APWLD members, Azra Talat Sayeed from Pakistan and Geetha Fernando from Sri Lanka participated in the Platform for Collective Action Forum Terra Preta*, Rome June 1 - 4, 2008

APWLD members, Azra Talat Sayeed from Pakistan and Geetha Fernando from Sri Lanka participated in the Platform for Collective Action Forum Terra Preta*, Rome June 1 - 4, 2008 which was organised as parallel events to the FAO high level conference organised by IPC for Food Sovereignty. (This article was circulated at the Platform for Collective Action Forum Terra Preta)

The recent escalation in food prices is the latest calamity to hit the poor and marginalised communities in every developing country. The price of rice, wheat, soy, corn and other staples skyrocketed. The price of imported rice in the Philippines nearly tripled this year, from $380 a ton in January to more than $1,000 in April, a phenomenon which is reflected in grain prices all over the world. But rising prices of food has not translated into higher prices for small-scale producers. On the other hand, it has meant increased hunger and escalation of the debt burden carried by small and landless farmers.

In Sri Lanka, the oil price has increased more than 80 present within this six months and it went up to 20 Rupees per liter on the 22nd of May. It directly affects the increase of food price.  Small scale food producers are not able to sell their rice, vegetables, fish and whatever they produce by themselves as intermediary agents and traders have control over trade.

In Indonesia, people have been organising huge rallies every day to refuse the government's plan to increase the fuel price as it will certainly increase the food price that has been already soaring terribly. Scarcity of fuel and kerosene controlled by transnational corporations (TNCs) are also affecting the increase of food price. Women take most of their time to wait in a long queue just to get 5 liters of kerosene to prepare food for their families.

In Kyrgyzstan the issue of food security and food sovereignty is equally critical. The significant rise in the costs for consumers became a major issue and has set the context of political events. Over a short period, the price of flour products and rice has increased three times and that of vegetable oil doubled. Bread prices have doubled which is the main food source in the rural areas and for the poorer sections of the population. There was also a notable increase in of prices for meat and other foodstuff. At the same time food production situation is worsening as women lack control and access to resources (land, seeds, water, credit and agricultural machinery) for agricultural production.

The chaotic conditions in the above countries are just examples of a vast suffering felt by the people, especially women and children in Asia and the Pacific, as well as the rest of the world. The face of hunger and food scarcity is most often the face of a woman and her children. It is now common to see images of women and children, queued up to buy government subsidized staple, made available to them in very small rations of 1 to 2 kilos per purchase. At the same time, the quality of these grains is much to be desired. The terrible hunger, deprivation and suffering of the people can be laid directly on the free trade paradigm. In Pakistan last year, the country’s former Prime Minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, a product of the neoliberal framework of the international financial institutions, exported the country’s staple grain, wheat. The result was an acute shortage of the staple of 1.6 million people. Later the government imported poor quality wheat at double the price it had exported. The crisis continues, even in face of the fact that April and May are wheat harvesting months; currently wheat is unavailable, or available at exorbitant prices.

Various reasons have been identified for the declining global food supply and soaring prices: continuing increase in the cost of oil, transport and fertilizer; the hoarding and manipulation of food supply by traders; more frequent and unpredictable natural disasters cause by climate change; and diversion of grain to bio-fuels and animal feeds that result in the shrinking of areas to plant rice and other staples. No doubt, all these reasons can be tied directly to the inherent fault-line in the free market paradigm. The crisis is the result of the corporate agriculture practices being promoted and pushed through the World Trade Organization and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank. The direct trigger of the current crisis is the speculation on food products in commodities futures markets. Food has become a commodity for speculation and profit-making. Those are rather short term causes of the crises, which are the cumulative effect of nearly three decades of Globalisation policies namely, privatization, deregulation and trade liberalization.

IMF-WB-WTO-Agrochemical TNCs in Food

In the post-colonial, post-war era, Green Revolution, a chemically driven agricultural production system, was pushed in the vast agrarian land of the developing world, by agencies such as IMF-World Bank, and brought about a dramatic change in agricultural production. It made farmers dependent on external inputs such as high yielding variety of seeds, chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides and modern machinery, which was designed to benefit the profit-oriented global agro-business corporation.

In the age of Globalisation, the WB and IMF through structural adjustment programmes have pressured our governments to drastically reduce subsidies in agricultural production, which have resulted in millions of small farmers world wide to get into a viscous cycle of debt, poverty, hunger and for many suicide has been the final escape from their misery.

The WTO, through agreements such as the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), has compelled agricultural countries to import a minimum volume of staples from other countries irrespective of the fact that they are self sufficient or not. Governments are now buying more imported rather than locally produced grains. Trade liberalization has allowed monopolistic transnational corporations (TNCs) like Cargill and Tesco, to gain tremendous power to control the trade and marketing of essential staples such as rice and wheat. Before many developing countries were either net food exporters, or at least were nearly food self-sufficient. India, once a wheat exporting country was forced to become the largest wheat importer.  The Philippines, which for a time produced enough rice to feed its population, is now the world's largest importer of rice.  A crucial factor related to food is land. Most farmers in developing countries do not own the land they till. But instead of providing land to the landless, under the pressure of WTO, IMF, and WB agreements, the governments and ruling elites in the countries have facilitated land-grabbing by private, mostly foreign companies.

Women have been at the forefront in the resistance movements against globalization. The latest macabre face of globalization with the massively rising prices of foods needs the momentum against corporate agriculture and to demand for policies promoting food sovereignty. We the women have gathered here to unite with the food-producing communities to show our determination in push out the global profit-oriented forces from our lands, to regain control of our natural resources, our agricultural and food production systems and our livelihoods. 

Take Back our Lands
Take Back our Food Systems from Profit-Hungry Corporations!
Food for the People not Profits for Agrochemical TNCs
Empower our Women, Empower our Farmers,
Empower the People

*Terra Preta (“black soil” in Portuguese) is the incredibly fertile soil created by Indigenous Peoples in central Amazonia. (www.foodsovereignty.org)