Communiqué

November 2009 Issue # 102

Questions for Food/Climate Crises Negotiators inRome and Copenhagen

November 2009ETC Groupwww.etcgroup.org

ETC Group

Communiqué

# 102

Pre-Publication Copy

November 2009

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2009’s most important intergovernmental meeting on the climate and food criseshas already happened. In October, as climate negotiators were fighting inBangkok and as the UN food agencies were jousting over a restructured responseto the food crisis and plans for the World Food Summit, FAO’s Commission onGenetic Resources met quietly in Rome to review the preparedness of theinternational community to adapt and develop crops, livestock, aquatic andmicrobial genetic resources used in food and agriculture to address climatechange. The meeting also considered the political and corporate constraints thatcould prevent a major strategic shift to achieve our food security. The Rome FoodSummit in November and the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December shouldpay attention. At stake is the answer to the most important question not beingasked in Copenhagen, “Who Will Feed Us?” A Tale of Two Crises:

En route toCopenhagen climate changenegotiators see agriculture as both apollutant and an opportunity. It is thesource of at least 14% of greenhousegas emissions, depends onunsustainable fossil fuels, and is theconsumer of 70% of the world’s annualfreshwater supply. Agriculture –including agroforestry – is also a(theoretical) alternative to fossil energyand a potential source of carbon credits– sequestering the gases it and otherindustries emit. From the perspectiveof some food crisis negotiators en routeto the Food Summit in Rome,agriculture is a vulnerable industrialmanufacture and smallholders(peasants) are a nuisance. Bothperspectives are distorted. Policy-makers need to be looking at not whatagriculture can do for carbon credits, but at who will feed us and protect ourplanet at a time of compounding chaos.

Climate and hunger?

There is a scientificconsensus that climate change is a majorthreat to world food security. Althoughincreased temperatures and even CO

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emissions could bring some benefits totemperate zones, even in these areas, theincrease in extreme weather events, thelikelihood of pest and disease migrations,and the reality that the warmer windscould blow over inhospitable rock andtundra, is hardly grounds for enthusiasm.There is no doubt, on the other hand, thatclimate change will be devastating fortropical and subtropical regions bringingabout major crop losses in South andSoutheast Asia as well as sub-SaharanAfrica. Yield declines of 20% to 40% areanticipated for major food crops in Africa,for example, well before 2050. Theseregions will also experience even moreextreme weather events than temperatezones and will also suffer from pest anddisease migrations. A survey of severalcountries in the global South shows that, atleast by the final decades of the 21stcentury, the most important food crops inthese countries will be grown intemperatures they have never beforeexperienced – i.e., the hottest days of the20th century will be the coldest days of thelate 21st century.

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As though this were not enough, global fishstocks are also collapsing and many majorspecies may be played out before 2050. Bothindustrial agriculture and aquaculture areheavily dependent on fossil fuels that aredestined to become too expensive and tooscarce before the century’s midpoint.There is also agreement that an entirelyunprecedented level of internationalcooperation will be needed if humanity isto avoid mass starvation in this rapidlychanging world. There is no agreement oneither what needs to be done or who needsto do it.

A Tale of Two Alternatives?

Policy-makersare being told by industry advocates (quitewrongly) that there are only two choices:We either globalize the Western industrialfood chain and embrace a suite of newtechnologies, or, we cling to the bucolic belief that massively-subsidized andhugely-expensive little organic familyfarms will suddenly scale up to crank outenough calories to feed the 9.2 billionpeople expected for dinner in 2050.

This is a false dichotomy. Neither option is grounded inreality.

ETC Group

Communiqué

# 102

Pre-Publication Copy

November 2009

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Food chain or food web?

The industrialagricultural model talks about a food“chain” with Monsanto at one end andWal-Mart at the other – a linked chain of agricultural input companies (seed,fertilizer, pesticides, machinery) at the startthat is attached to traders, processors andretailers. In fact, most of the world’s fooddoesn’t follow a chain; food moves within aweb: Peasants are also consumers whoexchange with one another; urbanconsumers are also peasant producersgrowing and exchanging food; farmers areoften fishers and foragers and their landsexist within an ecosystem with multiplefunctions. 85% of the food that is grown isconsumed within the same eco-region or (atleast) within national borders and most of itis grown beyond the reach of themultinational chain.The dominant food system – for most of history and much of humanity still today –is a web, not a chain – of relationships.The World Bank and many bilateraldevelopment agencies have bought into theurban legend that agricultural developmentcan pick and choose the links in the foodchain they like. This is naïve. The reasonMonsanto, DuPont and Syngenta (whichcontrol half the proprietary commercialseed supply and about the same share of global pesticides) are focused on breedingcrops like maize, soybeans, wheat and(now) rice is because the big processors likeNestlé, Unilever, Kraft and ConAgra canmanipulate these cheap carbohydrate fillers(the four crops account for two-thirds of U.S. consumer calories) into thousands of food (and non-food) products that can“bulk up” more expensive goods. Theprocessors, in turn, are scrambling to meetthe exigencies of consumer-attuned retailerslike Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour, and Metrothat demand cheap, uniform andpredictable products on their shelves andshow no hesitation to reach back down thefood chain to dictate how farmers (andwhich farmers) will produce food.Through a shared corporate culture andshared markets, different parts of the foodchain have developed strong informal bonds: There are close links betweenSyngenta and Archer Daniels Midland, forexample, and between Monsanto andCargill and between DuPont and Bunge.

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The industrial model comes with chainsattached. Buying into any part of it meansbuying into all of it.

“Small scale food producers are those menand women who produce and harvest fieldand tree crops as well as livestock, fish andother aquatic organisms. They includesmallholder peasant/family crop andlivestock farmers, herders/pastoralists,artisanal fisherfolk, landlessfarmers/workers, gardeners, forestdwellers, indigenous peoples, hunters andgatherers, and any other small scale usersof natural resources for food production.” –Michele Pimbert

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But, who will feed us?

Answering thisquestion first requires an understanding of who “we” are now and how we mightchange en route to 2050. Then we need tounderstand the conditions under whichfood will be provided in the decades ahead.Once we have this sorted out, we canevaluate the likelihood of differentproduction models meeting our futureneeds. We must not assume that any of theexisting models will be adequate. One of the most important findings in this report isthat neither the chain nor the web isprepared to confront climate change.

Who are the hungry and how are theychanging?

At the height of the media surgearound the 2008 food crisis, for the firsttime in history, half of the world’spopulation became “urban.” Thepredictions being written into policy arethat, in 2050, two-thirds of the planet’sprojected 9.2 billion people will be living incities and that all of this increase (2.6 billion) will be not only in the global South but also in the South’s urban areas.Between now and 2050 at least 1.3 billionpeople will (policymakers are told) migrate– be migrated – from country to city in thelargest land grab (or enclosure) ever. Left behind will only be those too old to moveand the indigenous peoples determined tostay. The best that can be done for theworld’s 1.5 billion peasant farmers (again,policymakers are being told) is to buy themone-way bus tickets to the city so that theland can be cleared for a “carbohydrateeconomy” that churns out “biomass” –