Updated on 10/13/07
U.S. Farm Bill and the EU Common Agriculture Policy at Crossroads -
A Global Dialogue on U.S., Canadian and EU Agriculture policies
Conference Report, 14 and 15 May 2007
Charles Sumner School, Washington D.CLEVELING THE FIELD – ISSUE BRIEF # 1
Corporate Power in Livestock Production:
How it’s Hurting Farmers, Consumers, and Communities – And What We Can Do About It.
You don’t have to live on a farm to know that there have been big changes in the agricultural sector over the last few decades. The United States has a much smaller number of farms and ranches today than it did even ten years ago. In fact, fewer than 600,000 full-time family farms provide most of the domestically produced food we eat. These operations must deal with a small and increasingly powerful group of input suppliers—seed, pesticide, fertilizer, and livestock genetics dealers—and an equally concentrated group of buyers for their product.
LEVELING THE FIELD – ISSUE BRIEF #2
Environmental and Health Problems
in Livestock Production:
Pollution in the Food System
Over the last thirty years, the livestock production system in the United States has undergone an industrial revolution. The number of animals raised for meat has been steady or growing, even as the number of farms raising animals has declined. Today, we have only a quarter the number of hog farms we had in 1982, but the number of hogs sold has gone up. How is that possible? Only because of a major change in the way livestock are produced—a change that affects farmers, consumers, businesses, and our communities.LEVELING THE FIELD – ISSUE BRIEF #3
Power Buyers, Power Sellers:
How Supermarkets Impact Farmers, Workers and Consumers—
and How We Can Build a Fairer Food System
The next time you visit the supermarket, glance down the aisle and ask yourself a question. How much choice do I have when it comes to deciding what food I buy? At first glance, it probably seems like you have quite a bit of choice. Hundreds of different products line the shelves; in some cases, you may be able to find ten or more brands of the same product. With immigrant communities growing in both urban and rural areas, it is now possible to find a variety of “international” foods alongside the traditional ones in many supermarkets. Some stores now carry organic, natural, or other specialty products as well.
23 Organizations Issue Joint Report Critiquing Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Initiatives
Human rights, labor and environmental groups find Wal-Mart’s
“green” initiatives lack real impact on global warming, employee health and welfare
Report asserts: “When you look at the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by Wal-Mart, it becomes impossible to take the company’s claims to reduce global warming as anything more than hot air.”
La Vía Campesina
- Globalization and the Power of Peasants written by
Annette Aurélie Desmarais, is “… a comprehensive, informative, and intelligent analysis of the current global agrarian resistance to the industrialization and corporatization of farming. The book takes us inside the organizational dynamics to reveal the courage, commitment, and imagination it takes to build coherent resistance. This book offers invaluable information — and articulates hope.” — Nettie Wiebe, St. Andrew’s College, Canada; former President of the National Farmers Union (Canada) and former Regional Coordinator of La Vía Campesina for North America
Fowl Play, a new report from GRAIN, presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the transnational poultry industry.
Under the Influence, a report from Action Aid International, highlights many examples of privileged corporate access to, and excessive influence over, the WTO policy-making process. It argues that governments must take urgent action to curb corporate influence in the WTO and put the rights of poor people before the profits of multinationals in the current round of global trade talks.
Who benefits from GM crops? is the executive summary of a full report (available by writing to info@foei.org) compiled by Friends of the Earth. It describes how the rapid penetration of GM crops in a limited number of countries has been the result of the aggressive strategies of the biotech industry, particularly pushed by top GM crop leader Monsanto, rather than the consequence of the benefits derived from the use of this technology.
The Trade Agenda of European Agribusiness, a report commissioned by WEED and AbL in Germany, explores the goals of various sectors of the European food industry and their lobbying positions in WTO negotiations on agricultural trade.
Oligopoly Inc. 2005 reveals that corporate concentration -- not only in food and agriculture, but in all sectors related to the products and processes of life -- has increased remarkably since ETC's last review in 2003.
The Farm Crisis and Corporate Profits, a report from the Canadian National Farmers Union, names the dominant agribusiness corporations from one end of the agri-food chain to the other. It lists their profits and Return on Equity rates for 2004. The report finds that in that year, over 75% of those corporations posted record or near-record profits. In 2004, farmers posted near-record losses. The report goes on to examine the many mechanisms that agribusiness corporations use to capture more and more of the revenues and profits from the agri-food chain.
A Systemic Approach to Occupational and Environmental Health, by Pesticide Action Network's Skip Spitzer, provides a comprehensive and systemic framework for understanding the role of corporations, the underlying structures that produce social and environmental problems, and opportunities for systemic change.
The Evolution of Frankenfoods? This article points to the similarities between the introduction of nanotech and genetically modified foods. In an unregulated environment, nanotech foods may be received with the same trust gap as GM foods.
Asda Wal-Mart: The Alternative Report This report shows that Wal-Mart, operating as ASDA in the UK keeps costs low by means of harsh working regimes in its supermarkets and depots as well as demanding ever reduced prices from suppliers in developing countries.
Agricultural Workers and their Contribution to Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development This report focuses on the often forgotten contribution made by agricultural workers to sustainable agriculture and rural development. It concludes with a set of recommendations, to ensure that conditions of decent work and fair employment prevail in agricultural industries, and that basic human rights in this sector are respected.
Whither Biosafety? Five years after the Cartagena Protocol was signed biosafety legislative processes are being co-opted. Biotech companies like Monsanto are using behind-the-door tactics to impose GM crops on the world. This short report, also available in Spanish and French, argues that real biosafety can only happen when the realities of the grassroots are taken into account.
A Matter of Trust: How the Revolving Door Undermines Public Confidence in Government - and what to do about it The Revolving Door Working Group (organized at an Agribusiness Accountability Initiative Forum in Kansas City) released A Matter of Trust in late October which expands the work done in USDA Inc. documenting three types of revolving door relationships that serve to erode public confidence in the integrity of the U.S. federal government.
Achieving Fairness in Trading between Supermarkets and their Agrifood Supply Chains This paper makes a series of public policy recommendations, especially around competition policy, that would be required to underpin fairness and equality in companies' mainstream trading practices.
The Global Food System: A Research Agenda This report features data collected at a January 2005 Workshop on Agri-Food Concentration, leading the authors to hypothesize that vertical and horizontal integration will continue to increase among the agrifood TNCs, and that the interrelationships between and among these firms will become more complex.
Global Seed Industry Concentration – 2005 Over the past two decades ETC Group (formerly RAFI) has monitored corporate power and trends. This communiqué looks at the seed industry reporting that the top 10 companies control half of the world's commercial seed sales. It also highlights a new US Department of Agriculture Study concluding that the concentration in the seed industry is resulting in less innovation, not more.
Corporate Control over Seeds: Limiting Access and Farmers’ Rights Increasingly corporations control seeds – and the genetic materials that make up seeds. This article makes a case for a review of intellectual property laws provided for within the WTO agreement and highlights movements of farmers working to protect their own genetic resources from bio-piracy and to preserve the knowledge systems of the informal sector which are often oral, built on trust and defended through the norms and practices of traditional institutions.
US Food Aid: Time to Get it Right This report demonstrates how the main beneficiaries of the U.S. food aid system are agribusiness companies that bid on food aid contracts, U.S. shipping companies that transport the food internationally, and private voluntary organizations (PVOs) that rely on sales of food aid in developing countries to generate funds for their other aid work (at enormous expense and often to the detriment of local producers and traders in developing countries). Urgently needed reforms of food aid are blocked by this unusual political alliance among agribusiness firms, shipping companies and PVOs.
