NFU and Lord Sainsbury lead UK farmers to US-style GM slavery
April 2001
It is remarkable how narrow the vision of the National Farmers Union of England and Wales has become in supporting the UK GM farmscale trials whose non-scientific design [1] is aimed at legitimising the commercialisation of GM crops in 2003.
Having already been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by the supermarkets on the output side of British farming the NFU is now lining its members up to be dominated by the biotechnology sector at the other end of the food chain.
The latest report from US farmer news service Cropchoice [2] confirms the following commercial realities in relation to GM crops in the US:
Here's what some farmers and their advisers are now saying about the GM situation in the US as reported by Cropchoice [2]:
"And we've been saving seed that long. It's a God given right that was passed on to us by our ancestors. It's never been disputed until now, when big corporations are misusing patents to take those rights away from American farmers. The reason they're doing this is to control all the food and fiber in the world. They do this by controlling seed...... Monsanto is a very farmer-unfriendly company and when the American people realize that it's trying to control all the food, they'll dislike them as well. They won't want a corporation to control all their food. Monsanto has 36 paid lobbyists in Congress and put millions of dollars into the Democratic and Republican House and Senate campaigns. Monsanto is misusing patents to monopolize the seed industry."
Mitchell Scruggs, Mississippi farmer growing 13,000 acres of soybean and 4,700 acres of cotton"Monsanto has a stranglehold on this industry. They have the technology. Ninety five percent of what we sell will be Roundup Ready soybeans and corn. A lot of the corn is Bt."
Bob Young, owner and operator of Memphis-based Seeds
"We don't like gmo (genetically modified organisms) here because it yields less......No farmers are buying into the higher yields stuff....[and] I don't know how Monsanto is getting away with saying that we're using less pesticides."
North Dakota soybean farmer Rodney Nelson"2,4-D goes on soybeans at about 0.4 pounds (active ingredient) per acre. Add in two applications of Roundup at the average 0.7 pound rate, and a grower is applying just under 2 pounds of herbicide per acre....Roundup Ready technology has its virtues but sustainability and reducing herbicide use are not among them,"
Agricultural economist and consultant Charles Benbrook, pointing out that as weeds develop resistance to Roundup, farmers have to use other herbicides, such as 2,4-D
Meanwhile a report by the University of Missouri [3], commissioned by the US National Farmers Union and published earlier this year, shows how corporate consolidation elsewhere in the food chain (food processing, supermarkets etc) has simultaneously been allowed to destroy farming communities right across the US. The report concludes that the same monopolistic tendancies in the global economic system that have been squeezing farmers via 'food chain clusters' (much of whose power is based on access to biotechnology - see earlier 1999 report commissioned by US NFU [4]) are now also increasingly being applied from the retail end of the food chain:
"Some economists point to globalization and question whether we need US farmers. Although US farmers may be very efficient, they have integrated the cost of environmental, health and safety standards into their costs of production, and are therefore high cost producers, compared to countries that do not require such standards. Thus, we can (and do) import much of our food cheaper than we can produce it.
At some point, citizens must ask what kind of a food system they want and then design our food and farm policies to create and encourage that system.....
....Wal-Mart's large size and market power causes concern as it integrates backward in the food system by creating relationships with dominant food chain clusters identified by us in the 1999 report........
Not to be left out, European retailers are undergoing the same rapid consolidation as their US cousins. According to McKinsey, a European management consulting organization, ' . . . only the Wal-Mart threat can explain a sharp rise in mergers involving European rivals' ..... In 1998, $12.4 billion worth of mergers in the European food-retailing sector happened. Moreover, ' . . . almost half were acquisitions or alliances outside domestic markets, against 20 percent five years ago' ....
'This is a global phenomenon,' says Mark Husson, a supermarket analyst for Merrill Lynch in New York .....
The perception of the threat Wal-Mart poses on a global level is so dramatic that two French retailers, Carrefour and Promodes, announced their merger as a way to cope with Wal-Mart on a global scale...Carrefour's merger with Promodes created the second largest retailer in the world......
Some analysts predict there will be only six or so global food retailers in the near future - Wal-Mart and the European firms of Carrefour, Ahold and Tesco (UK) are likely contenders.....
As retailers grow larger through acquisitions and mergers, they develop their own vertically integrated distribution systems that tend to shut out wholesalers, small processors and smaller retailers.....These large retail firms are able to develop one-on-one relationships with dominant food manufacturers that can service their far-flung systems....Thus, food manufacturers become more focused on serving the interests of food retailers rather than the interests of farmers.....
To survive and thrive in the global food system, most US farmers need new or alternative markets. To that end, many farmers, as well as processors, have looked to the rapid expansion of organic food sales....
....[but] organic or other alternative markets are subject to the same forces that have reorganized the conventional system...
Obviously, power is ever shifting in the food system. Two years ago, it appeared that access to biotechnology and the resulting seed stock was an important indicator of power..... It could be that new nodes of power are developing in the global food system based on who has access to the consumer and who has the ability to condition consumer wants..... The question still remains, though - where is the farmer in this emerging system and what decision-making power does he or she have?
Most likely, farmers will continue to be at the mercy of cost cutting and profit-improvement strategies of more dominant firms in the food chain clusters......
This loss of US farmers makes little difference to transnational corporations, whether they are headquartered in the US - as are many of the dominant agro/food processors, or in other countries - as are most of the emerging retail firms. They travel the world to find where they can 'source' the product with the least cost and then move the product where it can be sold for the highest price. In many of the poor countries, workers in rural areas receive less than five dollars a day. Health and environmental regulations, if they exist, are rarely enforced so firms can operate with lower costs in these countries. Transnational corporations are experts at reaping the economic benefits of globalization while pushing the economic, social, environmental and other costs onto the public. If regulations in this country are implemented to prevent corporations from shifting costs to the public sector, but nothing is done to prevent them from shifting the cost in other countries, then farmers in this country automatically become high cost producers........
Just a half-century ago, economists were justifying and promoting a decentralized agriculture production and processing system. As the economic system changed, so also did the economic theory that justified it. Today, much economic theory defends a highly centralized monopolistic or near monopolistic system....
A growing chorus of voices from a wide variety of political backgrounds is beginning to challenge the ideology - the assumptions, beliefs and values - of neoclassical economic theory that underpins the current economic system. Many feel that the loss of economic democracy may also lead to a loss of political democracy - and nowhere is that more apparent than in food.
The massive consolidation in food retailing that has taken place in the last few years seems to indicate that power is shifting toward the retail sector, as the structure of the agricultural system is determined by what consumers are conditioned to eat.....
Long protected from the ups and downs of the commodity markets, consumers are now beginning to see a direct economic impact from this near monopolistic food system as they experience increases in their food prices even when prices farmers receive for a commodity ......declines..... When will consumers become more proactive in challenging this emerging system?
For all of us, the question remains, who is going to have the power to make decisions about what food is produced, who will produce it, where and under what conditions it will be produced, and ultimately who will get to eat?..."
Oblivious to what is happening in America, back across the pond the National Farmers Union of England and Wales is gallantly leading UK agriculture into the same combined globalisation and biotechnology trap. Why aren't they paying attention to what is going on in north America where the reality of GM crops and food chain monopolisation, both up and downstream, is there for all to see?
Why has
the fact that the Canadian NFU has called for 'a moratorium on the
production, importation, distribution and sale of GM food', and the
Canadian Wheat Board for a moratorium on the introduction of GM
wheat, not registered with the NFU of England and Wales? Where
has the NFU been for the last few years? Why repeat the North
American experience - why not learn from it?
The battle for farm and food freedom in the UK is now being left
to consumers as Britain's farming leaders role over and have
their tummies tickled by the biotechnology industry. The recent
words of Indiana prairie farmer Tom Bechman to one of his own
advisers are a poignant pointer to the GMO blunder the NFU is
leading its members into:
"Why didn't you tell us about all of these potential
negatives a long time ago. Where have you been for the last two
or three years? I came here this morning feeling pretty good. But
now you've got me very concerned about where we're going to sell
our GMO-crops in the future. It's not right that you let us all
get hooked growing these GMO-crops and now tell us that maybe we
should be growing something else." [5]
Meanwhile back to the supermarkets. Isn't it
interesting that Lord Sainsbury of Turville's personal and
financial interests span biotechnology, food retailing, and
driving UK government policy in relation to technology and trade?
He is simultaneously [6]:
To reiterate the University of Missouri report: "Many feel that the loss of economic democracy may also lead to a loss of political democracy - and nowhere is that more apparent than in food."
NATURAL LAW PARTY
WESSEX
nlpwessex@bigfoot.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex
Footnotes:
1. 'US data reveals UK GM trials unscientific': 21 February 2000, NLPWessex www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/gmtrialsscience.htm
2. 'Mississippi farmer fights for the
right to save seed': 6 April 2001, Farm News from Cropchoice
http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?RecID=285
3. 'CONSOLIDATION
IN FOOD RETAILING AND DAIRY: Implications for Farmers and
Consumers in a Global Food System', Report to National Farmers
Union, Jan 2001, University of Missouri
http://www.nfu.org/index.cfm?category=legislative&title=issues&id=67
4. 'US corporate link up with UK co-op rings GM alarm bells': 1
March 1999, ngin
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/scats.htm
5. 'Why Didn't You Warn Me About GMO's?'
Farm Progress, 23 March 2001
http://www.directag.com/directag/news/article.jhtml?article_id=1000991
6.
'Meddling Minister revealed: Sainsbury's links to the
'Frankenstein food' industry', Daily Mail 9 Feb 99: http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/rw90212.htm#01
'Blair defends
billionaire cabinet member', World Socialist Web Site, 24 Feb 99:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/feb1999/sain-f24.shtml
'Sainsbury faces calls
to go after £2m gift to Labour', Independent 8 September 1999:
http://www.millennium-debate.org/ind8sept.htm
'Labour donors give
£4m to party' - Guardian, January 4, 2001
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Labour/Story/0,2763,417871,00.html
'Lord Sainsbury of Turville, Minister for Science and
Innovation': Department of Trade and Industry
http://www.dti.gov.uk/ministers/ministers/sainsbury.html
Update 2003
Sainsbury Gives Another £2.5 M To Labour
"Farmers will
be given just enough to keep them interested in growing the
crops, but no more. And GM companies and food processors,
will say very clearly how they want the growers to grow the
crops."
Friedrich
Vogel, head of BASF's crop protection business (Farmers Weekly 6
November 1998)