[getsmart-l] National Farmers Union Commentary - Selling that old globalization snake oil tonic that fixes everything from baldness to the economy

[John O'Gorman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Grant Robertson NFU Ontario Coordinator 
To: National Farmers Union- Ontario Commentary 
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:31 PM
Subject: National Farmers Union Commentary - Selling that old globalization snake oil tonic that fixes everything from baldness to the economy


 

Selling that old globalization snake oil tonic that fixes everything

 

from baldness to the economy

 

A commentary for the National Farmers Union-Ontario

 

By Grant Robertson

  

 

In the Saturday, May 17th edition of the Toronto Star there appeared a piece of tripe on page "AA6" entitled A challenge for the world, an opportunity for Canada.  (It is currently available at

http://www.thestar.com/article/426706 ).  This article penned by Don Coxe, a Global Portfolio Strategist at BMO Financial Group, essentially argues that farmer empowered systems of food production are causing world food shortages and that the recipe for Canadian success is to remove the pillars that support such things as Canada's dairy and poultry industries. 

  

Now to be fair Mr. Coxe is not the only globalization proponent to float this kind of argument since the long approaching issues of food shortages began to make front page news.  Like so many of his ilk, Mr.

Coxe deftly ignores reality, the outcome of many world trade agreements in the real world, and the real costs of the policies the proponents of global corporate power promote.

 

 First a minor point, Mr Coxe claims that farm organizations around the world have entered rhese food shortage issues caught completely unawares.  This is simply not the case.  Organizations like the NFU and its sister organizations in La Via Campesina have been warning since at least 2002 of the consequences of the global food system that has come to dominate the food that reaches the plates of eaters around the world.

Or in too many cases does not make it to the plates of those who go hungry far too often.  In May of 2006 NFU President Stewart Wells wrote an open letter to the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.  In the letter Mr. Wells warns, "it appears to (the NFU) that global population is rising rapidly, our cropland base is static or shrinking, production is struggling (and failing) to meet consumption, and that there is growing uncertainty over water and energy supplies and the stability of our climate. Taken together, these factors indicate we may be risking a calamitous shortfall in the world's grain supplies; global food security is rapidly eroding."  Despite Mr Coxe's inaccurate claims, dismissed at the time by globalization proponents as alarmist, the NFU and many people connected to the land and food production around the world could see the storm coming.

  

Like the snake oil salesmen of old, the globalization crowd continues to push a model of increased use of chemical fertilizers, destroying the sovereign right of peoples to determine their own food systems, increased irrigation and the overuse of water resources, the removal of instruments that give food producers power in the marketplace, more and more genetically altered lifeforms in our food, and the removal of millions of farmers from their land world wide that they know, or should know does not work.  In fact many of the ideas those like Mr. Coxe promote as solutions for a world where food security is declining are some of the very things that have gotten us into this mess.  It is not a matter of throwing the baby out with the bath water, but rather throwing the baby into polluted water for its bath.

  

Here's bit of reality that the globalization crowd does not want you to think about when you read or hear stories regarding food shortages or food price spikes around the world.  In Canada the rise in basic food prices have not resulted in large benefits for farmers.  While some downward income pressure has been reversed, farmers are seeing dramatic increases in their input costs, eating up any price increases farmers might have received.  So someone is making money on increased food prices but it is not, for the most part, farmers.  In other parts of the world, trade agreements like the WTO have forced countries to open up their markets to foreign imports that destroy local food production and at the same time refocus agricultural production from feeding a nation's people to providing developed countries with cheap nuts, flowers and other products.  

  

It is time for the media to dig a little deeper into the roots of global food insecurity and the impact it will have here in Canada.  A little less listening to urban tower workers and a little more listening to those who work the land around the world and here at home would be a good place to start.

 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Grant Robertson is a senior elected official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.  The author can be contacted at grant at bmts.com

 

If you have been forwarded this commentary and would like to be added to the distribution list please send an email to grant at bmts.com with "subscribe" in the subject line. 
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