Category Archives: economics

 

Australia is a functioning representative political democracy, but with so many important decisions being made in the economic sphere of social life, most of us are effectively disenfranchised. Key decisions about the allocation of resources, job creation or job destruction, and what form of economic development we want for our country, are too often taken by a small number of wealthy individuals, behind closed doors.

I argue that a system based on the endless and limitless accumulation of private wealth is not only socially and environmentally destructive: it is ultimately self-destructive. We have seen this already in the past 100 years with two major world wars and a seemingly endless succession of minor wars. As inequality reaches stratospheric levels in the first decades of the 21st century, the globalizing capitalist system is once again at breaking strain, and the drums of war are beating loudly yet again.

Happily there are powerful alternatives emerging, in the form of the the peer-to-peer, commons-based economy, the co- operative movement and economic democracy. All of these have natural affinities with the global food sovereignty movement. All are expressions of the solidarity economy, which Brazilian author Euclides Mance describes as being practiced daily by millions of people,

[W]ho work and consume in order to produce for their own and other people’s welfare, rather than for profit. In a solidarity economy what matters is creating satisfactory economic conditions for all people. This means assuring individual and collective freedoms, generating work and income, abolishing all forms of exploitation, domination and exclusion, and protecting ecosystems as well as promoting sustainable development.

In the context of food sovereignty, this is captured by Via Campesina leader Nettie Wiebe, who describes how the experience of working together for a common vision and cause is unifying and powerful:

To stand…and to walk shoulder to shoulder with people who all recognise that what we’re struggling for here are sustainable, nutritious, locally-based, empowering systems of farming, and that that’s key to all of us, that’s a tremendous strength…The hardships that we suffer, and the joys we have, don’t look the same, but…they’re very real in our own context. That kind of solidarity, generated of course by the political necessity of standing in solidarity with each other, has been just a powerful, powerful dynamic internationally. And it has sometimes surprised us in La Via Campesina just how powerful that has been.

Topics in economics: [suffusion-categories child_of=182 title_li=0]

 

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advocate, Alternatives, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm

Nicole Foss and the End of Growth

New ideas about ‘progress’

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 21st January 2012

 

“I don’t think anything remotely like business-as-usual is going to come back in our lifetimes, or probably ever again, quite frankly.”

These are the words of Stoneleigh, aka Nicole Foss. One of the world’s leading writers and speakers on the global energy and financial crises, the deep connections between them, and the implications for advanced economies such as our own, Nicole is travelling to Australia next month on a speaking tour. She will be visiting Coffs Harbour on Saturday, February 11, and speaking and answering questions for a couple of hours from 12 p.m. at the Cavanbagh Centre. The Advocate is sponsoring her visit, and will be running a series of articles exploring aspects of her thought over the next few weeks.

Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleight
Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleight

“Business-as-usual” means all sorts of things, of course, but here Nicole is talking specifically about economic growth. An expanding economy is the very definition of ‘normal’, which is why deep recessions, and above all depressions, are regarded as so awful. The idea that we are perhaps on the cusp of entering a prolonged – very prolonged – period of deflationary depression is extremely hard to contemplate with equanimity. Yet this is the no-holds-barred perspective that Nicole offers; and she does so on the basis of a sharp and clear analysis, with the sole motivation of helping individuals and communities inform themselves and prepare for the seismic changes she believes are now unfolding.

Buen Vivir

Let’s assume for a moment that Nicole is right. This raises all sorts of questions, but the one I want to look at briefly here is this: can the end of economic growth actually be a good news story? If you ask any politician of any major party in most parts of the world, the answer would be a resounding ‘no’. The terrible experience of the 1930s has been seared into our collective historical memory as something to be avoided at all costs, and with good reason.

And yet…as time has gone on, many are saying that the costs of growth now outweigh the benefits. More growth means more pollution, more waste. Having more ‘stuff’ doesn’t mean that we’re any happier. Bigger doesn’t always mean better – have you watched SuperSize Me? Maybe it’s time to start thinking in terms of quality, rather than quantity.

That’s what been happening on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in Ecuador and Bolivia. The citizens of both countries recently re-wrote their constitutions, and in them they included some old wisdom from the Quechua and Aymara indigenous peoples of the Andes as the guiding principle for the new development paradigm they wish to follow. Sumak Kawsay is a Quechau phrase that translates as buen vivir in Spanish; which in English we might understand as ‘good life’ or ‘living well’.

In contrast to individualistic ideas of progress based on economic growth, buen vivir seeks balance and harmony, amongst peoples, and between humanity and nature, as its primary goals. In a recent article, Thomas Fatheuer notes that it is ‘sharply distinct from the idea of individual good life’; and is ‘only conceivable in a social context, mediated by the community in which people live’.

Interestingly, buen vivir is being embraced by two of the poorest countries in the world, whose main source of ‘wealth’ has traditionally been based on the extraction of their natural resources, minerals especially. That they are seeking to strike out on a different path at this point in time should give us pause for thought, as we seek to keep riding on the wave of the minerals boom.

Maybe buen vivir is relevant to us; maybe not. But at the very least it offers a positive story for the future.

—-

Nicole Foss and her co-writer Ilargi Mendoz (touring Australia with her) write at The Automatic Earth: http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

Thomas Fatheur’s discussion of buen vivir can be read here: http://www.boell.de/publications/publications-buen-vivir-12636.html

advocate, Alternatives, Corporate control of food, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm

Nature as a “free gift”

Nature as a free gift

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 7th January 2012

Last time I discussed, in the spirit of Christmas, the tremendous and little-acknowledged extent to which our monetary economy depends for its continued successful functioning on countless daily acts of generosity, especially by carers and parents.

It also depends on the seemingly endless generosity of nature, which is almost always taken for granted. The idea of treating nature as a ‘free gift’ to humanity – our tendency to ‘treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves’, as the famous German economist and author of Small is Beautiful, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, put it – has its immediate roots in the thought of the founding fathers of our modern market economy: Adam Smith, David  Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus. 

small is beautiful 1st ed cover m

Arguably it goes back much further than that, to the very founding stories of our Judeo-Christian culture: to a certain interpretation of the Book of Genesis, according to which God created the world, then created and placed humans in it, and gave them dominion over all living and non-living things. This is of course not the only interpretation of the creation story – another is that the role of humans vis-à-vis nature is not as ‘masters’, but as stewards – but it is the conventional and predominant one.

Treating nature as a ‘free gift’ has certain consequences. Most obviously, as Schumacher noted, it means that we ascribe no value (in monetary terms) to resources such as clean air and healthy soils. That’s dangerous, in a culture in which most of us understand something as ‘valuable’ only when there’s a price tag attached to it. It sets up an unhealthy dynamic between private riches, in various forms of property, and public wealth, in the form of resources that everyone, of necessity, shares.

According to the theory which underpins our market economy,  a monetary value can only be affixed to goods and services which are exchanged, because they are said to exist in a condition (either actual or constructed) of ‘scarcity’. Public wealth, on the other hand, is said to exist in abundance, and as such is not susceptible to monetary exchange.

The difficulty is that as private riches increase, public wealth diminishes. This dynamic is endemic to much of modern production, in agriculture as elsewhere. Coal-seam gas mining is a prime example: extraction of the resource brings profits to mining companies, but at the cost of depleting and polluting underground water tables.  

More than two hundred years ago the eighth Earl of Lauderdale, James Maitland, foresaw this destructive tension between an expanding sphere of private riches and a diminishing realm of public wealth. We live daily with manifestations of the ‘Lauderdale paradox’, perhaps the most severe of which is climate change. As the private wealth generated by our market economy has expanded exponentially in the past two centuries, the ‘liveable space’ provided by a stable climate appears to be rapidly diminishing for future generations.

You might think that the obvious answer to this paradox would be to put a price on the most essential aspects of ‘public wealth’; to treat them as ‘scarce’, and subject them to the laws of supply and demand. We pay for waste water to be treated; and from the middle of this year, we will be paying for the emission of carbon into the atmosphere, as the first step towards a full-fledged ‘emissions trading scheme’. But markets always produce winners and losers; and there are real questions as to whether an ETS will be an effective way to tackle climate change, much less a fair one. 

A lot depends on what we understand by ‘scarcity’; and, fundamentally, what our relationship to nature is, or should be. Many farmers, here and round the world, already see themselves as ‘stewards’, not ‘masters’, of the land they inhabit. There is a great deal of wisdom in such a perspective, and it points the way to a truly ‘sustainable’ future.

advocate, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Demographic crisis, Ecological constraints, Food sovereignty, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming, Supermarket Duopoly

The poverty of farming in the Tweed

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The poverty of farming in the Tweed

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, on 10th December 2011

Last time I introduced Tweed mango grower Mike Yarrow, whom I met recently while in Murwillumbah as part of a team working with the Tweed Council to prepare a strategy for sustainable agriculture.

Mike would like this process to be a success, but he believes that it’s ’30 or 40 years too late’, at least in the case of him and his wife; and other farmers of their vintage (Mike is 67), which is the vast majority of farmers in the region.

Your problem as I see it”, he told us, “is that we, the farmers, have reached the end of our working lives. There are no new young farmers.

The aging of the farming population is an issue that affects the country as a whole. By far the largest category of farmers in Australia is in the 65+ age bracket. In this as in other aspects of food policy, the Federal Government has made the complacent assumption that there is really nothing to worry about, and that what objectively appears to be a demographic crisis will simply correct itself over time. Projections issued after the Australia 2020 Summit in 2008 saw the age of the average Australian farmer peaking in 2011 at just under 55 years, and then gradually declining past 2030.

mangos

Yet no convincing explanation was given as to where the next generation of Australian farmers would come from. On the contrary, all the indications are that the decades-long trend of an aging rural workforce is likely to continue. According to Mike Yarrow, the heart of the issue lies in what he calls ‘the deliberately destroyed profitability’ of farmers.

In Mike’s view, successive Federal Governments wanted ‘to keep the lid on industrial unrest by keeping the gap between a worker’s income and the cost of living apart’. He recalls that when he and his wife arrived in Australia in 1974, petrol was 7 cents a litre, and the minimum wage was $1 an hour. Both have since risen about 20-fold, in line with general cost of living increases. A box of fruit, on the other hand, was $10 in 1974 – and hasn’t gone up much.

You could take issue with Mike; dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist; say that the Government has never intended to screw farmers; that it’s simply a case of the way the markets (and supermarkets) operate. But that’s exactly his point.

By de-regulating rural industries, opening Australia to cheaper imported produce, and generally ‘letting market forces rip’, the market has done what it always does. It’s a competitive system, and it produces winners and losers. In this case, the losers happen to be the majority of Australia’s farmers, and the big winners have been Australia’s two major supermarkets, whose market share has more than doubled since the mid-1970s.

You could argue that in delivering ‘cheap food’ for shoppers, the Australian public as a whole have also ‘won’ in this process.  Yet as five farmers continue to leave the land every day, and very few are stepping into their shoes, the question remains: who is going to produce our food for the rest of this century, and beyond? Agriculture may be less than 3% of Australia’s GDP, but to understand its significance only through an economist’s eyes is unbelievably naïve and short-sighted.

At a deeper level, Mike is quite right. The market system – capitalism – has always depended on ‘cheap food’, in one form or another, to drive its major cycles of expansion. In the Industrial Revolution, it was sugar from the slave plantations of the Caribbean. Last century, it was the mountains of corn made possible by hybrid seeds, agro-chemicals and cheap oil. This century they tell us agricultural productivity will be driven by ‘environmentally-benign’ GM technologies. Meanwhile, food prices are starting to rise, and food riots are becoming more common. Food is too important to take for granted, and so are farmers. We need to be asking some hard questions.

advocate, Cost-price squeeze, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming

Sustainable Agriculture in the Tweed

Sustainable Agriculture in the Tweed

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 26th November 2011

The Tweed Shire Council is preparing a strategy for Sustainable Agriculture. This is part of the multi-faceted Northern Rivers Food Links project, in which the seven councils of the Northern Rivers, together with Rous Water, have been working together for the past three years on more than two dozen food security and sustainability initiatives. These include a source identification project, a Sustainable Food Directory, a sustain food website and ‘virtual marketplace’, the promotion of land-sharing to connect would-be growers with land-owners, a local government resource toolkit showcasing best case policy development across the region, and support for a number of community gardens and farmers’ markets.

Mount Warning, near Murwillumbah
Mount Warning, near Murwillumbah

The Strategy aims to set out a vision and a pathway in which the whole of the Tweed community can work together to ensure that agriculture remains economically and ecologically viable in the Tweed shire, contributing to the economic vitality and food security of the Tweed and beyond.

As I discovered through listening to the concerns of farmers and growers in the Tweed over a number of days, bringing the community together for this purpose will be no simple matter.

There is amongst many farmers a level of distrust and suspicion of the Council’s motives in preparing the Strategy. Specifically, there is a feeling that the Strategy may be used to further entrench existing restrictions on the subdivision of agricultural land.

For many farmers, in the Tweed as elsewhere, being able to sell part of their land is fundamental to their retirement plans. Restrictions on sub-divisions are seen as almost callous indifference to the huge burdens that farmers have been under for the past several decades.

This is a complex issue, because what typically happens with subdivisions is that they are purchased in five-acre lots by lifestyle ‘tree changers’ who spend a great deal of time mowing, slashing and fighting a largely losing battle against environmental weeds. After a number of summers spent that way, many urban refugees throw their hands up in despair, put their properties on the market, and gratefully return to the city. Sound familiar?

The one remaining agricultural machinery dealer in Murwillumbah confirmed this pattern. Whereas 15 years ago there were five dealers and most of the machinery sales were to commercial farmers, now it’s just him, and 90% of his sales are to lifestylers.

This pattern is resulting in the progressive loss of productive agricultural land, and so you can understand the Council’s reluctance to permit further subdivisions. But you can also understand the deep frustrations and bitterness felt by many farmers. These are the words of mango farmer Mike Yarrow, who has lived and worked in the Tweed since the early 1970s:

The core of our complaint [is] in relation to our deliberately destroyed profitability, which has left us at the end of our working lives – I am 67, whilst many [farmers] here are nearer 80 – with no super, no health insurance, no holiday houses by the sea, no life insurance, no income, no stocks, no shares…the list goes on…all we have left is our land, and many in places of power, or in the community, with no understanding of our deliberately induced poverty, call us ratbags for trying to take the only path out of this mess. I survive on a pension of $250 / week…

Mike has a quite sophisticated theory of what he terms ‘the deliberately induced poverty’ of smaller-scale farmers in Australia, and I’ll discuss that next time.

The Tweed Sustainable Agriculture Strategy Discussion Paper can be downloaded here: http://www.tweed.nsw.gov.au/Agriculture/default.aspx

The Northern Rivers Food Links project can be visited here: http://www.northernriversfoodlinks.com.au/

The Sustain Food website is here: http://www.sustainfood.com.au/

advocate, Alternatives, Coffs Coast, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

Local Food Film Festival, 2011

LOCAL FOOD FILM FESTIVAL

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 29.10.11.

Last Sunday the Coffs Coast Local Food Film Festival was launched at Bellingen’s Memorial Hall. In previous years the Festival has featured documentaries and short films from overseas, covering topics such as the collapse of global fisheries due to over-fishing, the inequities of the global coffee trade, the multi-functionality and vibrancy of community gardens, and the fundamental role that healthy soil plays in human well-being.

We continue that tradition this year, with two excellent feature documentaries. The first, Vanishing of the Bees, tells the story of the not-so-mysterious reasons for the collapse in bee populations worldwide, and the dangers this poses for food production. The second, The Economics of Happiness, argues that humanity must urgently find ways to transition away from the narrow focus on economic growth, and towards economic systems that place human and environmental well-being at their centre.

A big change this year is that, having successfully run the first-ever local food film competition, we are able to present some excellent short films made by residents of the Coffs Coast, telling local stories about the challenges and joys around growing, preparing and eating food. Entries came from Nambucca, Sawtell, Coffs Harbour and Bellingen.

The winning entry – The Bushman of Tamban – tells the story of Damien Mibornborngnamabarra Calhoun, as he provides the audience with a tour of his property outside of Eungai Creek, showing the abundance of tasty and healthy bush tucker that is seemingly everywhere he turns. Damien laments the widespread loss of knowledge about these sources of food, especially amongst indigenous people, who as a result suffer disproportionately high rates of diseases linked to poor diets.

Sharing this knowledge is very important, both to pass on this culture and keep it alive, and for food security. As Damien says, nearly all of us take our food for granted, but what will we do if the systems and shops that we have come to depend on so heavily should break down, for any reason?

Damien, and the winning film maker, Fil Baker, were at the Festival’s launch on Sunday; and Fil was happy to receive his winner’s cheque of $1000. Another surprise guest at the Festival was ‘the grandfather of Australian cuisine’, celebrity chef and owner of the newly re-launched Number One Wine Bar and Bistro at Circular Quay, Tony Bilson.

Chef Tony Bilson
Chef Tony Bilson

Tony and his wife Amanda, who were holidaying with a friend in the Bellingen area, prepared a special local snack for film goers: steamed garlic flowers with a rich avocado mayonnaise. If you can find these flowers (try the Coffs Growers Market) I thoroughly recommend this way of preparing them: it was absolutely delicious.

Tony was also there to tell the 70-strong audience about the publication of his new book, Insatiable, an ‘autobiographical review of contemporary Australian cuisine’.  Tony says that ‘a lot of people don’t understand contemporary Australian food, so what I’ve done is give it a context and a narrative’. ‘The biggest change’, he says, is that now ‘food doesn’t need geographical references, such as beef bourguignon, or chicken provençal. Now food is much more individual, and people are much more interested in texture.’

In partnership with the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, the Northern Territory Education Department and the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Tony recently launched a 10-year horticulture, healthy eating and educational project. By creating communal and market gardens, and combining this with cooking and nutrition classes, the project aims to address health inequalities, improve community self-reliance and create jobs.

Local food, says Tony, is ‘one of the things that give food its true character’; and in his view, the movement for local food is ‘very significant’.

Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, National Food Plan, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming, Uncategorized

Interview: Nick Rose

Thanks to Juliette Anich for the opportunity to create this portrait. Being able to explain at length my motivations is a rare opportunity and much appreciated.

advocate, Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Global hunger, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming, Supermarket Duopoly, Uncategorized

Of thuggery and utopia

16th October – World Food Sovereignty Day

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 15.10.11

16 October is World Food Day. It commemorates the day in 1945 on which the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations was established. The FAO is the pre-eminent global institution charged with working towards universal food security: its mandate is to ‘raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy’.

This year, the theme of World Food Day is ‘food prices – from crisis to stability’. Food price volatility in recent years has seen the numbers of malnourished increase significantly. Commemorative events will be held around the world, such as the ‘World Food Day Sunday Dinners’ being held across the US.

Some social movements believe that such actions are no longer sufficient, and that a rather more dramatic change in direction is needed. So they are now commemorating 16 October in a different way, by renaming it, ‘World Food Sovereignty Day’.

Two months ago, 400 (mostly young) people from 34 European countries, met for a week in Krems, Austria, to talk about what was happening to Europe, their futures, and their food systems, in the context of the increasing application of austerity programs being dictated by financial markets.

Food Sovereignty Forum in Krems, Austria, 2011
Food Sovereignty Forum in Krems, Austria, 2011

Prefiguring the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement a month later and its focus on the unfairness and inequalities of what Dick Smith calls ‘extreme capitalism’, they denounced the ‘model of industrialised agriculture controlled by a few transnational food corporations together with a small group of huge retailers’. This model, they said, had little interest in producing ‘food which is healthy, affordable and benefits people’, but was rather focused ‘on the production of raw materials such as agrofuels, animal feeds [and] commodity plantations’.

In Australia, Dick Smith has recently been talking about the ‘thuggery’ practiced by major supermarket chains, and how this silences and intimidates processors and farmers. In other countries, such as Honduras, there is thuggery of a rather more extreme version. There, following a military coup in June 2009, dozens of farmer leaders have been assassinated by private and state security forces, as they have tried to resist being evicted from their lands by companies in charge of a rapidly expanding palm oil monoculture.

Such examples suggest that the dominant global agri-food model almost seems to have zombie-like characteristics. Unsustainable from every perspective other than corporate balance sheets, it still manages to spread its talons around the world, draining life from ecosystems, forests and rural communities. Its ‘export vocation’, as scholar and food sovereignty activist Peter Rosset puts it, is effectively a ‘model of death’, and contrasts sharply with the ‘food producing vocation’ of smaller-scale farmers.

So what do the young people who attended the European Forum for Food Sovereignty at Krems propose in its stead? In the first place, they demand the democratisation of food and agricultural systems, according to the principles of fundamental human rights, cooperation and solidarity.  Secondly, they want ‘resilient food production systems’, which utilise ecological production methods, and are based on ‘a multitude of smallholder farmers, gardeners and small-scale fishers who produce local food as the backbone of the food system’.

Thirdly, they are calling for decentralised food distribution networks and ‘diversified markets based on solidarity and fair prices’, with ‘intensified relations between producers and consumers in local food webs to counter the expansion and power of supermarkets’. They want dignified and decent working conditions and wages for all food sector workers.

Next, they oppose ‘the commodification, financialisation and patenting of our commons’, including land, seeds, livestock breeds, trees, water and the atmosphere. And finally, they are calling for public policies to support such food systems and food cultures, based firmly on the universal right to food and the satisfaction of basic human needs.

Is all this hopeless utopia, or grounded realism? Increasingly, the growing global food movements are providing the answer to that question.

Collaborative cultures and networks, Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Food policy, Food sovereignty, Global hunger

Fair food from field to fork: food sovereignty

Reflections on the work of the People’s Food Plan process to date in Australia.

It’s a small beginning, there is a long way to go and the work seems daunting in its ambition and its urgency.

But we have to make a start.

Fair food from field to fork: food sovereignty.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Corporate control of food, Global hunger

Food insecurity amidst abundance

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Food Insecurity on the Coffs Coast

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 9.7.11

Last time I wrote about the link between global malnutrition and agri-business profiteering, on the eve of Ugandan farmer Polly Apio’s visit to Bellingen. Now we learn of a looming famine that may affect 10 million people or more in the Horn of Africa. The immediate cause is failed harvests due to prolonged droughts, but the situation is made far worse by soaring commodity prices.

Food insecurity though isn’t only an issue for Africa and other regions in the Global South.

As at 2008, at least 2 million Australians fell into the category of being food insecure, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Those numbers have surely increased in the last three years, taking into account cost of living pressures.

A week ago, power bills in NSW rose by 18%. Between 2008 and 2013, average household electricity bills in this state will double, even without factoring in additional rises that will flow from the introduction of a carbon tax; and they are tipped to rise another 50% from 2013-2016.

For most of us, rising power bills, like rising fuel costs, mortgage payments, rents, and food prices, are something we can deal with. We don’t like it, but we can make adjustments in our household budgets, and at least some of the increased costs are offset by wage rises, or new jobs with better pay.

On the other hand, if you’re among the 2 million plus who are food insecure, these cost of living pressures are a matter of very serious concern.

Being food insecure means that sometimes or quite regularly you struggle to put good food on the table for you and your family. Australians on fixed and low incomes, such as recipients of Centrelink payments and part-time or casual workers in low paying jobs, are those who most likely fall into this category. Others at risk include individuals and families facing crisis situations, such as a job loss or a separation.

There are a number of charitable and government agencies on the Coffs Coast who provide emergency assistance to people in these situations. The Salvation Army, St Vincent’s Paul, Lifehouse Church, the Uniting Church, various Neighbourhood Centres and others are all staffed by teams of dedicated, committed and selfless individuals. They are doing everything in their power to alleviate the hardships of families and individuals facing hardship.

Most of these organisations depend on limited emergency voucher relief systems from the Federal and State Government. In addition, they mobilise their own resources through donations, of both money and food, and sales. Yet they are struggling to keep pace with the growing demand for their services.

This reflects the national trends. Research published in March this year by the Australian Council of Social Services revealed that charitable service providers nationwide have seen a 47% increase in the numbers of eligible people they have had to turn away, compared to the same survey conducted in 2008/9.

The tragic irony of rising food insecurity in a rich country that exports two-thirds of its agricultural products mirrors the bigger scandal of massive global malnutrition in a world of food abundance.

What makes it so much worse is that as much as 50% of all edible food in Australia – 7.5 million tonnes – is actually wasted. It ends up in landfill. Earlier this year Melbourne-based food rescue group SecondBite published research which showed that this food would provide three good meals a day, every day of the year, for over 13 million people.

Coffs Harbour is fortunate to count amongst its residents an inspirational lady by the name of Narelle Milton, who for the past 13 years has been running the Uniting Church soup kitchen in the city centre every week day. Her kitchen, and the food parcels offered by other providers, are now being supported through Food Bank initiatives operated by several supermarkets. This is a start towards redressing the scandals of food insecurity and food waste, but so much more needs to be done.

Next time an interview with Narelle, who received the Order of Australia in 2009 in recognition of her work, will be published in this column.

advocate, Corporate control of food, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Global hunger

Ending global hunger means ending the corporate control of food

Ending Global Hunger – is it possible?

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 25.6.11

On Monday 27th June, Uganda farmer and mother of 11, Polly Apio, will be speaking at the Bellingen Uniting Church, from 5.30 – 7.30 p.m.

She is in Australia on a speaking tour, organised by Action Aid, to raise awareness about the reality of hunger as it is experienced around the world, especially in Africa, and especially by women.

There is a common misconception that hunger in today’s world is the result of a lack of food. It seems logical enough, and our political leaders promote it widely.

For example, Trade Minister Craig Emerson travelled to Paris this week to attend the meeting of G20 Agriculture Ministers to discuss food price volatility, and come up with an action plan to address it. His message was that ‘the single most powerful means of dealing with the food security problem is through agricultural trade liberalisation’. In other words, other countries lower trade barriers to Australian products, creating incentives for our farmers and growers to increase production. We help feed the world, and we get new markets and earnings into the bargain. Simple.

The trouble is, this recipe – this ideology – has been promoted and tried for nearly three decades. It hasn’t worked, at least as regards the alleged objectives of combatting food insecurity and providing decent livelihoods for farmers. Since 1980, the numbers of malnourished people worldwide have more than doubled, food price volatility has become endemic as speculators have poured into commodity futures markets, and the terms of trade for most farmers worldwide – Australians included – have steadily worsened.

In any competitive system there are always winners and losers; only in this case, we have well over a billion losers, and a tiny handful of big winners. Among them is the leading grain processing and meat-packing corporation, Cargill. Cargill’s sales have more than doubled since 2000, while its profits have risen 500% to $US2.6 billion in 2010; and that figure is a hefty fall from the $US3.95 billion it earned in 2008, at the height of the last round of extreme food price volatility. So far this year its profits are up nearly 50% on the 2010 figure, once again taking advantage of the sharp rises in commodity prices.

I don’t know about you, but frankly I find something quite obscene in this coincidence between record agri-business profits and the proliferation of mass hunger, poverty and suffering. It says a lot about the naked and callous self-interest that passes for global culture at this point in history.

You won’t of course find this item on the agenda in the ministerial discussions in Paris. Instead, the communiqué calls for greater free trade, increased production, and the more efficient functioning of international commodities markets.

The alternative to this failed agenda for food security is to empower small farmers in the developing world to feed their communities and countries. This used to happen; before the era of trade liberalisation, most sub-Saharan African countries were actually net food exporters. Now they have to import as much as 50% of their food, which makes them highly vulnerable to price shocks.

Incidentally, Australians as a whole don’t eat enough fruit and veg, especially leafy greens, and we don’t produce enough either to meet the recommended daily intake. So before we start telling other countries how to organise their food systems, we should get our own house in order.

Which brings us back to Polly. Ironically, more than half of the malnourished persons in the world are small farmers; and in developing countries, most of the small farmers are women. Supporting them to raise their productive capacities – and to do so sustainably, without creating further dependencies on expensive seeds and chemical inputs – will make large inroads into global hunger.

This is called Food Sovereignty, and it means looking beyond our own self-interest, to stand in solidarity with inspiring leaders like Polly, and to do what we can to help them achieve their vision of dignity and self-determination for their communities. Come along and listen to what she has to say.