food fight
The agricultural-environmental side of this whole globalization battle has never really caught my attention all that much. Yeah, of course Im up for organic food and what not but surely when people are stripped of basic human rights such as assembly, protest, social organisation, threatened, kidnapped and killed by quasi-state agents there are more pressing issues at hand.
Either way, this weekend I took the opportunity to escape the city. On an old brightly painted American schoolbus, I and around twenty others ranging from students, apprentices, union battleaxes, to displaced coca farmers and NGO so n sos headed up into the green mountains for a workshop on agricultural security. Ironically perhaps, the education project, which it is part of, operating in five areas across the country and meeting in secret (due to the ever-present security risk posed by educationalists to the state) is funded by the EU.
Ironic perhaps, since Common[senseless] Agricultural Policy which also began as a policy of food security and currently eats 40% of the EU budget promotes intensive industrial pesticide fueled farming the antithesis of which the eduaction project seeks to reintroduce. But hey, I shouldn’t dis the hand that feeds me (and the food was pretty good) after all cultivation of GMOs has been suspended in Europe. It’s just there’s a bit more to it. Let me say now that this isn’t going to be an ecowarrior rant and Im not getting into the debate of whether or not GMOs are healthy or not (I take the if it aint broke... viewpoint on that one anyway) This rant is about power, control, dependence, and most of all resistance but of a different kind to either the street battle or parliamentary pressure.
This country as ive probably mentioned before has the highest biodiversity in the world. It has the capacity to provide food for its people, to be agriculturally sovereign we could say. But wait, what’s that? a double cinna-mocha-foma-chino? hang on urg... £3.50? OK. Yes, I recognize comparative advantage exists, some places can grow certain products better than others and certain people will pay the price so surely there’s some sense in a little specialization. Undoubtedly, Fair Trade can be beneficial. Im not suggesting closing off boarders, but what has gone on over the course of the last thirty years is more than a little specialization. The homogenization and intensification of farming, driven by the IMF’s holy neoliberal mantra of export led growth has imposed a system of control and is costing the earth.
Yes it has created markets, dependent, captive markets despite the emancipation insinuated by the rhetoric of freedom. It has entrenched reliance on develloped states for their goods and services stifling development and making economies volatile to the whims of the irrational market despite its rhetoric of logic. Indeed where is the logic in GM crops that don’t regerminate so seed must be purchased each year or that contrary to their purported miracle properties require more pesticides not less? It’s a simple logic of profit and has served to empower the rich nations and multinationals and debilitate producers.
Here in Colombia, unsatisfied by the profits made by patenting life, selling chemicals, and creating a captive market (funny that free trade can do that isn’t it) for goods produced overseas, multinational companies and the co-opted national oligarchies realized that yet more money could be extracted form the land. Luckily it was only the campesinos, almost non-participants in the national money economy, (and thus an unused resource in themselves unless relocated), that stood in the way. Displacement was easy, funded by the gracious US aid in the form of the War on Drugs it has not only created urban food markets for rapidly appearing supermarket chains but has left the country side open to exploitation of more fruitful resources (minerals, oil).
As such, agricultural sovereignty, or growing food to provide for that area and decreasing reliance on imported goods including pesticides and patented seeds by moving to sustainable organic farming methods is not just about preserving the environment, it’s a form of defense. It’s about resisting the grip of multinationals by reducing their role, empowering people locally and rejecting the paternalistic relationship of dependency. What was good about this weekend was to see people organized. To recognize how much further there is to go but also, to hear about the multitude of projects that are in progress here and in many communities accross the world.
Sunday evening we descended back into the heat of Cali. It was a sunny evening and I headed up to the park in San Antonio. It gets busyish at the weekend, good smells fill the warm air emanating from the stalls round the church and as the light disappears the city scape below mirrors the sparkling sky. A comic was doing a skit about the violent clashes between the police and students at the University of Valle last year. I ate a delicious deep fried then barbecued platano, had a wander and bumped into a girl from the wokshop. She was with two Arhuaco friends, the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada. They spoke in organic similes alluding to the power of and complexity of the natural world, and exhibited a mental approach, a revolution apart from the political struggle of which we had debated over the weekend. While their agrcultural soveriegnty has been damaged by external forces speaking with them reminded me that mental soveriegnty is something no external power can take away.
Either way, this weekend I took the opportunity to escape the city. On an old brightly painted American schoolbus, I and around twenty others ranging from students, apprentices, union battleaxes, to displaced coca farmers and NGO so n sos headed up into the green mountains for a workshop on agricultural security. Ironically perhaps, the education project, which it is part of, operating in five areas across the country and meeting in secret (due to the ever-present security risk posed by educationalists to the state) is funded by the EU.
Ironic perhaps, since Common[senseless] Agricultural Policy which also began as a policy of food security and currently eats 40% of the EU budget promotes intensive industrial pesticide fueled farming the antithesis of which the eduaction project seeks to reintroduce. But hey, I shouldn’t dis the hand that feeds me (and the food was pretty good) after all cultivation of GMOs has been suspended in Europe. It’s just there’s a bit more to it. Let me say now that this isn’t going to be an ecowarrior rant and Im not getting into the debate of whether or not GMOs are healthy or not (I take the if it aint broke... viewpoint on that one anyway) This rant is about power, control, dependence, and most of all resistance but of a different kind to either the street battle or parliamentary pressure.
This country as ive probably mentioned before has the highest biodiversity in the world. It has the capacity to provide food for its people, to be agriculturally sovereign we could say. But wait, what’s that? a double cinna-mocha-foma-chino? hang on urg... £3.50? OK. Yes, I recognize comparative advantage exists, some places can grow certain products better than others and certain people will pay the price so surely there’s some sense in a little specialization. Undoubtedly, Fair Trade can be beneficial. Im not suggesting closing off boarders, but what has gone on over the course of the last thirty years is more than a little specialization. The homogenization and intensification of farming, driven by the IMF’s holy neoliberal mantra of export led growth has imposed a system of control and is costing the earth.
Yes it has created markets, dependent, captive markets despite the emancipation insinuated by the rhetoric of freedom. It has entrenched reliance on develloped states for their goods and services stifling development and making economies volatile to the whims of the irrational market despite its rhetoric of logic. Indeed where is the logic in GM crops that don’t regerminate so seed must be purchased each year or that contrary to their purported miracle properties require more pesticides not less? It’s a simple logic of profit and has served to empower the rich nations and multinationals and debilitate producers.
Here in Colombia, unsatisfied by the profits made by patenting life, selling chemicals, and creating a captive market (funny that free trade can do that isn’t it) for goods produced overseas, multinational companies and the co-opted national oligarchies realized that yet more money could be extracted form the land. Luckily it was only the campesinos, almost non-participants in the national money economy, (and thus an unused resource in themselves unless relocated), that stood in the way. Displacement was easy, funded by the gracious US aid in the form of the War on Drugs it has not only created urban food markets for rapidly appearing supermarket chains but has left the country side open to exploitation of more fruitful resources (minerals, oil).
As such, agricultural sovereignty, or growing food to provide for that area and decreasing reliance on imported goods including pesticides and patented seeds by moving to sustainable organic farming methods is not just about preserving the environment, it’s a form of defense. It’s about resisting the grip of multinationals by reducing their role, empowering people locally and rejecting the paternalistic relationship of dependency. What was good about this weekend was to see people organized. To recognize how much further there is to go but also, to hear about the multitude of projects that are in progress here and in many communities accross the world.
Sunday evening we descended back into the heat of Cali. It was a sunny evening and I headed up to the park in San Antonio. It gets busyish at the weekend, good smells fill the warm air emanating from the stalls round the church and as the light disappears the city scape below mirrors the sparkling sky. A comic was doing a skit about the violent clashes between the police and students at the University of Valle last year. I ate a delicious deep fried then barbecued platano, had a wander and bumped into a girl from the wokshop. She was with two Arhuaco friends, the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada. They spoke in organic similes alluding to the power of and complexity of the natural world, and exhibited a mental approach, a revolution apart from the political struggle of which we had debated over the weekend. While their agrcultural soveriegnty has been damaged by external forces speaking with them reminded me that mental soveriegnty is something no external power can take away.
