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Corporate Farming
Political economy of corporate farming
M Ramzan Ali
World food industry's US$2 trillion annual turnover is bringing back transnational companies to the agriculturally rich and fertile lands. This old hunger and lust of the corporate companies for insatiable profit can prove lethal for the poor peasants of our country if appropriate and comprehensive measures are not taken timely by the concerned circles.
Corporate farming is being projected and considered as a big blessing in disguise, especially for the poor peasants. But is it? It has had large, complex effects on our environment, economy, and urban and rural social fabric. A new awareness of the costs is beginning to suggest that the benefits are not as great as they formerly appeared. Many of the costs of corporate farming are coming as something of a surprise.
It is not hard to see why. Industrial animal and crop agriculture has been developed with a narrow focus on increased production. The so-called corporate research establishment in Pakistan that underpins modern industrial agriculture has until recently paid little heed to the long-term and remote consequences of the new systems of farming. Industrial agriculture impacts the environment in many ways. It uses huge amounts of water, energy, and chemicals, often with little regard to long-term adverse effects.
But the environmental costs of agriculture are mounting. Irrigation systems are pumping water from reservoirs faster than they are being recharged. Herbicides and insecticides are accumulating in ground and surface waters. Chemical fertilisers are running off the fields into water systems where they encourage damaging blooms of micro-organisms. Mountains of waste and noxious odour are the hallmarks of poultry and livestock operations. Many of the negative effects of industrial agriculture are remote from fields and farms. The adverse effects are showing up within agricultural production systems--for example, the rapidly developing resistance among pests is rendering our arsenal of herbicides and insecticides increasingly ineffective. The Indus River is becoming dry and the entire provincial politics of Sindh revolves around the water issue. Large tracts of fertile lands are now lying barren because of absence of water. Some political elements in Punjab and Sindh are projecting water as a weapon.
Estimating the economic costs of industrial agriculture is an immense and difficult task. A full accounting would include not only the benefits of relatively cheap prices consumers pay for food, the dividends paid to the share holders of fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers, and the dollars earned by exporting goods abroad, but also the offsetting costs of environmental pollution and degradation. Such costs are difficult to assess for a number of reasons. In some instances, such as water pollution and global warming, agriculture is only one of several contributors. Another difficulty is our rudimentary understanding of potential harms. A good example is the potential for endocrine disruption that many pesticides appear to have. Endocrine disrupters are molecules that appear able to mimic the actions of human and animal hormones and disturb important hormone-dependent activities like reproduction. More research is needed to determine the extent of the health and environmental damage done by such compounds and the relative contribution of agriculture and other sectors and activities. Among the many environmental costs that need to be considered in a full cost accounting of industrial agriculture are:
i Damage to fisheries from oxygen-depleting micro-organisms fed by fertiliser runoff
ii Cleanup of surface and groundwater polluted with animal waste
iii Increased health risks borne by agricultural workers and farmers exposed to pesticides
In addition there are enormous indirect costs implicit in the high-energy requirements of modern agriculture. Agriculture requires energy at many points: fuel to run huge combines and harvesters; energy to produce and transport pesticides and fertilisers; and fuel to refrigerate and transport perishable produce cross-country and around the world. The use of fossil fuels contributes to ozone pollution and global warming, which could exact a high price through increased violent weather events and rising oceans.
Among the benefits of industrial agriculture have been cheap and plentiful food; large, profitable chemical and agricultural industries; and increased export markets. All this is very attractive to the profit-hungry corporate elite, but very lethal for the poor workers and farmers of the developing world. Transnational companies claim that there is substantial increase in industrial agricultural production all over the world and all this is being attributed merely to the new trend of corporate farming. This is the half-truth.
There is no question about the increase in production. The increase can also be attributed to improved plant varieties, fertilisers, pesticides, management and mechanisation. All this has been done by the local, indigenous farmers very successfully. The local farmers need assistance and technical know-how to achieve sustainable development. Agricultural chemicals like pesticides and fertilisers are big business. The Environmental Protection Agency of USA estimates that US farmers and gardeners spent $8bn on herbicides, insecticides and fungicides in 1993. The total amount spent world wide on pesticides that year is an estimated $25bn. One company, Monsanto, reports sales of over a billion dollars for one popular herbicide, Roundup.
Unfortunately, such accurate facts and figures are not available to the public in poor countries like Pakistan where MNCs are bent upon manipulating and manoeuvring every thing. The fact is, Pakistani farmers are major customers of the pesticide industry. The big multinational companies earn billions from the poor farmers. They are looted and plundered not only by the foreign firms and the middlemen but also by the callous bureaucratic machinery of their country. Approximately they pay more than one hundred direct and indirect taxes to the governments. Their agony and plight is incredibly indescribable.
Pakistan, once used to meeting the demand of its entire population, is now increasingly dependent upon the foreign firms. Its role of an exporter is being snatched successfully by the new actors of globalisation. An agricultural country from the very inception, it is today importing wheat and soybeans rather than exporting them.
This is how we see the vicious cycle of structural imperialism or the new face of globalisation, designed for the privileged and not for the deprived and marginalised classes. US agriculture has long since passed the point of being able to meet the demand for food in the US population. Much of US agricultural production is now exported to other countries. For example, the US exports 60 percent of its wheat crop and 30 percent of its soybeans. Agricultural products make up 10 percent of all exported US merchandise. All know that when the question of exporting US wheat to Pakistan surfaced the imposed sanctions were removed and amended overnight to facilitate the corporate corpses.
This is how they protect and manipulate their interests. We simply bow, bob and burst. Social activist, Najma Sadiq, has rightly analysed that the government's drastic introduction of corporate industrial farming sans public consensus to attract foreign investment threatens not only Pakistan's agriculture, but also our food security and the future of our already victimised rural masses. In tandem with the new trade policy that intensifies export-orientation, it spells a handing over of the biggest production, employment-creating and profit-earning sector to outside interests on a silver platter.
The full costs of industrial agriculture call into question the notion of cheap food through corporate farming. It is time to transform agriculture into a sustainable enterprise, one based on systems that can be employed for centuries--not decades--without undermining the resources on which agricultural productivity depends. The question is how to do it. The choices are to stick with the current system and adjust around the edges or to fundamentally rethink it. We should think for the long-range transformation of our agriculture to a system that is productive, indigenous and environmentally sound.
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