CAPÍTULO 2. IMPLEMENTACIÓN DE LAS HERRAMIENTAS DE TRABAJO
2.1 Simuladores usados en VANETs
A wide range of studies suggest that the current mainstream capitalist agri-food
system has some serious structural ecological and political-economic problems. This
part of the chapter briefly discusses how the industrial agricultural production
methods are ecologically unsustainable and work against small-scale farmers. So-
38 cropping for export create dependency and increase food insecurity in some
countries. In addition, the supposed "free market" conceals the power of monopolies
in agri-food chains. Growing interests in agro-fuels, large-scale acquisitions of land
in developing countries or "land grabs", and financial speculations in agricultural
commodity markets in recent years, are also important problems of the mainstream
agri-food system.
1.1) Production
The Green Revolution, promoted around the world by institutions such as
Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the US and other Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) governments since the Second World War,
helped transfer techniques such as plant breeding and the dissemination of High
Yielding Variety seeds (HYVs) throughout the world.1 The yield of HYVs depends
on complementary capital-intensive soil management practices (fertilisers, agri-
chemicals, irrigation), which often do not benefit small-scale farmers in marginal
resource-scarce land.2 The associated biological simplification and standardisation of
mono-cropping and intellectual property seeds are connected to the loss of
indigenous species and biodiversity that increase genetic vulnerability, local
biological knowledge in farming, and vulnerability to the spread of pests, weeds,
fungi and disease.3 As resistance to agri-chemicals/pesticides develops, it is likely to
1 David Goodman and Michael Redclift, “Internationalization and the Third World Food Crisis,” in
Refashioning Nature: Food, Ecology and Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 151-152.
2 For example: Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution. Third World Agriculture,
Ecology and Politics (London: Zed Books, 1991), 45; Clara Ines Nicholls and Miguel A. Altieri, “Conventional Agricultural Development Models and the Persistence of the Pesticide Treadmill in Laitn America,” International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 4, no. 2 (1997), 94.
3
Tony Weis, “The Accelerating Biophysical Contradictions of Industrial Capitalist Agriculture,”
39 lead to increased economic costs in farming.4 Chapter 3 will discuss in greater detail
the Green Revolution experience in Thailand. There is evidence, for example, of
environmental degradations, as well as linkages between industrial agri-food
production and rising debts of farmers.5
Repeating the experience of the Green Revolution and HYVs is the attempt
to promote genetically modified (GM) seeds improvement technology as "magic
bullets" to drive change and innovation in agriculture by the corporate sector and the
World Bank,6 even though it is scientifically unproven that GM seeds are higher-
yielding, better adapted to climate change, and are thus the answer to world hunger. 7
The technology and associated intellectual property rights system can help to
increase monopoly power of large transnational agri-businesses,8 in addition to
possible increased in ecological, social and economic costs. Many scientists have
given a variety of reasons to suggest that large-scale uses of transgenic crops pose a
series of environmental risks that threaten the sustainability of agriculture.9 Adding
with the fact that farmers may have to pay inflated-price for these patent seeds, and
accompanying pesticide packages, as well as bear the consequences of GM
contamination and loss of export markets, GM seeds arguably have high economic
4 See Nicholls and Altieri (1997), 97-99, for a case study in Latin America.
5 A comprehensive study of such problems include Pattama Sittichai and et al., A Complete Report on
the Project to Compile and Analyse the Problems of Farmers and Sustainable Development
(Bangkok: National Economics and Social Development Board (NESDB), 2002). (in Thai)
6
Shelly Feldman and Stephen Biggs, “The Politics of International Assessments: The IAASTD Process, Reception and Significance,” Journal of Agrarian Change 12, no. 1 (2012), 146.
7 For example: D. Gurian-Sherman, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically
Engineered Crops. (Cambridge: Unions of Concerned Scientists, 2009), quoted in Giménez and Shattuck (2011), 119; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Genetically Engineered Crops for Pest Management (Washington DC: USDA Economic Research Service, 1999); Dominic Glover, “Is Bt Cotton a Pro-Poor Technology? A Review and Critique of the Empirical Record,”
Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 4 (2010),500-503.
8
M. Blakeney, “Recent Developments in Intellectual Property and Power in the Private Sector Related to Food and Agriculture,” Food Policy 36 (2011): 109–113, quoted in Sage (2013), 72.
9 Miguel A. Altieri and Peter Rosset, “Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will Not Ensure Food
Security, Protect the Environment and Reduce Poverty in the Developing World,” AgBioForum 2, no. 3&4 (1999): 155–162. Other studies include, for example, Goldberg (1992), Paoletti and Pimentel (1996), Snow and Moran (1997), and Lutman (1999).
40 and social costs as well. In addition, it has been argued that the present GM seeds
and chemical intensive technological trajectories may lock out agro-ecological
innovations.10 In Thailand, even though the Thai state has not approved of
commercial-scale plantation of GM crops, news and evidence of GM papaya
contaminations have already complicated Thai papaya exports to the European
Union (EU),11 not to mention that there is continuing lobbying attempts by
transnational agri-businesses, such as Monsanto, for Thailand to promote GM
seeds.12
1.2) International trade
The neo-liberal agri-food production and trade under the World Trade Organisation's
(WTO) governance, specifically the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) implemented
in 1995, established a set of binding obligations on members. These obligations
include limitation and reduction of tariffs and quotas, domestic subsidies to farmers
beyond market prices, and export subsidies which allow surplus production to be
sold on world markets at prices below the costs of production, often referred to as
"dumping".13 The rules, however, have not been applied to all countries to the same
extent. The EU and the US continued to give farm subsidies, and many developing
countries were unable to protect their farm sectors from such food imports that had
artificially been cheapened via subsidies, while at the same time faced restricted
10
Gaetan Vanloqueren and Philippe V. Baret, “How Agricultural Research Systems Shape a Technological Regime That Develops Genetic Engineering but Locks Out Agroecological Innovations,” Research Policy 38 (2010): 971–83, quoted in David Wield, Joanna Chataway, and Maurice Bolo, “Issues in the Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology” 10, no. 3 (2010), 356.
11
Bangkok Business Newspaper, “EU Warns against GM Papaya,” July 03, 2012. (in Thai)
12 Bangkok Post(online), “Fresh Struggle Kicks off to Halt GM Crops,” October 24, 2014. 13 Bill Pritchard, “Trading into Hunger? Trading Out of Hunger? International Food Trade and the
Debate on Food Security,” in Food Systems Failure: The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture, ed. Christopher Rosin, Paul Stock, and Hugh Campbell (London: Earthscan, 2012), 48- 49.
41 access to foreign markets.14 Neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, imposed by
institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also
intensified the reduction in farmer support mechanisms.15
Based on the belief in comparative advantage and free trade, developing
countries have been encouraged to specialise and grow high-value cash-crops for
export. This reduces their domestic food security and, at the same time, increases
their dependence on imports of artificially cheap subsidised staple food grains such
as wheat, rice, and maize from advanced capitalist countries. In many developing
countries, farmland that used to grow food for domestic consumption now grows
luxuries for higher-income consumers and overseas market.16 This problem of food
dependence and insecurity is exacerbated in recent years with the growing
production of agro-fuels and financial speculations, which are discussed in later
sections. Even though Thailand is food sufficient at the national level, mono-
cropping for export and some free trade agreements have caused a lot of economic
risks and problems for small-scale farmers, as chapter 3 will discuss.
1.3) Agri-businesses and monopoly power
There are studies which suggest that large transnational firms have monopoly power
to influence agri-food chains in various ways at the expense of smaller-scale
producers and consumers, through monopoly controls over inputs (such as seeds),17
14 For example, see Geoffrey Lawrence and Philip McMichael, “The Question of Food Security,”
International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19, no. 2 (2012), 135.
15 Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved. Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (London:
Portobello Books, 2007), quoted in Lawrence and McMichael (2012), 135.
16 For example, see: John Madeley, Hungry for Trade. How the Poor Pay for Free Trade. (London:
Zed Books, 2000), 54-56.
17 For example: Wield, Chataway, and Bolo (2010), 347; ETC group, “Global Seed Industry
Concentration,” Communiqué 90 (2005); ETC group, “Concentration in Corporate Power,”
42 trade, processing and distribution channels. At the global level, agri-food trade,
processing and retail are subjected to business concentration and monopoly power.18
Aside from using their market power, large agri-businesses can also influence the
agri-food system through lobbying for certain government policies and regulations.
Neo-liberal policies (such as liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation) have
enabled large agri-industrial transnational corporations to increase their political and
market power in many countries, and to promote certain agricultural production
technologies.19 Neo-liberal policies have also helped to increase monopoly power in
agri-food processing and trade industries in many countries, which drive up prices at
consumers' expenses. In Mexico, after the signing of North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), prices of US corn imports fell by 50 percent, but tortilla prices
in Mexico tripled during the 1990s.20 With two food processors which control over
97 percent of the industrial corn flour market, as well as reduction of state food
subsidies and wages, tortilla riots became common.21 As chapter 3 will discuss,
transnational Thai and non-Thai agri-businesses play an important role in shaping
the agri-food system in Thailand.
1.4) The food-energy complex and agro-fuels
The ecological unsustainability of the current corporate agri-food system is very
clear when one look at its dependence on finite fossil fuels, principally oil and
18 See: Lawrence Busch and Carmen Bain, “New! Improved? The Transformation of the Global
Agrifood System,” Rural Sociology 69, no. 3 (2004): 321–346; ETC group, “Concentration in Corporate Power,” (2005).
19 For example: Miguel Teubal, “Peasant Struggles for Land and Agrarian Reform in Latin America,”
in Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question, ed. A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristobal Kay (New York: Routledge, 2009),155-157; Zulkuf Aydin, “Neo-Liberal Transformation of Turkish Agriculture,” Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 2 (2010), 161 and 182-183.
20 Peter Rosset, Food Is Different. Why We Must Get the WTO Out of Agriculture (London: Zed
Books, 2006), 57, quoted in Philip McMichael,“A Food Regime Analysis of the ‘World Food Crisis,’” Agriculture and Human Values 26, no. 4 (July 31, 2009), 289.
43 natural gas, which is needed in mechanised production methods, agricultural inputs
(fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, which may be derived from petrochemicals),
and transport of agri-food products. 22 One estimate suggests that industrial
agriculture requires an average 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce a single calorie
of food.23 Because of the food-fuel connection, rising energy costs are likely to
translate to rising costs of production and food prices, which become burdens to both
farmers and consumers.
Due to the growing fear of "peak oil" or the scarcity of fossil fuel energy in
recent years, there is increasing diversion of agri-food production resources and agri-
food products from food consumption uses to the production of agro-fuels, which
might raise food prices and food insecurity. For most forms of first generation agro-
fuels (that are available in the short and medium run), the aggregate fossil energy
used in the production of agro-fuels is higher than the energy contained in agro-fuel
outputs, not to mention that agro-fuels output per land area is also low.24 This shows
that agro-fuels might exacerbate both the energy problems and the ecological-social
unsustainability of the current agri-food system. The agri-food system in Thailand is
also reliant on fossil fuels and, as chapter 3 will discuss, it is likely that agri-food
resources will be increasingly diverted to agro-fuels production.
22 For example: Philip McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture: A Review of the World Development
Report 2008,” Africa 9, no. 2 (2009), 242; Sage, “The Interconnected Challenges for Food Security from a Food Regimes Perspective: Energy, Climate and Malconsumption,”(2013), 75.
23McCluney, “Renewable Energy Limits,” (2005) and Manning, “The Oil We Eat: Following The
Food Chain Back to Iraq,” (2004) and Pollan, “Farmer in Chief,” (2008), quoted inWeis (2010), 321.
24Pimentel and Patzek, “Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel
Production Using Soybean and Sunflower,” (2005), Patzek and Pimentel, “Thermodynamics of Energy Production from Biomass,” (2006),quoted inWeis(2010),325.
44
1.5) Land grabs
Liberalisation policies have enabled captures of resources by international investors
in developing countries. In recent years, many have noted unprecedented
phenomenon of "land grabs", which usually refers to large-scale land acquisitions in
land-abundant countries, especially following the 2007/2008 hikes in world food
prices. Both private and public entities participate in land grabs, often with goals of
securing food and energy for their own purposes, or for distribution in their
countries.25 Beliefs in the benefits of large-scale farms and comparative advantages
are often used to justify large-scale corporate land grabs.26 However, there are
concerns over negative environmental effects and over how small-scale farmers and
rural population might be forced off of their land, which will intensify existing
ecological and social problems of the current agri-food system. The United Nations
(UN) Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Oliver De Schutter, points out that
there are opportunity costs involved in large-scale land purchases by investors, as the
land could have been used in alternative ways for more pro-poor effects and to
benefit local farming households.27 Land issues in the Thai context will be discussed
in greater detail in chapters 3 and 6.
1.6) Financialisation and the agri-food system
It has been suggested that the conjunction of food, energy and financial problems,
have prompted international capital markets to engage in speculative ventures in
25 United Nations, Foreign Land Purchases for Agriculture: What Impact on Sustainable
Development?, 2010; GRAIN, Seized! The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security
(Barcelona: GRAIN, 2008); Julia Behrman, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, and Agnes Quisumbing, “The Gender Implications of Large-Scale Land Deals,” Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 1 (2012), 51.
26 P. Collier, “Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan the Food Crisis,” Foreign Affairs,
(2008), quoted in Ben White et al., “The New Enclosures: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Land Deals,” Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 3–4 (July 2012), 625.
27
Olivier De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing: Three Critiques of Large-Scale Investments in Farmland,” Journal of Peasant Studies 38, no. 2 (March 2011), 256.
45 land, food and agro-fuels.28 In the past few years, financial institutions have become
increasingly involved at all points of the agri-food system, investing in farmland,
input supplies, storage and logistics, inspection and certification, food production
and processing, commodity trading, retailing and food services.29 This potentially
allows them to have the capacity to alter the conditions or to re-organise various
stages of agri-food supply chains. In recent years, non-commercial speculators, such
as hedge funds, have also entered futures market in large numbers to bet on rising
prices of food commodities.30 Agricultural commodity speculations partially helped
to inflate a price bubble that has pushed the costs of basic foodstuffs beyond the
reach of the poor in many countries between 2007 and 2008.31 The Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) noted that, by June 2008, a significant portion of the
price volatility in international food markets was beyond what could be explained by
the underlying supply and demand. Futures prices for wheat, for example, were 60
percent beyond what the market fundamentals would dictate in March 2008.32 While
these financial actors may benefit from the boom, rapidly falling prices after the
bubble bursts can harshly affect millions of food producers throughout the world.33
To a certain extent, Thailand is affected by fluctuating international prices of
agricultural commodities prompted by speculations, as will be discussed in chapter
3. Moreover, chapter 4 will discuss how the "speculation fever" had also inspired the
Thai government's paddy pledging scheme, which exacerbates problems of the
28 For example, see Philip McMichael, “The Land Grab and Corporate Food Regime Restructuring,”
Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 3–4 (July 2012), 690.
29 David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence, “Towards a Third Food Regime: Behind the
Transformation,” Agriculture and Human Values 26, no. 4 (July 31, 2009), 271.
30 For example, see: Jennifer Clapp, “Food Price Volatility and Vulnerability in the Global South:
Considering the Global Economic Context,” Third World Quarterly 30, no. 6 (September 2009), 1187.
31 Peter M. Rosset, “Food Sovereignty and the Contemporary Food Crisis,” Development 51, no. 4
(2008), 461.
32
FAO, Food Outlook, (Rome: FAO, June 2008), 55-57, quoted in Clapp (2009), 1186.
46 mainstream agri-food system, as well as hinder sustainable agriculture development
in Thailand.