New UN report calls for transformation in agriculture

Transformative changes are needed in our food, agriculture and trade systems in order to increase diversity on farms, reduce our use of fertilizer and other inputs, support small-scale farmers and create strong local food systems. That’s the conclusion of a remarkable new publication from the U.N. Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The report, Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before it is Too Late, included contributions from more than 60 experts around the world (including a commentary from IATP). The report includes in-depth sections on the shift toward more sustainable, resilient agriculture; livestock production and climate change; the importance of research and extension; the role of land use; and the role of reforming global trade rules.

The report links global security and escalating conflicts with the urgent need to transform agriculture toward what it calls “ecological intensification.” The report concludes, “This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production toward mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers.”

The UNCTAD report identified key indicators for the transformation needed in agriculture:

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Are you anti-globalist?: A question for the G-20 Summit

Photo by Twitter user @paulmurphymep.

This question was posed to me after I was detained for questioning at passport control in St. Petersburg, Russia airport. The Group of 20 Leaders’ meeting will take place here on September 5–6. I had arrived for the G-20 Counter Summit organized by the Post-Globalization Initiative, whose name was stamped on my visa as the inviting organization. Nevertheless, this was a question worth asking, if not for the apparent purpose of turning me away at the border.

After producing evidence of my hotel address, Russian contact person, return plane ticket etc., I was allowed to pass and now am free to ponder this question. More free than members of Russian civil society organizations and even Parliamentarians, who, according to the St. Petersburg Times, have been interrogated by the police about whether during the G-20, they would engage in “terrorist activities” in protest of the G-20. Shades of the aftermath of November 2001, when opposition to the World Trade Organization’s Doha agenda was affiliated with “terrorism” by proponents of that agenda. Although the technologies of official surveillance have become more sophisticated, the ideological purposes behind them have not changed so much.

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G-20 Counter Summit in St. Petersburg

Counter Summit logo.

On September 3 and 4, a large-scale international Counter Summit, intended as an alternative to the September Summit of the G-20, will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is taking place at the Международный Деловой Центр, nab.reki Smolenki 2, and is organized by the Post Globalization Initiative. The Summit’s ambition is to develop new principles of economic and social policy which are not based on the Washington Consensus. As part of the Summit, world renowned experts, economists, politicians and social scientists from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas will come together for panel discussions, seminars, and public lectures, including Dr. Steve Suppan of IATP. Dr. Suppan will address speculation in commodity markets.

Counter Summits have a tradition of their own. These major international democratic events are commonly held in response to the elites' G-20 and G-8 Summits and represent alternative points of view on the most pressing social issues. The St. Petersburg Counter Summit is especially important in light of the ongoing global economic crisis. It will suggest ways to solve the problems associated with the crisis of U.S. hegemony, "free trade" and the WTO.

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Lessons on globalization from Colombia’s uprising

Photo: Twitter / @neontrotsky

Last week more than 200,000 Colombians converged on Bogota for a nationwide strike to protest free trade, privatization and poverty. According to Common Dreams, the strike began as a protest by campesinos and spread to encompass teachers, miners and other sectors of society.

I have to admit I was surprised to see that farmers had been hit so hard, since prices for grains have been pretty high over the last few years. Back in the early 2000s, when the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA)—and the U.S.-Central America FTA, U.S.-Peru FTA, and others—was negotiated, the concern was that U.S.-grown commodities would be dumped by agribusiness at artificially low prices onto foreign markets. This was certainly Mexico’s experience under NAFTA. U.S. corn exports to Mexico quadrupled after NAFTA went into effect, and many small-scale farmers were unable to compete. More than two million Mexicans were driven from their lands.

But that was before the 2008 food price spike, when soaring grain prices sparked food riots around the world and, to some degree, a rethinking of agricultural development policies. Concerns over dumping were replaced by attention to extreme food price volatility and the prospect that prices would continue to increase for the foreseeable future.

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