Some of the global risks that impact on agriculture

One of the critical risks at global level that has been partly attributed to industrialisation is climate change (UNEP/GRID-Arendal, 2006). A number of solutions, with a bearing on agriculture have been advanced, one of which is bio-fuel. But the proposed solutions appear to be undermining the livelihoods of farmers, especially the small scale subsistence farmers in developing countries. Commenting on the issue of biofuel, Markwei, Ndlovu, Robinson and Shah (2008) noted that Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology have a big role to play “concerning the careful analysis of biofuel technology appropriate for Sub-Saharan Africa, in parallel with the development of policies and capacity building to reduce negative effects of growing biofuels and determine the health, environmental, energy and food security tradeoffs” (p. 13).

The Action Group of Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) (2008) pointed out that there are conflicting interests between transnational agro-companies of the world who seek profit and corporate control of the agricultural production chain on the one hand, and farmers who are concerned with food and health systems built on resilience, sustainability and sovereignty, on the other hand. The group also attributed the current food deficit in developing countries to the “tragedy which stems from decades of depressed commodity prices, trade liberalisation, withering investments in national agricultural programmes, and the ever-increasing dominance of the corporate agro-industrial food system” (ETC, 2008, p. 6). According to an FAO report in ETC (2008) in the early 1960s, developing countries

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had an overall trade surplus in agriculture worth US$7 billion per year. Policy makers seem to favour continued corporate growth and dominance over social development. ETC (2008) found it revealing that the response to the global financial crisis was to inject capital and call for some regulation while the response to food crises was to press for further de-regulation:

When the food crisis is defined as food scarcity and hungry people, the market based prescription is to further liberalise the markets and boost agricultural production with heavy doses of technology … The system has entrenched corporate power while undermining the ability of small scale producers to produce food for their own communities. (ETC, 2008, p. 6) ETC further argued that corporate solutions to climate change are not made in the interests of social and ecological sustainability but are intended to make profits at the expense of people such as small scale farmers. One of the recent examples they cite to support their conclusion is the corporate response to climate change and peak oil:

Recent experience with industrial agro-fuels offers a modern day parable about the dangers of techno-fixes that are promoted as green and sustainable solutions to peak oil and climate change. By mid-2008, even some OECD countries were admitting that industrial agro-fuels have been a tragic boondoggle that can‟t be remotely described as a socially or ecologically sustainable response to climate change. Not only are industrial agro-fuels driving the world‟s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty, they are the single greatest factor contributing to soaring food prices ad have pushed 30 million additional farmers (so far) from subsistence to hunger. (ETC, 2008, p. 37)

Similarly Pimbert (2009) in discussing the politics of knowledge argued that reductionist knowledge selectively favoured corporate profits as well as control over labour and nature. He pointed out that the use of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies, also called terminator technology because it causes second generation seed to be sterile, and the recent convergence of information technology, nanotechonology (based on atoms), neurosciences and biotechnology, has allowed the corporate sector to enclose people and commodify nature‟s autonomy (Pimbert, 2009, p. 9). Multinational agro-based industries have been recently accused of attempting to control the agricultural production chain by patenting seed and related knowledge (Shiva, 2006). Apart from undermining local knowledge systems and agricultural practices, the enclosures have resulted in biopiracy, „stealing‟ local knowledge and plants and protecting them from use by the very people whose knowledge has been „stolen‟ (Mushita & Thompson, 2006). The development of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has also caused concern among farmers who are afraid that their landraces will be permanently contaminated and consumers who are unsure about the consequences of consuming such foods. This is why the government of Zambia refused GMO maize donated from the US in 2004, even though its people were hungry. This event happened after Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states had agreed on “common guidelines to safeguard member states against potential risks in the areas of food safety,

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contamination of genetic resources, ethics, trade and consumer concerns” in 2003 (Mzinga, 2005, p. 31). Also commenting on GMOs, Markwei et al. (2008) argued:

Genetic engineering is considered by some to have important ramifications for productivity but some of its uses and impacts are hotly contested. Contamination of farmer-saved seed and threats to biodiversity in the centres of origin are key concerns with respect to biotechnology and genetic engineering in particular. The environmental risks and evidence of negative health impacts means that SSA‟s ability to make informed decisions regarding biotechnology research, development, delivery and application is critical [my emphasis]. (p. 12)

At the same time:

The politics of the critique of science become more complex and ambivalent in the face of the new ecological issues. While the Greens see the interests associated with techno-science as largely to blame for many ecological hazards, they also rely on scientific detection, measurement and theoretical explanations in making out the Green cases [my emphasis]. (Benton, 2001, p. 137)

This subsection (2.2.3) highlights again the need for dialectics in dealing with sustainability matters in agriculture as well as in other fields of practice.