Small farms and farmers are encountering increasingly desperate conditions not just in the United States, but worldwide, according to a report in the September/October issue of WORLD WATCH. Contrary to frequent news reports, it is not simply "low commodity prices" that are creating these conditions, but a massive restructuring of the food industry. And more than the welfare of farmers is at stake.
As globalization accelerates, the food industry is becoming more vertically integrated, with many of the more profitable functions once performed by farmers now being taken over by giant agricultural conglomerates such as ConAgra and Novartis, says the report. In the United states, the share of the consumer's food dollar actually going to the farmer has declined from more than 40 cents before 1950 to about 7 cents today.
"If you pay a dollar for a loaf of bread, you're paying as much money for the wrapper as for the wheat," says the report's author, researcher Brian Halweil. About 5 cents of the dollar goes for the wheat, and another 5 cents goes for the wrapper. About 75 cents goes to marketing.
Farmers who once selected which crops to grow, whom to buy supplies from, and whom to sell their products to, now have little or no choice in those decisions. Often a farmer finds himself in an oligopolistic market where there is only one buyer for the crops-the same conglomerate that is also the single source from which he must buy his seed and supplies. Forced to "buy high and sell low," the farmer is either driven out of business or compelled to become a virtual "serf" on his own land.
The net result, in countries where corporate farming has become dominant, is that thousands of farmers have given up. In the U.S. breadbasket states of Nebraska and Iowa, where the farm population has plummeted in recent years, about a quarter of those who still remain are expected to be driven out in the next two years. In Poland, 1.8 million farms could disappear in the next few years. In Sweden, half of the farms are expected to go out of business in the coming decade. In the Philippines, half a million farms in the Mindinao region alone are expected to go out of business.
As small farms are taken over by larger ones, and as all farms become more subservient to the conglomerates, the rationale often given is that the larger enterprises are more efficient or productive. But that is in large part a myth, says Halweil. While a large monoculture operation may produce more output per acre of that crop than a small farm does, the small farm doing traditional polyculture (raising more than one kind of crop, using different root depths or soil nutrients on the same piece of land) makes more intensive and efficient use of resources and can produce significantly more food overall per acre.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Brian Halweil, Research Associate, halweil@worldwatch.org
Ed Ayres, Editor, edayres@worldwatch.org
Dick Bell, Vice President for Communications , dbell@worldwatch.org
source: http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/000901.html 21feb02
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