It is more than troublesome that every day we see examples of what might be seen as David v Goliath or big business trying to "squash" the little guy. Yet another example of this is exemplified in this piece "The World Bank and the Battle for the Future of Farming" on CommonDreams.
"There is a battle raging over the future of farming on this planet, and the front line, this week, is at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC.
There are two visions. They are often portrayed as being about differences in technical approaches but are, in truth, far more fundamental. This is a battle over nothing less than the structure of global power and the sustainability of life on this planet.
In one corner are the World Bank and its financial backers, primarily rich country governments, multinational agriculture corporations and large private foundations. Their vision is one in which farming is seen, first and foremost, as a mega-industry, primarily concerned with efficiency, output and profitability. The way they go about this is to promote “business friendly” policy environments and aggressive structural reform programs focused on liberalizing economies to make them more amenable to large multinational businesses and foreign investment. Their case rests on the claim that the only way to feed a growing world population is to focus on increasing overall food production through more widespread use of genetically modified seeds and the synthetic fertilizer and pesticides that they need, economies-of-scale, and vast, centrally planned industrial farming operations.
In the other corner are a group of 260 NGOs, think tanks, smallholder farmer’s groups, environmental organizations and trade unions, of which /The Rules, the organization I work for, is one. Our collective vision is one in which power is not centralized in corporate boardrooms and the offices of global institutions but held by farmers themselves. Our case is built on the fact that the real problem isn’t that we are, or will be, short of food in any aggregate sense, but that it is poorly distributed because of deep imbalances of power. Throwing vast amounts of money at large corporate models, and telling governments to put in place rules that focus solely on bolstering the ability of large institutions to grab huge tracts of land for industrial, often mono-culture farms, only deepens those power imbalances. It also does incredible harm to the health of the soil and the wider environment. Far better to invest that money in smallholder farmers and regenerative farming methods that are perfectly capable of feeding a growing population; can do so in ways that can help reverse the pattern of pollution by the agricultural industry (the world’s largest single source of greenhouse gasses); and help foster a more equitable distribution of power in an increasingly unequal world."
"There is a battle raging over the future of farming on this planet, and the front line, this week, is at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC.
There are two visions. They are often portrayed as being about differences in technical approaches but are, in truth, far more fundamental. This is a battle over nothing less than the structure of global power and the sustainability of life on this planet.
In one corner are the World Bank and its financial backers, primarily rich country governments, multinational agriculture corporations and large private foundations. Their vision is one in which farming is seen, first and foremost, as a mega-industry, primarily concerned with efficiency, output and profitability. The way they go about this is to promote “business friendly” policy environments and aggressive structural reform programs focused on liberalizing economies to make them more amenable to large multinational businesses and foreign investment. Their case rests on the claim that the only way to feed a growing world population is to focus on increasing overall food production through more widespread use of genetically modified seeds and the synthetic fertilizer and pesticides that they need, economies-of-scale, and vast, centrally planned industrial farming operations.
In the other corner are a group of 260 NGOs, think tanks, smallholder farmer’s groups, environmental organizations and trade unions, of which /The Rules, the organization I work for, is one. Our collective vision is one in which power is not centralized in corporate boardrooms and the offices of global institutions but held by farmers themselves. Our case is built on the fact that the real problem isn’t that we are, or will be, short of food in any aggregate sense, but that it is poorly distributed because of deep imbalances of power. Throwing vast amounts of money at large corporate models, and telling governments to put in place rules that focus solely on bolstering the ability of large institutions to grab huge tracts of land for industrial, often mono-culture farms, only deepens those power imbalances. It also does incredible harm to the health of the soil and the wider environment. Far better to invest that money in smallholder farmers and regenerative farming methods that are perfectly capable of feeding a growing population; can do so in ways that can help reverse the pattern of pollution by the agricultural industry (the world’s largest single source of greenhouse gasses); and help foster a more equitable distribution of power in an increasingly unequal world."
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