate between the people who grow our food and us. And those corporations, in many cases—it’s usually four corporations controlling more than 50 percent of the market. I mean, in tea, for example, one company, Unilever, controls 90 percent of the market.
Now, when you’re in that position of market power, you’re able to do a great deal. First, you’re able to drive prices down for farmers. And of course the irony there is that farmers and farm workers are the poorest people on the planet. So you’re paying the poorest people on the planet the least. And then you’re processing the food so that what we end up with is food that is rich in salts and fats and sugars, food that tends to make us want to buy more, food that makes us obese. And that’s why you’re having a situation where there are six billion people in the world, a billion of whom are now overweight.
AMY: Explain that further, that connection that you actually start your book with. A billion people overweight, 800 million people who are starving, who are hungry, who are not fed enough—explain the connection.
RAJ: Well, I mean, in the past, it used to be that the people who were overweight were rich—excuse me—and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. They’re unable to control, not in a sort of willpower way, but unable to control in terms of being able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy. I mean, in the United States, for example, it’s much harder for communities of poor people and people of color, in particular, to access fresh fruits and vegetables. In West Oakland, for example, near where I live, you have a situation where there’s just one supermarket in West Oakland and dozens and dozens of liquor stores where there is no fresh fruit and vegetable, but there are these highly processed industrial foods. Now, that’s a sign that in fact—I mean, it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to access these fresh fruits and vegetables, but at the moment, particularly for people on low incomes, that’s pretty tough to do. And so, the environments in which poor people find themselves and which are being built around poor people are more conducive to being overweight and to be unhealthy in the cities, and for poor people in the fields, those kinds of prices that come from the industrial food system are driving them out of business.
April 16, 2008
DemocracyNow!
Stuffed and Starved: As Food Riots Break Out Across the Globe, Part II of Raj Patel on “The Hidden Battle for the World Food System”
RAJ PATEL: There are two kinds of stories that we can tell about the food prices. One is an economic story, and that’s a story about a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain, and the high price of oil, which is driving up food—farm inputs, and at the same time, the biofuels boom, the process of growing fuels in order—sorry, growing food in order to burn it rather than eat it. All of these are economic factors that are driving up the price of food.
But at the same time, there’s a political story here, and it’s a longer-term political story about how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. And this is a longer-term story, and it involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have a fairly iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world. And what the World Bank and what the WTO and, to some extent, the International Monetary Fund have done is force these countries to tie their hands behind their back, effectively, and to bind them very firmly to an international economy in food. And the consequence of that is that when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically.
AMY: Raj, you worked at these institutions that you’re now critiquing. You worked at the World Bank. You worked at the World Trade Organization. How much contact do you have with people at the other end—for example, the people who are now rising up all over the world, the most destitute?
RAJ: Well, I mean, I certainly don’t have any contact with anyone at the World Bank or the World Trade Organization. I was there when I was doing my doctoral work. I did some research for the World Bank. It was a disaster. And I interned at the World Trade Organization just to find out what it was like.
But my allegiances are and always have been with the people on the streets. And I’m working right now with shack dwellers in Durban in South Africa. But also I’m connected to groups of peasants and of landless people around the world by occasionally doing some research for Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, that by some estimates has over 100 million members. So I’m definitely more connected and more supportive of their efforts to develop a more positive and more genuine food democracy.
AMY: In your work there, even as a researcher, what was—how much understanding did people who work there have of what was going on and what their institutions were doing?
RAJ: I mean, to some extent, there’s a lot of creative denial about the suffering that these organizations cause. I mean, certainly within the World Bank, when I worked there, there was a banner, sort of five stories high, as you enter into the World Bank building, with a beautiful African child on it and beneath it the slogan, “Our dream is a world free of poverty.” And certainly, there’s a sort of myth-making enterprise within the World Bank that everything they were doing was for the benefit of the poor, whether the poor liked it or not. So I certainly think that there’s a sense that when things are tough, it’s tough love that comes from the World Bank.
But I don’t think that they’re terribly connected to the movements of poor people around the world, who are very articulately saying that what the World Bank is doing is actively destructive. And that’s, in fact, one of the reasons that Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, started, was because the World Bank was introducing agricultural policy throughout the developing world, but they were doing it without any reference to the farmers’ movements that existed or the movement of landless people that existed. And those movements got together to fight back against the World Bank. And they continue to fight back against the World Bank, and the World Bank has very little, if any, contact with them at all.
AMY: Raj, talk about coffee.
RAJ: The price of coffee is absolutely a function of the way the food system works today. If you look at the path that coffee takes from the field to our cups, you will see that the farmers get paid a pittance. The processors get paid a little bit more, sort of twenty, thirty cents a kilo. The grain exporters get paid a little bit more, sort of fifty, sixty cents a kilo. But by the time it gets processed and turned into instant coffee, it’s nearer $30 a kilo. And the people who make the most money out of that process are the coffee processors, the big international coffee traders, companies like Nestle, for example. And that’s indicative of the way the food system works in general.
I mean, if you imagine a sort of hourglass, at the top there are the millions of farmers who grow the food that we eat, and at the bottom there are billions of us consumers, and in the middle there are just a handful of corporations that mediate between the people who grow our food and us. And those corporations, in many cases—it’s usually four corporations controlling more than 50 percent of the market. I mean, in tea, for example, one company, Unilever, controls 90 percent of the market.
Now, when you’re in that position of market power, you’re able to do a great deal. First, you’re able to drive prices down for farmers. And of course the irony there is that farmers and farm workers are the poorest people on the planet. So you’re paying the poorest people on the planet the least. And then you’re processing the food so that what we end up with is food that is rich in salts and fats and sugars, food that tends to make us want to buy more, food that makes us obese. And that’s why you’re having a situation where there are six billion people in the world, a billion of whom are now overweight.
AMY: Explain that further, that connection that you actually start your book with. A billion people overweight, 800 million people who are starving, who are hungry, who are not fed enough—explain the connection.
RAJ: Well, I mean, in the past, it used to be that the people who were overweight were rich—excuse me—and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. They’re unable to control, not in a sort of willpower way, but unable to control in terms of being able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy. I mean, in the United States, for example, it’s much harder for communities of poor people and people of color, in particular, to access fresh fruits and vegetables. In West Oakland, for example, near where I live, you have a situation where there’s just one supermarket in West Oakland and dozens and dozens of liquor stores where there is no fresh fruit and vegetable, but there are these highly processed industrial foods. Now, that’s a sign that in fact—I mean, it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to access these fresh fruits and vegetables, but at the moment, particularly for people on low incomes, that’s pretty tough to do. And so, the environments in which poor people find themselves and which are being built around poor people are more conducive to being overweight and to be unhealthy in the cities, and for poor people in the fields, those kinds of prices that come from the industrial food system are driving them out of business.