A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF FOOD SYSTEM ANALYSIS

No. 285, November 2011

ISSN 0827-4053

Trade and Sovereignty

Once upon a time there were great trading companies, such as the Hudsons Bay Company and the British East India Company, operating under crown charters as monopolies. These great and honourable companies were engaged solely in trading raw commodities, not in manufacturing or producing anything other than profits for their owners. Of course, these companies were in effect engaged in a lot more than just trading, as they brought with them to foreign lands their assumptions about their superior culture and civilization. Over time this was elaborated and was called colonialism. Britains relationship to India is the classic example, but Canadians can hardly overlook the Hudsons Bay Company in relation to North American Indians. Contemporary trade talk still refers primarily to commodities, from potash to oil, timber and fish, but commodity trading now also includes abstractions such as currencies and derivatives as well as material goods such as components for manufactured goods and finished products including automobiles, electronics and clothing.

by Brewster Kneen

The British East India Company was an early English joint-stock company formed initially to pursue trade with the East Indies. It was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the largest of which was the Dutch East India Company. The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and opium. The Company also came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, to the exclusion, gradually, of its commercial pursuits. Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, when the British Crown assumed direct administration of India in the new British Raj. The Company itself was finally dissolved in 1874. The Hudsons Bay Company was incorporated by English royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudsons Bay. The charter granted the company a monopoly over the Indian Trade, especially the fur trade, in the region watered by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern Canada. It functioned as the de facto government in parts of North America before European states, and later the United States, laid claim to those territories and was at one time the largest landowner in the world, with Ruperts Land having 15% of North American land mass. Its network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and the United States. With the decline of the fur trade, the company evolved into a mercantile business selling vital goods to settlers in the Canadian West. Today Hudsons Bay Company, now US-owned, operates retail stores throughout Canada.

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EARLY LAND GRAB

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Food crops such as wheat and canola, pork and beef are handled primarily as commodities and traded globally, along with crops with smaller volumes, many of which are consumed locally or processed for domestic and foreign consumption. It is an operating assumption and ideological fixture of capitalist economics that trade between provinces, states, and nations is essential for economic growth, if not for life itself; Canadas agriculture policy has always been export oriented, expected to make a positive contribution to Canadas balance of trade, i.e., more exports than imports. What is studiously ignored, however, is the balance of human and environmental welfare. Trade, yesterday, as well as today, has played a major role in impoverishing peoples and their habitat. During the 19th century colonization of much of the world by the same powers that were the sponsors and beneficiaries of the great trading companies, this activity was protected by what came to be called international law. In fact, as Antony Anghie (Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Cambridge, 2005) tells the story, international law was constructed by the imperial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries to protect their commercial interests in their colonies and in the territories assigned (mandated) to them by the League of Nations after World War I. These Mandated Territories were the remnants of the defeated empires, like the AustroHungarian, and were to be granted the status of sovereign states in due course, when they had become civilized and taught how to govern themselves. By the mid-twentieth century most of these territories and colonies were recognized as sovereign states, at least in name, and found their place in the United Nations, though the UN remained firmly under the control of the imperial powers that constituted and still constitute the Security Council. We assume that independent, sovereign states are natural and good. But what if their sovereignty is undermined, or at least limited by, the commercial interests of the old powers, with international law being called upon to protect the right of their corporations to trade? Not only to trade, but to organize the economy to produce the commodities desired by the trading companies and their patrons. That is how the plantation economies exporting food produced by ill-fed slaves or indentured labour came to be. It is worth observing that the idea and formation of sovereign states, established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, came eight years after the charter-

ing of the British East India Company. In other words, the rights of corporations were recognized prior to recognition of national states. The current land grab frenzy must be seen as a current expression of the old trading companies and colonialism. (See Tanzania, page 4) This is the essential history of the International Financial Institutions the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization and the various multilateral and bilateral trade agreements (NAFTA etc.). It also illuminates the variety of interventions aimed at protecting the oil interests of the great powers, always under the implicit legal doctrine of the right to trade. Now the new doctrine of Responsibility to Protect or R2P, (authored by Canada) has been called upon in the cases of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan to mask commercial interests behind these selective interventions. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a class on economic development in the London School of Economics in 1964. The lecturer went on interminably about the groundnut (peanut) scheme in Kenya, which was Britains economic development project for Kenya, its newly independent colony. The groundnut scheme, like other development schemes imposed on colonies and former colonies, had little to do with the well-being and sovereignty of Kenya and a lot to do with British commercial interests. One can see the same pattern all over Africa and in the nations of the Pacific, even though the countries might not have been officially designated as colonies or mandated states. In country after country international commercial interests shaped and imposed monoculture plantations of crops for export. While the states claimed and celebrated their political sovereignty, their economies remained largely controlled by foreign interests. For the people, this has usually meant a lack of food sovereignty, since the productive lands were used for export crops such as cut flowers, a successor to peanuts in Kenya, or green beans, for export by air to Europe, or palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia to be refined into food oil and biodiesel for export. (Here one could mention Cargill as a key actor.) The trade agreements being pursued today are no more democratic in how they are achieved or who benefits from them than the WTO or colonialism ever was. This is not really surprising since the kind of commodity trade we are talking about never was about public benefit. At best it is defended as an essential aspect of development and we know that development has never been about equity and justice.

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If all of this is effectively, and in some cases explicitly, undermining state sovereignty, where does that leave food sovereignty? The intended meaning of food sovereignty is that management of food I prefer not to use the word control is in the hands of the people producing, distributing and eating it, with as little distance between these activities as possible. It differs from state sovereignty in that it is not just a formal, quasi-legal sovereignty, but a practical and practised social sovereignty, constructed in such a way, and with such a consciousness, as to exclude corporate traders. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is the practise of food sovereignty, all over the world, with its insistence on inclusion, equity, and respect for natural elements and local knowledge, that will be the key to a system which can replace the colonial and imperial systems that are bankrupting the globe.

what is now being referred to as urban agriculture, and much more. Long may it continue to inspire and deliver!
B.K.

Speaking the Truth

In responding to an interviewer from German Radio, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, had this to say: A child that dies of starvation these days has been murdered. The murderer is the cannibalistic world order. That world order is dominated by multinational corporations. The global agricultural market is dominated by some 10 multinational companies that function according the principle of profit maximization; thats completely normal. Its not a matter of attacking them. What matters here is the structural violence of a cannibalistic order. Last year, Cargill controlled 26% of the entire global wheat trade. Monsanto controls 85% of all seed, both genetically modified and normal selected seed. Archer Daniels Midland, Louis Dreyfus control the rice market and decide every day who on this planet will live and who will die. Last year, the Americans burnt 138 million tons of corn and hundreds of millions of tons of wheat to produce bioethanol and biodiesel. The production and import of bioethanol and biodiesel have to be banned. Stock market speculation on basic foodstuffs must and can be banned. The 27 states of the EU pay billions in production and export subventions and swamp the African markets with cheap products, completely ruining the local farming industry. This form of dumping can and must be stopped. The foreign debt of the poorest countries must be cancelled so that these countries can invest in subsistence farming. And land-grabbing has to stop, it must be banned. All of these are very concrete demands that a democratic public sphere could implement today, now. The tyranny of the oligarchy of globalized financial capital has existed for 20 years. Things have been liberalized and privatized as never before in the history of humankind. Nation-states are like snowmen in summer; every week they lose more sovereign rights. And hunger is growing. Minimum wages for farmers, land rights, rights to seed, rights to fertilizers, the legally protected access of people to sufficient food: these are things we can achieve it isnt a utopian dream.
Deutsche Welle, 16/10/11

Toronto Food Policy Council

It was a delight to participate in the 20th birthday party of the Toronto Food Policy Council on October 20th in Toronto in the historic (1850) public space of St. Lawrence Hall. The energy, hopefulness and youthfulness of the event was overwhelming. Looking around the hall during the day I realized that there were really three generations present. The oldest were people like us, among the dreamers and agitators who created the TFPC starting in the mid 1980s. It was wonderful to be greeted by people like Jennifer Welsh, Mary Lou Morgan and Harriet Friedmann. Then there was the next generation perhaps most notably represented by Rod Macrae, the first director of the TFPC. Finally, and present in the greatest numbers, I think, were the third generation, the strong, committed young men and women, including members of the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council, who are now initiating a host of projects around the city beyond the city itself. The Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) connects diverse people from the food, farming and community sector to develop innovative policies and projects that support a health-focused food system. It was established in 1991 as a subcommittee of the Board of Health to advise the City of Toronto on food policy issues.
toronto.ca/health/tfpc/

From the beginning the orientation of the TFPChas been on what could be done in and by the city, not the federal or even provincial governments. Instead of talking about the right to food the TFPC has been fostering and working with projects actually making food available to the neglected and marginalized, as well as working on school food programs, hospital food,

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Land Grab in Tanzania

A small group of U.S. investors plans to acquire 800,000 acres (1,250 square miles) of land in Tanzania and transform it into large-scale industrial crop, beef and agrofuel production. They plan to use genetically engineered seed and other inputs supplied by Monsanto, Syngenta and other global agribusinesses. The deal, if it goes through, would force 162,000 former refugees from Burundi off land they have tended for the past 40 years, destroying their livelihoods and the communities they have built to give their children a future. So who wins? The Tanzanian government might make a few dollars off the deal, but it wont be much, once negotiations over a suite of investor incentives (tax holidays, duty waivers, and relaxed rules for repatriation of dollars out of Tanzania) are concluded. The three biggest winners would be Iowa-based AgriSol Energy, Summit Group (a large-scale farming and livestock operation headquartered in Alden, Iowa) and Pharos Global Agriculture Fund. Iowa State University is also a key supporter of the project.

Department and Agency for International Development (USAID). And its no coincidence that the Obama administrations Feed the Future initiative targets Tanzania for agricultural development based on public-private partnerships and transgenic biotechnology. Until recently, Tanzanians were somewhat protected from the intrusion of transgenic crops by the countrys placement of the precautionary principle at the center of its biosafety legislation. Now, under intense industry pressure, the government has relaxed its laws and allowed research and field trials of GE corn and cassava, with GE cotton around the corner. The last legal protections against GE crops could fall, if the AgriSol land grab is able to effectively rewrite Tanzanias biosafety laws. Peeling back the onion, one usually finds one or a few individuals behind such schemes, in this case wealthy Iowa investor Bruce Rastetter, who is simultaneously CEO of Pharos Ag and Summit Farms as well as Managing Director of AgriSol Energy.
PAN North America, 1/11/11

R.I.P. Democracy: CWB

Upon careful consideration, I think it is fair to say that Harper and Ag Minister Ritz (and Co.) have an infantile fixation on the Canadian Wheat Board as their nemesis, standing as it has on the principles of equity, fairness and good business that the Harper regime simply cannot stomach. It just goes against everything they stand for. And as we implied in our comments in the last Rams Horn, we are sure there is some political payback to be expected from corporations such as Viterra, CN and CP and perhaps even Cargill. One could also say that Harper wants to clear the decks to achieve increased, not to say total, control. This means getting rid of, or buying off, any organized opposition in whatever form it takes. Another way to look at the CWB issue is as a distraction. If Harper and Ritz can keep prairie grain farmers, and their supporters, sufficiently focussed on the Wheat Board, they will not have the time and energy to build a political opposition to the rest of the Harper agenda, particularly on energy and climate change, two areas where Harper is highly vulnerable to broad public opposition. In other words, keeping energy focused on the CWB is like engaging people in consultations where they are led to believe that their voice will make a difference even while it is all simply a diversionary tactic. B.K.

GAPHIC FROM AFRONLIE.ORG

These three private entities stand to gain the most, not only by ramping up lucrative agrofuel production for export, but even more significantly, by requiring as a condition of the deal that the Tanzanian government overturn its current prohibition of genetically engineered crops. They are demanding creation of a regulatory framework that allows importation and cultivation of GE crops in that country. Rewriting Southern countries biosafety legislation in order to start flooding the region with exports of U.S. GE crops has long been a tactic of the U.S. State

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Raw Rights?
I recall attending (and testifying, if I remember correctly) at Biodynamic dairy farmer Michael Schmidts first trial 17 years ago. Schmidt is still making news with his refusal to give up supplying his cow-sharers with their raw (unpasteurized) milk from the 150-cow herd he is responsible for. On Nov 4 Schmidt abandoned a five-week-long hunger strike after an impromptu meeting with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Schmidt, 57, began his hunger strike after he was found guilty on 15 of 19 charges related to the sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk. As far as anyone knows, in 17 years no one has become ill from drinking the milk from Schmidts farm. For Schmidt the issue is not just about his farm and his cow-sharers for whom he supplies raw milk. In September Schmidt made the following sage comments, with which we totally agree: Food safety measures for industrial food production have become the death knell for small farms, small butcher shops, small dairies, small bakeries. Most of the traditional rural infrastructure, as we know from history, has been destroyed as a result. The centralisation of our food system is currently the greatest danger to the food security of our nation. He has also been reported as saying that the government has no right to decide what people put into their bodies. Now one can argue that in a country that still enjoys socialized health care, the government, on behalf of the people, does have a responsibility to limit the toxic substances that the public consumes (like tobacco and junk food) due to the consequent cost of medical care. But this is not a right of government. A government cannot hold any human rights: it is not a person (any more than a corporation is, law notwithstanding). We point this out because of the confusion and difficulties created the minute the rights language is introduced into any subject except strictly legal proceedings. Schmidt illustrates this in saying that Raw milk has become the focal point in the Food Rights Battle across North America even while rightly pointing out that, the real danger of todays food lies in the industrialized food system, which is sanctioned and supported by the bureaucracy and Government. What the introduction of the rights language invites is the attention of right-wing libertarianism, as evidenced by the petition being circulated by change.org,

a website which says its mission is to build an international network of people empowered to fight for whats right locally, nationally, and globally. The petitions described on its website are devoid of any structural critique or any definition of whats right and they are highly individualistic. One of the petitions being circulated by change.org calls on the Government of Canada to Support food freedom, saying The ability to choose what food we consume is a fundamental right. This is supposed to be in support of Michael Schmidt. The introduction to the petition goes on to point out that Hundreds of millions around the world have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years, yet today, it is illegal to sell it in Canada. However, raw milk is legal to sell in every other G8 country as they have a second set of dairy production standards of sufficiently high caliber to ensure the raw milk comes from healthy animals and is safe to consume. While this may be true, and Canada certainly does need such a second set of criteria for raw milk consumption, it has nothing to do with rights or the right to food. Statements such as everyone needs to eat, or, food is a necessity for every living organism would be much more to the point. The ability to choose what food we consume is an individualistic privilege enjoyed by the affluent of the world, not a fundamental right. Rights talk leads to arguments like this: . . . every person who knows their right to food and nutrition has been violated must have access to legal recourse and receive support in claiming their rights. Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, 2011 (a joint statement of almost every big European NGO dealing with aid and development) We just have to wonder how many hungry people have the time, energy and money to seek out a lawyer to take their case to court. And if they get that far, who will provide them with food while they are waiting? There is, we must add, another issue of great importance that is overdue for consideration, and that is the cost and availability of dairy quota which makes it nearly impossible for small dairy farms to operate, whether marketing raw milk or not. None of the above should be interpreted as a call to end the supply-management regime (see page 6).

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Note: While working on this article we received a phone call from Maine, USA, where the very same scenario is being acted out, including the intervention of libertarians talking about rights. It seems that there they have whole towns engaged in the issue of raw milk. B.K.

Fortunately, there is a growing resistence to this cruel treatment, and thanks to a vocal public, it was never licensed for use in Canada.) Nor does the professor seem to be aware that milk is a highly perishable product that cannot be withheld from the market in hopes of higher prices; he compares milk production with automobile production in his call for eliminating supply management (and fair returns for the farmers based on costs of production, not profit maximization). But the final point the writer makes is that Ottawa should offer the EU a bigger cheese quota in return for more access to their beef and pork markets. Meanwhile, Ag Minister Ritz had the grace to point out that the US spent $450 million last year to support its dairy farmers while the Canadian government spends nothing on Canadian dairy farmers, who get a fair price from the controlled market. At the same time, agriculture and trade experts are warning that Canadas share of export markets for food is shrinking and that the Harper government needs to introduce even more free-market thinking in a changing world. G&M, 5/11/11 So we are back to the issue of trade, market access and export oriented agriculture as the solution for what, greater corporate profits that will do nothing to lower the cost of food or provide food sovereignty and good food for all?

Recycled Arguments
1990: The agricultural sector in Canada exists in its current form only by grace of a government life-support system aimed at preserving the concept of the small family farm. . . Canadas highly developed system of supply management is one of the more potent means by which the Canadian consumer subsidizes the farm community not through taxes, but through higher prices.
G&M editorial, 17/11/90

1991 The clear message . . . is that supply management does not work. Farmers are losing markets and consumers are paying too much for food. G&M editorial, 28/3/91 As we should expect, the spotlight on the Wheat Board has flushed out, once again, the larger issue of marketing boards, in particular the egg and poultry supplymanagement marketing boards and the milk marketing boards. (They are not called marketing boards any longer; that language set off too many fire alarms, so their names were changed, for example, to the Dairy Farmers of Ontario and the Chicken Farmers of Canada.) 2011:A good example of the kind of mindless attacks on supply management put in place, remember, to make it possible for the farmers producing perishable foods like milk and eggs to survive as independent farmers, not captives to big corporations was on display in the Globe & Mail 11/10/11. The writer was complaining about the high price of cheese and milk in Canada, compared to world prices and prices in the U.S. What neither the writer, nor the Carleton University trade professor he cites, seem to be aware of is that family-sized U.S. dairy farms barely provide a living while Canadian dairy farmers enjoy an adequate stable income from their farms. The result in the USA is a relatively small number of huge (3000-8000 cows) environmentally destructive mega-farms where the cows are never outside their barns for the short duration of their milking life of three-four years. (Its that short due to the stress resulting from being forced to produce to the maximum with injections of rBGH.

Turkeys and Marketing Boards

The problem is not with marketing boards per se, but with the industrial-scale turkey producers running the show. Being Green, a diverse farm in southern Ontario with vegetables and pastured animals and birds, comments: As is the case every year around this time, we are overwhelmed with emails and phone calls about our pastured turkeys. And the unfortunate response that we have to give is that we are sold out. Since this happens every year, one might ask the question: Why dont you raise more? Well, believe us, we would if we could. However, turkey production in Canada is a supply managed commodity and regulations in Ontario are such that you cannot raise more than 50

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turkeys unless you purchase quota, which is the right to raise turkeys. There is a minimum amount of quota one must buy, which equates to about 200 turkeys. Thats fine, but the cost of that much quota is about $14,000. Its a one time expense that does nothing but give you the right to farm turkeys, and forces you to follow the rules set by the Turkey Farmers of Ontario, who only a few years ago, tried to force organic turkey farmers to raise their birds more or less indoors. Being Green Farm points out that the limit for non-quota turkey production in Ontario is 50 turkeys, while in BC and Alberta the limit is 300, and in Saskatchewan and Manitoba its 99. Being Green Farm thinks the Ontario limit should be raised so that a) people like yourself will have an easier time finding good turkey, and b) small farmers will have an opportunity to make a more respectable income from raising turkeys. At this point, we are not sure we will continue to raise turkeys if 50 is all were allowed to sell. www.greenbeingfarm.ca, 8/11

populations, to create new combinations of traits, said Sagers. In terms of evolutionary biology its pretty amazing. She says the findings raise questions about whether the escaped or feral GM canola might pass on man-made genes to wild species like field mustard, which is an agricultural pest. She and her colleagues said the study, published in the journal PLoS One, also raises questions about whether adequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place to track the environmental impact of biotech products. It is conceivably a very large problem, said Sagers. Crop and forage species now cover more than a quarter of the earths land surface and yet we know relatively little about how domesticated plants influence wild ones, said Sagers.
Margaret Munro Canada.com, 5/10/11

GMO Canola Everywhere

Genetically modified canola has escaped from the farm and is thriving in the wild across North Dakota, according to a study that indicates there are plenty of novel man-made genes crossing the Canada-U.S. border. GM canola was found growing everywhere from ditches to parking lots, the scientists report, with some of the highest densities along a trucking route into Canada. Thats where the most intense canola production is and its also the road that goes to the canola processing plants across the border, said ecologist Cynthia Sagers of the University of Arkansas. Her study stopped at the border, but Canadian research has also found escaped GM canola is becoming common on the Canadian prairies, and swapping man-made genes in the wild. For the study, Sagers and her colleagues drove across North Dakota and stopped every eight kilometres to see what was growing. At almost half of the 634 stops they found genetically modified canola. At some locations there were thousands of GM plants growing. That was a shock to us, Sagers said. At other spots, the GM canola was the only thing growing. In some places along the road where department of transportation had sprayed for weeds, the canola was blooming brilliantly, Sagers said. Of 288 canola plants the researchers tested, 231 were genetically modified. Perhaps most significant, they said, is the fact that two of plants had combinations of herbicide resistance that had not been developed commercially. That suggests to us there is breeding going on, either in the field or in these roadside

Missing the point (deliberately?), as usual: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said that it is satisfied that the GM crops escaping farms pose no risk. GM crops have been safely grown in Canada for the past 20 years. CFIAs media office said assessments, done by CFIA before the GM crops were approved for use, concluded that herbicide tolerant canola varieties authorized for cultivation in Canada are neither more invasive nor more persistent than unmodified commercial counterparts.

Fumigating Crops and Villages

A statement from the Network of Physicians of Fumigated Towns, Argentina: According to declarations from the sector chambers, Argentina consumed 340 million litres of pesticides and herbicides in the last year; and this quantity is increasing 15% to 20% each year. These poisons are sprayed, fumigated, and applied in areas inhabited by 12 million people. The people living in the affected localities have been for a long time denouncing the serious diseases they suffer

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in consequence of their contamination with pesticides. This situation was confirmed at the 1st and 2nd Meeting of Doctors of the Fumigated People, at the Cordoba Medical Sciences Faculty and Medical Sciences Faculty of the Rosario National University, in 2010 and 2011, respectively. There is a public demand to reclassify the pesticides in Argentina. This demand is not unsubstantial: the distances between the fumigated areas and inhabited areas are determined according to how the pesticides are classified in the provinces regulations. Currently, the classification is made according to the milligrams of poison contained in the food given to rats, which kills 50% of them. This form of measurement leaves out the medium and long term effects, like oncogenic, reproductive, immunity and endocrine. Considering these effects, Glyphosate should be classified as level Ib (highly dangerous), specially because of the scientific and epidemiologic data showing that its accumulation in the organism is related to congenital malformations and spontaneous abortions. Also, the current toxicological classification of acute effects of pesticides doesnt take into account a new set of information and data showing the acute damages of these poisons on humans, which follow a different and specific pattern from the results observed on rodents. These new data come from studies of the effects of the different pesticides on

people who ingested them for self-harm (suicide purposes); there is no other way to research the effects of these toxins in our species, because it is not ethical to try them on humans. One third of suicides worldwide are caused by ingestion of pesticides and in Asia, this percentage rises to 50% of the suicide attempts. Dawson et al. published (Oct 2010) a research study of the evolution of around 8000 people who entered two hospitals in Sri Lanka due to pesticides ingestion and they determined, very precisely, levels of acute toxicity for several distinct pesticides. On the group studied, 10% of the patients died, but there was a great variation in the lethality of each pesticide. The problem, as we see, is not exclusively Argentinian; but in this country there is a very high level of urgency and need, considering the quantity of pesticides that are being sprayed over the population and the accelerated growth of pesticide consumption in the rural areas. Nowadays, there is no justification to continue to follow the old classification of pesticides and to authorize the fumigation of these poisons on people. We recognize there are huge economic interests in maintaining the use of these poisons without restrictions, but this is an attack on the July 2011 health of the populations.

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Brewster and Cathleen Kneen

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