agriculture

By various - La Via Campesina, June 8, 2021

La Via Campesina, presents the publication “The Path of Peasant and Popular Feminism in La Via Campesina” with the aim of strengthening the training processes of the Movement and to build Peasant and Popular Feminism as a political tool against oppression and violence. This document compiles the historical knowledge accumulated by Peasant and Popular Feminism in identifying the political challenges that exist in the historical moment that we live in, and thus contribute to the analysis and collective reflections to build a plural movement that respects diversities.

The publication is split into four parts: the first one looks back at the conquests of women inside LVC, up to Peasant and Popular Feminism as something to be built collectively. The second chapter highlights the role of women in the Peasants’ Rights Declaration adopted at the UN and highlights the rights achieved with this tool. The third chapter focuses on La Via Campesina’s Global Campaign “End Violence against Women”, the way the campaign is organized and its experience in different territories. Finally, in the last chapter in order to further expand reflections and discussions, we provide a virtual toolbox that will facilitate training and communication processes.

Since its very beginning La Via Campesina has sought to encourage the participation of rural women at all levels of action, power and representation in the building of an international movement that is broad, democratic, politically and socially committed to the defense of peasant agriculture, Food Sovereignty, the struggle for land, justice, equality and to eradicate all forms of gender discrimination and violence.

Recognizing the contribution and participation of women in member organizations has not been an easy task, notably because of patriarchy and the sexism rooted in societies. These have a negative impact even on the practices of comrades and of the organizations that belong to the movement. LVC’s women speak of two revolutions: one that burdens problems with gender relations within the movement, and a broader one aimed at making a revolution inside societies for justice, equity and the emancipation of human beings.

Read the text (PDF).

By various - La Via Campesina, June 2, 2021

By Chris Smaje - Small Farm Future, May 26, 2021

The first draft of A Small Farm Future had a chapter called ‘Labour on the farm’ which didn’t make the final version. I needed to cut the length, and although there were parts of this chapter I was quite attached to, I felt I hadn’t nailed the issues as well as I’d like, so it was easy to spike. Some passages found their way into other parts of the book, but I’d been hoping to make good on the issue in this blog cycle with parts of the deleted chapter and my own more polished thoughts. Trouble is, I still don’t feel I’ve nailed this issue sufficiently. So instead I offer this post as a placeholder for a more distant day when I hope I can offer something more up to scratch.

What I’ll do here instead is provide a few brief thoughts on the topic prompted by a deeper dive I took recently into Francesca Bray’s fascinating book The Rice Economies (University of California Press, 1986) – an old book, but a very good one. Then I’m hoping I can come back in the future with something a bit more expansive.

A key organizing theme in Bray’s book is her contention that wheat in western countries and dryland cereal crops in general offer economies of scale in production that don’t exist in the case of the wet rice cultivation that dominates much of the populous regions of East, South and Southeast Asia. The combination of relatively scarce labour and relatively abundant land in the west (albeit that the latter was too often a function of colonial dispossession) created a dynamic of labour substitution and mechanization geared to increasing the per worker productivity of farming as an economic sector that’s come to be seen as exemplary of agricultural ‘progress’. In the wet rice regions, on the other hand, relatively abundant labour and relatively scarce land created a dynamic of agricultural development where the focus was using more (skilled) labour to increase the per acre productivity of the land.

From this point of departure, Bray unfurls an enormously detailed and sophisticated discussion of poverty, development, mechanization, landownership, credit, state formation, agrarian organization and much else besides which I hope to draw and elaborate from in future posts. But for now I’ll restrict myself to a couple of main points.

In certain situations of economic growth and capitalist development, there can be a compelling logic to agricultural labour substitution of the western kind. People quit the toilsome agrarian life for better paid jobs in industry or services, helping fuel an accumulation of capital and resources that redounds to the net benefit of all.

This is a pretty idealized vision of how capitalism works in practice, but it has a sufficient grain of historical truth to it in western societies to colour notions of a more labour-intensive agricultural future with a sense of regress and misplaced romanticism. Nevertheless, it matters where the accumulated capital and resources go. If labour substitution helps generate extra income that doesn’t find its way back to labourers, then to them there is no benefit. And this is basically what’s happening in the present phase of the global economy.

By various - La Via Campesina, May 9, 2021

Sub-point 1.1 of the Peace Agreement establishes mechanisms for access to land for the benefit of peasants without land or with insufficient land, mainly through land allocation processes and formalization of rights. Thus, it has been planned on the one hand, the formalization of 7 million hectares in 10 years, prioritizing areas such as those related to Development Programs with a territorial approach – PDET, in Spanish, and on the other, the allocation of 3 million hectares in the first 12 years of management of the Fondo de Tierras.

However, the implementation is moving slowly. After the first 4 years of the implementation, the National Land Agency – ANT, the entity responsible for carrying out formalization and allocation processes, reports the formalization of 1,966,691 hectares, however, it should be remembered that 1,055,000 of these lands were handed over and registered before the signing of the Peace Accord. Land formalized before the implementation of the Accord should be excluded, which reduces the deal for formalization to 913,548 hectares; the claim to inflate the figures on the achievement of compromises is obvious. Likewise, it is pointed out that this figure is very low in comparison with the pace of implementation needed to achieve the goal set out in the Accord: nearly 700,000 hectares are expected to be formalized annually.

65.2% of the beneficiaries of formalization processes are men and 31.6% are women. It is also interesting to note that the 93.3% of formalized land corresponds to collective titles of black communities and constitution / expansion of indigenous reserves, similarly, only 14% of formalized hectares are in municipalities focused on the implementation of the Agreement.

Regarding the allocation process, the National Land Agency (ANT) presents the entry of about a million hectares to the Fondo de Tierras, however, if the hectares available to be distributed were strictly counted, in which the allocation condition has no restrictions or they are determined, this figure would be reduced to 90%, given that only 2,253 available plots corresponding to 96,471.1 hectares fulfill this condition¹. This accentuates, again, the government’s pretention to inflate the figures for the fulfillment with the Agreement, given that only the entry [in the database] of the available land to be handed over to the peasants without land, in other words, the Fondo de Tierras actually has 96,471.1 hectares.

Likewise, the government is accounting for sources of vacant land and the Fondo Nacional Agrario, the land that is available for distribution, however, these are vacant lands with a previous occupation, which cannot be allocated and on which processes formalization of rights must be executed. In other words, these are cases where the formalization of the property is a must and that can feed the results of the formalization of seven million hectares goal, but this does not represent an accomplishment of the compromise to hand over land.

The Office of the Inspector General reports that 8,143.7 hectares have been allocated. It is important to stress that this figure corresponds to direct purchases and full allocations, that is, there were no allocations without previous occupation. Likewise, the regulatory body indicates that only 6.6% of hectares allocated by direct purchase correspond to municipalities prioritized in the implementation of the Agreement.

However, if we consider the figures presented by the ANT in relation to the Fondo de Tierras – in which the condition of land allocation is not considered – there is a 52.2% of the hectares put into the Fondo where the municipalities prioritized by the Territorially Focused Development Plans – PDET, and the 47.8% in non-priority areas. Likewise, 8 out of 16 PDET sub-regions² each register less than 1% of the hectares included in the Fondo de Tierras.

As it is seen, the government is inflating the figures of the fulfillment of point 1 of the Agreement and there is no progress in democratizing access to land in the country. Additionally, the actions carried out by the government are not focused on the areas prioritized for its implementation, such as the PDET municipalities, which disregards the principle of prioritization established in the Agreement.

By Howie Hawkins - Solidarity, May 4, 2021

IWW EUC web editor's disclaimer: the IWW does not advoate electralism or endorse political parties, including the Green Party. This article is included to provide a critique of the reformism of the Democratic Party (a similar critique could be offered about the Greens and all other parties).

The climate emergency demands a radical and rapid decarbonization of the U.S. economy with numerical goals and timetables to transform all productive sectors, not only power production (27% of carbon emissions), but also transportation (28%), manufacturing (22%), buildings (12%), and agriculture (10%). It also requires that the U.S. pay its “climate debt” as the world’s largest historical carbon emitter and destroyer of carbon-storing forests, wetlands, and soils. Paying that climate debt would not only be reparations to the Global South for deforestation and fossil fuel emissions by the rich capitalist countries, but also an investment in the habitability of the planet for everyone. This emergency transformation can only be met by an ecosocialist approach emphasizing democratic public enterprise and planning.

Instead, Biden’s plan features corporate welfare: subsidies and tax incentives for clean energy that will take uncertain effect at a leisurely pace in the markets. It does nothing to stop more oil and gas fracking and pipelines for more gas-fired power plants, or to shut down coal-fired power plants. Without out directly saying so, it is a plan to burn fossil fuels for decades to come.

The scale of spending falls pathetically short of what is needed to decarbonize the economy. An effective plan would not only reach zero emissions on a fast timeline. It would also move quickly toward negative emissions. We have to draw carbon out of the atmosphere because we are already well past carbon levels that are triggering dangerous climate change.

Biden’s stated goal of a 50% cut in emissions does not actually cut current emissions in half. His proposed 50% cut is from a baseline of 2005 when emissions were at their peak, not what they are today. Emissions were 6 GtC (gigatons of carbon dioxide) in 2005. Due to a leveling of electric power demand, a trend away from coal to wind, solar, and gas for electric power, and more energy-efficient vehicles, U.S. emissions were down 13% from 2005 by 2019 to 5.1 GtC and, due to the covid contraction, down 21% in 2020 to 4.6 GtC, although emissions are now soaring back up as the economy re-opens. Biden’s goal of 50% below 2005 is 3 GtC per year in emissions instead of 2.5 GtC if 2019 were the baseline, or 2.3 GtC if 2020 were the baseline.

Biden provided no explanation for how the U.S. will get to the precisely stated range of “50% to 52%.” 52% seems to be an arbitrary number pulled out of the air so he can say he is aiming for more than 50%. Greta Thunberg’s video prebuttal to the targets that were to be announced by Biden and the other 40 world leaders at his Earth Day Climate Summit saw right through the staged spectacle. “We can keep cheating in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is needed, but while we can fool others, and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics… Let’s call out their bullshit.”

By Perla Alvarez - La Via Campesina, May 4, 2021

Whether in the movement or outside of it, the word “agribusiness” brings to mind instant associations like “soybeans,” “Brazil,” or “the Mennonites.” Why? When did this word first enter common parlance? What are we actually saying when we use this word?

The word “business” is not an accidental component of this portmanteau word; on the contrary, it is central to the whole concept. Agribusiness embodies a different conception of the earth than the one upheld by peasants and Indigenous peoples. For agribusiness, the earth is a commodity, a product to be bought and sold and made profitable, to be commercially exploited. It is no longer seen as tekoha, the place where we are, where we live, produce, and reproduce, where we come into our own, in which our culture is rooted. No: for agribusiness, the earth and its capacity to support life are negotiable. They are measured in terms of uniformity, not diversity; in tonnes of grain, not seeds; in productivity, not safety; in dollars, not life; in contour lines, not disappearing species of trees and birds.

That is agribusiness: the capitalist exploitation of the earth, extracting from it anything that can generate a profit in record time. Agribusiness subjects the earth to “inhuman” treatment because for agribusiness, agriculture has nothing to do with humanity. What’s human about chemical fertilization, constant tillage with heavy machinery, backbreaking labour, the spraying of toxic compounds, an unswerving routine? That’s not how we provide food our bodies or care for our health, is it? But when agribusiness hears the word food, it thinks in terms of commodities. For agribusiness, the earth is not a living thing but a machine, and to be treated as such. It has been that way ever since capitalism set foot in the countryside. True, these tendencies were there earlier, but timidly, at various stages of production, when merchants refused to pay fair prices, or when they started selling seeds, or when they presented themselves as the peasants’ allies and starting hawking poisons. With the rise of agribusiness, this mentality invaded the countryside and stealthily changed everything, even the way we think.

What do I mean by “changed the way we think”? In general, when we talk of agribusiness, we refer to large commercial plantations. But we also see its effects in the luxury vans cruising through villages, in fantastical-looking, robot-like tractors roaming the streets and kicking up so much dust we have to stay indoors. We see the elements of “success” and we think to ourselves: “So much money made in so little time… Why work so hard, if poisons and machines will make you rich?” We think that maybe, if we emulate this model, we’ll get rich too. Or we take a stab at it and become divorced from our communities; we stop being communitarians and start being landowners. We start using “weedkillers” so we can stop hoeing; we buy genetically modified seeds; we go into debt to buy biotoxins; we get someone to harrow so we don’t have to plough. We lease tractors because we can’t afford to buy them, and can’t get a bank loan without giving our land as collateral (but we don’t have the deed). We secretly take after agribusiness, whom we personify as a successful businessman, a role model. So when agribusiness colonized the countryside, it also colonized minds. It planted genetically modified seeds in the countryside and planted new ideas in our heads. As a complex process of rural capitalist accumulation, agribusiness applies costly, high-tech recipes (machinery, hybrid or GM seeds, biotoxins, trucks, etc). It looks easy and attractive on the surface, and that’s how it took hold of our minds. It occupied the countryside, displacing communities, and it occupied our thoughts, displacing knowledge. What we knew became old hat, a thing of the past, for Luddites only. The result, for rural peoples, for peasant and Indigenous communities, has been depopulation of the countryside, disappearance of wild land, lost seed varieties, and changes in food customs. And we didn’t turn into the nouveau riche, not by a long shot. Instead we were impoverished, lost our land, had our knowledge taken from us. Only the old rich kept getting richer, while a few others managed to sweep up some of the crumbs. And all this is by design: The purpose of agribusiness isn’t to enrich us but to fill the coffers of investment banks and multinationals.

By Laurie J. Beyranevand, et. al. - Vermont Law & Graduate School Center for Agriculture & Food Systems and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, May 2021

FARMWORKERS ARE THE FOUNDATION of a trillion-dollar industry in the United States yet face a level of occupational risk unrivaled by most workers. Despite their prominence within the nation’s food system, farmworkers are largely invisible to most Americans, as are their sacrifces and challenges. To some degree, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the country to reckon with the inhumane realities of food production; farmworkers were quickly deemed essential. At the same time, farmworkers contracted the coronavirus at high rates due to the lack of enforceable COVID safety standards, crowded and unsafe working and housing conditions, and delayed federal assistance. As our nation begins to reckon with its long history of pervasive and systemic racism, law- and policymakers must confront the fact that the vast majority of farmworkers are foreign born, identify as Hispanic or Latino/a, are not native English speakers, earn low wages, and have long worked under extraordinarily hazardous conditions. A smaller percentage of farmworkers identify as Indigenous with some identifying an Indigenous language as the one in which they are most comfortable speaking while some may speak a language without a consistent written form, which makes reading and writing in any language impossible. Over half of farmworkers are either undocumented or migrant workers thereby limiting their labor rights,10 as well as their willingness to exercise the limited rights they possess to report health and safety violations for fear of retaliation through immigration enforcement. Estimates suggest approximately 524,000 farmworkers are under the age of 18.

Farmworkers face many different workplace hazards including injury from heavy machinery and repetitive motion, and illness from exposure to zoonotic disease, pesticides, and heat. For migrant farmworker women, signi%cant reproductive health issues are common. Children working in agriculture amount to less than 5.5 percent of working children in the country yet suffered 52 percent of work-related fatalities. Additionally, farmworkers often lack access to or cannot a(ord healthcare both because they earn extraordinarily low wages and due to rampant wage theft. Understandably, they may be reluctant to raise workplace concerns with their employers due to fear of retaliation. Climate change has exacerbated some of these conditions due to extreme heat and increased pesticide usage to combat the rising spread of pests.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Sarah Goldman, Anna Aspenson, Prashasti Bhatnagar, and Robert Martin - Vermont Law & Graduate School Center for Agriculture & Food Systems and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, May 2021

On March 19, 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, the federal government declared farmworkers “essential workers.”1 From California to New York, the same communities called upon to keep Americans fed during an unprecedented period of sickness and uncertainty also suffered some of the most horrific Covid-19 infection and fatality rates. While individuals across the country grappled with the devastating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, farmworkers throughout the United States (US) were among those the US government called upon to risk their health and the health of their communities in order to keep groceries on the shelves for millions of Americans.

Despite the government’s public acknowledgement of the essential role that farmworkers fill in our food system, farmworkers were denied the most basic public health protections. This incongruity was nothing new. Americans have long relied on the skilled and arduous labor of farmworkers to fuel our food system, while the US government and agricultural employers fail to provide protection or address systemic problems that make workers vulnerable to sickness.

Moreover, Covid-19 has only exacerbated existing inequities in our food system. Any future shocks to the US food system could leave farmworkers further exposed to exploitation and health risks. In this report, which is an update to the Center’s 2017 report, “Public Health, Immigration Reform, and Food System Change,” we review available research on a variety of public health threats that farmworkers face. We demonstrate how these health burdens are, in part, the result of laws, policies and practices that are intentionally designed to limit this workforce’s resources and recourse to fight against unsafe working conditions.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Anna Canning - Fair World Project, May 2021

Fair Trade USA released a new “Fair Trade Dairy” label in partnership with Chobani. It’s a program that has been opposed by farmworker and human rights organizations since it was first announced. Now that there is yogurt on the shelf, but still no final standard released, this report looks at the label claims and evaluates “Fair Trade Dairy” based on the available standards.

The critique focuses on three key areas:

• Inadequate standards development process
• Standards that are not fit for purpose
• Lack of enforcement mechanisms

Finally, the report also reviews the rising tide of research that shows that corporate-developed and led certifications are inadequate and points instead to existing models that are better suited to defending workers’ rights and safety. Organized workers are pushing policy changes across the country, improving wages and winning vital workplace protections. And Worker-driven Social Responsibility programs are building power and supporting workers defending their rights and addressing the fundamental power imbalances in the food system.

The report concludes that:
“Corporate consolidation, trade policy, and other macro trends are squeezing farmers and workers in the dairy industry. To address the forces at work requires addressing the imbalance of power head on. If we are to envision a world where those at the top of supply chains are held accountable, we must support programs that are transformative. Instead of reinforcing existing systems of power, we should look to the leadership of those who have been protesting, leading, and advocating for their own communities for hundreds of years.”

Read the text (PDF).

By National Farmers Union - La Via Campesina, April 29, 2021

Today, the National Farmers Union (NFU) provided detailed input to the federal government’s review of the Canada Grain Act (CGA) and the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC). The NFU submission considers the future of grain production in Canada and makes fifteen major recommendations to strengthen and equip the Act and the Commission for expected challenges and opportunities.

“The climate crisis and international measures to deal with it, increasing digitization and data-driven technology, ongoing mergers and acquisitions in the grain trade, and international trade agreements will have big impacts on farmers,” said NFU President, Katie Ward. “We will need a strong and effective CGC to regulate the grain handling system in the interest of farmers, and ensure that Canada will continue to be recognized for the quality of our grain.”

The CGC’s mandate is to “in the interests of the grain producers, establish and maintain standards of quality for Canadian grain and regulate grain handling in Canada, to ensure a dependable commodity for domestic and export markets.” The NFU’s first and foremost point is that this mandate must not be changed.

“The CGC has proved its worth as Canada’s grain system regulator for over a century. The global corporations that dominate the grain trade constantly seek to cut costs and unfairly lower prices paid to farmers in ways that not only remove wealth from our economy, but also compromise the quality of Canadian grain,” said Stewart Wells, NFU 2nd Vice President. “Changes in the grain handling system since the last major review of the Act have resulted in gaps where CGC lacks the authority to fully safeguard farmers’ interests. The need for a strong regulator has not gone away.”

The Act is the solid foundation of our grain economy, our farmers’ livelihoods and our domestic and international customers’ confidence. The NFU is pleased to offer recommendations for making the CGA and the CGC even stronger.