food and profit

Eco-farming could double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to a new U.N. report. Low-input farming projects, not reliant on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, have brought significant increases in food production in Africa, south-east Asia and South America. Small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in Africa by using ecological methods rather than chemical fertilisers, a new UN report demonstrates. Farming projects with focus on a minimal use of external inputs, like chemical fertilisers, in favour of controlling pests and disease with natural predators, mixed crop and livestock management and agroforestry (interplanting of trees and crops), the report found average increases in crop yield of 80 per cent in 57 less-industrialised countries. In Africa the average increase was 116 per cent. The report also points out that projects in Indonesia, Viet Nam and Bangladesh recorded up to 92 per cent reduction in insecticide use for rice, leading to important savings for poor farmers.

"Conventional farming relies on expensive inputs, degrades soils, fuels climate change and is not resilient to climatic shocks. It simply is not the best choice anymore today", said report author Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food. "We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development." He explained “Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live – especially in unfavourable environments. Projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3 to 10 years.”

He admitted that it may be difficult to encourage investment into agroecological alternatives from the private sector because there are "no patents on sound agricultural practices" and also because it encourages diversity of plants rather than reliance on monocultures. "It is thus less adapted to the requirements of larger food chains and to the needs of export markets. Therefore it may be less attractive to investors." He added "Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds,”

Alas for De Schutter and ourselves , food security for all the people of the world will only be possible when the profit motive is taken out of food supply. Farmers around the world tell of plummeting incomes and higher overheads in both rich and poor world, of farm closures, bankruptcies and suicides whilst financial pages boast of bigger and better profits for the industrial agricultural corporations. Farmers seek a solution which allows them to continue farming with input and policies emanating from them, the producers, not to the dictates of large corporations. This aim is understandable. The big question is how to move from a model in which everyone recognises the profit imperative whether they love it or hate it; profit on a large scale or small, profit from agribusiness or market stall, from pure accumulation to simple survival, from the greedy to the needy, profit which favours minority over majority in all areas. Everyone recognises it but far fewer question the possibility, the sense, the imperative of implementing a different model, not a few reforms here and there to give temporary help to this sector or that, but one which takes into consideration the needs, aspirations, ideas and ideals of the many rather than the few.
Food production should be about meeting the self-defined needs of people, not a profit-motivated venture for corporations, agribusinesses and their boards and shareholders. Food security is about meeting the dietary needs of all people, at all times, enabling them to live a healthy life and not to be constantly in fear of the vagaries of the market. Only by addressing the monetary element, by coming to terms with the absolute necessity of removing it and any profit motive from the food supply will farmers, consumers and all the peoples of the world have the security of knowing that sufficient food is available to all, at all times and in all situations. Food security for all the world's citizens is just not possible in a capitalist system.