[E-rundbrief] Info 1141 - Destruction of peasant and family farming

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1141 - La Via Campesina - GRAIN - Friends of the 
Earth International (FoE) - Coordinadora Latinoamericana de 
Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) - Re:Common: Why are the FAO and the 
EBRD promoting the destruction of peasant and family farming?

Bad Ischl, 15.9.2012

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Why are the FAO and the EBRD promoting the destruction of peasant and 
family farming?

La Via Campesina - GRAIN - Friends of the Earth International (FoE) - 
Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) - 
Re:Common

  14 September 2012

We are shocked and offended by an article co-signed by Jose Graziano 
da Silva, Director General of the UN's Food and Agriculture 
Organisation (FAO), and Suma Chakrabarti, President of the European 
Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), that was pusblished in 
the Wall Street Journal on September 6, 2012.1 In the article, they 
call on governments and social organisations to embrace the private 
sector as the main engine for global food production.

While referring specifically to Eastern Europe and North Africa, the 
heads of these two influential international agencies make a clear 
call for a world wide increase in private sector investment and land 
grabbing. They say that the private sector is efficient and dynamic 
and call on companies to "double investment in the land itself". 
Meanwhile, they dismiss peasants and those few remaining policies that 
protect them as burdens "holding back" agricultural development that 
should be eliminated. To do so, they urge governments to facilitate 
the growth of big agribusiness. Their article was published in the 
context of a joint FAO and EBRD conference in Istanbul on September 
13th, which they describe as the largest and most important gathering 
of companies and decision-makers in agribusiness.

Graziano da Silva and Chakrabarti make a number of biased claims in 
the article that obscure the reality when it comes to agriculture and 
food. They point to Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan as successful 
examples of agribusiness that have transformed these countries from 
"the agricultural wastelands of the 1990s" into "leading grain 
exporters." But at no time do they mention that the official 
statistics from all three countries show that small farmers and 
peasants are more productive than big agribusiness.

Peasants and small farmers, especially women, account for over half of 
Russia's agricultural production but occupy only a quarter of the 
agricultural lands. In the Ukraine, they produce 55% of the 
agricultural output on only 16% of the land, while in Kazakhstan, 
where they occupy half of the land, they account for 73% of 
agricultural production. The fact is that these countries are fed by 
their peasants and small farmers. And this is true the world over. 
Wherever offical data are available, as in the EU, Colombia and 
Brazil, or in the studies undertaken in Asia, Africa and Latin 
America, peasant farming is shown to be more efficient than 
large-scale agribusiness.

Contrary to what is claimed by the Director General of the FAO, those 
who really have the capacity to feed the world are the world's men and 
women farmers and peasants. The expansion of agribusiness has only 
exacerbated poverty, destroyed the potential for dignified rural 
livelihoods, increased pollution and environmental destruction, and 
brought back the scourge of slave labor and a series of recent food 
and climate crises.

For social movements and the peasants and small farmers of the world, 
it is unacceptable and even incomprehensible for a Director General of 
the FAO to be promoting the destruction of peasant farming and an 
increase in land grabbing. It is particularly troubling for this to 
occur after three years of careful, hard work by La Via Campesina and 
other organisations in constructing the FAO's voluntary guidelines to 
protect communities against land grabs and after Graziano da Silva had 
repeatedly assured farmers' organisations during his campaign for 
Director General of the FAO that he would promote and validate the 
importance of peasant agriculture and the critical role small farmers 
must play in food production.

The language used by Graziano da Silva and Chakrabarti is offensive. 
Phrases like "fertilize this land with money" or "make life easier for 
the world's hungry" call into question the FAO's ability to do its job 
with the necessary rigor and independence from large agribusiness 
companies and fulfill the UN mandate to eradicate hunger and improve 
the living conditions of rural people.

We wonder what the FAO means by the "International Year of Family 
Farming" when its Director General says that the obstacles to 
improving agricultural production are "relatively high levels of 
protection, lack of proper irrigation, [and] small and uneconomically 
sized farms." This vision and the FAO's subservience to the demands 
and interests of greedy investors undermines all the work at 
conciliation that has taken place in recent years between farmers' 
organisations and the FAO. And it raises questions about why the FAO 
has not developed a proposal for concrete and effective action to 
promote peasant agriculture and family farming as a fundamental 
response to a global food crisis that is once again enriching 
transnational banks and corporations.2 Where, we wonder, will peasant 
families go if these plans to transform their lands into industrial 
megafarms are successful?

Beyond the issue of the FAO abandoning its mission, it is also of deep 
concern that the EBRD is playing such an active role in profitting 
from and promoting investments in land grabbing and the take over of 
agriculture by big agribusiness. The EBRD's stance is all the more 
dangerous now that its area of operation is expanding in North Africa.

What is needed for agriculture and the planet is just the opposite of 
what Chakrabarti and Graziano da Silva propose. Humanity and those 
suffering from hunger need the agro-cultures of rural areas, which 
represent half the world's population and make peasant farming 
possible, to be protected and promoted-- because peasant farming is 
more efficient and productive, because it produces at least half of 
the global food supply and most of the employment in rural areas, and 
because it can cool the planet.

The livelihoods of peasants and indigenous peoples and their food 
production systems cannot be destroyed to create a new source of mega 
profits for a tiny group of elites. We need comprehensive and 
effective agrarian reforms that put lands and territories back into 
the hands of rural peoples. The commodification and grabbing of lands 
must be stopped and reversed. We do not need agribusiness; we need 
more communities and more peasant and indigenous families farming with 
dignity and respect.

Farmers feed the world

Agribusiness grabs it


1) 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443686004577633080190871456.html 
.

2) See, for example, James Cusick, "We'll make a killing out of food 
crisis, Glencore trading boss Chris Mahoney boasts", The Independent, 
Londres, 23 August 2012, 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/well-make-a-killing-out-of-food-crisis-glencore-trading-boss-chris-mahoney-boasts-8073806.html 
; Tom Bawden, "Barclays makes £500m betting on food crisis", The 
Independent, Londres, 1 September 2012, 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/barclays-makes-500m-betting-on-food-crisis-8100011.html 
; and Peter Greste, "Rising food prices hit Nairobi slums", Al 
Jazeera, Doha, 6 September 2012, 
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/africa/2012/09/201296195748591887.html .

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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