Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their “solution” were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the “promise” of feeding the world.

Politicians and philanthropists, who may mean well, jump on the high technology band wagon. Could the promise of financial support or investment return fuel their apparent compassion?

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation supposedly works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa. While these sentiments and goals may be philanthropy at its best, some of the coalition partners have a different agenda.

One of the key players in AGRA, Monsanto, hopes to spread its genetically engineered seed throughout Africa by promising better yields, drought resistance, an end to hunger, etc. Could a New Green Revolution succeed where the original Green Revolution had failed? Or was the whole concept of a Green Revolution a pig in a poke to begin with?

Monsanto giving free seed to poor small holder farmers sounds great, or are they just setting the hook? Remember, next year those farmers will have to buy their seed. Interesting to note that the Gates Foundation purchased $23.1 million worth of Monsanto stock in the second quarter of 2010. Do they also see the food crisis in Africa as a potential to turn a nice profit? Every corporation has one overriding interest–self-interest, but surely not charitable foundations?

Food shortages are seldom about a lack of food. There is plenty of food in the world, the shortages occur because of the inability to get food where it is needed and the inability of the hungry to afford it. These two problems are principally caused by, as Francis Moore Lappe’ put it, a lack of justice. There are also ethical considerations, a higher value should be placed on people than on corporate profit, this must be at the forefront, not an afterthought.

In 2008, there were shortages of food, in some places, for some people. There was never a shortage of food in 2008 on a global basis, nor is there currently. True, some countries, in Africa for example, do not have enough food where it is needed, yet people with money have their fill no matter where they live. Poverty and inequality cause hunger.

The current food riots in Mozambique were a result of increased wheat prices on the world market. The UN Food and Agriculture organization, (FAO) estimates the world is on course to the third largest wheat harvest in history, so increasing wheat prices were not caused by actual shortages, but rather by speculation on the price of wheat in the international market.

While millions of people go hungry in India, thousands of kilos of grain rot in storage. Unable to afford the grain, the hungry depend on the government to distribute food. Apparently that’s not going so well.

Not everyone living in a poor country goes hungry, those with money eat. Not everyone living in rich country is well fed, those without money go hungry. We in the US are said to have the safest and most abundant food supply in the world, yet even here, surrounded by an over abundance of food, there are plenty of hungry people and their numbers are growing. Do we too have a food crisis, concurrent with an obesity crisis?

Why is there widespread hunger? Is food a right? Is profit taking through speculation that drives food prices out of the reach of the poor a right? Is pushing high technology agriculture on an entire continent at that could feed itself a (corporate) right?

In developing countries, those with hunger and poor food distribution, the small farmers, most of whom are women, have little say in agricultural policy. The framework of international trade and the rules imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on developing countries, places emphasis on crops for export, not crops for feeding a hungry population.

Despite what we hope are the best intentions of the Gates Foundation, a New Green Revolution based on genetically engineered crops, imported fertilizer and government imposed agricultural policy will not feed the world. Women, not Monsanto, feed most of the worlds population, and the greatest portion of the worlds diet still relies on crops and farming systems developed and cultivated by the indigenous for centuries, systems that still work, systems that offer real promise.

The report of 400 experts from around the world, The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), is ignored by the proponents of a New Green Revolution, precisely because it shows that the best hope for ending hunger lies with local, traditional, farmer controlled agricultural production, not high tech industrial agriculture.

To feed the world, fair methods of land distribution must be considered. A fair and just food system depends on small holder farmers having access to land. The function of a just farming system is to insure that everyone gets to eat, industrial agriculture functions to insure those corporations controlling the system make a profit.

The ultimate cause of hunger is not a lack of Western agricultural technology, rather hunger results when people are not allowed to participate in a food system of their choosing. Civil wars, structural adjustment policies, inadequate distribution systems, international commodity speculation and corporate control of food from seed to table— these are the causes of hunger, the stimulus for food crises.

If the Gates Foundation is serious about ending hunger in Africa, they need to read the IAASTD report, not Monsanto’s quarterly profit report. Then they can decide how their money might best be spent.

Originally published on CommonDreams.org

If you’ve been listening to the news in the past month, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about biofuels. Simply put, they are fuel made out of plants – principally corn and soybeans in the United States.

The new Obama administration is solidly in favor of increased biofuels production. Everyone from his Secretary of Agriculture to his Secretary of Energy has voiced their support for this policy. But the production of biofuel is by no means uncontroversial, and solidly at the center of this controversy is Dr. David Pimentel, Professor of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences at Cornell University.

Dr. Pimentel was born on a large farm in California’s central valley, and he later moved to a smaller farm in Middleboro, Massachusetts. After his graduate work in entomology at Cornell and post-doctoral work at Oxford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago, Pimentel got a break when paper on the “life cycle analysis” of corn production was accepted by the journal Science in 1970. He’s been increasingly involved with agricultural issues ever since, and has become one of the most outspoken critics of both industrial farming methods and biofuel production. On both counts, he has published numerous papers demonstrating that modern agricultural technology uses more energy, is more toxic, and provides less benefit to a world of hungry consumers.

Some of his findings are:

1) According to recent analysis, it takes 143% more energy to make one gallon of ethanol than is contained in the ethanol itself.

2) If the entire United States corn crop were used for fuel, it would replace a mere 4% of US oil consumption.

3) One of the possible replacements for corn ethanol is called cellulosic ethanol – made from plant stalks, corn husks and other agricultural waste – but this material is even less efficient than corn and takes even more energy to produce.

4) It currently requires 1,700 gallons of water to produce each gallon of ethanol (mostly to grow the corn.)

His most recent paper Pimentel D et al. Food versus biofuels: environmental and economic costs, published in the journal Human Ecology, is as scathing an indictment of the effects of biofuel policy as a scientific paper can be. He and his coauthors conclude, “Growing crops for biofuel not only ignores the need to reduce fossil energy and land use, but exacerbates the problem of malnourishment worldwide.”

Ironically, in the recent economic environment ethanol production is starting to look a little less rosy for the people who make it, as well. A recent New York Times article details how the “goals lawmakers set for the ethanol industry are in serious jeopardy.” While new ethanol plants were recently being built as fast as possible, the article continued, “the industry is burdened with excess capacity, and plants are shutting down virtually every week.”

I recently caught up with Dr. Pimentel to see what all the fuss was about.

Dr. Pimentel, did you have any idea that this work was going to strike such a strong chord when you did this research a few years ago?

No, I didn’t but that’s what happens when you get mixed up with politics and big money.

But you’ve been working on biofuel issues for quite a few years?

Yes, more than 20 years.

And you’ve gotten some news for your work, but it seems like people on the policy level haven’t listened to what you’ve been saying.

Well, were gaining on the system and getting more and more people to understand the situation, so that’s encouraging.

Have you been contacted by the Obama administration?

Not really, no. And I’m a little disappointed by Obama right now, and the new Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack and Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, and the Secretary of the Interior Salazar – they’ve all expressed support for Ethanol. And that position is clearly not supported by the research.

Can we back up – didn’t your scientific career start out in Entomology?

Yes, that’s true, I started by studying insects but I was an entomologist with broad interests.

So how did you progress from entomology to sustainable agriculture and biofuel research?

Well, I got involved with energy and agriculture back in the early 1970’s – and we published a paper in Science at that time. Fortunately they accepted it way back then.

And I’m really intrigued by your 2005 study about organic agriculture producing the same yields as conventional?

I’m really proud of that study published jointly with the people at the Rodale Institute.

But with all the current press I’ve seen about your current biofuel paper, I haven’t seen people making the connection between large agribusiness and the biofuel companies?

Well, they all work together to keep the system of subsidies and dependence going. For example, the big chemical companies have definite interests in keeping the chemicals going, and in fact that’s what genetic engineering is about, especially the herbicide resistance. That’s been put into soybeans and corn – in fact 75% of both those crops are now herbicide resistant. And these are the crops that people want to use for fuel. All this does is waste energy and promote the use of herbicides that the chemical companies are most interested in selling.

So that’s what this business is all about. It’s not increasing the yield of corn or soybeans at all, it’s increasing the use of herbicides in soybeans and corn.

And recently I’ve seen advertising that they are making drought resistant GE crops to increase yield, but from what I understand there aren’t any proven crops that are drought resistant?

That is true. When they say they are drought resistant, what they mean is that the crop can wilt better than a conventional crop. But if you look at it, it still takes the same quantity of water to produce the same quantity of corn whether they are drought resistant or not.

In other words, it still takes about 700,000 gallons of water to produce an acre of corn whether it is drought resistant or conventional corn.

So Monsanto’s claim to be able to have a drought resistant corn in the next few years is all talk?

Yes, that’s right.

Do you follow the debate about organic farms with GMO seeds, saying that there isn’t any conflict between organic agriculture with genetically modified seeds?

I don’t agree with the genetically modified organisms, but I am glad that more people are interested in organic and are supporting it.

I certainly don’t want to propose that all organic is going to solve all our problems. There are significant problems with some of our crops – like potatoes, and apples, and oranges and so forth – that have serious pest problems that have to be dealt with.

But the corn and soybeans that we have studied and published in Bioscience was a very fortunate combination. We achieved the same yields of corn and soybeans over a 22 year period, comparing organic with conventional fields. That is very encouraging – using no nitrogen fertilizer, and no insecticides, and no herbicides in this study.

It shows that it can be done, and that we don’t need genetic engineering or chemicals to do it.

Are you following the current drought situation here in the US?

Yes, I have been following it, and it’s also terrible in Australia, too.

Yes, and also in China and South America.

They are having problems as well. But according to the climatologists, this is a normal amount of precipitation that we’re going to have to get used to. Of course, I hope we go back to the abnormal levels we’ve been having. There’s no question that we need more water.

And again, I emphasize, to grow an acre of corn for the growing season of three months uses 700,000 gallons of water, and that’s an enormous amount of water. Very few people appreciate the amount of water that is required by agriculture.

Out in California, you might have a better appreciation than we do back in the East.

Perhaps more than some. Here in California, it looks like we are going to be forced to drastically reduce our agricultural output this year due to water shortages, and California produces 50% of the national’s row crops. So it’s going to greatly affect our overall food resource in this country, and probably raise prices even in this depressed economy.

Yes, that’s true. So in this economy and environment it’s not a time to grow more crops for fuel. That’s my main point that I’m trying to make. Each gallon of ethanol requires 1,700 gallons of water to produce – we just can’t keep that up.

Did you see the recent USDA Census of Agriculture Report, indicating an increase in the number of small and organic farms?

Yes, and while it is true that the larger farms are producing most of the food, I’m still very supportive of the smaller farms because I was born and brought up on a small farm, so I’m biased. But I think they have a place, and should have a place, and I’m pleased to see that organic is growing.

What do you think is the future of sustainable agriculture?

When you say sustainable, what do you mean?

Exactly! That’s my question for you – what do you mean when you use the term? In general people don’t have a clear definition of that term.

Well, unfortunately, it means everything to everybody.

Do you have a personal definition?

Organic. It’s a simple clear term, if you’re talking about producing crops in an environmentally sound and energetically sound way. And I don’t want to indicate that all organic is easy and successful, because it’s not. But there are some crops such as the corn and soybeans, which are the two major crops in the United States, where organic can be used and be effective.

Photo: jurvetson

Join Slow Food Alameda October 8, as Raj Patel discusses his award-winning book Stuffed and Starved. Patel explains the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of farmers and consumers and rebalance global sustenance.

If you missed the opportunity to hear him speak on World Food Crisis panel at Slow Food Nation, this is an excellent opportunity to listen to this writer, activist and academic. All proceeds will go to Rachel Saunders, founder of Alameda’s Blue Chair Fruit Company and vendor at Slow Food Nation Marketplace and Taste Pavilions, for her trip to Slow Food International’s Terra Madre Conference as a U.S. delegate.

Held concurrently with Salone del Gusto in Torino, Terra Madre will bring together food communities, cooks, academics and youth delegates for four days to work towards increasing small-scale, traditional, and sustainable food production. It is made up of approximately 6,000 participants; almost one-fourth of them will be between the ages of 18 to 30, reflecting the Slow Food’s commitment to supporting, engaging, and cultivating the emerging youth food movement. Much of the Slow Food Nation staff will be boarding a plane to Torino to participate in this biennial international meeting. We will be blogging from Torino, so check back at the end of this month to learn more about Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre.

Saunders’ jams, jellies and marmalades can be found at various locations and farmers’ markets throughout the Bay Area. For a full list, please visit her website.

Tickets are $20 which includes the lecture, complimentary wine and desserts. Please RSVP at 510.522.2226.

Raj Patel is the author of the book, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He will be speaking on August 29th at Slow Food Nation’s Food for Thought. You can read more about his work on his website.

This is Part 2 of this interview. The first portion can be found here.

Paula: How did the advent of the supermarkets change the way people think about food?

Raj: It was a slow process. The reason supermarkets emerged was because in 1917 you were in a situation, much like the one we have today, where there were sudden food price rises, and retailers were looking for a way to shift food cheaply, and to reduce the price of selling food so they could pass those savings onto the consumer and get more of the market. The way that was most successful was precisely through the supermarket, a way of presenting food and goods to people without having an intermediary.

Paula: So this supermarket idea is what made cheap food the standard?

Raj: I think the idea of the supermarket was to bring Fordism to food production. And what that means is that if you standardize everything about a way a place looks, functions and the way that the components pass through it and in that process food becomes another component that gets trucked through a warehouse and processed. The fact is that most tomatoes are now picked green, because they can stand the rigor of the transportation when they are unripe, and then they’re ripened with ethylene gas. That’s a really unnatural way of eating. And it’s precisely that taste of the sort of watery supermarket tomato that makes us remember fondly the homegrown version. That process of the power of supermarkets shaping the food we then get to select from is a fine example of how this sort of modern life that is geared around convenience is geared around fast food, which has its origins in industrial capitalism and the application of industrial capitalism for food is destroying the quality of our food and is harming us.

Paula: And you say its paradoxically eliminating our ability to choose.

Raj: Well that’s it because we are taught that if you go to the supermarket, and you have hundreds of varieties of cereal or coffee for example, selecting between them is free choice. But it’s not. All it is offering is a broader palate of constrained choices, and thus a constrained outcome. The word choice is what we apply to that afterwards, but in fact we are being denatured [and] we are being made to forget that there are broader choices, that there are sort of strange local fruits and vegetables that require a little bit of hunting down and a little bit of familiarity with food and with cooking, but which are fresher, better for you, and cheaper. But those choices are not on offer in the supermarket because they are not profitable.

Paula: Does that mean that you don’t think that supermarkets could work as part of a sustainable food system?

Raj: Supermarkets work because they fit into a life that demands fast food, food that is convenient, and that is pre-cooked. The produce section in the supermarket is one of the least profitable; supermarkets are kind of in the business of making us buy other stuff. That’s why the milk section is always in the back, even in Whole Foods. That’s the very telling illustration of the fact that supermarkets are not in the business of being friendly. They’re in the business of shifting products. The kinds of social relations that are involved in a supermarket are not the kinds you need for a sustainable system, and by that I mean knowing your producer. If you look at the Slow Food founding documents, they are a declaration of independence from the fast-paced world of capitalism in which food is just another thing that you need to get through the day rather than a moment of sensuousness and pleasure. And the founding ideas behind Slow Food look fairly anti-capitalist, and I think perhaps that’s not a bad idea, because the reason we need supermarkets is because we are working so hard for such little money and for such little joy. We need to reorganize our social system in order that everyone can eat properly. Supermarkets become superfluous in that more sustainable system, because actually we do have time to engage with our food more, and we do have time to go to the farmer’s markets, and we do have income to do that.

Paula: You suggest that, “poor diets are a symptom of systematic lack of control over our spaces and our lives.” What do you mean?

Raj: Certainly in the U.S. and the UK and in Spain you have a situation where working class people are more likely to be overweight. Now that translates into a lot of scorn, particularly in the Unites States, being heaped onto people of color for being fat. I think that sort of prejudice masks the fact that for working Americans, [there is] very little choice about how to eat. Just as an experiment, I went around the East Bay looking for ways to spend a week’s worth of food stamps, about $21 per person, and the only way to make the food stamps stretch as far as they could was by buying crap. I then went to the farmer’s market in the Ferry Building here, and tried to see what I could get for $21. I got a loaf of bread, some cheese, half a dozen eggs and a few tomatoes. There’s no way you can live on that for a week. Too often poverty gets written out of the equation when we think of both obesity and hunger. But the reason people go hungry today is not because there’s not enough food, it’s because people are poor. And the reason that we have obesity is because the choices that are available to many working people are very poor food choices. And that means that those low cost foods have a very high cost in the long term. At the end of the day poverty means that you are unable to control your environment the way rich people can.

Paula: Are there ways that we can start to change how people feed themselves, the choices they have?

Raj: I think that we need some deeper political change around redistribution. There was a time where you could say redistribution and not be howled at as a communist. I think its important to reclaim the idea that redistribution is an integral part of a healthy food system. Because you can’t have such a food system when people can’t afford the food.

Paula: Specifically when you say redistribution what do you mean?

Raj: Redistribution is not just about cash in pocket, but creating other kinds of freedoms to be able to access food. Increasing social programs, reducing the tax burden on poor people, increasing it on rich people, and investing in broad social programs like healthcare. One of the reasons Americans are working so hard is that they need healthcare, and everywhere else in the civilized world kind of takes it for granted, and that’s why a healthcare system would reduce the need for things like supermarkets because people would be working less. Food is medicine. The Hippocratic idea, that food is a way of keeping our bodies healthy and at the moment we are poisoning ourselves, which is why life expectancy is declining in the United States for the poorest people, particularly women. The reason that governments in Europe are taking the obesity epidemic far more seriously than in the United States is because in Europe when the population becomes obese, it’s the government healthcare system that has to pick up the tab. And that’s why [the European] governments are very into preventative measures, which in the United States would be seen as unconstitutional. Things like banning advertising food to children would be seen here as an infringement on companies rights of free speech, where as in the UK the government has no problem with that. They say if we don’t do this, half of British kids will be obese by 2050 and we will have to pay the cost, so you don’t get to advertise near our schools.

Paula: You’ve said that we are not going to change the situation by shopping.

Raj: Don’t get me wrong, I buy fair trade if there is an option. Because do you want hostile trade? I don’t want that, no one wants that. But it is a very American delusion to think that we can together change the world by shopping. Here we are kind of encouraged to think that way because we’ve been so denatured as people that the only way we can think of ourselves is as consumers. But we’re not consumers, we are human beings. And being a human being is a much richer, and more engaged and fulfilling idea of what and who we are than merely people who shop. And I think part of the transformation is realizing that we are richer and bigger, and more beautiful and fantastic and more able to change our world than our supermarkets would like to make us believe. We can change it through engaging with other people, we can change it by growing our own food and sharing that food, there’s a range of things that we can do, but there’s so much that we can be doing that isn’t about shopping and that you can’t get off the shelf. And I think that’s all for the good.

Photo by lyzadanger

Raj Patel is the author of the book, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He will be speaking on August 29th at Slow Food Nation’s Food for Thought. You can read more about his work on his website.

Paula: Food prices are higher than ever, but farmers are struggling to survive, why don’t they see any of that money?

Raj: There are millions of farmers and billions of consumers, [and] there are really just a handful of corporations in the middle that have the power to shape the market. Some of these mega-farmers are seeing the benefit from these high prices, [but] it’s the middlemen, the corporations, that are trucking and bartering the goods. So while the consumers are paying more for food the people who benefit from this are not necessarily the people who grow it, but instead the people who distribute and invest in it.

Paula: Debt seems to be another issue keeping farmers impoverished. How do they get into debt?

Raj: It’s always a range of factors. But once they’re in that cycle of debt, they find it very hard indeed to get out. One of the stories I tell is about a farmer in India, he had a couple of acres, and he wanted to leave the land in a better condition for his kids. So he borrowed money from the local moneylender because that was the only person who would lend to him, and as a result the farmer found himself paying three-digit interest rates. And of course, he couldn’t afford to pay it back, particularly when his test for drilling irrigation failed, and he committed suicide. And in fact around the world, it’s a sort of silent epidemic of farmer suicides that began in the United States with the demise of family farms during the Reagan era. What this points to is that the state isn’t stepping in and supporting its farmers, its sort of cutting them off to the private sector. And the private sector is either these predatory lenders, or just regular banks like we see here in the United States, who are no less predatory for having shiny corporate headquarters. And as a result, more independent, sustainable family farms around the world are facing very similar circumstances with subsidies going to the mega-farms and unsustainable production being the sort of thing governments fund. Whereas good, healthy, clean food is almost being stamped out by government actions and inactions.

Paula: Subsidy programs had started originally as a form of credit. Do you think it is possible for the government to use programs like that to help these family farmers?

Raj: It has to happen. I think subsidies have a bad name, deservedly at the moment because, especially in the United States, we are being sold the idea that the Farm Bill is all about supporting the Little House on the Prarie. And that’s horseshit. If you look at who gets the subsidies, its millionaires. But there are plenty of reasons to think that a well-designed support program for food is a good idea. We fund things for the public good because society benefits from them, things like education, and elsewhere in the civilized world, healthcare. These are things that we recognize makes society better. So I think there is a role for government here, in fact government needs to be involved here, and at the moment the way government has been involved is to support of the wrong side of the sustainability equation.

Paula: The Green Revolution tried to make it technologically possible to eradicate hunger. Where do you think the Green Revolution failed, and what do you think we can do about it now?

Raj: It’s certainly true that there’s been a productivity bump as a result of the Green Revolution, but that’s come at a tremendous human, ecological and social cost. In terms of the environment, the Green Revolution is hugely carbon intensive and water intensive, because it takes a lot of energy to make the fertilizers that the Green Revolution needs. So that’s why you’re seeing in areas where the Green Revolution happened, particularly in Punjab in India for example, which is the grain basket of India, farmer suicide rates are through the roof. The second thing, its not really spoken about that much but one of the tacit reasons for the Green Revolution was to prevent redistribution of land. One of the best ways to increase productivity is through land reform, by giving land that belongs to large landowners to the workers that actually work that land. But the Green Revolution was designed to prevent that because that sort of redistribution looked pretty socialist, and the United States didn’t really approve. That deep inequality still persists to this day and is a human tragedy. Now we are at a stage where we do have these inequitable land holdings and we have technology that’s going nowhere that is actually dangerous to the environment and widely recognized as such. The IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development), that came out last year, headed by Robert Watson and a team of about 400 scientists [sought] to answer the question: how are we going to feed the world in 2050, when there are 9 billion of us? They looked at the options and they said Green Revolution technologies are not going to work. We don’t have enough water, we don’t have enough soil fertility to be able to support the Green Revolution. What they suggested was that we need to be moving to smaller scale, local, lower carbon footprint kinds of agriculture. Now this is very different from the monoculture that we have at the moment, growing one thing and destroying the ecosystem so that this one thing can flourish. And what they are pushing for is an agro-ecological approach where you use the ecosystem rather than destroy it, to be able to create great food in a way that builds soil fertility. I think [that it] holds a great deal of promise for the future. And that is the approach that is being tried, for example, at the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden.

Paula: In your book you talk about the American predicament a lot. Do you see the U.S. as setting the food agenda for the world?

Raj: I do, in that the Unites States enjoyed, from the beginning of the 1990s to about now, a position as an unrivaled superpower, the U.S. has been very much responsible for setting the agenda around food and food policy. And I think the United States is home to the biggest contradictions in food in the world today. There’s the fact that America is the most obese country on Earth and yet there are [at least] 35.5 million families going hungry every year. This is the richest country on Earth, it produces the most food on Earth, and yet there are people here that go hungry. That for me is a telling contradiction of the food system. And that’s why I turn to the United States a lot because it shows what can happen when markets go wild, but its also the case for what happens when people get together and organize. There are some really inspiring things happening in the United States, people are fighting back. And that’s why I live here, because it is possible to fight back in some really creative ways.

Paula: Conglomerates control most of the processing, packing, selling and also have a lot of capital to lobby in Washington. Do you think that anti-trust laws are not being enforced in America?

Raj: Absolutely. One of the things that’s happened in Europe is that the anti-trust authorities there have been aggressively following up with supermarkets to find out why the price of milk, eggs, etc are so high. Those kinds of investigations have not been carried out in the United States. And in fact if you look at the IRS prosecutions of fraud since 2000 you’ll find that they’ve halved. That is not an indication to me that the companies are twice as well behaved now than they were in 2000. I think precisely anti-trust and regulatory authorities are being beaten down by an administration that is being run by large corporations.

Paula: How do we begin to dismantle this? What do we have as citizens take on this large corporate-mindedness?

Raj: Change has never happened because someone gave it to us, change has always happened because we took it. And I think that organizing around food is a great way of taking change. What that means concretely is sort of a food policy council, we have two food policy councils here in the bay area and more on the way, and basically those are local government spaces in which people can democratically demand of their local government, for example, that food come from within 100-200 miles of where ever your municipality is. And demanding that there be space for farmer’s markets, and demanding that there be space for victory gardens, and demanding that there be adequate support for low income people to be able to eat. There is a lot of really exciting local organizing happening. As the current food system heads deeper and deeper into crisis, it is those islands of sanity that will offer us a way out, and allow us to make bigger and bigger changes.

This is Part 1 of two parts. The second part will be posted next week. Raj Patel’s talk at Food for Thought is sold out. Please stay tuned for updates on the series.

Map image courtesy of Ecological Footprint @ Phtbb!!