[asia-apec 867] Women Challenge Globalization and the Erosion of Food Security.

[PAN Asia Pacific]

Feed the People!

Women Challenge Globalization and the Erosion of Food Security.

By Suria Prakash and Jennifer Mourin 


Delegates to the Third International Women's Conference Against
APEC at Kuala Lumpur today called for active resistance to
globalisation in agriculture - calling on the development of
alternatives, including alternative strategies, vision and
leadership, which will provide food security at the household and
community levels for all. 

At the workshop on Land, Food Security and Agriculture, they said 
globalisation that is being driven by APEC and other free-trade
caucuses, has destroyed food security in Asian countries, hitting
women the hardest. "As national and transnational agri-business
corporations take over food production and distribution, this has
further marginalized women's role in agriculture, and destroyed
their knowledge and skills.  Women are now much worse off as farm
workers: where once they were decision-makers and active
participants, women are now being increasingly pushed into the
informal sector undertaking jobs such as weeding, etc.",  stated
Sarojeni V. Rengam of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Asia and
the Pacific. 

To develop sustainable agriculture and provide food security, the
workshop demanded that women have better access to land, seeds,
water and other resources.  But the struggle for food security, and
sustainable agriculture, needs to confront not only the interests
and institutions involved in the new globalized agriculture, but
also patriarchal systems.  Systems represented in its extreme form
in some countries by militarization of the State, which dominates
all levels of society.  Which means, the workshop noted, women
should develop alternative leadership to reflect the whole range of
problems that women faced, and to work towards building a better,
more egalitarian and gender-just society. 

Several delegates discussed the problems of food security in their
own countries, and how alternatives are being developed.

In the Philippines, where landlessness is a major problem,
globalisation has worsened the situation.  Large tracks of land are
being converted to 'high- value' export crops, industrial zones,
tourist resorts, golf courses, mining projects, etc.  Land
conversion is eroding the capacity of the farmers to produce their
own food.  And food security at the household level, and national
food security, is being met with food imports. 

"The Estrada administration had vowed to give priority to food
security,… but the directive in which it is actually going is
alarming," said Carmen Buena of AMIHAN.  "Peasants have lost their
land, and the cry for land remains a dream; there is massive
starvation and poverty among peasants because of increasing
landlessness". 

In India, "the new colonialism in the form of structural adjustment
Programmes is further undermining the already fragile livelihoods
of Dalit (community of women belonging to 'untouchable' low castes
who are extremely impoverished) and tribal women.  The current
rhetoric of women’s rights are women’s emancipation, economic as
well as social, promoted by government officials and political
leaders hides the dismal conditions in which Dalit women continue
to live", stated Dr Rukmini Rao, of the Deccan Development Society,
Hyderabad, India. Oppressed and exploited, these women are now
beginning to fight back to regain their livelihoods and dignity.
 
Dr Rao cited an example of how Dalit women in one of the districts
(Medak in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh) in India were
organising themselves into women's sanghas (groups) to carry out
their struggles. 

"The women oppose the ethic of competition and individualism and,  
collectively, they are demonstrating the power of sharing one
caring", she said.  "To ensure immediate food security for
themselves, they have set up grain banks and also taken several
steps to create sustainable life-styles". 

These steps include setting up seed banks to confront multinational
seed companies; social forestry programmes to revive degraded lands
(creating also employment and additional resources such as fuel wood
and fodder); alternative health care system; promotion of organic
agriculture; and values of democracy and gender equity.  "Through
their actions, Dalit women have demonstrated an alternative path to
development and self-reliance in opposition to the values and
strategies promoted by world elite through international
organisations and multi-national corporations".

"The erosion of community power in the face of encroaching and
centralising forces beyond the control of the peasantry is, in
fact, a political issue to the farmers", according to Farhad Mazhar
of UBINIG, Bangladesh. 

The Nayakrishi Andolan (New Agricultural Movement) is therefore
challenging conventional centralised agricultural practices with
the promotion of alternatives, as an initiative of the peasants of
Bangladesh.  Their alternative and integrated agricultural
practices do away with chemical pesticides, and involve
agro-forestry, livestock and poultry, fish culture and conservation
of water, seeds and genetic resources at the household and
community levels. 

"But Nayakrishi is not just a matter of introducing new
agricultural technology based on nature-friendly organic methods,"
says Farhad.  "Neither is it an ecological or an environmental
movement in a narrow, elitist and 'official' sense - its objective
is to transform and reconstruct the community on new relations and
values.  It is an effort to create new visions for a mode of
living". In this, the experiential knowledge of farmers is critical,
he says. 

Meanwhile, agro-chemical companies are adapting new strategies to
promote chemical-based food production as the sole solution to meet
the world’s food needs – without considering how food is
distributed. This by itself cannot solve the problem, and "we must
continue to assert the importance of access to and distribution of
food", said Barbara Dinham of the Pesticide Trust, United Kingdom.

"Top pesticide companies now control 80% of the agro-chemical
sales, and there is growing integration with seed companies,
particularly by Novartis, Monsanto, Zeneca and Du Pont.  These
agro-chemical companies assert that they can feed the world, insist
that pesticides can be used safely, and promote pesticide
management as integrated pest management (IPM)." These strategies
need to be challenged and countered. 

The workshop recommended that every country should develop a
national plan for food security that incorporates commitment to
growing certain healthy percentage of national food production
needs.  Governments should also be pressed to implement national
plans for food security. 

Other recommendations included: 

Campaigns to remove the Agreement on Agriculture from the WTO's
purview; these campaigns should also push for the removal of
subsidies in U.S. and European agriculture.  

Promotion of national food  security debates and campaigns.

Demonstration of the 'multi-functional nature of agriculture'.

Campaigns to encourage people to eat local and to develop and
support the local economy.

Campaigns against the loss of agricultural biodiversity.

Revival of indigenous knowledge, and its protection from TNCs.

Development of hunger maps as recommended at the World Food Summit.

Assertion of the practise of sustainable agriculture as a resistance
to the globalization of agriculture.  

Documentation of the effects of liberalization, as being pushed by
trade blocks like APEC, including the impact of structural
adjustment on agriculture and rural livelihoods. 

  
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