Written By Guest Blogger-Reciprocity Partner: Dianne James

Discovering the Global Peasant Movement – Why the Need?

A Persistant Western Mindset

Globalisation is a planned project of exclusion that drains the resources and knowledge of the people in the poorer nations of the world resulting in an obscene imbalance in livelihoods between the people of  “western” rich nations and those poorer nations in the “south”.

Global agribusiness has brought about a fundamental shift in the treatment of food – from a “necessity”critical to the survival of humans, to a “commodity” where profit comes before any other social or environmental need.

Feeding the people of the world is now dominated by this market-driven agribusiness paradigm, seen as the ‘best way’ forward, and bringing with it a deliberate strategy of disempowering and delegitimising peasant knowledge and voices.

This global policy and decision making is dominated by rich nations and is underpinned by a “western mindset” of paternalism, control and agricultural neo-liberalism.

Paternalism

Within the Western mindset, the majority world, commonly referred to as the “developing” or  “third world”, is most often portrayed as incompetent, inefficient, corrupt and steeped in cronyism. Traditional values and cultures, different from those of the West, are often viewed and portrayed as backward, out of date and totally without economic worth.

Western discourse on the majority world is framed within “development” contexts. These “undeveloped” countries need the knowledge, wisdom and resources of the West if they are to survive in the modern world. The Western driven IMF structural adjustment programs of the 80s, heralded the emergence of the Western “development” ideal: development programs, managed by Western NGOs, seeking to help the poor totally disregarding their capacity or right to be the best agents of their own development.

As trade and food security became more closely aligned with these notions of underdevelopment, fresh locally produced food has been portrayed as “backward” and highly processed food clothed in aluminium and plastic as “modern”.  In Western-agribusiness speak “development” is aligned to degrees of corporate control. Underdeveloped food systems are represented as decentralised, locally controlled and small-scale. On the other hand, developed food systems are represented as centralised, corporate controlled and global. The “development” of food systems is presented as a natural progression from small to big. Most significantly, peasant agriculture is considered less than ideal and part of the problem.

Control of South

In the 1950’s and 60’s, majority world countries wanted to restructure the world economy in a way that would lead to rapid development and a global redistribution of wealth. In response, northern countries set out on a process of global economic containment of these aspirations for development and redistribution of wealth.  This process involved a two-pronged strategy aimed at dismantling the role of majority world governments in their own economies and drastically weakening the United Nations system as a form and instrument for the majority world’s economic agenda.

Sponsored by northern governments and corporations, the economic instruments of the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) formed three overlapping bureaucracies to structurally constrain and control the majority world aspirations and interests.

The single, clearest, most direct result of economic globalisation to date is a massive global transfer of economic and political power away from national governments and into the hands of global corporations and the trade bureaucracies they helped create.

Agricultural Neo-Liberalism

At its ideological heart, agricultural neo-liberalism is founded on free trade, often called trade liberalisation, as the vehicle for world development and the panacea for world economic issues.

Its key characteristics include the deregulation and privatisation of as much economic activity as possible, and the rapid commodification of every remaining aspect of life.  Fundamentally, it is a system of trade designed and constructed to place economic values and corporate self-interest above all other values.  The goal of agricultural neo-liberalism is profit gained through greater and cheaper access to scarce resources, new markets and cheap labour of the majority world, with little to no consideration of environmental and social costs.

In essence, agricultural neo-liberalism has replaced peasant producers maintaining sustainable local food systems with capitalist entrepreneurs producing for the global market

The result for the majority world of this persistent western mindset of paternalism, control and agricultural neo-liberalism, has been the loss of livelihoods for millions of farmers; the depression of rural communities; an increase in hunger in many parts of the globe; compromised nutrition and food safety; increased environmental destruction; and the control of food production and distribution by an ever smaller number of giant global agribusinesses.

The people of the majority world have been the most direct victims of this globalisation project.  They have also been its most astute and ardent critics. It is critical that their voices be heard.

Viva La Via Campesina!

References:

Debi Barker: http://www.bioneers.org/presenters/debi-barker-1

Debi Barker and Jerry Mander http://www.ifg.org/wto.html

Walden Bello: http://www.waldenbello.org/

Francisco VanderHoff Boersma: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f4260p41u8600205/

Jerry Mander: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mander1.html

Raj Patel: http://rajpatel.org/

Dr Vandana Shiva http://www.vandanashiva.org/

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