Agriculture and food in crisis : conflict, resistance, and renewal

349 Pages·2010·1.3 MB·English

by  Fred Magdoff, Brian Tokar

Agriculture and Food in Crisis
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Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal
edited by FRED MAGDOFF
and BRIAN TOKAR
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York
Copyright © 2010 by Fred Magdoff, Brian Tokar and the authors
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agriculture and food in crisis : conflict, resistance, and renewal / edited
by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58367-226-6 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-58367-227-3 (cloth)
1. Nutrition policy. 2. Food security. I. Magdoff, Fred, 1942– II.
Tokar, Brian.
TX359.A36 2010
363.8'2—dc22
2010039982
Monthly Review Press
146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W
New York, NY 10001
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Agriculture and Food in Crisis: An Overview ....................9
Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar
PART ONE:
UNDERSTANDING THE AGRIFOOD CRISIS / 31
1. Food Wars..............................................33
Walden Bello and Mara Baviera
2. The World Food Crisis in Historical Perspective...........51
Philip McMichael
3. Sub-Saharan Africa’s Vanishing Peasantries
and the Specter of a Global Food Crisis ...................69
Deborah Fahy Bryceson
4. Origins of the Food Crisis in India
and Developing Countries ...............................85
Utsa Patnaik
5. Free Trade in Agriculture:
A Bad Idea Whose Time Is Done........................103
Sophia Murphy
6. Biofuels and the Global Food Crisis .....................121
Brian Tokar
7. The New Farm Owners: Corporate Investors
and the Control of Overseas Farmland ...................139
GRAIN
8. The Globalization of Agribusiness
and Developing World Food Systems ....................155
John Wilkinson
PART TWO:
RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL / 171
9. The Battle for Sustainable Agriculture in Paraguay........173
April Howard
10. Fixing Our Global Food System: Food Sovereignty
and Redistributive Land Reform.........................189
Peter Rosset
11. From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty:
The Challenge of Social Movements.....................207
Eric Holt-Giménez
12. Do Increased Energy Costs Offer Opportunities
for a New Agriculture? .................................225
Frederick Kirschenmann
13. Reducing Energy Inputs in the Agricultural
Production System.....................................241
David Pimentel
14. Agroecology, Small Farms, and Food Sovereignty .........253
Miguel A. Altieri
15. The Venezuelan Effort to Build a New Food
and Agriculture System.................................267
Christina Schiavoni and William Camacaro
16. Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People?.....283
Jules Pretty
About the Authors..........................................299
Notes......................................................303
Index......................................................335
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Agriculture and Food in Crisis:
An Overview
FRED MAGDOFF and BRIAN TOKAR
As the fall 2006 harvest was progressing, corn prices in the United
States began a rapid rise, ending the year some 50 percent higher than
before. “Tortilla riots” in Mexico in early 2007 demonstrated to the
world that the rise in prices was having a devastating effect on the
poor. But this was only the prelude to what has been called The Great
Hunger of 2008. Corn price increases continued in 2007, and were
joined by most other critical food commodities—soybeans, wheat,
rice, and vegetable oils—continuing through June of 2008. Following
the scorching hot summer of 2010, this pattern appeared to be
repeating itself once again.
In 2008, however, the world woke up to an apparent tsunami of
hunger sweeping across the globe. Although the prospect of rising
hunger has loomed on the horizon for years, the 2008 crisis appeared
to many as if it came without warning. Prices for basic foodstuffs dou-
bled or tripled in a short period, and food riots spread beyond Mexico
to many countries in the global South. People were desperate to
obtain a portion of what appeared to be a rapidly shrinking supply of