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food justice
Trinational Solidarity Can Protect Mexican Food Sovereignty From GM Corn
U.S. and Canadian civil society groups are supporting the successful efforts of the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (“Without Corn There’s No Country”) campaign to protect cultural heritage and biodiversity.
Dec 17, 2023
This coming January 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the trade pact originally known as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It also marks the 30th anniversary of the historic Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico that denounced the pact over concerns about threats to Indigenous people and food security.
Three decades later, it’s clear the Zapatistas were right.
For Mexico, NAFTA meant abandoning food sovereignty in favor of imports of basic grains, causing an increase in inequality and migration. It meant abandoning the countryside and opening borders to trade, creating a vacuum that organized crime has filled.
Trinational civil society organizations warned 30 years ago that the free trade model could destroy age-old farming traditions. Today they are demanding that Mexico stand up to the pressure of the agribusiness oligopolies and stop what could be the final blow to Mexican food culture.
But, for a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations—such as Bimbo, Maseca, Monsanto, and Cargill—NAFTA has delivered huge profits.
La Jornada reports that, today, food shortages and dependence continue to worsen while imports of basic grains in Mexico are growing to unprecedented levels—accounting for more than half of consumption.
In 2020, the three North American governments renegotiated some aspects of NAFTA. But as La Jornada op-ed coordinator and columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro explained then, “in the agricultural area, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is more of the same, but worse. It is a central instrument for oligopolies to strip control of farmers’ seeds from those who have developed and cared for them for thousands of years. It’s a key piece of the neoliberal order in the region.”
Thus, under the USMCA, Mexico now has to defend itself tooth and nail against plans of the United States, supported by Canada, to flood the country with genetically modified corn.
Last August, the United States filed a claim under the treaty’s dispute settlement framework over a February 13, 2023, Mexican government decree that prohibits the use of biotech corn in tortillas and dough and phases out its use in all products for human and animal consumption.
The U.S. government charges that Mexico’s anti-GM corn policy lacks sufficient scientific basis and undermines the market access that the country agreed to in the trade treaty.
This attack on Mexican sovereignty has reactivated the trinational solidarity of Mexican, American, and Canadian organizations—a transcontinental bond strengthened in the decades since NAFTA was negotiated behind the people’s backs.
U.S. and Canadian civil society groups are supporting the successful efforts of the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (“Without Corn There’s No Country”) campaign to protect cultural heritage and biodiversity by preventing the planting of GM corn and the use of the herbicide glyphosate over potential risks to human health, the environment, and the country’s biocultural diversity. In one form of solidarity, they’ve submitted a series of statements to the trade dispute process.
As Karen Hansen-Kuhn of the U.S.-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy puts it, “whether or not the dispute panel accepts these statements, the range of topics covered will enrich the public debate on how trade rules could limit or enable sustainable solutions that promote public health, human rights, and economic opportunities.”
The organizations’ statements emphasize the insufficient research on the safety of GM corn for human consumption and the risks of glyphosate. They also emphasize the contradiction between the U.S. claim against Mexico and other key provisions of the treaty, which the United States should not be treating as mere decorations.
For example, Article 32.5 of the USMCA states that the treaty does not prevent a party from adopting or maintaining a measure that it deems necessary to comply with its legal obligations to Indigenous peoples, as well as protections for biological diversity in the chapter on the environment.
The statements emphasize the cultural and environmental risks of GM corn’s proliferation in Mexico, considering the diversity of over 59 native corn varieties that Indigenous peoples have constantly labored to diversify and adapt. They explain that the Mexican policy does not discriminate against U.S. producers, and in fact, these producers are profiting from increased exports of non-GM corn to Mexico.
A support statement led by Rick Arnold of the Council of Canadians—a network of tens of thousands of members from coast to coast and supported by Common Frontiers, a broad network of Canadian organizations—critiques the cozy relationship between their own government and large agribusinesses.
“As Canada joins the U.S. in challenging Mexico to stop its planned phaseout of genetically modified corn for human consumption,” they write, “a too-close collaboration between federal government departments and the biotechnology industry has been exposed […] CropLife Canada was instrumental in Canada’s new decision to remove regulation from many coming gene-edited GMOs.”
Canadian organizations demand that their government support Mexico in its efforts to gradually eliminate the importation of GM corn, and are calling upon the USMCA dispute panel to rule in favor of protecting health, small farmers, and environmental well-being, as Mexico has done for several millennia.
Trinational civil society organizations warned 30 years ago that the free trade model could destroy age-old farming traditions. Today they are demanding that Mexico stand up to the pressure of the agribusiness oligopolies and stop what could be the final blow to Mexican food culture. Long live international solidarity.
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Corporate Takeover of the Global Food System Should Not Get UN Approval
The U.N. should address issues such as land concentration, so that peasant agroecology can have a real chance to flourish and make a significant contribution to tackling hunger, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
Jul 23, 2023
A U.N. summit on global food systems should be an opportunity to address structural inequalities and tackle hunger. It should be a chance to learn from small-scale producers whose sustainable food practices feed 70% of the world. Instead, next week’s conference in Rome will be a festival of greenwashing, allowing Big Agriculture corporations to tighten their grip on food systems.
This will be the second Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The first, in 2021 was supposed to address the lack of progress towards the U.N.’s sustainable development goals. It was dubbed a “people’s summit” by the organizers, but caused an outcry among local producers when their calls to roll back the power of transnational corporations were cynically ignored.
Corporations that dominate global food systems, such as Bayer and Nestlé, used the summit to promote greenwashing initiatives rather than address pressing problems such as food speculation and the impact of Covid-19 on world hunger.
The U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri described it as “inviting the fox right into the henhouse.”
Discussions on eradicating hunger were hosted by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), a foundation partly funded by processed food and consumer goods giant Unilever, while transnational corporations were invited to discuss solutions to problems they had largely created. The whole event was an excellent opportunity for them to identify new profit-making ventures and to “capture the global narrative of ‘food systems transformation.’”
More than a thousand small-scale food producer associations and Indigenous Peoples’ groups, academics, and social movements boycotted the event, which was also widely criticized by U.N/ human rights experts and others.
The U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri described it as “inviting the fox right into the henhouse.”
Agribusiness vs Small Farmers
Food is a common good and access to healthy and nutritious food is a basic human right enshrined in U.N. covenants. These are the issues that governments and the U.N. should focus resources on, and next week’s summit provided a perfect opportunity.
Sadly, it looks set to simply consolidate corporate control over food and natural resources.
Hundreds of grassroots groups have called out the U.N., saying they are still being excluded and claiming the summit is “poised to repeat the failures” of two years ago and want to see fundamental change in food systems.
Here’s the picture as it stands. A handful of agribusinesses control more than 70% of the world’s farmland. Smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, and Indigenous peoples, who use agroecology and other sustainable practices, feed 70% of the world’s population with just 10% of global farmland.
In just the last five years, the world’s nine largest fertilizer companies—with nearly 40% of global synthetic fertilizer sales— have tripled their profits.
Agriculture is responsible for nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, almost 90% of deforestation, and 80% of biodiversity loss, the bulk of which can be attributed to industrial agriculture and agribusiness operations.
The disruption of global fertilizer supply chains has been a major focus of the U.N.’s response to the global food crisis. But the dangers of market concentration, which make food systems extremely fragile to shocks, have been largely ignored.
In just the last five years, the world’s nine largest fertilizer companies—with nearly 40% of global synthetic fertilizer sales— have tripled their profits. Rocketing fertilizer prices have less to do with disrupted supply chains than quasi-monopolies.
Despite all this—and the growing global obesity pandemic, for which consumption of ultra-processed industrial food bears a major responsibility—the U.N. continues to empower corporations. What it should be doing is addressing issues such as land concentration, so that peasant agroecology can have a real chance to flourish and make a significant contribution to tackling hunger, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
Industrial Agriculture Has Failed
A dystopian future where a handful of corporations control everything we eat is just around the corner, if we do not resist now.
About 60% of all calories consumed worldwide come from just four crops: rice, wheat, corn, and soy. Everyone is vulnerable if we are over-dependent on global corporate-controlled supply chains. Industrial agriculture has failed to address rising levels of hunger and malnutrition across the world, which are now at an estimated 828 million people.
We are facing a stark choice between unsustainable, exploitative, corporate-controlled food systems and diverse, locally sourced ecological food.
The global governance of food is being hijacked by corporate interests. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization receives less than a third of its $3.25bn budget from the world’s governments, making it dependent on “voluntary contributions”—including from corporations and their proxies—for the rest.
We are facing a stark choice between unsustainable, exploitative, corporate-controlled food systems and diverse, locally sourced ecological food that prioritises the needs and rights of those most affected by the hunger, climate, and health crises.
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Most Vulnerable Will Bear the Brunt as Russia Pulls Plug on Ukraine Grain Deal
Urgent action is needed now more than ever to help countries rebuild their capacity to produce the food they require to break their dependence on the global market.
Jul 22, 2023
Russia announced on Monday that it was suspending a crucial deal that allows grain to be exported from Ukraine to countries in Africa and the Middle East.
The grain agreement, which was brokered in July 2022 by the United Nations and Turkey to allow grain that had been blocked by the conflict to be exported through the Black Sea, was aimed at alleviating the global food crisis, which had been worsened by the war in Ukraine.
And it was effective too. Prices of global foods have been declining in recent months thanks in large part to this initiative. The U.N. FAO Food Price Index shows that prices are now 13% lower than they were in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Local communities in the Global South are on average now spending twice as much on a loaf of bread, fertilizer, and petrol as before the war.
But not everywhere experienced this relief. In 14 countries surveyed as part of ActionAid’s recent research into the human impacts of the cost-of-living crisis across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, the cost of essential items has been continuing to escalate to crisis levels over the past 18 months. Local communities in the Global South are on average now spending twice as much on a loaf of bread, fertilizer, and petrol as before the war.
It’s a far worse picture than the last time we looked. Research released in May 2022 indicated that at worst, some local communities were paying up to quadruple the food, fuel, and fertilizer prices from before the war began. Now, in Zimbabwe, where an estimated 2.8 million people are unemployed, families are spending up to 10 times more. In some districts, petrol prices reportedly rose by more than 900%, pasta by up to 750%, fertilizer costs by more than 700%, and period pads by an extra 600%.
So what will happen now that the grain deal is dead? While the U.N. is hard at work to find a solution to this problem and ensure that Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizer can still make it out on the global market, I simply can’t agree with those who suggest that the move will have little immediate impact due to the current harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere. While the E.U.’s “Solidarity Lanes” should be applauded for enabling the export of about 25 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain, oilseeds, and related products to world markets between May and October last year, communities in the Global South are still suffering. We can’t take the chance that prices will increase even more, further exacerbating the harsh situations faced by many vulnerable countries already facing acute hunger.
If the situation worsens, women and girls will be the hardest hit. They already are: Community leaders in 10 out of 11 of the countries ActionAid surveyed said that rates of child marriage were increasing in their local areas, while almost half of survey respondents said mothers in their communities were reducing their food intake so their children could eat. More than half of those we spoke to said the price hikes made them feel sad or hopeless.
East Africa has faced four years of failed harvests, unpredictable rainfall, and rocketing global food prices. In Somaliland, people have been pushed to the brink since war broke out more than 3,000 miles away and are facing an extreme drought which scientists say would not have happened without climate change. Hibo Aden, women’s rights officer at ActionAid Somaliland, says that the situation has become so desperate for some families in a country where in one district, the price of cooking oil has risen by 224%, that girls are being forced to marry in exchange for food and water.
Russia pulling out of the Black Sea grain initiative could plunge food consumers in countries dependent on Ukrainian and Russian food supplies, like Somaliland, into food shortage, and re-ignite food price rises and volatility. If prices go up again, with the current dollar depreciation, the food import bills for countries already suffering will become even more unaffordable, leading to millions experiencing famine.
Our food system is to blame: 75% of the world’s nutrition comes from
12 crops and five animal species, while an even smaller group of just three crops—maize, wheat, and rice—constitute nearly 60% of humans’ caloric needs. Production of these three grains, plus soybeans, is concentrated in a few key regions, and is dominated by less than 15 companies. These factors combined make it easy for any industry to maintain high prices and reduce the number of farmers, making food production highly susceptible to shocks.
Ever-rising prices are likely to continue to push communities to their limits, and the devastating impacts we are seeing—both in Ukraine and across the Global South—will only intensify. Urgent action is needed now more than ever to help countries rebuild their capacity to produce the food they require to break their dependence on the global market. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and private banks have a role to play here. By cancelling the debts of countries like Malawi, where in one district the price of bread has risen by up to 233%, they would enable them to invest in greater domestic food security, shifting their focus towards climate-resilient agroecological farming, strengthening local food systems to help stabilize food supplies and prices.
Don’t take it from me—Meem, a student from the remote village of Kolpara in southern Bangladesh puts it best: “The rich may get away with price hikes, but the poor will struggle. Something has to be done, or society will suffer a lot.”
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