Category: Chapter 2

Immediate causes of the food crisis

Chapter 2 / Immediate causes of the food crisis

The following is a simple listing of the major immediate causes of the food crisis. Each will be discussed further in the text.

  • Petrol price increases
  • Recent growth of agri-fuel cultivation (displacing, in some cases, food crops for home consumption) – see, for instance, Box on palm oil production in Honduras
  • Increasing climatic shocks (such as droughts and floods)
  • Decline in national food reserves – under privatisation
  • Increasing volatility in commodity markets
  • Falling value of the dollar (in 2007 and 2008), in which all major commodities are traded
  • Attempts to boost exports rather than meet local and national demand – under neoliberalism
  • Increased migration of small-scale and subsistence farmers away from the land
  • Hoarding by transnational companies to create favourable conditions for sale – manipulation of markets to create windfall profits

Source: Adapted from Megan Rowling (2008) ‘Food price rises threaten poverty for millions more’, in Central America Report, summer 2008.

Solidarismo

Chapter 2 / The long term origins of the food crisis

Solidarismo is a form of worker organisation that serves as an alternative to trade unions. It originated in 1947 with an idea of Alberto Martén and it is particularly associated with Costa Rica, where it has grown strongly through and since the 1990s. By its critics, it is often referred to as a boss’s union because it responds principally to the economic interests of profit maximisation held by businesses, owners and managers.

Despite its name, the movement does not seek to generate solidarity within the working class. Its aim is to create harmonious relations between work and capital in the workplace; and in the long term, … the promotion of a form of ‘popular capitalism’.[i]

Solidarismo is a philosophical technique, like a movement with an evangelical route rather than a worker’s union. The concept suggests disputes between workers and bosses can be resolved through Christian principles and ‘arreglo directo’ (direct settlement) – a means of collective negotiation. Solidaristas contend that injustices and social inequalities are not the result of capitalism, but of unequal access to property, and that by becoming owners workers will start to share their boss’s aim of increasing the productivity of the company. Solidarismo also has a financial aspect to it which in Costa Rica is supported by law. People in solidarismo associations are often plantation administration staff, and the movement helps them to build their personal savings accounts by allowing frequent payments from wages to be made, and money to be loaned.

The methodology, however, is often abused because the three committee members of arreglo directo are supposed to be selected by plantation workers, but more often are put forward by the company and thus most disputes have a one-sided outcome. This is a way around collective bargaining and avoids the formation of unions which companies perceive as threats.

Today, the solidarista movement represents a serious challenge to unions throughout Central America.

[i] Equipo Envío (2009) ‘Solidarismo: nueva arma contra los sindicatos’, Revista Envío.

ANEXCO harasses and fires union members

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

The following is a report reproduced here by kind permission of Banana Link.
ANEXCO harasses and fires union members – update on our Urgent Action
November 2015

baThank you for supporting our recent urgent action appeal in support of union members at Costa Rican pineapple producer ANEXCO. More than 23​,000 emails have been sent to the company, calling on them to end harrassment of union members and to engage in constructive dialogue with the union SINTRAPEM (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores/as del Sector Privado Empresarial). This massive effort, plus several articles in the trade press and an intervention by the UK’s Ethical Trade Initiative combined to convince Fyffes of the need to try and resolve the issues we raised.

Initially, three union members were sacked shortly after the urgent action appeal was launched. However, the pressure against union members inside the plantation ​i​s reported to have diminished since then and a meeting at the Costa Rican Labour Ministry on 20th October generated an agreement to explore the potential for the reinstatement of these three most sacked workers.

Subsequently, a meeting in San José on 30th October – involving SINTRAPEM, COSIBA (the Costa Rican banana and pineapple union coordinating body), COLSIBA (the Latin American banana and agro industrial union coordinating body), Banana Link, ANEXCO and Fyffes – did not achieve the real breakthrough that was needed to put an end to the anti-union activities. But ANEXCO and Fyffes did, however, agree to another meeting to review the list of the union’s complaints, provisionally scheduled for 6th November.

Although there is not yet a satisfactory conclusion to our urgent action appeal, the progress made so far would not have been possible without your support. We will keep you updated.​

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Definitions of food security and food sovereignty

Chapter 2 / On food security and food sovereignty

The concept of ‘Food Security’ reigns supreme as the practical means of achieving access to food (Madeley, 2000)[i]. The term is largely a United Nations construct, originating from the institution’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) formed in 1945.

The organisation defines food security as when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.[ii]

Despite the problems associated with food aid (see text), the FAO decided food security would be best achieved with unilateral cooperation; hence the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security where participating states reaffirmed “the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger”.[iii]

This spawned the Millennium Development Goal Target 3, to ‘halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger’.

More recently, the concept of ‘Food Sovereignty’ has gained prominence. The term, which refers to the right to produce food on one’s own territory, was coined by the NGO La Vía Campesina in 2002. This includes the right of peoples to sustain themselves and define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their circumstances.[iv]

It defines seven principles of food sovereignty which are: the right to food, agrarian reform, protecting natural resources, reorganising food trade, ending the globalisation of hunger, social peace, and democratic control. As Jefferson Boyer states, the notion of “food sovereignty was a direct attack on official food security, especially its eschewal of local production.”[v]

[i] John Madeley (2000) Hungry for Trade, London: Zed Books.
[ii] FAO (2005) Food and Agriculture Organisation [on-line] www.fao.org (accessed 25th June 2009).
[iii] Rome Declaration, [Ref required ???]
[iv] La Vía Campesina, www.viacampesina.org accessed 29 June 2009.
[v] Jefferson Boyer (April 2010) ‘Food security, food sovereignty, and local challenges for transnational agrarian movements: the Honduras case’, the Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, 319-351.

Honduras, Ethiopia and the crazy logic of food supply

Chapter 2 / Prospects

News in June 2011 that Honduras had begun to import beans from Ethiopia caused some anxiety amongst local food producers in Honduras who questioned policies which seemed to run counter to the idea of food security and very much in favour of growing biofuels.[i] The strategy is promoted by the World Bank and USAID (US Agency for International Development). The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations notes that in Honduras 60 per cent of the population have no salaries, no access to the means of production and no way of ensuring adequate food provision.[ii]

The worst element of this strategy is that red beans are now being imported into Honduras from one of the poorest countries of the world, Ethiopia, a country with 13 million people dependent on food aid from the international community. Ethiopia has a policy of renting or selling vast expanses of land to foreign companies and expelling from those lands the peoples who have used them for hundreds if not thousands of years.[iii]

The Indian company Karuturi Global leases 2,500 sq km of fertile land in the Gambella region of Ethiopia at a knock-down price of $245 (USD) per week for fifty years. The company plans to grow and export palm oil, sugar, rice and other foods. In all, Ethiopia has offered 3 million hectares of land to foreign corporations, and companies from 36 countries have leased land there.[iv]

Although local government officers deny claims that people are being forcibly displaced to make way for these companies and their farming techniques, others report that no consultation was carried out with local people. Kassahun Zerrfu from Gambella’s Department for Investment has acknowledged that 15,000 people are being relocated “to give them better access to water, schools and transport,” but claims that “it is a coincidence that the investors are coming at the same time as the villages are being relocated.”[v]

Honduras used to be self-sufficient in beans, one of the staple crops of the Honduran diet. Now, the most fertile land in Honduras is being used for biofuel crops such as palm oil and other crops for export. In Ethiopia on the area taken over by Karuturi Global, the land is also remarkably fertile and full of organic matter – as project manager Karmjeet Sekhon states, “We don’t need fertiliser or herbicides. There is absolutely nothing that will not grow in it.”[vi]

This is the logic of big capital. It can show that yields and overall food production increase. It can glory in its own success. But at the same time, it increases landlessness amongst those who need it most; it reduces food security and food sovereignty; it increases dependence; and the final result is increasing hunger. The logic of finance and the profit motive fail humanity.

[i] Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) (21 June 2011) ‘Rapiña de territorios: el olor a saqueo de los frijoles importados de Etiopía’, email communication, OFRANEH, La Ceiba.
[ii] La Tribuna (9 June 2011) ‘Más de la mitad de los Hondureños sufren por hambre’, La Tribuna, Tegucigalpa.
[iii] Op.cit.. (OFRANEH).
[iv] John Vidal (21 March 2011) ‘Ethiopia at centre of global farmland rush’, The Guardian, London.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.

Industrial farming methods spell damaging dust storms for Leon and Chinandega

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Pesticide (ab)use

Taken from Nicaragua News 15/03/15

Leon and the Chinandega departments have been subjected to four days of dust storms with winds gusting to 30-50 km per hour. Residents say the dust storms are an annual event with dust carried from the industrial scale planting of sugarcane and peanuts in the region. Residents said trees serving as windbreaks had been chopped down and they called on the government to plant more windbreak trees. They criticized the industrial farming methods as ecologically unsound. The dust is so bad that drivers on the Leon bypass highway had to drive slowly with lights on at noon. Poor people’s homes are filled with dust because they are not air tight.

There were increased incidents of respiratory illness, skin irritation, and potential contamination of water sources reported in Chinandega. Dr. Marcio Arteaga warned that the dust carries viruses and bacteria and warned the public to be cautious, especially children. “There are more respiratory illnesses such as influenza, pneumonia, and the dust can also cause conjunctivitis. People need to be careful not to expose children, especially children with allergies. Another important thing is to wash hands, because bacteria stick to the hands,” Arteaga said.

Originally from La Prensa (Managua), Mar. 8, 2015

Famine and Hunger Devastate Guatemala …, Again The Pathological Interdependence of Feast and Famine in the Global “Free Trade” Economic Order

Chapter 2 / The long term origins of the food crisis

By Grahame Russell, February 18, 2015

“New famine”, cries out the Guatemalan newspaper headline (La Prensa, February 7, 2015), threatening the lives of 874,000 people in 206 regions of the country.

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‘Famine and hunger spreading through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador’, reports the United Nation’s Food and Hunger Program, pulling on heart strings, opening their bank accounts for charity donations, many of which might come from the countries and consumers that help create and profit from the famine and hunger.

Former general, now president Otto Perez Molina promises: “My government will not abandon those families suffering from drought”, as his government cuts back spending on health and education, increasing spending on police and military forces that provide “protection” to large-scale landowners, the mining industry, hydro-electric dam companies, etc, that control the best lands and water sources, so as to produce goods for faraway investors and consumers.

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In all of this dismally repetitive ‘crisis’ reporting, year after year, there is no discussion about how most of the people suffering famine and hunger live short distances from some of the richest lands in all of Guatemala, that – protected by men with guns (police, soldiers and private security):

  • produce bananas and pineapple for export (Dole, Chiquita, Standard Fruit, etc) to European and North American consumers whose fruit consumer demands will be met;
  • produce cow meat for export to fast-food and boutique hamburger joints (“billions served”);
  • produce African palm and sugar cane for food products and “green” energies like bio-diesel fuel and ethanol so that vehicles of faraway consumers will not hunger for fuel, will not be famished for endless travel and mobility.

There will be no reporting about how the Guatemalan police, military and private security guards forcibly evict indigenous and campesino communities to make way for hydro-electric dams and open-pit gold, silver and nickel mining operations so that global investors (private equity firms and pension funds) will not hunger for profits.

Nor will there be analysis about how the World Bank, Inter-American development Bank, governments of Canada, United States, etc, are passing more “free trade” agreements, to make more of Guatemala’s best lands and water available to more foreign companies and investors to produce more products for export to more consumers in faraway places, creating more famine and hunger in Guatemala, just over there beyond the chain-linked, armed-guarded fence, just up there on the dried out, parched lands of the steep mountain sides.

The annual devastation and death caused by famine and hunger in countries like Guatemala are not a ‘crisis’ and they are not national issues.  There will be no end to this predictable, logical cycle of global feast and famine if there is no significant transformation of the unjust global economic system that creates and perpetuates it.

Rights Action: www.rightsaction.org