Failed Formulas in New Clothing

Originally published by the Deccan Herald

By Anuradha Mittal / July 14, 2009

Assertion that free trade will help solve hunger requires a certain degree of political amnesia.

With world hunger reaching a historic high in 2009 – over a billion people are hungry – the G8 summit concluded July 10 will go down in history as a lavish Italian gala with 25,000 meals prepared over three days for the powerful elites from rich countries. The talks approved the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative generating much media coverage of the G8’s pledge of $20 billion aid commitment towards food security and agricultural development programmes. With details of the package unclear, and some of the promised money, likely to be old money counted as new, the initiative is at the most a ‘moral carbon’ offsetting tool for the G8.

Commitments, pledges and grandiose communique to challenge hunger have become a common agenda item at international conferences, especially since the 2008 food crisis. But world hunger is deeply entrenched. The problem lies in the fallacy of explanations offered to explain world hunger which has been framed as a crisis of demand and supply.

The proposed solutions, such as the L'Aquila Initiative, thus primarily focus on boosting agricultural production through technological solutions, like genetic engineering and chemical inputs, and/or on removing supply-side constraints to ensure access to food through liberalisation of agricultural trade.

This framework does not allow the questioning of policies promoted over the last several decades by the donor countries and the international financial institutions that have undermined food security in developing countries. While pledging commitment to fight hunger, G8’s Initiative reiterates its continued support for open trade flows and efficient markets. Assertion that free trade will help solve hunger requires a certain degree of political amnesia.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, in May 2009 pointed out how rich countries have used their heavily subsidised agriculture to help secure markets by flooding developing countries with cheap farm imports, making subsistence farming uncompetitive and financially unstable.

The worst impact of the indiscriminate opening of markets has been felt in rural areas, where agriculture is the main occupation for most of the poor and the source of purchasing power. Increased imports, which have destroyed livelihoods, have not increased food security.

Also, measures previously available to governments to soften the effects of price volatility – such as controlling import and export volumes, managing domestic stocks, using price control and price support tools, consumer subsidies, and rationing systems – have been criticised for distorting free trade.

But these measures by developing countries had sought to protect national populations, especially the poor and vulnerable, against the global agricultural price shocks by ensuring national food availability below world prices before allowing exports to other countries.

Failed solutions

Following the footsteps of the first ever G8 farm summit held in April 2009, the L'Aquila Initiative upholds a technological agricultural revolution, such as the promotion of GE crops, to increase agricultural productivity. But the promises of feeding the world with GM crops have so far proven to be empty. A 2009 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which analysed nearly two decades worth of peer-reviewed research on the yield of GE crops in the US, demonstrates that GE has failed to significantly increase crop yields.

Other studies also demonstrate that organic and similar farming methods can more than double crop yields. In the face of growing evidence, continued efforts by the G8 to improve agricultural productivity through technologies like genetic engineering only serves the interests of biotech corporations.

At the World Food Summit in 1996, heads of governments made a commitment to reduce the number of hungry people – 815 million then – in half by 2015. The latest figure of 1.02 billion people living with hunger reveals a crisis that has gone out of control.

If the G8 is indeed committed to ending hunger, the member countries must stop the steady drumbeat of proselytising for free markets and technological solutions. A genuine commitment will require recognising the need for developing countries to have policy space to determine agricultural policies that meet the needs of their populations; implement a genuine agrarian reform that will ensure farmers’ rights to land, water, seeds and other resources; see that farmers’ livelihoods and incomes are sustained; and assure national food security.

In short, instead of promoting their old failed ‘development’ formulas in new clothing, the G8 need to take responsibility and support governments in developing countries to put in place or restore sustainable and resilient agricultural systems.