IMF “Cure” for Food Crisis Also a Cause

By Emad Mekay, May 21, 2008 Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it is responding to the global food crisis by doling out new emergency loans to 15 of the world’s poorest nations, mostly in Africa.

But the new loans carry the same controversial conditions, such as tariff and subsidies cuts, that many analysts now agree are partly to blame for the soaring inflation and inability of developing country governments to cope.

Mark Plant, deputy director of the IMF’s Policy Development and Review Department, told an IMF publication last week that the so-called Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF), which the fund uses to disburse fast loans in emergency situations, would be open for business to the world’s poorest nations by June.

Already 15 countries are talking to the Washington-based IMF about tapping loans from the programme, which is designed to offset expenses and budget imbalances incurred from shuffling expenditures to ease food prices in poor nations.

“The IMF is preparing a review of the Exogenous Shocks Facility for Board consideration in June,” Plant told the IMF Survey.

“But I would underscore that the ESF is available now, if any country needs immediate help,” he added.

The IMF official said that in addition to the emergency programme, developing countries suffering high food prices could also receive advance loans from the more traditional Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), the loan framework under which poor countries typically have to agree to revamp their economies in return for IMF cash.

Countries resorting to the Fund’s emergency loans for the first time will have to accede to the terms of the controversial PRGF, if they do not have one in place already.

But analysts say that both loan programmes could in fact make a bad situation worse. The conditions that these two programmes share include trade liberalisation, cutting social spending, trimming subsidies to local producers and limiting bailouts to troubled national sectors.

Under those conditions, international financial institutions such as the IMF and its sister institution the World Bank helped force developing countries to dismantle much of their agricultural tariff systems, allowing in huge quantities of cheaper farm goods from Europe and the United States.

Critics say this effectively sabotaged national food security systems and has left poor countries ever more reliant on food imports and defenseless in the face of the latest price increases. Today, according to figures from the Global Policy Forum, nearly three in four developing countries are net importers of food.

“The IMF adjustment programmes forced poor countries to abandon policies that protected their farmers and their agricultural production and markets,” said Henk Hobbelink of the international non-governmental organisation GRAIN, which promotes sustainable agriculture and biodiversity.

“As a result, many countries became dependent on food imports, as local farmers could not compete with the subsidised products from the North. This is one of the main factors in the current food crisis, for which the IMF is directly to blame,” he added.

According to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, these food import surges have had an especially harsh impact on rural poor and local economies in Africa.

For example, in Cameroon, lowering tariff protection to 25 percent saw poultry imports increase by about six-fold. In Senegal, 70 percent of the poultry industry has been wiped out in recent years because of an influx of European poultry.

And when Ghana cut its rice tariffs from 100 to 20 percent under structural adjustment policies ordered by the World Bank, rice imports to the country increased from 250,000 tonnes in 1998 to 415,150 tonnes in 2003. Domestic rice, which had accounted for 43 percent of the domestic market in 2000, captured only 29 percent of the domestic market three years later.

Rising food prices are having their biggest impact on poor people in low-income developing countries. Rice prices have reached record levels, while wheat prices have nearly tripled and corn doubled since 2000.

Some 33 countries, most in Sub-Saharan Africa, which already carries the world’s heaviest debt burden, have been particularly affected. New loans from the ESF could further plunge these nations into the red.

GRAIN also notes that IMF policy advice to eliminate tariffs on some food items, as Plant has advocated, would simply continue to discourage local production and put poor countries even more at the mercy of international commodity markets over which they have no control.

It is unclear whether pushing more funds in the form of new loans in the market will ease prices, although such a move would likely fatten profits for international food companies, traders and speculators.

GRAIN says that Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, achieved an 86-percent increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of 2008. Another company, Bunge, had a 77-percent increase in profits during the last quarter of 2007, while ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, had a 67-percent increase in profits in 2007.

As part of its package to deal with the crisis, the IMF is also arguing that poor nations redirect new subsidies only to the poor while removing subsidies to petroleum products, an argument that overlooks the major impact of fuel on food prices.

The IMF insists that it is offering varied advice to suit different countries and avoid destabilising their economies.

“Individual country circumstances will require different approaches calibrated against the nature of each country’s shock,” said Bill Murray of the IMF’s media office in an email message.

But food security activists say that poor nations should reject the advice they are getting from institutions such as the IMF and World Bank and work instead towards “food sovereignty”.

The answer to the current crisis, argues Anuradha Mittal of the U.S.-based Oakland Institute, is for developing countries to “break with decades of ill-advised policies that have failed to benefit their people”.

 

Make the Toyako Summit 2008 the Last G8 Summit!

*Walden Bello interviewed for Japonesia Review by OGURA TOSHIMARU (People’s Plan Study Group)

Ogura: A different initiative to mobilize Japanese people against the G8 summit which is taking place in 2008, in Toyako town, Hokkaido Prefecture, is emerging. How do you see the present G8 strategy and what kind of struggle is important and necessary for movements against the G8, especially against the Japanese government that plays a key role in controlling other Asian countries through the G8 and Asian monetary system? What do you think about the present G8 situation and its role in the global capitalist regime?
 
Bello: The G8 was initially planned, as G7 in 1975 to be a sort of coordinating group of the most dominant capitalist countries to be able to work out a common strategy towards the south and the weaker countries generally. The G8 members seemed to believe that the summit still meets the purpose to come up with strategies that are liberal sounding to make the summit looks like they are solving global problems. But in fact they have failed miserably in terms of their actions and rhetoric.
 
In their rhetoric they basically say they are out to have better relations between the north and the south. They want to save Africa, they want to deal with climate change, and they want to deal with the debt problem. But their commitment to seriously dealing with these issues has been mainly rhetorical. There have been very little substantial actions they have come up with. The promises they made in terms of Africa aid, and the debt cancellation, have achieved very meager result in fact.
 
Now they are saying that they will focus on climate change. This was the theme during the last G8 summit in Rostock, Germany. But if you look at this, the whole real idea is about how they can continue their economic growth, while making symbolic and unserious efforts to cut down on emissions of green house gasses. In the G8 in Rostock, the members basically did not want to face the fact that the north should be the ones to radically bring down the consumption level to reduce the green house gasses. They did not come up with that discussion. In fact, they avoided it. They had no serious plan.
 
I think that the G8 summit at this point is some kind of a body where the members meet but that has become mainly a talk show. The members use the summit as a way by which the leading countries can try to evolve a strategy of defusing resistance in the south, but they cannot among themselves agree on what measures to take. I think that more and more people have seen the G8 as a body that is really ineffective in terms of addressing serious problems that are faced by the world today.
 
Ogura: I agree that more people are seeing the G8 as an ineffective body. Nevertheless, I think the G8 still retains its power as a sort of an informal headquarter of global capitalists. The G8 and several other ministerial meetings discuss the best way to operate global capitalism.
 
Furthermore, each member country has its own particular role. For example, Japan, as the only member country in G8 from Asia, plays the role of integrating other Asian countries into global capitalism. Also the G8 as a whole uses the United Nations, WTO, IMF, the World Bank and NATO and other transnational institutions. By seeing the problem in these terms, I believe the G8 holds hegemonic power in capitalist globalization.
 
But also, the internal ideology of the G8 is fundamentally contradictory. The climate change issue reveals itself as an aspect of this contradiction, as you just pointed out. Climate change issue is a part of environment issue. The environmental issue is broader than the mere issue of climate change. When you think of Subic in the Philippines, where a major U.S. military base was located until 1991, it still has very serious toxic contamination problems. Also, the JPEPA (Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement) is now being discussed at the Senate of the Philippines. I guess Japanese capital and the state also intend to export industrial waste to the Philippines and other Asian countries.
 
I also believe that the climate change issue is related to the nuclear plant issue. The Japanese government and businesses are trying to export nuclear plants to Asian countries. What do you think about the Japanese government vis-a-vis the G8?
 
Bello: Japan is a part of the G8 from the very beginning. I have always seen Japan as trying to act as the Asian voice in the G8. But, increasingly, I think that role has been challenged by China. The idea that Japan speaks for Asia within the G8 is also met with a lot of resentment and anger because that’s the way in fact Japan is putting forward itself. But people here in Asia are asking themselves who gave Japan the right to represent Asia. This is a big problem which should be considered among us.

Japan will feel that its membership in the G8 is more important because of the threat it faces from China’s rise as a big economic power. I think Japan will try to keep China out of the G8. Politically Japan needs the G8 for its prestige in Asia, and as of the body by which Japan can consult with other G8 members that are equally threatened by the rise of China.
 
If you look at the last G8 ministerial documents, aside from climate change, they were discussing about how countries should open up their investment, which was directed at China, and how countries should have rules in exploitation of natural resources — again this was directed at China. So what Japan eventually wants to do is to try to make the G8 some sort of a break on China’s ambitions.  That’s why the G8 has increasingly become important to Japan.
 
But as I said before, for Asians, it is bad for public relations with Asians to say that Japan is the voice of Asia within the G8. This is something that will create some resentment.
 
Ogura: I think that Asian countries have very little respect for Japan. In my opinion the main issues for the G8 will revolve around China. One will be China’s economy and the other will be national security or some kind of military issue. What do you think about the China-U.S. military relationship and Asian military relationships in terms of China?
 
Bello: I would see the U.S. and Japan, and even European countries seeing the G8 as a mechanism by which they can counter China’s rise. G8 members will cooperate to find ways to contain China.
 
But of course there is the whole set of other relations within Asia that is not in the G8, like military issues. Here, too, what unites the U.S. and Japan elites is their sense that they should cooperate more to be able to counter the rise of China.
 
However, they will see a big contradiction, because they also heavily dependent on China. China has a huge market, produces many products that G8 or northern countries need for their manufactures. For the United States, China is a source of credit. China is the well for global growth.
 
The important thing for us in the developing world is to show our opposition to policies of Japan and the U.S. directed at China, because these policies would eventually lead to conflict. But at the same time, we see China as becoming one of the pillars of the global capitalist order. Unless there is a new relationship between the south and China, China could end up with the same kind of exploitive relationships with the south that the U.S. and Japan and Europe now have.
 
And then the environment is another problem, because China is developing in a way that is damaging not only to itself but also to the environment of other regions and to the world. And we, especially the civil society, are basically saying that China should move towards more environmentally sustainable kind of economy. It can no longer hide behind excuse: U.S. does not respect the Kyoto Protocol, why should we.
 
So basically at this point in time it is important for the civil society in Asia to be critical about the policies of Japan and the U.S. aiming to contain China. But we should also have our own criticism of China as having patterns of growth that are environmentally quite destructive.
 
In fact, China and the U.S. have something almost like an unholy alliance, because when Bush says he will not sign the Kyoto Protocol because China and India have not signed it, then China says why it should agree to mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions while the U.S. has not signed it. Basically, this is almost an undercover alliance, which exempts the Chinese and the U.S. industrial elites from having to take serious environmental controls.
 
Ogura: Japanese business circles look at China as a big opportunity for environmental investment.
 
Bello: When we look at environmental problems in China on one hand the U.S., Japanese and European investors have made use of China’ weak environmental enforcement in order to raise their profits. But at the same time, as you said, Japan is looking at China that in the future it can be a good source of environmentally advanced technology. This is an interesting issue emerging.
 
Ogura: The last question is about the people’s movements against the G8. I know that you were at the Rostock G8; what was your impression of the anti-G8 movement in Rostock, and what do you think about the mission of the people’s movement against the G8, especially the next G8 in Japan?
 
Bello: What was very impressive about the protests against Rostock G8 was that we were able to recover a spirit of Genoa. The English civil society and the NGOs, not all but some of them, made a very bad move in Gleneagles in 2005. What they told the civil society was that we should praise the G8 so that they would do good things like aid Africa and have fair trade rules. So instead of criticizing the G8, what happened at the Gleneagles Summit was that civil society was made to support the G8 so that they would make good moves, which was a big failure, because almost all the promises at Gleneagles have not been met.

At Rostock, the Germen NGOs were able to get back to militant mood of Genoa in 2001. Our role there was not to praise the G8, but to tell it to get out of the way, that it has no right to manage the affairs of the people of the world. So it was a very important message in Rostock and the levels of the demonstrations and the efforts to close down the G8 by the very use of actions and the theme; we are here not to talk of the G8 but want them to get out of the way and to shut down the G8 summit. 
 
I will certainly come and I think many people will come to Japan next July to continue to give the same message. We want you to get out of the way, and we want the people of the world to, in fact, manage the affairs of the world, and we no longer want to be seduced by promises on Africa, on climate change, and that you are the organization that has failed and the world would be better off without this directorate of global capital.
 
The G8 is the directorate of the global capital. How successful it is, that is a different matter. Nevertheless we do not need anymore of such a directorate. It is like a board of directors of global capital. We don’t want that, we don’t want a G8 summit anymore. And hopefully since it is taking place in Japan, Japanese movement will be able to lead in telling the G8 to stop. That is the big hope we have.
 
Ogura: In my view the G8 does not have negotiating partners. But some NGOs intend to negotiate with the G8 at the summit. How do you think we could make broader coalitions, including moderate NGOs together with very radical social movements. How do you think of the best way to construct such a network? Rostock made a very broad alternative space including NGOs together with a Black Block. It痴 difficult to achieve this, but still important. 
 
Bello: Rostock showed that the movements out on the streets were able to make a strong anti-G8, programs, protests, messages. This was from a broad fronts including church groups. You could have the same common theme which will unite everybody: “G8 out of the way, because you made promises you have not fulfilled, and let people manage their affairs.” I think Rostock showed that you could have a wide anti-G8 appeal. 
 
Ogura: How do you think Japanese people and people in other Asian countries work together in anti-G8 actions? Japan is a member of the G8, but other governments in Asia are not. How can we encourage Asian people to join the anti-G8 actions in Japan?
 
Bello: It would be important in the preparations leading up to the G8 to be able to talk to these various groups why they should have an alliance for global reform. And the process of discussions starting right now could convince them that it is useless to ask the G8 to be the one to reform. It is very important to get as many people as possible through-out Asia to come to Japan. We should really start right now to plan it well. 

It can be a historic one. One of the themes can read that in Toyako it should be “the last G8 meeting ever.” This will be a good theme to catch people’s imagination: the final G8 before it abolishes itself.
 
Ogura: So the slogan will be “the final G8, farewell G8.”                       
                                                                            (August 2007)

*Walden Bello: Professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. He is the author of numerous books on Asian issues and globalisation, including Walden Bello Presents Ho Chi Minh  (London: Verso, 2007), Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire (2005), The Anti-Development State: the Political Ecnonomy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines (2004), and Deglobalisation: Ideas for a New world Economy (2004). His articles have appeared in numerous periodicals including Review of International Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Race and Class, Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Monde, Guardian, Boston Globe, Far Eastern Economic Review, and La Jornada. In 2003 he was given the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for “outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to it can be implemented.”

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This article is reprinted from Japonesia Review No4 issued in March 2008. Japonesia Review is a bi-annual English language magazine published by the People’s Plan Study Group [PPSG] based in Tokyo. Japonesia Review both provides up-to-date information on the contemporary Japanese political situation and protest movements and theoretically-informed analyses concerning social problems arising from the recent resurgence of nationalism and militarism in Japan. To start subscribing to the magazine, please visit www.ppjaponesia.org

The World Food Crisis – A Human Rights Disaster

FIAN International press release

Geneva/Heidelberg, 22.05.08: Today, the UN Human Rights Council stresses the key role of the Human Right to Food to address the immediate and root causes of the current world food crisis. FIAN, the International Human Rights Organisation for the Right to Food, welcomes this clear message to the international community. “The World Food Crisis is a Human Rights Disaster”, stated FIAN International General Secretary Flavio Valente today in Geneva.

The Human Rights Council has adopted the urgent call of the new U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to hold today in Geneva a Special Session on the negative impact of the world food crisis on the realization of the Right to Food. The Right to Food perspective is crucial to revise thoroughly all international and national policies which have, in fact, generated hunger.

In a Joint Written Statement to the Human Rights Council, FIAN, CETIM, Action Aid, Habitat International Coalition, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and Vía Campesina point out: “Differently from the diagnosis that the UN presented at the creation of its Task Force on the Global Food Crisis, we recognize the present crisis as deeply rooted in decades of misguided international policies - decided and implemented under the auspices of the Bretton Woods Institutions and, more recently, the WTO - that have failed to create and maintain an enabling environment for states to respect, protect and fulfil the human right to adequate food.”

“The world does not need more of the same medicine”, the FIAN General Secretary said. “It is remarkable that the the UN Task Force Response to the World Food Crisis under the clear influence of the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO does not mention with a single word the Human Right to Food, but it calls for a green revolution in Africa and accelerated trade deregulation processes .”

FIAN welcomes the statement delivered by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to the Council. The Committee “urges State parties to address the structural causes at the national and international levels, including by: revising the global trade regime under the WTO to ensure that global agricultural trade rules promote, rather than undermine the right to adequate food and freedom from hunger, especially in developing and net food-importing countries”.

Further Information

Flavio Valente +49- 172-1394447

Sandra Ratjen +49- 174- 1925 771

Links to sources:

Joint Written NGO Statement to the Human Rights Council

Statement of the UN Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council

Statement of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to the Human Rights Council

FIAN is an international human rights organization that since more than 20 years advocates for the realization of the right to food. FIAN consists of national sections and individual members in over 50 countries around the world.

Bangladesh Government may bow to ADB for access to loan: Job cut likely at state enterprise

Asif Showkat, NewAge, May 20, 2008. Dhaka, Bangladesh

The government may retrench more than 550 workers at the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation to get access to the lending by the Asian Development Bank, said sources in the industries ministry.
   

The Manila-based lending agency has suggested that the corporation should bring down the size of its manpower to 1,662 from 2,029 as permissible in the organogram under the small and medium enterprise sector development programme.
   

The industries ministry, which regulates the corporation, has accordingly submitted a proposal with a new organogram to the establishment ministry. A letter in this regard has also been sent to the ADB country director Hua Du.
   

‘The Asian Development Bank will not release the money under the enterprise development programme unless the condition of BSCIC manpower rationalisation is fulfilled,’ a high corporation official told New Age on Sunday. The ADB contribution to the Tk 31.50-crore programme is Tk 28.63 crore.
   

The official further said the ADB suggestions were more applicable to the SME Foundation which will result in job cut at the BSCIC.
   In line with the ADB conditions, the SME Foundation is expected to appoint a new managing director by May 31.
   

The industries ministry letter to the Asian Development Bank said the corporation had ‘reconstructed the organogram as part of overall human resources restructuring by rationalising the total personnel strength to 1,662 [285 staff at the head office and 1,377 in field offices].’
   

The corporation chairman, Mohammad Mohbubur Rahman, said they had submitted the proposal for human resources ‘rationalisation’ to the establishment ministry.
   

Adding that the move is in the preliminary stages, he said a number of meetings would be held before making the final decision on the manpower rationalisation, which is a part of the government’s restructuring plan for corporations. The BSCIC chairman, however, said he was not aware of the ADB conditions in this regard.
   

The small and medium enterprise sector development programme was undertaken in 2005 and it is scheduled to be completed by this December.

Vandana Shiva: Why We Face Both Food and Water Crises

By Maria Armoudian and Ankine Aghassian, AlterNet, May 15, 2008

Policy-makers are finally grappling with the growing global food and water crises that are upon us. While they grope for answers, Vandana Shiva reminds them that it was their wild economic schemes that created these crises in the first place.

The globalized economic structure is simply incompatible with the basic physics of the planet and the principles of democratic governance, she says. And until we align the economic system with those of the ecological system, the problems will only get worse. While many of Shiva’s books address some aspect of this fundamental problem, one title captures it most succinctly, Earth Democracy, Justice, Sustainability and Peace.

Shiva is a physicist, author, director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology and Ecology and the founder of Navdanya.

AlterNet: Much of your writing and speaking has focused on our economic structure’s incompatibility with the ecological functioning of the earth. Talk about that incompatibility.

Vandana Shiva: One aspect of the inconsistency is between the principles of Gaia, the principles of soil, the ecology, renewability, how the atmosphere cleans itself and the laws of the global marketplace. The global marketplace is driven by the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the illogic of so-called “free trade,” which is totally not free. [The result of this incompatibility] is the current food crisis: The more agriculture is “liberalized,” the greater the food scarcity, the higher the food prices and the more people will go hungry.

Never has there been this rate of escalation in food prices worldwide as we witness now with the global integration of the food economies under the coercive and bullying force of the WTO.

AlterNet: You have said, in the past, that these activities are done in the name of improving human welfare. But instead, poverty and dispossession have increased. Where do we see this the most?

VS: We see the worst dispossession in the countries of the South — tragically — those countries that could feed themselves. India, for example, was food self-sufficient. We were able to feed our people with a universal distribution system, affordable food for all, and agriculture policies that put food first. Small farmers could make a living.

But a decade and a half of globalization’s perverse rules have led to 200,000 farmers committing suicide because they can’t make a living anymore — all their money goes to make profit for Monsanto or Cargill. Meanwhile, with the economy’s so-called growth, people are starving. Per capita entitlement to food has dropped in a decade and half from 177 kg to 152 kg per year.

This contradicts the false propaganda being spread about the reason prices are rising. They say it is because Indians are getting richer and Indians are eating more. Well, some Indians are getting richer, but they’re not eating more. There’s a limit to how much you can eat. And the handful of billionaires buys a few more private jet planes and builds a few more private mansions. [But in reality], the average Indian is eating less. The average child has a bigger chance today of dying of hunger. The Cargill’s of the world have a stranglehold of the world’s economy; they’re harvesting super-profits while people die of hunger.

AlterNet: You talk about India being worse off, but many economists — including those on the political left — say that places like China and India are, overall, actually improving. But you say that is not true.

VS: It’s not true. India, under the perverse growth of globalization, has beaten out Africa in the number of hungry people. While we have 9.2 percent growth measured by GNP and GDP, 50 percent of our children have very severe malnutrition. Fifty percent of deaths for children under five are due to lack of food. That’s about a million kids per year.

AlterNet: That is a considerable change that I don’t think the world is seeing.

VS: That’s because the media orchestrates every analysis and interpretation. They would like this crisis to look like a success of globalization, and they would like to offer more globalization as a solution. In fact, the World Bank has said there should be more liberalized trade. Before the WTO was formed, we had protests with 500,000 farmers on the streets of Bangalore in 1993 to say that this is a recipe for starvation, for destroying agriculture, self-reliance and food security. And the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs — before the WTO was born — had a press conference to say that globalization will make food affordable for all.

They forget that food ultimately is not produced in the speculation and commodity exchanges controlled by Cargill in Chicago. It is produced by hard working women and men working with the soil and sun. And if you destroy the capacity of the people to work the land and the capacity of soil to produce, you’re going to have hunger. The tragedy is that the hunger of today and the rise of food [prices] is the result of globalization policies, and it is being implemented on a global scale. Unless we bring local food sovereignty and “food democracy” back into the picture, we will not have a solution to this.

AlterNet: You’re talking about basic ecological principles here. But there are two other aspects about food shortages that are being discussed. One of them is that among some societies, such as China, the diet is changing, which contributes to food shortage. Reportedly, after being exposed to western diets, they are eating more meat which requires an enormous amount of grain — normally fed to people — to instead be fed to cattle. Do you see this as part of the problem?

VS: Well, I can definitely say that is not true for India. Vegetarian India will stay vegetarian India — rich or poor, integrated globally or not integrated globally. And the Chinese have always eaten meat. The difference is that now they are integrated into the global production system: It is factory farming that feeds grain to chicken and pigs and cows.

No indigenous culture — not China or India — has fed grain to animals. Animals have fed on what humans could not eat. Global agribusiness, which makes huge money out of the feed industry, is creating this pressure while destroying what I would call the “real free economy” — the free-range cattle, the free range chicken — and replacing it with prison factories for animals. In fact, in my interpretation, even the Avian flu is being used to violently shut down small economies, the free economies of Asian peasants, and turning them into Tyson and Cargill factory farming systems.

AlterNet: What about the role of climate change in this global food crisis?

VS: Climate change and agricultural food crises do have a connection. In fact, my next book is precisely about this connection. Industrial farming — driven by agribusiness in order to sell more chemicals, pesticides, and costly seeds to farmers — is heavily responsible for emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane from factory farms nitrogen oxide from chemically fertilized soil and fossil fuels from mechanized farming systems.

Further, the long distance trade is responsible for adding food miles, which adds more carbon emissions. Taken together, more than 25 percent of climate instability is being caused by unsustainable farming that [simultaneously] displaces small peasants, creates poverty and bad food. So, tomorrow we could solve 25 percent of the planet’s climate instability if we returned to ecological agriculture as the earth wants it, farming according to 10,000 years of wisdom that evolved from the third world.

Research that we are undertaking now shows a 200 percent higher level of carbon return and 10 times higher level of moisture retention. So if increased drought is one consequence of climate change, what you need is sorted organic matter, not more chemical fertilizers. We have two issues pertaining to climate change: We need to get rid of emissions from agriculture and long-distance transport.

This means ecological farming, localization of the food system and only importing what can’t be grown locally — not forcing imports as the U.S has done on India. It has forced us to buy wheat, give up our mustard and coconut oil and to live on soya. These trade factors are “forcings” that are causing more damage to our climate and destroying our food culture, nutrition and access to food.

Finally, biodiverse systems actually produce more food. It is an illusion that because there’s a food crisis, we must have [genetically modified food] spread around the world. First, genetically-engineered crops don’t produce more food. And secondly, they make the soil more vulnerable to climate change. They are herbicide resistant and toxin traps. That is not a yield increase.

AlterNet: So the genetic altering of food ultimately exacerbates the already difficult circumstances with food shortages.

VS: Absolutely. I think any recipe today offered in agriculture should be measured against the test of whether it will enhance the food production capacity of the poor and if it will reduce the pressure on the planet.

AlterNet: Let’s also incorporate another concept that you feature in your writing — “biopiracy.”

VS: Biopiracy is the strange phenomenon whereby the richest and biggest of corporations steal genetic resources and traditional knowledge from poor little women and peasants who have shared it for free for over a millennium. The first case I had to fight was against the United States government with W.R. Grace, which became infamous in the film A Civil Action, when it polluted the groundwater outside of Boston.

They stole Neem, which is a tree that gives us [natural] pest and fungal control through its oil. The USDA along with Grace claim to have invented Neem. Of course, my grandmother and my mother used it. Then, I popularized it after Bopal with a campaign called “No more Bopal. Plant a Neem.” When I saw this patent, I had to fight it. We fought for 11 years, and eventually the biggest governmental powers and one of the biggest chemical companies were beaten out by a coalition of civic society groups and movements.

Another case of biopiracy is the famous Basmati rice that comes from my valley. A company in Texas claims to have invented it. The third case was Monsanto, which claimed to have invented an ancient wheat variety, which is very low in gluten. The problem with biopiracy is not simply that they’re taking genetic material and knowledge for free, but that they are claiming an exclusive right to it and then demanding royalty, claim and fame from the very communities and societies [from which they have taken it], communities that have had this biodiversity and this knowledge for years.

AlterNet: Speaking of Monsanto, you have done considerable research on this company and published a report, “Peddling Life Sciences or Death Sciences.”

VS: If I had to rank criminality of corporations, Monsanto will easily walk away with the highest award. Monsanto has taken over the control of world’s seed supply. It has bought up every small seed company in India, Brazil and the United States and become the biggest seed corporation. But its entire model of functioning is through corruption. They corrupted the United States decision-making such that U.S. citizens no longer have a right to know what they are eating, whether milk has bovine growth hormone in it or if soybeans and corn are genetically engineered. They are spreading this corruption worldwide.

I am fighting them through three cases in our supreme court. And we’ve managed to hold them at the level of Bt cotton. They have not yet managed to invade into our food economy with genetically modified food crop. But the worst thing Monsanto is doing is buying Delta and Pine Land, a company that has the patent for terminator technology that designs seeds to be sterilized. It is genetically engineering life for life’s extinction.

AlterNet: We should also talk about water scarcity. There are major water wars occurring and considerable concern about the future of water. Do you think that water scarcity is being created largely by the phenomenon of privatization or is it resulting from climate change and other such phenomena?

VS: Water scarcity [is] being created by non-sustainable systems of production for both food and textile. Every industrial activity has huge water demands. Industrial agriculture requires ten times more water to produce the same amount of food than ecological farming does. And the “green revolution” was not so green because it created demand for large dams and mining of groundwater.

Industrial agriculture has depleted water resources. In addition, as water has become polluted and depleted, a handful of industry saw water as a way of making super-profits by privatizing it. They are privatizing it in two ways. The first is through buying up entire civic, municipal distribution. The big players in this are Bechtel, Suez and Vivendi.

And interestingly, wherever they go, they face protests. Bechtel was thrown out of Bolivia. Suez wanted to take Delhi’s water supply, but we had a movement for water democracy and did not allow them to take over. But there’s a second kind of privatization, which is more insidious — and that is the plastic water bottle. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are leading in this privatization. But in India where Coca-Cola was stealing water, I worked with a small group of village women, and they shut their plant down. Across India, these giant corporations are taking between 1.5 to 2 million liters of water a day and leaving behind a water famine.

AlterNet: Given what is happening as a result of climate change, would we still face a water crisis without these practices?

VS: We would not be facing water problems if people have been allowed to have their economies, to practice sustainability and to live their lives. Every step in the water crisis is due to greed. As the water becomes increasingly scarce, the corporations who control the water become richer. It is the same with food. As food becomes scarce, the corporations controlling food become richer. That is the paradox of the global economy. Growth shows up in the profits of corporations while in the real world, the resources from which they make their profits, shrink.

AlterNet: You have also suggested that these same economic principles are incompatible with the sustenance of democratic governance.

VS: There are many levels at which a market economy called corporate globalization has to kill democracy in order to survive. Take the birth of World Trade Organization (WTO), an undemocratic institution. There are no negotiations on the rules it imposes. These rules are created undemocratically. Then, every time these rules are implemented, there are protests. Normally in democracy, if the will of people say change this policy, governments change. Unfortunately, governance today is run by corporations not the people. Every step of deepening the market economy is a depletion of democracy. Our very governments have been stolen from us, and we have to use democracy to counter these rules, this paradigm, and the absolute destruction [it causes].

AlterNet: Describe your alternative vision that could replace what we currently have.

VS: I try to articulate an alternative vision in terms of a democracy. Global market economy makes the first citizen the corporation. The rest of us are slaves, second class citizens. Secondly, it creates an identity for the human species as consumers in a global supermarket. We are no longer creators and producers. We are just consumers of goods that corporations bring to us from the place where they can manufacture them — at the highest cost to the environment and workers.

What we need is a reclaiming of who we are as human beings. We are first and foremost citizens of this beautiful planet. Our first duty is to protect this planet. And out of that flows the rights to the earth, air, water and food that the earth gives us. Those gifts are common resources, not commodities, private property or intellectual property. They are the commons of the earth and all of us have equal access to it. Nobody can interfere in the access of a person to their share of water, land and air. That interference is a violation of the rules of Gaia and the rules of democracy.

But the polluting industry has privatized even the air by first putting their pollutants into it and then by the carbon trade. They’re basically are saying that because we polluted the atmosphere, we own it. So we can pollute as much as we want and then buy up clean credits from someone else who is not polluting. The commons and the recovery of commons is vital to earth democracy. It’s at the heart of sustainability of the earth and democratic functioning of society.

AlterNet: Do property rights fit into this vision of the commons?

VS: Most private property rights have been carved out of the shared resources of the earth. In India we say “land belongs to creation.” We can use it and have “use rights,” but that is different from ownership and tradable rights. It is British colonialism that created private property in land the way it is now practiced.

Now, the World Bank is trying to create private property in land among indigenous communities. Water was never property either, but today, they are trying to change that. Seeds were meant to be shared and distributed, not treated as property. Intellectual property rights are as recent as the World Trade Organization and need to be eliminated because they are inconsistent with life [principles]. A world of the future governed by intellectual property rights over seed in Monsanto’s hands is a future where biodiversity will be destroyed, farmers will be wiped out and there will be no food worth eating.

AlterNet: You’ve also been involved in the “slow food” movement and organic farming.

VS: I was just elected Vice President of Slow Food [International], and I chair an international commission on the future of food, a commission started by the region of Tuscany in Italy. I convinced the [founder], Carlo Petrini, to recognize that food does not begin in the kitchen or in the chef’s hands. It begins in the farmers’ fields. One of the contributions that I and my colleagues have made in the seed-saving and organic farming movements is the recognition that biodiversity, organic farming and small-scale agriculture produces more food. It is a myth created by industrial agriculture and agribusiness that monocultures and chemical farming produce more food. They use more energy and chemicals, and do not produce more nutrition per acre. In fact, they use ten times more energy inputs than they produce as food. So with the food crisis, it is vital that we move to efficient food systems that also give us better quality food.

AlterNet: How would we carry your vision and language into actual political and farming structure?

VS: In countries like India, it’s not a case of vision being translated into practice. It’s defending a practice that’s being destroyed by a perverse vision. For us, it is defending the rights of small peasants. That’s where lot of my energy goes. An India of the villages was Gandhi’s dream and is my dream. But I do not see India surviving if her villages and her food capacity are wiped out. In the Northern countries like the United States farmers have already been uprooted. We need more farms producing more locally-grown foods. This country that can subsidize biofuel and chemicals should instead subsidize the return of small farmers to the land. This would solve much of the unemployment problem too.

Maria Armoudian is a singer/songwriter, a commissioner on the environment for the City of Los Angeles and host and producer of the Insighters for KPFK. Ankine Aghassian is co-producer of the Insighters on KPFK and a human rights activist.