Tag Archives: Free trade

Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, economics, fair food movement, Food sovereignty, Growth paradigm

Confronting Corporate Power with Democracy and Solidarity

Democracy and Solidarity

This is the text of my address to the Public Meeting on the Kernot Dairy, Gippsland, 12.5.15, held at RMIT Building 56, Queensberry St, Melb. 50 people were in attendance. 

We’re here tonight for a political meeting. This is not about party politics; rather, it’s about politics in the deep sense, of who holds power in our society, and how that power is exercised, for whose benefit, and with what consequences.

That’s what we’re here to discuss tonight, in the very specific context of a clear intention by one corporation to transform a Gippsland dairy farm into a highly intensified system of production.

 Our food system is facing a series of crises. One of them is the exploitation of vulnerable workers. Some of you may have seen the Four Corners program, Slaving Away, on Monday 4th May. It exposed the distressing and disturbing reality that significant portions of our cheap food system depend on the ruthless exploitation and abuse of migrant workers, most of whom are in this country on short-term working visas.

It’s all too easy in such circumstances to point the finger of blame at the few ‘rotten apples’, the unscrupulous labour hire contractors, or the few large farms that use their services. But the real beneficiaries are the major supermarkets, and the fast food companies, that buy these products at the lowest possible cost.

As Tammi wrote last week on the AFSA website, what this Four Corners program actually revealed is a system that’s failing, at many levels, to secure the well-being of all. These migrant workers are experiencing truly appalling treatment, without any doubt. But let’s not forget the millions of chickens and pigs in their cages in the dozens of factory farms that already exist in Australia. Let’s not forget the 1 million-plus Australians who experience food insecurity on a regular basis. Let’s not forget the millions more who suffer chronic pain and early death as a result of type 2 diabetes, and other diseases of diets based on cheap and empty calories.

WTF?
WTF?

Let’s not forget the farmers, who on average receive only 10 cents of every dollars’ worth of food they produce; and who feel so devalued by our cheap food culture, that they experience rates of suicide and depression at twice the national average.

This food system is failing the great majority of people, in this country and worldwide, and the non-human species that are caught up in its voracious maw of ceaseless production. But it’s not failing the handful of corporations that make a handsome profit off the misery of the majority.

And that’s the problem we face. We’ve inherited a system that’s primarily designed and operated to feed corporate profit, rather than feed people fairly. It’s all about production, for production’s sake, regardless of the consequences. That’s what the Kernot dairy issue represents, as we’ll hear shortly. It’s a choice for all of us as to what food system we want for our country: one that primarily serves large corporations and banks; or one that serves people and ecosystems.

What factory farming of dairy cattle looks like...
What factory farming of dairy cattle looks like…

* * * * *

We’re also hear tonight to reclaim our democratic culture, which lately has been under increasing strain. We have a journalist summarily sacked for committing the cardinal sin of criticizing the sanctification of Anzac Day. We have campaigning environmental organisations like Friends of the Earth under financial attack because they dare to mobilise communities to question the rush to frack our fertile farmlands. We have moves to criminalise animal welfare groups who dare to expose the cruelty meted out in factory farms.

TPP

At such times, it’s important that as many of us as possible stand up and speak the truth as we know it. Food sovereignty, we say, is the fundamental right of communities to democratically determine our food and farming systems. To participate in the making of decisions about who owns our farmland, and what sort of production systems should be employed. What should be grown or raised, and where and under what terms should the produce be sold? For the past few decades we have delegated all these decisions to a mythical and apparently all-powerful entity known as ‘the market’. But the market, far from being ‘free’ and a ‘level playing field’, is actually structured in favour of the largest and most powerful corporations.

How do we begin to change this? By gathering together in forums such as this, to hear directly from the producers and communities who are at the sharp end of these processes of ‘free trade’ and ‘globalisation’. By listening, and becoming informed of the issues, and what’s at stake.

And by taking action. Because that’s what this meeting is also about. Solidarity. Standing together with those who are trying to sound the alarm on what looks like a headlong rush to the intensification of dairy farming in Gippsland and elsewhere in Victoria. We have several people who’ve made the journey up the freeway to be with us tonight and share their stories with us. I’d like to invite them all to stand up now – and invite you all to give them a very warm round of applause. You are very welcome here; and we have come here tonight to support you.

But it’s also very important to remember that although the corporation that is planning the intensification of this dairy in Kernot is Chinese, we have no quarrel with the people of China. Food sovereignty is a global movement that embraces hundreds of millions of people in more than 80 countries, and it is firmly grounded in the principles of international solidarity and non-discrimination. What we oppose is a food system that privileges short-term financial gain for a tiny minority, over the long-term well-being of the vast majority of humanity, non-human species, and ecosystems everywhere. Ultimately we have one home, and it’s called Earth. And our responsibility is to adopt an ethic and a practice of care, and love, towards each other. Not only those closest to us, but those far away as well.

Corporate control of food, economics, Growth paradigm

Berry Beware

Berry Beware

 The widespread coverage of outbreaks of Hepatitis A in all eastern States and now in WA, linked to faecal contamination of frozen raspberries packaged in China, has proven a boon for Australian producers, with a surge in demand for local produce.

As someone who has been writing and speaking about the benefits of local food economies for many years, and warning about the risks and downsides of an increasingly globalised food system, these events feel like vindication.

The tragedy of course is that a number of individuals – and there will likely be many more – have had to suffer in order to raise these issues to the top of the political agenda.

That is unfortunately so often the case, however. Until something becomes a ‘media storm’, politicians see no need to act.

 

The suspected contaminated fruit in this instance is actually raspberries...
The suspected contaminated fruit in this instance is actually raspberries…

In this instance – as in just about everything else connected with our globalised food system – many people have been suffering for a long time. We just don’t get to hear about the near-Dickensian conditions of the largely female and indigenous farm workers in Chile who pick the fruit, or the factory workers in China who pack it. That’s not ‘news’.

Rather, their low wages and precarious working and life conditions are merely ‘factors of production’ that show up as a column of numbers in the balance sheets of the agri-business corporations that call the shots in the globalised food and farming system.

 

And their cheap labour is essential to keeping prices ‘Down! Down!’ and ‘Cheap! Cheap!’ at the supermarket checkouts.

The price of an item like frozen imported berries conceals so much.

As does the label, for that matter. In the wake of these outbreaks, much of the emphasis has been on improved labeling requirements and ensuring stricter safety standards, including more tests of imported produce.

Both would be a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile, claims that this outbreak boosts the ‘clean, green image’ of Australian produce need to be made with a little bit of humility. While our food handling and safety standards are certainly stringent, what about the use of chemicals in production?

The US Environmental Working Group releases an annual list of a ‘Dirty Dozen’ foods, that US Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program tests reveal have an unacceptably high level of chemical residues.

Creative Gourmet

These tests have shown that conventionally-produced blueberries – a major crop on the Coffs Coast – have residues of up to 52 chemicals, including 8 carcinogens, 14 neurotoxins and 17 bee toxins. While this data relates to US production, what do we really know about chemical residues on our local produce? What would a ‘Made in Australia’ label tell us about potential risks to human and environmental health?

 

Then there is the whole can of worms that is the free trade agenda, which I’ve written about many times before. In a globalised system that is all about driving down costs and boosting production – and that’s true both here and elsewhere – human and environmental well-being are always going to be secondary priorities.

 

Ultimately this is the conversation that we as a society need to be mature enough to confront. The ‘cheap food’ paradigm is essential to a growth-based consumer economy. Why? Because keeping food cheap means consumers can devote more of their income to servicing debt to banks, and on discretionary purchases.

Tackling that conundrum is going to be really tough, because we all want to have our cake and eat it. Most of us haven’t grown up in an era of sacrifice and hardship. But the chill winds of austerity are blowing ever harder.

My view is that we can enjoy rich and fulfilling lives, while supporting our local producers, and helping them to produce really clean and green food. But we will need to break out of this paradigm of cheap food, and growth-and-production at all costs, to get there

 

advocate, Corporate control of food

The Trans Pacific Partnership – An attack on our democracy and sovereignty

Our sovereignty at stake

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 19th October, 2013

It is ironic that the candidate who staked so much of his political capital on his ability to ‘stop the boats’ and ‘protect this nation’s borders’, should roll over so promptly when in office like a Cheshire cat and have his political tummy tickled by the likes of Cargill and Monsanto.

Ironic, but not surprising, because Tony Abbott’s first words on winning the 7 September Federal election were to declare that Australia was now ‘open for business’.

While our men and women in uniform are dispatched to patrol our borders to make sure that no ‘illegal’ humans can enter, transnational corporate capital can come and go more or less as it pleases.

It is not enough that we roll out the red carpet for these ‘foreign investors’ as though they were royalty. Now, with the new administration’s commitment to sign up to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) without reservation, we are ceding a large chunk of our sovereignty to them as well.

Not heard of the TPP? That’s hardly surprising, because, like nearly all free trade negotiations since the infamous ‘battle of Seattle’ back in 1999, the 12-nation TPP talks, involving Australia, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, have been conducted exclusively behind closed doors. More than that, it’s only due to the leaking of 2 of the 26 chapters under negotiation that we know anything about the substance of this agreement.

One of these chapters is titled, innocuously enough, Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). What this means is that foreign investors have the right to take state and federal governments to international tribunals if they dare pass legislation, or adopt policy, that conflicts with Australia’s obligations under the TPP.


One of Australia’s first civil society forums on the Trans Pacific Partnership, held at the Hawthorn campus of Swinburn University, on 14 October 2013. My contribution begins at 1:06 and ends at 1:25.

What does this mean in practice? Under an earlier free trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the oil and gas company Lone Pine Resources sued the Canadian government because the state of Quebec had a moratorium on coal-seam gas fracking.

While we don’t know for sure – because the draft TPP is a closely-guarded state-and-corporate secret – it is thought by those who have followed the process closely that other chapters will impact on our domestic freedom of action in a number of ways. For example, there may be well be prohibitions on any laws requiring the mandatory labelling of products containing genetically-modified organisms.

There may also be restrictions or even prohibitions on the ability of governments to adopt procurement standards that preference local suppliers and local jobs. National governments’ freedom of action to adopt laws and rules that safeguard the environment may be curtailed, should such rules impact on transnational corporate profits.

TPP

 

The trouble is, we won’t know what this agreement contains until the negotiations have been concluded, when it will be presented to the Australian Parliament, and the Australian people, as a fait accompli.

What we do know is more than enough to set alarm bells ringing loudly. The other chapter that has been leaked contains provisions designed to tighten already restrictive intellectual property laws. One Canadian media commentator, on reviewing the powers the draft TPP confers on international media conglomerates, said that it ‘would turn all Internet users into suspected copyright criminals [and] appears to criminalise content sharing in general’.

Before some of our most basic rights and freedoms that we take for granted are signed away behind some closed door, supposedly in the name of ‘growing the economy’ and ‘boosting employment and productivity’, we must at the very least be entitled to know the detail of what this agreement contains.

Whether or not he ‘stops the boats’ and ‘protects our borders’, Tony Abbott will be selling our national sovereignty to the highest bidder if his government signs onto to the TPP in its current form.

 

advocate, Coffs Coast, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming

Bootstrapping independent coffee roasting on the Coffs Coast

Amelia Franklin

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 22nd June, 2013

Sugar and tea was said to be the fuel that drove forward the workers in the mills and factories of England, as it led the world into the industrial revolution.

In our time, coffee has replaced milky tea as the beverage of choice for the white collar workers and entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of the information technology and communications revolution of the late 20th and early 21st century.

But now, as then, the world is connected. Tea and sugar were produced somewhere, and that somewhere was often on large plantations were the workers were either indentured slaves or paid very little. Either way conditions were poor and the work was harsh.

Coffee is likewise often grown on large plantations, where the conditions are harsh and the pay is poor. Often, children labour in these plantations, picking the ripe red fruit that contains the green coffee beans alongside their parents and siblings.

The coffee industry globally has revenues in excess of $80 billion per annum. Most of the profits wind up in the hands of multinationals like Nestle and speculators on futures markets, while many coffee growers don’t earn enough to feed their children, let alone send them to school.

Amelia Franklin
Amelia Franklin

There is an ethical alternative, and it’s called fair trade coffee. In our region, Amelia Franklin is the embodiment of fair trade principles.

“When I went into coffee, I just wanted to do fair trade and organics, because I didn’t want to impact on anyone else, that was the main objective”, Amelia says. “I didn’t want to make my life and my son’s life good, at the expense of another family. That’s not OK. I’d rather be poor, and not have that knowledge that where the product is coming from is impacting on someone else’s family in another place to make a profit for myself.”

Amelia is a fiercely independent and values-driven young woman who owns and operates her own coffee roasting and grinding business, based in Bellingen. She has struggled every step of the way and overcome major obstacles, building during the course of 10 years an ethical business with significant sales and a staff of four, including herself. And as I will discuss in the second part of her story, her business directly supports the education of children and the equality of women, amongst many other benefits, in the regions where she sources her coffee: Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra, Ethiopia and Timor Leste.

Amelia entered the coffee business with no prior experience or mentoring. She even spent a year teaching herself how to roast coffee, after borrowing $20,000 to buy a 5-kilo coffee roaster from Turkey and a grinder; and selling her 1960 FB Holden to purchase a tonne of green beans.

The early days were daunting, even scary. “The whole garden was filled with coffee beans that were burnt or under-roasted”, Amelia recalls. “In that year I thought, What the hell have I done? I’ve screwed up big time, I’ve put myself into a lot of debt, and I don’t even know what I’m doing!”

“There were a lot of tears and fist-pounding on the floor”, she adds with a smile. “But people started to buy my coffee, and I got a couple of big customers in Sydney, and I thought, I must be doing something right.”

Her initial loan came via an equipment finance company, at an extortionate 18% interest rate. Because she had no job, no established business record and no assets, Amelia found herself with little option but to go down that route. It took her four years to clear the initial $20,000 loan, after she had repaid more than double the original amount in interest.

“Going into debt to start a business is not the best way forward”, she reflects ruefully. “It would be good if there were some sort of interest-free loans for start-up businesses”, she adds, pointing out that she has neither the experience or the time to spend long hours writing grant applications, and nor can she afford to employ someone to do that work for her.

Amelia Franklin’s story will be continued. Don’t forget the inaugural Sawtell Veggie Swap this Sunday, 23rd June, from 11.00 am – 2.00 p.m., at Sawtell Public School. Bring your surplus veggies, or just a plate to share!

advocate, Coffs Coast, Corporate control of food, Food policy, National Food Plan

A vacuum of political leadership on food policy in Australia

Questions for the Federal Government – and the Opposition

A version of this article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 8th June, 2013

Two weeks ago the Federal Government launched the National Food Plan White Paper, after nearly three years of preparatory work.

With colleagues at the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Food Alliance (Deakin University) Gene Ethics and the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, I have been going through the White Paper closely, in preparation for a briefing from the office of Minister for Agriculture Joe Ludwig.

So far we’ve come up with 10 pages of observations and over 50 specific questions. We’re not expecting the Minister’s office to address all of these in a 90 minute briefing, of course, but it should give you an idea of the extent of misgiving and disquiet about this Plan felt by the representatives of Australia’s Fair Food movement.

There are two headline targets of this Plan: an increase in Australia’s commodity exports to Asia of 45% by 2025; and an increase in agricultural productivity of 30% by the same date. Just in case the reader doesn’t get the message that this Plan is all about exports and productivity, it is rammed home through relentless repetition. The word ‘export’ and its derivations are mentioned 118 times in the 104 page document. ‘Productivity’ receives no fewer than 80 separate mentions.

The word ‘health’ and its derivations appear even more frequently – 140 times – but don’t be deceived: this plan is not mainly about health, or for that matter environmental sustainability. If we follow the money, nearly $40 million of the $42.8 million in new funding that this Plan represents is focused on growing exports and boosting productivity, with the largest chunk – $28.5 million – to be spent on researching Asian markets.

With the exception of the Community Food Initiatives and Food Literacy programmes ($1.5 million each) – which are welcome and somewhat unexpected inclusions, if symbolic rather than substantive – the whole question of health has been deferred to a National Nutrition Policy, work on which is slated to begin in 2014. Given that the Food Plan was intended to be an integrated, whole-of-government food policy, this is a major disappointment. Quite frankly, it’s a cave-in to big food lobbyists who always pushed for this outcome.

As well as side-stepping our health crisis, the Plan makes very light of climate change as a risk factor, and includes no targets or action plan for reducing the fossil fuel intensity of our food system. This is quite extraordinary, given that the latest data suggest that the Arctic may be ice-free in the summer within one or two years, contrary to the ‘worst-case’ projections of the International Panel on Climate Change that such an occurrence, with all its implications in terms of cascading non-linear feedback loops, would not happen before 2075.

Free trade is held up as the best and only route to happiness and prosperity. Meanwhile this week brought news that Simplot is threatening to close down its Devonport frozen food factory in the face of waves of cheap imports, with major consequences for Tasmanian growers. Ausveg rightly says that the loss of this capacity and with it many growers is a real threat to our food security.

Judging by the Food Plan, the Government is not concerned about such developments; and the Opposition’s only answer is that scrapping the carbon tax will solve all our problems. Such is the dearth of leadership on basic questions of our national security and our children’s future.

Veggie swaps - a growing phenomenon
Veggie swaps – a growing phenomenon

Meanwhile, some positive news on the local front. The first harvest swap in the Coffs Harbour region will take place at Sawtell Primary School on Sunday 23rd June, from 11.00 a.m. – 2. 00 p.m. If you have armfuls of surplus cabbage or kale, this is your chance to spread the love! (but keep the caterpillars at home!) If you want to attend, please contact Juliet Thomas, jtinthegarden@gmail.com

advocate, Corporate control of food, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger, National Food Plan, Small-scale farming

Globalise the struggle, globalise hope! Viva La Via Campesina!

While peasants maintain their struggle, corporations’ mouths water over the ‘dining boom’

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 20th April 2013

Nick Rose

Two events this week mark sharply diverging paths for national and global food systems.

Wednesday (17 April) marked the 17th anniversary of the murder of 19 peasant family farmers in the Brazilian town of Dorado dos Carajas. Members of the million-strong Landless Workers Movement (MST), they were targeted as part of a campaign of intimidation and harassment by big landowners and agribusiness interests, for whom the MST’s demands for more equitable access to land and other resources could not be tolerated.

The global small farmers movement La Via Campesina now commemorates 17 April as the ‘International Day of Peasants’ Struggle’. Each year hundreds of peasant farmers in many different countries lose their lives attempting to resist what appears to be a relentless push for greater corporate ownership and control over land, seeds, water and markets. Thousands more lose their livelihoods and their land as they are forced off their own ancestral lands, often violently, to make way for biofuel plantations and the GM soy mega monocultures that provide feed for the factory farming of pigs and chickens.

All of this is supposedly done in the name of ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘efficiency’.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne on Thursday (18 April), the Australian and the Wall Street Journal launched the inaugural Global Food Forum. As reported in the Australian, ‘billionaire packaging and recycling magnate Anthony Pratt’ called for a ‘coalition of the willing’ so that Australia can ‘quadruple our exports to feed 200 million people’.

 

The ‘dining boom’ will replace the mining boom as the next driver of our economy, apparently. Eyes lit up with estimates of an ‘additional $1.7 trillion in agriculture revenues between now and 2050 if [Australia] seized the opportunity of the Asia food boom.’

 

Amongst other measures, this ‘dining boom’ is said to depend on the so-called Northern food bowl: clearing large swathes of Northern Australia and irrigating it with dozens of new dams.

 

But, as Professor Andrew Campbell of Charles Darwin University has pointed out, water is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for successful food production. Good soils are essential, and in our north the ‘soils are low in nutrients and organic matter, they can’t hold much water, they erode easily and they have low infiltration rates’. Other obstacles to the rosy future of being ‘Asia’s food bowl’ include extreme monsoonal weather events, high input costs and higher labour costs due to remote locations.

In short, the so-called Northern food bowl is likely to prove a mirage. And when you add to the picture the parlous state of many wheat farmers in south-west WA, not to mention the Murray-Darling itself, the idea that massively expanding food exports to Asia is going to be this country’s economic saviour looks decidedly like wishful thinking.

And even if it were true, who would be the main beneficiaries? A handful of very large exporting farms, and the grain traders and agri-business that dominate the global food system.

Which brings us back to Via Campesina. They’re campaigning for a food system that’s fair and sustainable, one that works for people and the land, not simply for shareholders and CEOs.

Sam Palmer, from Symara Organic Farms (near Stanthorpe, Qld), who attended the 6th Global Via Campesina conference in Jakarta, June 2013
Sam Palmer, from Symara Organic Farms (near Stanthorpe, Qld), who attended the 6th Global Via Campesina conference in Jakarta, June 2013

In June this year, Via Campesina will be holding its sixth international conference, in Jakarta. For the first time, a delegation of four Australian farmers are hoping to join the other delegates from dozens of countries around the world, to discuss the future of family farming and food systems worldwide. They’re asking for support from the Australian public to get there, to make sure the vo

ices of Australian family farmers are heard in these important discussions.

You can find out who they are, and help them get to Jakarta, by going to http://www.pozible.com/project/20941.

advocate, Corporate control of food, Food policy, National Food Plan

More export markets – but who benefits?

Export! Export!

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 18th August, 2012.

A fortnight ago the Australian Grains Industry Conference – ‘the premier industry-hosted conference for grain industry market participants and service providers’ – was held in Melbourne.

Described as a ‘high-level market event that brings together the Australian and global grain industry in a premium networking event’, this Conference was truly a gathering of the great and the good in the world of grains.

Which is why, when I heard that my colleague Fran Murrell, co-ordinator of MADGE (Mothers are Demystifying Genetic Engineering), had scored a ticket, I was fascinated to see what her impressions would be.

Grain Industry Report

She wrote to tell me that she had found the event ‘extremely worrying’. It’s not that anything particularly out of the ordinary happened. What’s shocking is simply the very ‘normality’ of how the large corporate players view the food and agricultural system as an arena purely for speculation and profit, regardless of the destructive social and environmental consequences of their actions.

This was made crystal clear when one speaker said that a significant reduction in the outrageously high levels of food waste – 50% or more of all food produced in developed countries is wasted, by some estimates – would represent a ‘threat’ to the burgeoning ‘investment opportunity’ that large-scale land acquisitions and clearances of rural and indigenous people in Africa and South America represents.

Let me illustrate the sheer, chilling insanity of this perspective by reference to a few facts about food waste, via Stuart Tristram’s excellent Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal:

  • ‘the irrigation water used globally to grow food that is wasted would be enough for the domestic needs (at 200 litres per person per day) of 9 billion people’
  • ‘if we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecesssary surplus and wasted food, this would offset 100% of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion’
  • ‘all the world’s one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe’

Just let those facts – and there are many, many more – sink in for a minute. And then reflect on the claim, endlessly repeated by the government and most media, that the world ‘must double food production’ by 2050 to meet ‘growing global demand’. There’s a very good case to be made, in my view, that the real challenge we face is how to curb wasteful overproduction.

Yet our federal government, in its wisdom, has placed increased production of commodities for export as the centrepiece of its ‘National Food Plan’, out for public consultation until 30 September. The grains industry, naturally, takes its cue from the urging of the Prime Minister, that Australia, in addition to being Asia’s quarry, also become its ‘food bowl’. It’s focused on supplying meat, wheat and dairy commodities to the Asian middle class, also exporting in the process all the diseases associated with diets based largely on these products.

The financial industry was also well-represented at the grains industry conference. Its spokespeople regard agriculture as the ‘shining sector of the economy for the next five years’. In their worldview, it’s assumed that the sale of Australian land and agricultural assets to sovereign wealth funds, global corporations and foreign investors will benefit Australian farmers and consumers.

Meanwhile US multinational Cargill is positioning itself as the farmers’ friend, as it increases its control of the Australian Wheat Board; as well as domestic grain storage, handling and marketing infrastructure. As Fran pointed out to me, while we’re being asked to trust that this type of foreign investment is in all our interests, we shouldn’t forget that Cargill is currently being prosecuted by the Argentinian government for large-scale tax evasion.

The corporatisation of our food system means that there will be a relentless and constant drive for efficiencies, all in the name of ‘global competitiveness’ and ‘productivity’. Amongst other things, that means far fewer farmers. The numbers of Australian grain farmers have fallen from 40,000 to 22,000 over the past thirty years. We can expect that trend to continue, even accelerate.

But don’t worry – it’s all going to be fine, because we’ll have new export markets!

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advocate, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Food policy, Global hunger, National Food Plan, Supermarket Duopoly

A food plan for corporate agribusiness

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A National Food Plan, but not for us

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 20th July, 2012

On 17th July, the Federal Government released its green paper for a National Food Plan. This is the next step in the development of Australia’s first-ever national food policy. The first was the release, in June 2011, of an Issues Paper, followed by a two-month period of consultation and invite-only roundtable discussions. The green paper will also be followed by a two-month period of public consultation, and I’ll provide the relevant link at the end of the article.

During the first phase of public consultation, 279 written submissions were received from Australians, many of them from ordinary members of the public, and from community groups and small farmers. One of them was Graham Brookman, CEO of a permaculture farm (foodforest.com.au) in Hillier, SA, which produces 160 varieties of fruits, nuts and vegetables.

DAFF

The Food Forest is a family farm, run by Graham, his wife Annemarie, and their two children. The family’s aim is to ‘ demonstrate how an ordinary family, with a typical Australian income, can grow its own food and create a productive and diverse landscape’.

Graham took the trouble to write 13 pages in his submission to the National Food Plan consultation. He pointed out that ‘the dogma that internatioanl free trade will solve food insecurity has been proven to be faulty over centuries, billions continue to starve while others die of obesity in a world with relatively free movement of food’.

This would seem to be a simple statement of facts. Close to half the world’s population is malnourished in one form or another, either because they have inadequate intake of key micronutrients, or excessive intake of the wrong types of (highly processed) foods. Free trade, vigorously pursued by Australia and many other countries for the past few decades, has not resolved these issues; indeed there is a good argument that it has made them worse.

But in the green paper, the Federal Government has shown, to quote a(n) (in)famous lady, that ‘it’s not for turning’ when it comes to free trade. On the contrary, it’s full steam ahead on the trade liberalisation agenda, and we can expect increasing amounts of food imports. The Government wants your opinion on free trade – but only for suggestions on how Australia can export more, not whether the free trade agenda itself might require further thought.

Then Graham pointed out that the impacts of climate change, peak oil and geopolitical instability mean that ‘the whole food system needs rethinking and massive effort needs to go into rebuilding the skills of our agricultural producers such that the nation can remain domestically food-secure’.  To the free trade dogma, Graham adds the ‘free market dogma [which] has given Australia the duopoly of Woolworths and Coles who have driven farmers from the land by reducing profit margins for producers to miniscule levels and requiring them to use every technical device available to maximise yields.’ Broccoli crops in the Adelaide Hills, he points out, are ‘sprayed with biocides approximately 30 times to meet the cosmetic standards of the supermarkets.’

But Graham and the Government are inhabiting parallel universes, it seems. According to the green paper, Australia ‘has a strong, safe and stable food system’ and ‘Australians enjoy high levels of food security’; our food industry is ‘resilient and flexible’ and we ‘have one of the best food systems in the world’. A key plank of our national food strategy should be about us becoming ‘the food bowl of Asia’, in the Prime Minister’s words. This is a frankly preposterous example of wishful thinking, given that even on the most optimistic scenarios, Australia would supply food for no more than 1% of Asia’s 3.5 billion people.

So it’s no surprise that Graham, on reading the green paper, wrote to tell me that, ‘in terms of a sustainable food future for Australia there is virtually nothing in the ‘national food plan’ or its structure that is acceptable’.

There’s a simple reason for this: the ‘National Food Plan’ is actually a Plan for corporate agri-business and retailers, not ordinary people. If we want a food plan that meets our needs, we’ll have to work on it ourselves.

occupy_our_food_supply_new

If you want to read the green paper and tell the Government what you think about it, follow this link: http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/green-paper.

Update: 8th November 2013

Following the election of the conservative Liberal-National Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, there is considerable doubt about the future of the National Food Plan. Apparently the new administration is not that happy with it, and the proposed Australian Council on Food has already been abandoned. This is not to suggest that we are likely to see a change of tack on free trade or any other aspects of the big corporate agenda. On the contrary, we are likely to see an intensification of that agenda, via the so-called ‘Northern Foodbowl Plan’, of which more in a later post.

 

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advocate, Food policy

The Free Trade Taliban

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Apples, pears and free trade

Nick Rose

This article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 20.8.11

On Thursday, the Federal Government made the historic announcement that henceforth New Zealand apples will be imported into this country.

NZ Apples

This decision had been resisted by Australian apple and pear growers since 1919, both for biosecurity reasons, i.e. the risk of diseases such as fire-blight and European canker devastating apple and pear orchards in this country, and for economic reasons. The Australian Apple and Pear Growers’ Association estimates that on average its members will see a 30% drop in their incomes as a result of being exposed to large volumes entering the country from New Zealand and, subsequently, from China.

The decision to end the import ban was made at the behest of the World Trade Organisation, which ruled that it could no longer be justified for scientific reasons, and was therefore contrary to Australia’s trade liberalisation obligations.

Apple tree with fire blight
Apple tree with fire blight

In theory, free trade sounds wonderful, an idea that no-one in their right minds would disagree with. Each country specialises in doing what it does best; domestic producers are exposed to international competition, and so must innovate to stay competitive; new businesses, jobs and products are created as a result; and consumers get progressively better prices. In turn, new markets overseas become available for Australian products, and so a virtuous cycle of wealth creation comes into being.

The trouble with theory is that all too often it fails to take into account the messy complexities of real world practice. Speaking about this issue a few weeks ago, independent Senator Nick Xenophon recalled how he had been told earlier this year by a union official that Australian trade negotiators are commonly referred to in international trade talks as ‘the free trade Taliban’. Trade liberalisation, in all sectors and all circumstances, has virtually become a religious catechism for them.

Leaving aside its merits or otherwise in sectors such as manufacturing, the question here is whether untrammelled free trade is an axiomatic good in the case of agriculture. The evidence to date, frankly, is not persuasive. Some farmers and growers have undoubtedly benefited from lucrative and growing niche markets: blueberries and pecans are two that come to mind. Whether WTO rules and free trade dogma were required for such markets to become available is debatable.

By far the biggest beneficiaries of greater trade liberalisation of agricultural commodities have however been the handful of multinational corporations that dominate grain trading, meat packing, proprietary seeds and agro-chemicals. Farmers in general have been the biggest losers. Their terms of trade, their standard of living and their numbers have declined worldwide. It’s been estimated that over the past 40 years, Australia has lost an average of five farmers every single day.

As the spectre and reality of famine returns in an increasingly uncertain world, more and more people are waking up to the reality that, at the end of the day, none of us can eat, drink or breathe money. The food system in all its aspects isn’t just a sector of the economy like any other: it’s the very stuff of life. It deserves special consideration and, yes, protection. Using that word as a term of abuse, as the free trade Taliban are wont to do, simply reveals the shallowness, not the sophistication, of their thinking; and the depth of their adherence to dogma.

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The Federal Department of Agriculture recently announced that, following requests from many groups and individuals, it has extended the deadline for submissions on its Issues Paper for a National Food Plan to COB Friday, 2nd September. If you feel strongly about the future of food and farming in this country, and what role government has in supporting it, then make your views known by visiting the DAFF website: http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/national-food-plan.

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Update – 6th June 2013

The Federal Government has now published the final version of the National Food Plan – you can download it in all its glory at the DAFF website. Over the two years of ‘consultation’, the writers of the NFP were little moved to make concessions in the direction of a more fair and sustainable food system. Their mantra of export more commodities, increase agricultural productivity, sign more free trade agreements and force open new markets, remains unshakeable. Personally I foresee their neoliberal dogma crashing hard against the shores of biophysical reality; indeed it already is. In the meantime, Australia continues to lose farmers and farmland at an alarming pace; and the obesity pandemic continues to gather momentum. Why is why I and my colleagues at the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance will continue to campaign for the People’s Food Plan for Australia.