Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy recently partnered with Raj Patel and Annie Shattuck to bring us Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Recently, Holt-Giménez spent a weekend in New York to introduce his new book and open a conversation about these rebellions.

Perhaps you’ve heard the stats: between 2007 and 2008 approximately 40 food riots occurred around the world. In Mexico, corn prices made tortilla, a staple of the country’s diet, prohibitively expensive for the nation’s poor. In Haiti, soaring food prices led people to the streets, and eventually to overthrow the Prime Minister.

Yet were these riots or rebellions? For some, the distinction may seem small. These were not spontaneous anger outbursts fueled by mob mentality. They were not riots. Rather, they were conscious, political acts. They were rebellions. The objectives of a rebellion–agency and intention–are the essential implications of the word itself.  They are not just a reaction to food prices–they are a protest.

But a protest against what, exactly? The simple answer: against the causes of the food crisis. But Holt-Giménez draws an important distinction between what he calls the “proximate” and “root” causes of the global food crisis. It is the difference between symptoms and sickness.

Proximate causes are the commonly-cited reasons for hikes in food prices. These include grain speculation, increased use of land for agro-fuel production (as opposed to edible crops), increased meat consumption and a particularly poor harvest season in the US, Australia and Turkey. While in 2007-2008 these forces were certainly at work, a deeper look reveals that the food crisis was actually a long time in the making.

A more discerning analysis of the upheaval of 2007-2008 points to what Holt-Giménez calls the root causes of our food crisis. We have a vulnerable food system, one in which 91% of our crops are maize, cotton, wheat, rice and soy. A lack of diversity in our agricultural repertoire leaves our crops open to environmental (not to mention economic) shock.

Think Irish potato famine.

Holt-Giménez sees our vulnerable food system as part of the “agri-foods industrial complex.” The agri-foods industrial complex actually refers to any and all corporate business involved in the production, processing, storing and transporting of food. It is a powerful force to reckon with. Follow its track record, Holt-Giménez urges, and one will see that the Green Revolution combined with the destruction of tariff barriers in the ensuing decades, and the free-trade trends of the 90s, were all results of a corporation-driven food system. These phases increased developing nations’ dependency on imported grain and seed, in countries that had been largely self-sufficient before. Production went down, diversity shrunk dramatically, local producers lost their market and were forced migrate–often emigrate. One million bankrupt Mexican growers, for example, headed for the United States.

There is a danger in conflating the proximate and root causes of the food crisis in searching for solutions, warns Holt-Giménez. When we focus only on the symptoms of the problem (grain speculation, increased agri-fuel production, lower crop yields) we easily reach the conclusion that genetically modified food and industrial agriculture present a “solution,” or an immediate fix to world hunger. Not so fast. Looking at the root causes, we see that loss of crop diversity, market flooding and farmer bankruptcy are actually all part of the quick fix that fuels the agri-foods industrial complex. It is the consolidation of land and power.

We need our seeds and we need our small farmers. We need them not just for biodiversity, not just for distribution of power, but for the pure know-how they possess. There can be a place for small farmers and an alternative food system. As long as our planet has a smallholder population, we have a chance, Holt-Giménez argues, citing La Via Campesina as a hopeful example. Low-input, small operations can indeed be high-yielding. They needn’t be reinvented, just supported. We can’t use a corporate food system to fix symptoms of the corporate food system itself.

At the end of Holt-Giménez’s talk, he reminded his audience that we are political beings, even in the toughest circumstances. Our challenge now is to recognize sickness, not symptoms–and revolution, not riot.

Corn prices peaked during the run up to the 2008 economic crisis at $7.88 per bushel and as the prices of corn and other commodities rose we saw food riots worldwide. Commodity prices soon came back the earth — corn is currently trading at about $4 a barrel. Given that we’re in the middle of an anemic recovery, you’d think spiking food prices are thankfully the last thing we have to worry about.

Not so, say a pair of economists from University of Illinois (via Phil Brasher of the Des Moines Register). In an analysis of past growing seasons, they suggest that commodity corn prices could reach $7 by summer. The reason for the potential coming price spike? Would you believe ethanol?

As a polarizing subject, biotechnology has no peer.

On the one hand, it has potential to raise crop yields, increase the nutrient value in food and speed up traditional plant breeding through marker-assisted selection, a biotechnology that does not mix genes of different species.

On the other hand, biotechnology is generally funded and controlled by large corporations. The corporations then patent the products produced through the technology and sell them to farmers to make a profit.

In the past, agricultural knowledge and seeds have been owned by everyone for the common good and shared freely among gardeners and farmers. This new system is a departure from how food has traditionally been raised. By turning knowledge into private property, it effectively removes the control over food production from the communities engaged in it.

There are many other problems with biotechnology, as well, including potential loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation caused by indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and herbicides on crops that have been bioengineered to withstand heavy doses of chemicals, and the unknown impacts on our health we may experience from consuming genetically modified organisms.

Another problem is with the companies that develop and promote this technology. Monsanto in particular is known for spying on farmers and suing them if Monsanto-patented crops are found in the farmers’ fields – whether or not the farmers planted these crops or they ended up their via “drift.” Further, Monsanto is known for using strong-armed tactics to gain new markets in countries around the world.

Monsanto has also been devoting significant resources to an advertising campaign aimed at thought leaders who read publications like The New Yorker, or listen to NPR stations. To influence a public that is wary of biotechnology, the campaign asserts that we need biotechnology to “feed the world.” The ads imply that if you care about starving people around the world, you’ll support biotechnology.

This advertising is disingenuous because most crops patented by Monsanto are engineered to withstand the pesticides and herbicides the company also sells. In reality, developing these crops and selling them to farmers is another way to sell more chemicals.

Furthermore, the most widely-planted GMO crops don’t feed the people in the countries where the crops are grown; they are export crops for the global marketplace. Most are not used for food at all.

Soybeans, the most-planted GMO-crop worldwide, go mostly to feed animals or for biofuel; GMO corn is used in animal feed and industrial products; rapeseed is used to make canola oil; cotton, of course, is not even a food crop.

All of these crops favor large landholders, not the people we think of when talking about hunger.

With GMO development being framed as the only way to combat hunger, let’s take a look at some of the global hotspots around the world.

Africa

The Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are currently funding what’s touted as a Second Green Revolution in Africa. Unlike the first Green Revolution in Asia and South Asia, which promoted a fossil-fuel dependent form of heavy input agriculture, this new, improved Green Revolution is supposed to benefit smallholders, use genetic engineering to reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers and utilize the extensive knowledge of the farmers on the ground.

According to an article in Seed Magazine, seven out of every 10 Africans make their livelihoods through farming. They produce the majority of Africa’s food but with minimal resources and little support. Agriculture receives, on average, just 4 to 5 percent of national budgets.

This article asserts that the main problem is not lack of technology. It is that national governments have not invested enough in basic programs that will turn smallholder farming into a viable economic enterprise.

The Gates Foundation funding is being distributed to AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. According to AGRA’s website, AGRA “works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.”

That all sounds good, but in an article in The Nation this past September, it was revealed that though the Gates Foundation appears to have learned something from the first Green Revolution, much of what is being funded looks like business as usual.

The Gates project is doing some work engaging small farmers and sharing technology with African scientists, but researchers at the Community Alliance for Global Justice have found that a hefty portion of the Gates money is going to organizations connected to Monsanto.

Some farmers that have been working on their own sustainable, ecologically based farming systems to increase yields say they have been ignored. For their part, The Gates Foundation responded to these charges in a letter to the editor in The Nation. That letter (and others) can be read here.

According to Africa Files, “a network of people committed to Africa through its promotion of human rights, economic justice, African perspectives and alternative analyses,” AGRA is a “hoax.”

Africa Files accuses AGRA of promoting monoculture type farming that relies on heavy irrigation and ignoring the possibilities of economic gains when smallholders engage in organic farming.

According to Annie Shattuck, Policy Analyst for Food First, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, and co-author of the article in The Nation cited above,

“The pattern of the Green Revolution is to reduce agriculture systems to a monoculture crop that responds well to a highly limited set of circumstances and inputs. Trying to engineer genetic resistance to one more circumstance is not going to cut it for the agriculture of the future. We need systems that provide resilience to multiple hazards, and to do that we need diverse sustainable systems that also provide a decent living for the people who work them.”

India

The first Green Revolution begun in the 1970s was touted as a success. But today, it looks more like a disaster in India. While yields did go up, hunger did not go down. The reason for this is the high input technologies promoted tended to favor large, already privileged landholders. What it really did was push a lot of rural people into cities to try their luck there.

Today, despite the Green Revolution, there are famine conditions in India caused by drought and extreme weather. Suicide among Indian farmers has been epidemic as farmers find themselves in crushing debt when technological farming fails. Recent stories profile Indian farmers going back to organic methods.

What’s clear from the stories in India is that technological solutions only work for so long. Whether you are talking about chemical fertilizers, or genetic modification, such solutions are a crude fix overlaid across nature’s elegant variability. Currently, the only GM crop grown in India is cotton, but the country recently approved the development of GM eggplant.

“The myth of “one gene, one solution” to complex problems like climate change and poverty, (the root cause of hunger), is a myopic way to look at what is a complex ecological and social problem”, says Annie Shattuck. “So far attempts to engineer drought tolerance have been a miserable failure. The crops do well in drought years, but not in a normal year. We know agriculture will have to use less water and less fossil fuel in the future. It will also have to deal with increasingly wild weather – delays in the rainy season, erratic frosts, more intense storms. Unpredictability is the name of the game.”

China

Due to concerns about food security while agricultural land is being lost to rapid industrialization, China has been engaged in state-sponsored GMO research since the early part of this century. Details of the Chinese program are sketchy but the most interesting aspect of the program is that it is owned by the Chinese government rather than being funded by Monsanto, BayerCropScience, Syngenta or any of the other large agricultural biotech companies.

According to an article in Reuters, a large budget was approved in 2008 for GMO research with a huge portion of that budget earmarked for safety research. A good thing, because unauthorized GM rice has been found in processed foods imported into the EU from China.

With consumers in Europe among the least accepting of GM foods, China would do well to be cautious.

According to Chinese officials, the Chinese program “aims to obtain genes with great potential commercial value whose intellectual property rights belong to China, and to develop high-quality, high-yield and pest-resistant genetically modified new species.” Currently China grows large amounts of transgenic cotton. Rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, and a few food crops like peppers and papaya are in the development phase.

Mexico

In October, Mexico issued the first permits to grow GM corn. Despite assurances that the corn will not be planted in the same areas as native corn, native corn in Mexico is already contaminated. In a study published in the journal Nature, in 2001, scientists reported that corn in remote fields in Oaxaca was contaminated with GM genes.

This report set off an ugly industry effort to discredit the scientists who published the study. But in spring 2009, the controversy was finally put to rest when another study confirmed the findings of the first study. At any rate, according to the story in Reuters, some Mexican farmers in the north have been planting GM corn illegally.

Turkey

In a surprising and controversial move in October, Turkey (which doesn’t grow any GM crops) put restrictions on the import of GM foods into the country. Some say the move did not go far enough toward an outright ban and will endanger Turkey’s chances in its bid to join the EU. The regulation does not restrict or ban the import or use of GMOs but rather introduced some criteria for their import. Because Turkey does not yet set rules and regulations for GMOs, the government sees this as a stopgap measure until a comprehensive law comes into effect.

Ireland

Also in October, Ireland joined a growing number of countries with an outright ban on growing GM crops or using GM feed for livestock.

The battle lines are sharply drawn.

As Europe, Japan, and some Middle Eastern countries increasingly reject GM foods, look for more action in developing countries as agricultural biotech companies muscle in. Just last week, President Obama nominated Dr. Rajiv Shah as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Most recently, Dr. Shah served as undersecretary and Chief Scientist at the Department of Agriculture under Tom Vilsack and before that was the Director for Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he promoted the technological farming solutions of the organization.

As we debate how to feed the world, we would do well to remember that the problem is not so much lack of food. The problem is lack of food sovereignty. When control of the food system is in corporate hands rather than local ones, people who have no money to buy food on the open market starve.

For more information on the GMOs in the developing world, and other battles for food sovereignty, sign up for the Food First newsletter or check out their publications section. If you want to help, donations are always welcome.

Originally published on EcoSalon

This is an old phenomenon in our country. Studies have documented a strong link between cotton crop failures in the South and the incidence of lynchings of African-Americans. In the 19th Century, economic depressions were often accompanied with an increase in “nativist” sentiments; established immigrants attacking the most recent immigrants as “un-American”.

Richard Hofstadter’s classic work, Anti-Intellectualism in America presents these “know nothing” reactions as an inherent part of the American Revolution’s anti-aristocratic roots — one of the original “them” and “us” moments that divide and define our nation. (The historical irony of largely well-off Republicans dressing as revolutionaries at tea parties over the past summer has escaped most reporters.)

The rise in antipathy we are experiencing today has a more disturbing dimension because it is based, in large part, on a series of failures so profound as to threaten our very way of life. This is particularly true of food.

The industrial system in agriculture depends on cheap oil, surplus water, and stable climate to operate. All three of these pre-conditions are becoming increasingly questionable, yet there is little acknowledgment of this truth in the corridors of government and corporation power. Indeed, the handful of corporations which control the US food system today engage in a systematic misrepresentation of our situation that verges on lying.

This lie of industrial agriculture is at the heart of the increasing vitriol in the public debate about food. The growing assault on the so-called agri-intellectuals — Michael Pollan, Christopher Cook, Eric Schloesser, Francis and Anna Lappe, and others (referred hereafter to as Michael et al) — reflects something more than class (working farmers vs. educated elites) and geographical (the farm heartland vs. the coasts) differences that now dominate the conversation.

Michael et al function today like that boy in the crowd who couldn’t see the new clothes worn by king and called out “he is naked”. They challenge the basic design assumptions of the entire industrial agricuture system and worse, much of the global economic system, as well.

In doing so they raise the emotionally-laden specter of our civilization and our nation being “out of control” as the majority of people understand “control” –- a kind of predictability they can count on in making day-to-day decisions about their lives.

I believe ordinary people, in their guts, know, in the words of Fox Commentator Glenn Beck, “SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT” (his emphasis). Now, I am definitely not a fan of Glenn Beck, who is a racist and a fear monger. But we can’t ignore that there is growing unease about the failure of our current systems, an unease Beck skillfully promotes and exploits.

I believe what “doesn’t feel right” is a growing sense that the financial, industrial design paradigm that promotes a global, resource intensive global economy (including food) is failing.

The evidence of this failure fills the news everyday. In the massive institutional failure on Wall Street, in the health insurance system, in Washington and state capitols, many people can see their personal, family, and community security crumbling. All people, regardless of ideology or party, are increasingly confused about what is happening and, as a result, are increasingly anxious about the future. In 19th Century cotton economy terms, it is time for a lynching of the “other”.

With trillions of dollars at stake, industrial agriculture hires PR/astroturf consultants and supports right wing surrogates to attack the science, the advocacy, and the pioneers of a true healthy, local food system through caricatures, smears, and fear.

Most local food revolutionaries are too polite, too inexperienced, or too afraid to confront these attacks. The little resistance raised is often drowned out by the volume of the right wing media noise machine. This absence has consequences.

As Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.” Our food system is a broken window that we are ignoring.

We are at a moment of fundamental change, not just in a trough of an economic cycle. To survive and prosper, we all must stand up and be honest about the challenge we face and the need for healthy, local food.