Report from Johannesburg: “Business as Usual is Not an Option”

by Marcia Ishii-Eiteman

On April 7, 2008, as the world’s newspapers carried headlines about falling grain stocks, soaring prices and food riots, representatives from 61 nations gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, to adopt a United Nations report that identifies urgently needed solutions for addressing underlying problems of the global food system.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) addressed the central question: What must we do differently to overcome persistent poverty and hunger, achieve equitable and sustainable development and sustain productive and resilient farming in the face of environmental crises?

The IAASTD, sponsored by the UN Environment Programme, Food and Agriculture Organisation and Development Programme; UNESCO; Global Environment Facility; and the World Bank, represents four years’ work by more than 400 experts who examined the intertwined problems of global agriculture, hunger, poverty, power and influence. Their findings sent shockwaves through the conventional agriculture establishment.

Call for global agricultural revolution

“Business as usual is not an option,” declared IAASTD Director Robert Watson, echoing the IAASTD’s call for a radical transformation of the world’s food and farming systems. The final report—endorsed by 58 governments and released worldwide on April 15—concluded that industrial agriculture has degraded the natural resource base on which human survival depends and now threatens water, energy and climate security. The report warns that continued reliance on simplistic technological fixes—including transgenic crops—is not a solution to reducing persistent hunger and poverty and could exacerbate environmental problems and worsen social inequity. It also critiqued transnational agribusiness influence over public policy and the unfair global trade policies that have left more than half of the world’s population malnourished.

Fortunately, the IAASTD affirmed, we have options. By revising policies to strengthen the small-scale farm sector, increasing investments in agroecological farming and adopting an equitable international trade regime, we can establish more socially and ecologically resilient systems while maintaining productivity and, crucially, improving profitability for small-scale farmers. A reconfiguration of agricultural research, extension and education is also needed, one that recognizes the vital contribution of local and Indigenous knowledge and innovation, and that embraces equitable, participatory processes in decision-making.

Pesticide Action Network delegates in Johannesburg hailed the report as a “wake-up call for governments and international agencies to act now to ensure the survival of the planet’s food systems.” For the first time, an independent, global assessment has acknowledged that small-scale, lowimpact farming offers crucial ecological and social functions that must be protected, and that nations and peoples have the right to democratically determine their own food and agricultural policies.

Food crisis vs. food sovereignty

Today’s global food crisis has been exacerbated by a number of factors: the large-scale conversion of food crops to agrofuel production, price volatility driven by rampant commodity speculation, changing diets in China and India, and climate-related production shortfalls. However, as documented by the IAASTD, the deeper roots of today’s crisis lie in decades of government neglect of the small-farm sector, grossly unfair trade arrangements and Northern governments’ practice of dumping their food surpluses in developing countries at prices far below local cost of production. These factors, along with heavy reliance on environmentally destructive industrial agricultural practices, have destroyed rural farm communities around the world, undermining their ability to produce or buy food and contributing to environmental pollution, water scarcity, increasing poverty and hunger.

The IAASTD presents compelling options for confronting today’s food crisis. By strengthening farmers’ organizations, creating more equitable and transparent trade agreements and increasing local participation in policy-formation and other decision-making processes, we can begin to reverse structural inequities within and between countries, increase rural communities’ access to and control over resources, and pave the way towards local and national food sovereignty. The IAASTD concludes that ensuring food security and recognizing food sovereignty necessitates ending the institutional marginalization of the world’s small-scale producers.

An inconvenient truth

The IAASTD was precedent-setting for its bold experiment in shared governance. Civil society groups (along with government and private sector representatives) played a key role, not only in authoring the report, but also in providing oversight and governance. History shows that governments and transnational corporations, acting on their own, have not been successful in meeting broad societal goals. The IAASTD’s success has proven that active civil society participation in intergovernmental processes is critical to meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

The radical shifts proposed by the IAASTD will inevitably shake up the status quo. Indeed, the IAASTD has already rankled some participants, including the U.S. government and the agrochemical industry (Syngenta walked out of the IAASTD process in its final days, complaining that their synthetic pesticides and transgenic products had not been sufficiently valued). The U.S. and Australia were especially stung by criticism of their trade liberalization policies, which were found to have had adverse social and environmental impacts while doing little to alleviate hunger and poverty.

Despite the Food Crisis, The Old Order Holds On

World food prices climbed 83% over the past three years; wheat prices soared 130% in the past year. Food riots have rocked Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Somalia, the Philippines, Uzbekistan and Yemen—and toppled the government in Haiti.

Although 2007 saw record global grain harvests, nearly a billion people remain hungry. While millions of small farmers struggle to survive, transnational corporations’ seed and chemical sales skyrocket—ADM 42%, Cargill 86%, Monsanto 108%, Bunge 1,964%.

Just decades ago, many of the countries now in crisis were selfsufficient, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s June 3–5 summit in Rome on World Food Security continued to back the same “Green Revolution” approach that has fueled food insecurity — increasing chemical inputs and transgenic crops, trade liberalization and corporate control of food. Under U.S. and industry pressure, the conference Declaration ignored recommendations of the IAASTD, stifled the voice of civil society, dismissed calls for food sovereignty and offered scant mention of agrofuels, unjust trade systems, or industrial agriculture’s impact on climate change.

Once again, corporate right to profits trumped peoples’ right to food. Yet PAN Asia and the Pacific’s Sarojeni V. Rengam assured reporters in Rome that a new agriculture is still possible. “Helping small-scale farmers and supporting their agroecological methods can provide the only way forward to avert the current food crisis,” Rengam told the press. World hunger will be on the agenda in July at the G8 Summit in Japan.

Three countries attending the Johannesburg plenary—Australia, Canada and the U.S.—have refused to endorse the report. Like reports on the climate crisis, the IAASTD’s findings are likely to be considered an “inconvenient truth” for the industrial agricultural establishment and the world’s dominant economies. Washington, the agrochemical trade association CropLife, and other beneficiaries of the current system continue to argue loudly against doing what needs to be done.

PAN is calling on Australia, Canada and the U.S. to fully endorse the IAASTD’s bold vision, and is urging all governments and international agencies to work closely with all segments of civil society to adopt more sustainable food and farming practices. The outcome of the Johannesburg meeting represents our best chance to apply the lessons of climate change to agricultural policy—and to take a decisive step towards advancing the productive, healthy and resilient farming on which our future depends. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman is a senior scientist at PAN North America and was a lead author on the Global Report of the IAASTD.

on the web

For more information, see www.panna.org/jt/agAssessment and www.foodsovereignty.org All IAASTD documents are available at www.agassessment.org