President George W. Bush has a new analysis on the global rise in food prices. At an interactive session on the economy, President Bush argued that prosperity in countries like India has triggered increased demand for better nutrition. "There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That is bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealthy, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. So demand is high and that causes the price to go up." While this fabricated story might work to divert the US political debate from the role of US agribusiness in the current food crisis (both through speculation and through diversion of food to bio-fuels) and might also present economic globalisation as having benefited Indians, the reality is that Indians are nutritionally worse off today than before globalisation. The poor are worse off because their food and livelihoods have been destroyed. The middle classes are worse off because they are eating worse, not better, as junk food and processed food is forced on India through globalisation. India is now the epicentre of the malnutrition of the poor who do not get enough and the malnutrition of the rich, whose diets are being degraded with Americanisation of food culture.

Indians eating less and worse

The myth that Bush is propagating is a "growth myth." While the Indian economy has grown, the majority of Indians have grown poorer because as a result of globalisation, they have lost their land and livelihoods. Most Indians are, in fact, eating less today than a decade ago. The per capita availability of food has declined from 177 kg per person per year in 1991 to 152 kg per person per year. The daily availability of food has declined from 485 gm to 419 gm per day.

Economic growth has gone hand in hand with growth in hunger. India is perceived as an economic superpower with almost nine per cent growth. However, because this growth is based on a large-scale takeover of land belonging to the tribals and peasants and destruction of the livelihoods of millions in agriculture, textiles and small-scale industries, poverty has grown.

Earlier, Indian farmers had seed security because 80 per cent of the seeds were their own, and 20 per cent came from the public sector seed farms. Globalisation has forced India to allow biotech giants like Monsanto into the seed market. And Monsanto’s growth comes at the cost of farmers’ lives. More than 2,00,000 have committed suicide as they were trapped in debt created by high-cost, non-renewable and unreliable seed.

Indian farmers also had market security. They grew the diverse crops. They grew rice and wheat for the national food security system which provided them a remunerative price and provided the poor affordable food through the public distribution system

Globalisation has destroyed the securities of both the producer and the poor by integrating the local and domestic food economy with the speculative global commodity trade controlled by agribusiness.

Force Feeding is not Free Trade

While Indians are eating less, India is definitely buying more soya and wheat as a result of forced imports. Imports have been forced on India by the US agribusiness, aided by the pressure of WTO rules and the US government.

This is not "demand" from India, this is "dumping" bad food on India. In 1998, India was forced to import soya even though we had adequate edible oils. With nearly $200 per tonne of subsidies these imports amounted to dumping. Millions of India’s coconut, mustard, sesame, linseed, groundnut farmers lost their market, their incomes and their livelihoods.

In 2005 India was forced to import wheat as part of the US-India agreement on agriculture. These are forced imports, designed to destroy domestic production to create markets for US agribusiness. This is force-feeding not free trade. The US wheat was declared unfit for eating but the US arm-twisted India to dilute health standards to import bad wheat. Destruction of domestic production worldwide can only result in food scarcity and food insecurity and when food moves into the hands of global agribusiness who see profits through price fixing and speculation, a food emergency is inevitable.

The absolute decline in food production arises from three factors. First, the transformation of ecological biodiverse systems to chemical monocultures, which produce more commodities but less food and nutrition for the household and for local economies.

Second, the shift from food crops to cash crops for exports.

Third, the vulnerabilities created by climate change to which industrial farming and globalised food systems make a significant contribution.

Food security requires a strengthening of local and domestic food economies, the defence of rural livelihoods and small farmers and the reigning in of the global grain giants and their price fixing. We need an anti-trust action against the agribusiness corporations which are at the heart of the current food crisis.

GM Food is problem, not solution

There is also an increasing reference to new seeds and genetically modified crops as a solution to the food crisis. However, GM crops are part of the food crisis. Bt. Cotton has destroyed food production in India and has pushed farmers to suicide. Cotton used to be grown as an intercrop with food crops. Now it is a monoculture. And with high costs of production and low prices of produce, farmers are trapped in debt and hunger. In any case, GM seeds do not produce more food. There are only two traits commercialised in 20 years — herbicide resistant crops, and Bt. toxin crops. Neither is a yield trait. In India we see high risks of crop failure with average yields of Bt. Cotton at 300-400 kg per acre. Not 1,500 kg per acre as advertised by Monsanto.

The present crisis is in part a consequence of transforming biodiverse systems to monocultures of globally traded commodities. With commodities getting transformed to feed and fuel, there is a shortage in food availability. Unless food sovereignty is put back in the equation, the crisis will continue to deepen.

Food Sovereignty is the answer

The current food emergency is a result of half a century of non-sustainable farming and one-and-a-half decades of trading unfairly in food. The United Nations has called an emergency meeting in early June to address the food emergency. Even the World Bank has called for an urgent response.

Will the response intensify non-sustainability and injustice, or will the global community use the crisis to strengthen sustainability, justice and fairness?

There are already signals that global agribusiness, which has created the crisis (both historically and currently), will use it to increase its stranglehold on the world food system. Lowering import duties has been one response of governments to deal with rising food prices. But lowering import duties encourages destruction of domestic markets and domestic production, thus aggravating the agrarian crisis. The crisis of rising food prices is a direct result of countries being forced by the World Bank, WTO and regional and bilateral agreements to import food from the US agribusiness.

The World Bank call to increase contributions to the World Food Programme by $500 million and President Bush’s call to Congress to add $770 million in food aid could become another subsidy to Cargill and ADM if the procurement is not based on creating fair markets for farmers at the local and regional levels.

The globalised system under corporate control is a guaranteed recipe for food disasters and food famines. We can either stop the damage through food democracy and rebuild food sovereignty by strengthening local economies or the corporate powers that have created the emergency will use it to deepen and expand their profits. While billions are condemned to starvation and death, they will use political leaders like President Bush to give a false spin on the causes of the food crisis.

Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/why-bush-is-wrong-in-blaming-indians.aspx

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