How the international policies that govern the way we grow and trade food are leading to starvation, obesity, poverty, environmental pollution, and injustice.

There are millions of starving people struggling in regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We’ve all known this for years. The usual explanation is that there are simply too many people and not enough food. And the usual proposed solution is to grow more food using new biotechnologies to increase yield. The truth is that people starve as a direct result of policies that govern the way we grow and trade food. To me it’s clear that the foreign policies of Western governments are actually based on the profiteering of Western-based corporations. In a world where the vast majority of humanity is still engaged in agriculture, the common people are suffering.

Growing Food: Traditional farming is NOT backward

In old world agricultural communities, farmers have developed the means to fertilize and cultivate their land through thousands of years of accumulated traditional knowledge. Farmers in South America know that corn and squash grow well together; farmers in India use the Neem tree as a natural pesticide. These farmers live in balance with their local environment and grow enough food to sustain themselves and their communities, while selling the surplus. The West came in with a new dogma: the “best” way to farm is by using high-yield seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides to maximize crop yield. On top of that, countries should specialize in producing a few different foods, and import the rest.

What has been the result? Previously sustainable communities are now dependent on buying seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides (inputs) from Western corporations. The chemicals from these inputs deplete the natural minerals in the soil, so every year farmers need more and more to reach the same yield. They now only grow a single crop and they depend on the cash from selling that crop. Many farmers are going into debt as they put more money into inputs and get less and less yield from their chemically burnt soil. In India, over 20,000 farmers have committed suicide because of indebtedness and starvation.

Trading Food: Agribusiness sets the rule of the game

An agricultural subsidy is money the government pays to farmers (and agribusiness) to supplement their income and manage the supply of produce. Western governments first started subsidizing farmers because food is not a stable commodity—in some years there is good harvest, and in some years there is drought. As time went on, Western countries became increasingly urbanized and farms fell under the control of large agribusiness corporations. Today, only about 2% of the U.S. population is still engaged in agriculture. This means that when we subsidize agriculture we subsidize large corporations. On average, $16 Billion a year is given to agribusiness in the U.S. in the form of subsidies. We subsidize our crops so much, that farms sell staple produce for LESS than its own cost. The result is a very cheap and abundant supply of food.

So what do Western countries do with all their cheap food? Well, we eat a lot of it. This has lead to a large scale obesity epidemic in the U.S. But we also export it to other countries. This is where organizations like World Trade Organization (WTO) come in. Going along with the doctrine that countries should specialize in a few products, the WTO advocates for free trade in agriculture—meaning no tariffs. A tariff is a tax on imported goods—tariffs make the imported product more expensive to defend the domestic producer. When developing countries remove their agriculture tariffs in a global economy, their farmers are put into direct competition with overseas producers. All that cheap, subsidized food from the West floods the markets of these countries. Developing countries do not have the means to subsidize their agriculture so heavily. Local economies, local farmers, and local produce are wiped out. Large agribusiness firms from the U.S. and EU effectively “capture” these markets. While millions starve, and billions are indebted, the Western companies reap windfall profits.

The truth about starvation

There is enough land and food in this world to feed every person. However, because the policies for growing and trading food are dominated by corporations that are primarly concerned with their bottom line, millions are no longer able to sustain themselves.

–Rohit