Food multinationals threaten fight against poverty - new report

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GMW: Food multinationals threaten fight against poverty -

new report

 

" GM WATCH " <info

 

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 13:55:47 GMT

 

 

Food multinationals threaten fight against poverty - new report

http://www.gmwatch.org

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You can download Action Aid's new report, 'Power Hungry: six reasons to

regulate global food corporations' from

http://www.actionaid.org.uk/wps/content/documents/power_hungry.pdf

 

This report is part of ActionAid's new campaign to curb the power of

multinational food retailers over small farmers.

 

1.ActionAid Press release - excerpts

2.EXCERPTS FROM THE REPORT

*No justice from Bayer poisonings

*Corporate concentration in national and global agrifood markets

*Intellectual property rights on plants and seeds

*Monsanto et al's child labour in India

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1.ActionAid Press release (excerpts)

 

Food multinationals threaten fight against poverty

 

Multinational food companies are growing too big and powerful and are

threatening the fight against poverty in developing countries, says a

new report by development agency ActionAid.

 

The report - Power hungry: six reasons to regulate global food

corporations - reveals that the activities of multinational food and

agribusiness companies and their subsidiaries, such as Nestle, Monsanto,

Parmalat, Syngenta and Unilever, threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of

thousands of poor farmers and undermine basic rights.

 

ActionAid's evidence from Brazil shows that 50,000 dairy farmers have

been forced out of business, after a series of takeovers by Nestle and

Parmalat. In India, an estimated 12,000 children worked last year on

cotton seed farms supplying subsidiaries of Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta and

Unilever. Many children were also exposed to dangerous pesticides.

 

These cases provide condemning evidence of the impact of increasing

corporate power within the global food chain. The statistics are alarming:

 

Julian Oram, policy officer from ActionAid. " Our research shows that

the world's poorest farmers are in effect subsidising the world's largest

food companies, and in many cases are paying with their health,

livelihoods and basic rights. "

 

For more information on ActionAid's 'Stop corporate abuse' campaign

visit:

www.actionaid.org.uk <http://www.actionaid.org.uk/>

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2.EXCERPTS FROM THE REPORT

 

To down load a copy of the full report visit

http://www.actionaid.org.uk/wps/content/documents/power_hungry.pdf

 

No justice from Bayer poisonings

 

" The kids were screaming, vomiting and grabbing their bellies. Some

were dead, others were writhing on the grass and still more were on the

school patio. We had no idea what to do. " A villager from Tauccamarca,

Peru, where 24 children died after swallowing a pesticide sold by Bayer

 

Five years after 24 children died in Tauccamarca in Peru after

accidentally consuming a hazardous pesticide sold by the agrochemical

company

Bayer, their families are still waiting for justice. … a Peruvian

Congressional Subcommittee found evidence of criminal responsibility

on the

part of Bayer and the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture, and recommended

they compensate the families. Despite this, the families have received

no assistance, compensation or an apology from the company, which

blocked a lawsuit brought by the families.

 

The Peruvian villagers are not alone in facing barriers to obtain

justice against TNCs.

***

 

Corporate concentration in national and global agrifood markets

 

" For people who want to buy corn, there really isn't much choice but to

come to us. " Bob Kohlmeyer, former manager, Cargill corporation

 

1) Seed and agrochemicals

* Six TNCs – BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta – now

control 75-80% of the global pesticides market, down from 12 corporations

in 1994.

 

* DuPont and Monsanto together dominate the world seed markets for

maize (65%), and soya (44%).

 

* Monsanto controlled 91% of the global genetically modified (GM) seed

market in 2001

and took over 60% of the Brazilian non-GM maize seed market in the

space of two years (1997-1999).

 

* Bayer controls 22% of the Indian pesticide market.

***

 

Intellectual property rights on plants and seeds

 

" Patents held by northern multinationals…deprive poor farmers of access

to the means of growing their food. " Jean Ziegler, UN Special

Rapporteur on the right to food, 2003

 

…the WTOs rules on IPRs have raised the cost of some agricultural

inputs and encouraged anti-competitive practices in the industry. As

these

rules begin to be applied more widely in the South, their impacts are

likely to have other marginalising effects on smallholder agriculture.

IPRs could be granted very broadly to allow monopoly rights over

individual plant varieties, genes and their characteristics.

 

This extension of IPRs further threatens food security in the South by

removing farmers' customary rights to save, use, exchange and sell

farm-saved seed. Increasing use of IPR-protected GM plants and seeds

could

make smallholders dependent on TNCs such as Monsanto, Syngenta and

DuPont that hold the patents and IPRs. This, in turn, could fundamentally

change the way agriculture is practised in developing countries by

facilitating the growth of large-scale agribusiness and the decline of

small farms and biodiversity still further.

 

While IPRs have promoted and protected research by the largest

corporations, they have had the opposite effect on public research

bodies,

plant breeders and smaller companies. As shown above, patents on genes

and

genetic traits have created expensive legal barriers that make it

difficult for public sector researchers and smaller companies to gain

access

to new agricultural technologies.

 

Research and development can be blocked or becomes prohibitively

expensive if royalties have to be paid on the patented processes or

traits

required for the research.

 

Most corporate research is driven by the demand for profits and control

of markets rather than the needs of poor farmers in developing

countries. It is estimated that around 80% of public research is

oriented to

smallholders' needs, compared with only 12% of corporate research.

 

GM crops provide a classic example:

less than 1% of all GM research is targeted at small-scale producers.

 

Most research is directed at crops that large-scale commercial farms

grow in monocultures, often with destructive effects on local communities

and the environment. Since the mid-1990s, large-scale, mechanised GM

soy production in Argentina – promoted by the government and TNCs such as

Cargill, Dow, Monsanto and Syngenta – has expanded to cover almost 14

million hectares of land.

 

The technology requires virtually no farm labour and has led to an

" agriculture without producers " . This has triggered a rural exodus

into the

shanty towns surrounding Argentina's cities, according to the advocacy

group GRAIN.

 

In light of these threats to smallholder agriculture, it is vital that

state and private actors ensure that agricultural inputs are designed

to be appropriate and affordable for poor farmers, and that governments

protect farmers rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed.

***

 

Case study 3

 

Child labour on India's cotton seed farms

 

Transnational corporations have been accused of benefiting from the use

of child labour to produce hybrid cotton seed in India, and of not

doing enough to stop the practice in their supply chains.

 

It is estimated that 82,875 children were employed on cotton seed farms

in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in 2003-2004 -12,375 of them on

farms supplying subsidiaries of TNCs such as Advanta, Bayer, Monsanto,

Syngenta and Unilever.

 

Campaign groups report that many child workers are under 10 years old,

85% of them are girls, and they earn an average daily wage of 14-25

rupees.

 

Many are migrants from low castes who have been sold into debt bondage

to pay off family loans. The childrens job is usually to

cross-pollinate cotton flowers by hand for up to 13 hours a day; in

the process, they

are exposed to toxic pesticides. They sleep communally in small huts

and complain of headaches, nausea and convulsions. " It is very hard work

and we get tired and bored doing the same work again and again, " says

Sarala, a 12-year-old girl working in Alavakona village interviewed by

ActionAid.

 

TNCs do not employ child workers themselves, but they do work with

intermediaries known as " seed organisers " who in turn work with local

farmers. Campaigners say the TNCs are complicit in the use of child

labour

because they help set and pay such low procurement prices for cotton

seed that it makes it less viable for farmers to employ adult workers.

They argue that TNCs exert a high level of influence and control over the

cotton seed production process by giving farmers credit, technical

advice and stipulating quality

controls. Corporate representatives make regular visits to farmers

fields to ensure that their standards are being followed, and to

advise on

the use of pesticides.

 

Despite this, Suhasini's experience is not an isolated one. Many

children are suspected to have died from pesticide poisoning and a local

civil society group, the MV Foundation, is currently investigating 36

such

deaths of young children.

 

It appears it was mainly because of the efforts of local groups, who

exposed and publicised the issue in 2001, that the companies took action

against child labour.

 

Campaigners argue that stronger international human rights obligations

on TNCs would have compelled companies to act sooner, even though the

major companies deny that they have any legal responsibility for the

activities of local farmers.

 

The TNCs have jointly set up a Child Labour Elimination Group to

address the problem and Unilever says it intends to fulfil long-held

plans to

withdraw from India's cotton seed business in 2005.

 

Recent campaigns, legal actions against farmers and interventions by

the state government, industry groups, TNCs and civil society have

brought down the number of child labourers in Andhra Pradesh - from

247,830

in 2000-2001 to 82,875 in 2003-2004.

 

Some observers comment, however, that the decline is due mainly to

drought, and that much more must be done by TNCs to get child workers out

of the cotton fields and into education.