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288 pp.
September 2000
also by
John Bellamy Foster:
THE VULNERABLE
PLANET
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Excerpt
An
Overview
The conventional view that agriculture was displaced by industry in two
stages—by the industrial revolution in the late nineteenth century and, as
a result of the rise of the agribusiness system in the mid-twentieth
century—has left many observers of the contemporary issues with the
impression that to deal with agriculture is essentially to focus on
political-economic history rather than contemporary political economy. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The purpose of this book is to help compensate
for the neglect that agriculture has often suffered in political-economic
literature of the late twentieth century, and to assist what is fast becoming a
powerful resistance movement in the agricultural realm.
Historically, the significance of agriculture to the origin and development
of capitalism cannot be overemphasized. The development of capitalism in
England depended on the increasing surpluses resulting from an agriculture in
the throes of major technical and social transformations. And England's
distinctive patterns of land holding created a new kind of market dependency in
agricultural production that was critical to the initiation of dynamic
capitalist relations geared to constant productivity growth (see Wood, chapter
1). In subsequent development, the rise of industry in no way left agriculture
behind but was mirrored (indeed in some cases prefigured) at each stage by
changes in the latter.
Agriculture, which has been dominated for decades in the United States and,
more recently in the rest of the world, by large agribusiness corporations, is
now once again undergoing rapid, even unprecedented change. To be sure, much of
this story—concentration and centralization of capital and exodus of
peasants and farmers from the land—is not new. But the trends witnessed in
agriculture in the late twentieth century are distinctive in several important
respects. Concentration and centralization and rural dispossession within this
sector are being reinforced by new technological innovations, particularly in
the area of biotechnology, leading to such developments as the
proletarianization of the farmer, and to the appropriation of ownership and
control of indigenous plants and animals in third world countries. The global
commodification of agriculture has its counterpart in the destruction of
peasant and small-scale agriculture throughout the world. Subsistence farming
is in decline in the third world while the production of luxury crops for
export to the rich countries is being expanded as never before. The result is a
rise in world food supplies, together with an increase in world hunger. So
sharp are these contradictions that hunger is expanding in the United States
itself, at the very heart of the system, where it is no longer surprising to
see food lines and soup kitchens even during economic expansions. The growth of
agribusiness has also generated more and more ecological problems through the
subdivision of traditional diversified farming into specialized production, the
break in the soil nutrient cycle, the pollution of land and water (and food
itself) with chemicals, soil erosion and other forms of destruction of
agricultural ecosystems, and so on. These developments in world agriculture,
however, have not gone unanswered. Movements dedicated to promoting sustainable
agriculture, fighting hunger, supporting family- and small-scale farming, and
staving off ecological destruction have sprouted from the rural and urban
grassroots everywhere: locally, nationally, and globally. Our purpose in
compiling the essays for this book is to provide the basis for a coherent
analysis of these developments.
The essays in Hungry for Profit are focused
on the political economy of agriculture, food, and ecology. Each article adopts
a historical approach while at the same time focusing on issues of current
concern and of importance for the future. Further, each of the essays is a
critique in the classical sense of striving to penetrate a contradictory
reality in order to develop the means for transcending it. Capitalism presents
us with the paradoxical reality of a rapid growth of food production and
perpetuation of overproduction (relative to markets and income distribution) on
one hand, accompanied by the reinforcement of social exclusion and thus the
growth of hunger on the other. The latter is not, as is sometimes thought,
mainly a result of population growth (which has generally been surpassed by the
growth of productivity in agriculture), but instead a consequence of the fact
that the immediate object of food production is not human sustenance and
well-being but the growth of profits. The coincidence of hungry mouths with
overflowing grain silos may seem to be a paradox, but it is a paradox not of
our analysis, but of capitalist agribusiness itself.
HISTORICAL TURNING POINT
There can no longer be any doubt today, at the turn of the twenty-first
century, that we are in the midst of an unusually rapid change in all aspects
of the world's agriculture-food system. This system consists of the farmers who
produce the food, but also the huge industry that supplies farmers with inputs,
from seeds to fertilizers to tractors to fuel, and the even larger industry
that processes, packages, and distributes the food. And, although international
trade in agricultural products has occurred for centuries, the pace at which
the world is being bound together by trade and the penetration of third world
agriculture by the largest of corporations is also quickening (see McMichael,
chapter 7).
Traditionally, the various activities of different parts of the
agriculture-food system have involved many players—numerous suppliers of
inputs, millions of farmers, many purchasers of agricultural commodities, and
processors and distributors of food—and have often been portrayed as the
textbook example of free-market competition. In Monopoly Capital (1966),
Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy discussed the process of the increasing
concentration and centralization of production under a mature capitalism, which
results in a few "corespective" firms dominating most industrial
sectors. Under these conditions, a handful of giant corporations control the
bulk of a particular market, and the struggle over market share is more by
advertising, product differentiation, and brand identification than price
competition. The process of concentration and centralization of the agriculture
and food sectors of the economy is occurring later than in the nonfarm
industrial sectors. But recent decades have witnessed a startling pace of
concentration of suppliers of agricultural inputs that farmers must purchase
(such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery) as well as
concentration in the food processing, distribution, and retail sectors, where a
relatively small number of food conglomerates now play a dominant role (see
Heffernan, chapter 3).
How food is produced and how it gets from farm fields to people's tables
(the entire food system) is something that obviously concerns everyone. Today
there is growing popular fear over possible pesticide contamination of food as
well as with the microbiological safety of the food supply. Recent outbreaks of
illness have been associated with a variety of contaminated products—meat,
juice, fruits, and vegetables. Concern also is growing in the United States and
abroad over the safety of food made from genetically modified crops. But the
food safety question so much on people's minds is only one small part of the
picture. Other important issues include concentration of ownership and control
in the production, processing, and marketing of food; safety of farmers and
farmworkers when using pesticides; the heavy dependence on nonrenewable
resources; environmental consequences of widespread use of genetically modified
plants, animals, and microorganisms; contamination of surface- and groundwaters
with pesticides and nutrients; low returns for most farmers; low wages and poor
working and living conditions for farmworkers; cruel treatment of livestock;
and inadequate access to food by poor people. The negative influences of
current agricultural practices on ecological systems at the local, regional,
and global levels affect the lives of all of us as well as many other species
(see Foster and Magdoff, chapter 2, and Altieri, chapter 4). The environmental,
social, and economic problems are intertwined, and all are related to the
structure of agriculture as it has developed in the late twentieth century.
There are now few buyers for most raw agricultural products. This has left
farmers without truly free markets to sell their commodities. Although supply
and demand forces, when at their extremes, certainly influence the prices of
agricultural commodities, prices for most agricultural commodities have
generally remained low and the farmer's share of the food dollar (after paying
for input costs) has steadily declined from about 40 percent in 1910 to less
than 10 percent in 1990. The enormous power exerted by the largest
agribusiness/food corporations allows them essentially to control the cost of
their raw materials purchased from farmers while at the same time keeping
prices of food to the general public at high enough levels to ensure large
profits. It is no accident that the food industry is the second most profitable
one in the United States, following pharmaceuticals!
While Baran and Sweezy wrote persuasively and perceptively about how
concentration and centralization of capital was occurring and would decisively
affect national economies and societies, several of the essays in this
collection point to how these concentration and centralization processes are
being shaped by the globalization of capital in agriculture and agro-food
systems. Heffernan's essay portrays the breakneck pace of concentration and
centralization of agribusiness capital at a global scale. McMichael notes that
the emergence of new global trade rules over the past twenty-five
years—culminating in the World Trade Organization, the North American Free
Trade Agreement, other regional trade agreements, and the proposed Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI)—has contributed to the expansion of global
sourcing of foodstuffs and to the growth of export-oriented production in the
third world.
Just as remarkable as the globalization of the agro-industrial chain of
production and distribution are the trends in the United States and most other
nations toward the industrialization of agriculture and contractual
integration. Recognizing that farming tends not to be very profitable and that
cheapening the cost of obtaining raw food products is a key to corporate
profitability, agribusiness firms have begun to develop
"industrial"—or factory-style—production systems and
contractual integration arrangements in which the decisions about how to
produce crops and animals are increasingly being taken over by the large
agribusinesses (see Lewontin, chapter 5). In the extreme situation, such as
poultry growers under contract to Tyson or Perdue, or hog producers under
contract to Murphy Family Farms, independent farmers are reduced to the
position of laborers, but without the rights of workers to collectively
bargain.
Contractual integration in the white and red meat sectors (especially
broilers and hogs) is closely associated with industrialized or
"factory" farming. Meat packers and processors prefer factory farming
because it provides them with large, predictable quantities of uniform
commodities. Though factory farming and contractual integration are often
justified in terms of the need to respond to "consumer preferences,"
consumers more often than not oppose factory farming, and there appear to be
few benefits for consumers from these types of production systems. The
development of factory farms, which produce animals under the most cruel
conditions as part of a vertically integrated production system, has also
resulted in the separation of the animals from the land that produces their
feed (see Foster and Magdoff, chapter 2). This phenomenon is in addition to the
separation of the mass of the population from the land that occurred when
industrialization caused the migrations to urban centers (a process that
continues to this day in Third World countries, with or without commensurate
industrialization). The ecological consequences of that earlier process were
outlined by Marx in Capital.
TECHNOLOGY AND EVER-INCREASING SCALE
As is generally the case for relatively small-scale producers of commodities
under capitalism, farmers are on a treadmill in which the downward pressure on
prices they receive—and/or the upward pressure on inputs needed for
production—force them to adopt new technologies and to increase the scale
of production in an attempt to stay in business. (It has been said that farming
is one of the few businesses that pays retail prices for inputs and sells its
products at wholesale prices.) As the financial returns of farmers decline per
unit of output, in order to reap the same returns as before the farmers are
told that they must get larger or get out. The treadmill that this creates is
indicated by an old New England saying: "we grow more corn, to feed more
cows, to make more milk, to buy more land, to grow more corn." However, a
recent study of dairy farmers in New York State showed that their profit per
cow decreased as production per cow and herd size increased. More production is
needed just to stand still!
The physical advantages that accrue to increasing production scale (mainly
more efficient use of labor and machinery) reach their limits fairly quickly in
agriculture. For most commodities medium-sized family farms are as or more
efficient than larger, more industrial ones. But that doesn't mean that there
aren't real pecuniary advantages to very large farms in a capitalist
economy—they typically receive a premium for the commodities they sell
because of their large volumes, pay less for purchased inputs and for interest
on borrowed money, and have more opportunity for making profits through the use
of hired labor.
In the most industrialized and "integrated" sectors such as
broilers, "open markets" disappear, and only those producers who have
production contracts with processors and other agribusiness
"integrators" are able to find a market for their products. A number
of publicly funded agricultural experiment stations have also tended to give
more attention to factory producers—who account for a very small share of
their clientele—than to the far more numerous, but less influential
family-scale farmers.
Those who can't keep up with the treadmill of producing on an
ever-increasing scale tend to be forced out of farming, and their children are
discouraged from entering farming. This is what has been responsible for the
drastic decline in the numbers of farms in many countries; in the United States
from close to 7 million in the 1930s to about 1.8 million by the mid-1990s. And
as farmers left the land, the effects on minorities were devastating. From a
high of 14 percent of all U.S. farms being owned by blacks in the 1930s, today
less than 1 percent are black-owned. The bulk of decline in farms occurred from
the end of the Second World War through the early 1970s, when farm numbers
stabilized at approximately 2.0 million and declined by only 0.2 percent a year
through the early 1980s. (Although there has recently been an increase in the
number of minority-owned farms, mainly among Mexicans and Asians, they still
represent a very small percent of total farms.) During the severe "farm
crisis" of the 1980s, U.S. farm numbers again declined at a rapid pace (of
approximately 17 percent per decade), but are now declining at a slower rate.
The rates of decline in farms have been particularly startling in the livestock
sectors that are undergoing the most rapid industrialization and movement
toward factory farming. Since the early 1980s the numbers of broiler, hog, and
dairy farmers have declined at about 4.0 to 4.5 percent per year.
Philip McMichael (chapter 7) stresses that one of the key provisions of the
Uruguay General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Round which culminated in
the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the dismantling of
agricultural commodity programs, which since the Second World War have served,
albeit very imperfectly, to put a floor under domestic commodity prices. The
U.S. government wasted little time in complying with the Uruguay Round
Agreement, having done so, in the form of the Federal Agricultural Improvement
and Reform Act (FAIR) of 1996. As this book goes to press we are in the midst
of another era of hardship and bankruptcies caused by the phasing out of the
farm commodity program safety net, and by continuing low prices received by
farmers for the basic agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, and
soybeans. This year, as last, an "emergency" farm-aid bill was passed
by the U.S. Congress in response to the low prices of farm products.
As farm numbers declined during the last half century, the average farm size
increased and the largest of farms have come to account for a sizable
proportion of production. At present, the 122,000 largest farms in the United
States, representing only 6 percent of the total number, receive close to 60
percent of total farm receipts. These large farms have also been able to reap a
disproportionate amount of government support payments, receiving over 30
percent of the payments for the commodity programs.
In the Third World, displacement of farmers under internal pressures, as
well as external pressures arising from growing imports from the first world,
has led to a loss of huge numbers of people from the land, and has resulted in
the swelling of cities (see Araghi, chapter 8). One of the consequences has
been increased hunger because of less non-market access to sources of food,
particularly by way of peasant self-provisioning from household plots of land.
The unfair advantages of the more powerful transnational corporations in
shaping world trade in food only accelerates these trends toward
"depeasantization."
As U.S. farmers have been squeezed by the trends mentioned above and as
Third World farmers have left their fields in increasing numbers, the
conditions of U.S. farmworkers have remained dismal (see Majka and Majka,
chapter 9). Many of the gains made by the successful unionization drives of the
1970s and early 1980s have been reversed. The increased immigration of
farmworkers from Mexico and Central America, and the high rate of worker
turnover has made it exceedingly difficult to maintain the organizing momentum.
TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE?
A number of technological fixes have been proposed for the environmental
problems of agriculture and food. For example, instead of solving food safety
problems by shortening the distance between the point of production and the
point of consumption, and producing animals in a small-scale, stress-free,
pleasant and clean environment, industry has been promoting irradiation of meat
as a cure to bacterial contamination.
A good example of misplaced priorities is that of "precision
farming." Over the past few years chemical and farm-machinery companies
have been pushing precision (or "Prescription") farming, whereby
through the use of global positioning technology (developed by military
contractors as part of Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative), yield
monitors, extensive field sampling and mapping, and variable application rate
machinery, it is possible to apply agrichemicals according to the supposed
needs of different parts of a field. It is clearly the case that for decades
many fertilizers and pesticides have been applied at higher rates than are
economically justifiable. Proponents of precision farming believe that this
technology can tailor doses of chemicals to the specific characteristics of
small parts of a field, and thereby avoid overusing chemicals on plots of land
where the chemicals result in little additional yield. There is little
evidence, however, that the precision technology brings any better
environmental results than could be obtained with common sense reductions in
the use of agrichemicals based on previously available methods. And in many
cases it has been found that farmers employing precision farming techniques use
a greater overall level of chemicals than they did before.
The push toward biotechnology is being driven by corporations looking for
ways to expand their profit-making potential (see Lewontin and Middendorf et
al., chapters 5 and 6). While the quest for profits is hardly unique to
biotechnology firms, the way that the biotechnology industry developed
historically has made this quest a particularly frantic one. The agricultural
biotechnology industry dates from the early 1980s. With a very few exceptions,
the billions of dollars invested in crop and livestock biotechnology research
since the early 1980s yielded virtually no commercial products by the
mid-1990s. Thus, with staggering investments but no significant revenues,
agricultural biotechnology firms have been particularly intent in the 1990s on
the need to speed up the introduction of products into the market. The tendency
has been for these corporations to release as many products as possible, many
of which have some significant shortcomings, and then convince farmers that
they need the particular products that have been developed. Bovine growth
hormone, for example, can increase milk production by 10 percent or more per
cow. This is a dubious advantage, however, when the price of milk received by
farmers has declined in real terms (corrected for inflation) by over half since
the early 1980s, and when the number of dairy farmers is already declining by
about 40 percent each decade. As noted by Lewontin, other first-generation
biotechnology products, such as Bt-engineered and herbicide-tolerant crop
varieties, have significant liabilities as well. Even the more environmentally
benign "identity-preserved" biotechnology products, which can
potentially increase the quality of food products, are likely to serve as the
newest frontier for capital to extract profits from agriculture, and through
"integration" will serve to convert more farmers into essentially
being a proletariat that nominally "owns," but has lost control over,
its own land (see Lewontin, chapter 5).
RESPONSES TO THE ONSLAUGHT
There have been many responses around the world to the negative effects of
the developing monopoly capital control of the agriculture-food system. In
Third World countries there have been efforts against the patenting of plant
genetic information (which really constitutes the common heritage of the
world's people, and is to a large extent the cultural product of indigenous
peoples over many generations), as well as struggles against the trade
treaties, such as the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, that tie countries
closer together by exposing all to the full force of the market in which the
more powerful gain and the less powerful lose out. Farmers and the general
public in Europe are trying to resist the importation of genetically modified
grains (like "Roundup Ready" soybeans) and beef produced using
hormone stimulants.
In the United States, literally hundreds of organizations have been formed
to struggle against one or another of the many problems (see Henderson, chapter
10). These organizations and groups have fought for changes in state and
national laws, have promoted research aimed at developing practices that are
appropriate for environmentally sound farming on a small to medium scale, have
specifically promoted organic agriculture, and have provided direct assistance
for farmers to help them survive in a very hostile climate.
Critical developments during 1999 have put the purveyors of genetically
modified seeds on the defensive. There was an immense reaction in the Third
World and Europe to the possible introduction of technology that would produce
sterile crop seeds, so that farmers would be forced to buy new seeds annually
(see Lewontin and Middendorf et al., chapters 5 and 6, for discussion of the
"terminator" gene.) This backlash has forced Monsanto first to put
the introduction of the technology on hold and then to back out of the
acquisition that would have given them access to the terminator technology. In
response to concerns both at home and abroad about environmental and food
safety effects, it is projected that lower prices will be paid to farmers
growing genetically modified crops. This, combined with the meager returns even
before there was a price differential, has made many farmers question the
economics of continuing to grow these crops. For the first time since their
introduction, a major decrease in acreage planted to genetically modified crops
is projected for 2000 (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1999). Activists
are convincingly and loudly arguing for mandatory labeling of foods made from
genetically modified crops. For years biotechnology firms, along with U.S.
government officials, have tirelessly made the case that "the market"
should control the introduction of new technologies. Now, however, these firms
and government agencies are fighting against labeling of biotechnology
food—the only way that the public can actually have a choice. The biotech
industry, including Monsanto, DuPont, and Novartis, has launched a
counter-offensive to take on the critics of genetically modified crops (New
York Times, Nov. 12, 1999). The fight against genetically modified foods is
currently the leading edge of a struggle by farmers and the general public
against complete corporate control of the food system.
It has often been suggested that most farmers can't survive by selling
undifferentiated commodities such as wheat, corn, apples, milk, and meat to
wholesale processors because of the unequal power relations between direct
producers and agribusinesses. Thus, it is believed that to thrive in an era
dominated by giant agribusiness corporations farmers must either find a niche
crop that few others are growing, start their own processing business (to
capture some of the added value to their agricultural product), or sell
directly to the public through farmers markets or Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) farms, where people buy shares in the production of the farm
before the season starts. Some of these groups concede the loss of the mass of
agricultural production to corporate agribusiness and the largest farms. Each
of the proposed solutions may help those individual farmers with
entrepreneurial skills, or boost those who enjoy working with the public. But
while there certainly are some niches available, once they are developed and
other farmers start to get into the same enterprise, the niche becomes less
lucrative. It cannot offer relief for the mass of farmers. Moreover, once a
particular niche grows into a large-scale operation (as in the case of today's
organic food industry) it will inevitably face new pressures from agribusiness
determined to monopolize all large-scale, lucrative markets.
A parallel social movement has developed in response to the persistence of
hunger in the midst of plenty and the decrease in support of food distribution
through governmental programs. Many efforts have taken place all over the
United States to remedy this problem, including soup kitchens, the opening up
and expanding of food shelf pantries that distribute food to the poor, and many
corporate or organizational food drives that collect food for later
distribution. Nevertheless, the focus has all too often been simply on hunger
and what can be done to alleviate it, without going deeper to underlying causes
(see Poppendieck, chapter 11).
In the noncapitalist world (i.e., Cuba) and the formerly noncapitalist world
(i.e., China), two countries are attempting very different pathways in a sea of
change. Cuba is facing severe dislocations caused by the breakup of the Soviet
Union. It is under severe pressure because of the lack of fuel and access to
other inputs needed to run the high-input, large-scale production system they
copied from the Russians. The Cuban state and farmers have turned to
small-scale production, in many cases using animal power and organic
agricultural techniques (see Rosset, chapter 12). They are also encouraging
urban gardening to help provide food during this crisis.
China, in contrast, is moving in a very different direction. The government,
as part of its program to achieve and maintain very high rates of income growth
through reintroducing capitalist relations, has largely disbanded the
agricultural cooperatives. Agricultural plots have been sliced up into narrow
strips (see Hinton, chapter 13). Because there is little animal power available
and the individual strips are too small to justify use of tractors (which are
now mainly used for transportation), most farmers are not able to do a good job
of managing their fields. Farmers routinely burn crop residues, just to get rid
of them, instead of incorporating them into the soil to make it more fertile,
improve its structure, and make it more healthy. Instead of supporting
small-scale, resource-efficient agriculture as in Cuba, the infrastructure
being developed under government direction (fertilizer and other agrichemical
factories) is aimed at high-input systems. Better soil and crop management
under these conditions would seem to call for consolidating small strips into
larger units of production. Ironically, the effects of the extensive land
reform of 1947, a critical part of the success to date of the country's
agriculture, has provided an important buffer to the Chinese peoples' food
supply as the government heads in the direction of privatization.
WHAT CAN
BE DONE?
It is clear that the current food system in all its ramifications is not
beneficial for the mass of farmers or the environment, nor does it ensure a
plentiful supply of food for all people. However, it does meet the needs of a
limited group of large farmers and, of course, the sellers of agricultural
inputs as well as the processors, distributors, and sellers of food. Can
tinkering with the existing capitalist system realistically be expected to make
the changes needed toward a more environmentally sound and humane food system?
Such a sound and humane system would, minimally, be one in which:
- People would live in greater proximity to agricultural land and animals
would be raised more humanely and reunited with the cropland that produces
their feed (so nutrients can be recycled more easily with fewer environmental
problems).
- The power of a few corporations to control so much of food production,
processing, and sales would be broken (to make a better deal for farmers
growing the food and encourage more environmentally sound farming practices).
- There would be a plentiful and healthy food supply for all people.
Clearly, the changes needed are huge and go to the very foundation of
capitalism. The job of creating a just and environmentally sound food system
cannot be separated from the creation of a just and environmentally sound
society. As pointed out by Poppendieck (chapter 11), hunger is only a symptom
of a larger problem—inequality and poverty. And it is critical to
emphasize the problem and not to dwell on the symptom. Can the grassroots
efforts for food security, growing healthy food, and direct selling of food
from farms to consumers be mobilized to help in the efforts to completely
transform the food system? Certainly, many sustainable agriculture and food
security activists—from a diversity of perspectives—are dedicated to
making substantial changes in the food system.
Yet the range of groups with a stake in the transformation of agriculture is
both a strength and weakness of this movement. Family farmers, sustainable
agriculture proponents, migrant farmworkers, environmentalists, health- and
environmentally-conscious consumers, and third world peasants all share an
interest in changing the system. This will be a difficult alliance to cement on
more than an intermittent basis. Family farmers, for example, are petty
property owners whose political leanings are seldom consistent with reducing
the prerogatives of property. Family farmers tend to be more comfortable with
"right to farm" laws (which insulate producers from
"nuisance" lawsuits and from many local land use or environmental
regulations) and "food disparagement" laws (like the Texas law that
was the basis of the Texas Cattlemen's Association suit against Oprah Winfrey)
than they are with environmental regulations or public programs to feed the
hungry. Farmworkers continue to strive for improved working conditions as well
as higher wages. Environmental groups tend to find wilderness issues and global
environmental concerns most important, and do not usually give much emphasis to
agriculture. Consumer movements can wield great power over the short
term–for example, the boycott of grapes during the California farmworker
unionization drive three decades ago was critical to its success, and consumer
resistance to biotechnology products such as bovine growth hormone and
herbicide-tolerant crop varieties has recently been significant. But consumer
movements tend not to focus on any one issue for very long—a particularly
dramatic example being the decline of anti-BGH (bovine growth hormone)
activities in the United States over the past three years. There continue to be
major barriers to cooperation between farmers, farmworkers, environmental
groups, sustainable agriculture groups, and consumer organizations.
These groups' struggles offer many opportunities for left activity by those
who believe that a complete transformation of society is needed to meet the
goals of a truly just and environmentally sound food system. Their differing
interests, however, raise the difficult question of how to unite the many
groups that focus on individual but interrelated issues, all best approached
with a unified focus.
THE
MORAL OF THE TALE
Those who wish to radically transform the present agricultural-food system
often focus on issues such as the proper scale of agriculture, the question of
whether food should be organized in local or global systems, and the
appropriate technology to be adopted. Although all of these questions are
significant—and we should emphasize the importance of relatively
small-scale (by today's standards), local production in agriculture, using
technology appropriate to a given set of social/historical/ecological
conditions—it is well to remember that such issues are essentially
secondary under present circumstances to the question of the commodification of
agriculture (and indeed of nature itself) promoted by the capitalist economy
with only one end in mind: the production of profits. "The moral of the
tale," Marx wrote in Capital (vol. III, chapter 6, section 2),
is that the capitalist system runs counter to a
rational agriculture, or that a rational agriculture is incompatible with the
capitalist system (even if the latter promotes technical development in
agriculture) and needs either small farmers working for themselves or the
control of the associated producers.
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