Are we hungry for change for genuinely transforming food systems?

    21-Jul-2021
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Shobha Shukla – CNS
Contd from previous issue
Foundation. So you have this brazen interlinking between the two, with Gates Foundation creeping into publics institutions and shaping policies. Also transnational corporations have benefitted from researches conducted at CGIAR around seeds and agri-chemicals. CGIAR still holds substantial influence on food systems in many developing countries”, adds Neth.
Abbas Melhim, Executive Manager of Palestinian Farmers Union, rues that, “Military occupations are destroying the sovereignty of farmers. Small scale farmers must have sovereignty over their production to be able to produce the food they want and not become dependent on big corporations. For this they should have control over the resources - water and land - needed for food production. But in war-torn nations, like Palestine, these resources are under the control of occupation forces. So they are struggling to be able to produce food based on the demands of the people rather than those of big corporates for international markets.”
But even in many non-conflict countries, corporate grabbing of land and resources, and anti-farmer policies of governments are rampant and trying to push small farmers out of agriculture. Agricultural land is also often converted for non-agrarian purposes in the name of developing special economic zones.
However, farmers are now understanding how industry is trying to take over their livelihood for its own gains. A case in point is the farmers’ movement in India that has been going on for more than 7 months, against 3 contentious Farm Bills forced passed by the Indian government in September 2020. These three legislations, purportedly called reforms to help the farmers, would actually put them at the mercy of giant corporations. They will loosen government regulations on agriculture and allow the corporates to deal directly with the farmers, opening up the agriculture sector at both ends – production (through contract farming) and sale (through complete deregulation). Farmers see these neoliberal farm laws as a potential death blow and fear that they would throw all the marginal farmers, who form 85% of the total farming community, to the mercy of private players, and ruin their livelihood which is already under severe strain.
Small farmers who produce the vast majority of food on this planet own the least amount of land - less than 25% of global farmland is owned by small farmers. The fight for them is to take back control of water, land-they-till and other resources that are needed to produce food. Covid-19 has shown that if communities have even a small piece of cultivable land, they will have some food on their table and not die of hunger. Moreover, when almost the entire world went under lockdown it was these farm workers and farm labourers who continued to produce food which we are consuming in our homes and cities around the world.
(To be contd)