Food sovereignty: Restoring the rights of farmers

Food sovereignty: Restoring the rights of farmers

Witoro, Jakarta

Access to food has been declared a basic human right in
several international conventions, including the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The right to food is also recognized
in national laws, such as the Law No. 7/1996 on food.

In this country, close to 90 percent of land-tilling farmers
produce food. However, according to a Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) report in 2002, Indonesia was one of the
countries that had between 5 and 19 percent of its population
going hungry from 1998 to 2000.

Ministry of Health figures from the 2000 Census showed almost
five million Indonesian children suffered from malnutrition
deficiencies. About 305,000 babies and children aged under five
die every year in Indonesia, with an estimated 180,000 of them
due to malnutrition.

In the past decade, food globalization, the inevitable
consequence of agricultural trade liberalization, has
accelerated. This process has pushed the integration of national
food agriculture in the global market.

Liberalized trade agreements regarding agricultural products
have allowed transnational companies to intensify their role in
producing a variety of agricultural products and trade them on
the international market. Most of these companies are based in
rich countries and receive massive subsidies from their
governments. They enjoy the greatest benefits from the World
Trade Organization's program to scrap global trade barriers.

This strategy awards monopolies to a handful of giant
companies that derive profit from the monopoly of genetic and
agricultural resources as well as export subsidies for food and
agricultural products and input, including pesticides. By
extending massive subsidies, food exporting countries can raise
their food production surplus and sell their products below of
production cost.

A rise in food production in advanced countries has caused
developing nations, including Indonesia, previously known as
exporters, to gradually turn into importers.

In 1989-1991 period, Indonesia was a net food exporter
securing about US$418 million of export value a year. However, by
1994 the tide had turned. From the 1998 to 2000 period, Indonesia
recorded a net food import of $863 million annually. In 2002, it
was even estimated that Indonesia's food imports stood at some
$2.3 billion.

Consequently the country has an abundant supply of cheap food
as a result of imports, food smuggling and food aid from rich
countries. This has caused the price of small-scale farmers' food
products to become increasingly depressed. Meanwhile, the
government's support for the farmers has continued to shrink. In
Indonesia, subsidies for farmers have been reduced or even
scrapped since 1998. The agricultural liberalization is part of
the policy changes Indonesia had to implement to obtain
International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans.

Lowering food import tariffs and the scrapping of the role of
the State Logistics Agency (BULOG) to stabilize food prices and
hold monopoly over the import of strategic food products have led
to an influx of imported food.

The influx of cheap imported food and the absence of a policy
framework to protect farmers' interests in Third World countries
have reduced farmers' earnings, caused farmers' debts to swell
and increased the number of those affected by food shortages.

An agricultural system oriented towards subsistence and
sustainability, which for many centuries has become the basis of
farmers' livelihood, has given way to the ownership of land,
seedlings and other production by a small number of companies.

Efforts have indeed been made to reduce the number of starving
people in the world. World leaders attending the 1996 FAO World
Food Summit in Rome agreed to act to cut the number of hungry
people worldwide from 840 million to 400 million by 2015.
Unfortunately, during the past eight years, statistics show only
25 million people have been freed from starvation.

Given this reality, Via Campesina (Food Sovereignty), an
international farmers organization, has come up with an
alternative concept to replace the neo-liberal food policy that
has proven unsuccessful in protecting food production.

Since it was first introduced in a public debate in the 1996
World Food Summit, the concept of food sovereignty has now become
a theme in various meetings.

Food sovereignty is the right of the people or a state to
determine its agricultural and food policies. This sovereignty
refers to prioritizing local agricultural production to meet the
people's food requirements and providing small-scale farmers
access to water, seedlings and loans. All this requires an
agrarian reform, resistance against transgenic plants or
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), free access to seedlings
and efforts to protect water as public property.

This concept also covers the right to food as well as the
rights of farmers and local communities to control their own food
system. Food problems are also political and various communities
and the state have lost their capacity to determine their own
food policies.

This concept differs from the concept of food security, which
is not concerned with where food comes from and how it is
produced. It is this food security concept that has encouraged
the importing of cheap food, rather than producing food locally,
is the most reasonable way for poor countries to fulfill their
food needs.

The acceptance of this argument has led to the influx of cheap
food imports to poor countries in such a way that domestic food
products from small-scale farmers have dropped in price. The
absence of an incentive to produce food has led to increased
starvation and encouraged rural people to migrate to towns and
cities for a living. Many of them have become trapped in a new
vicious circle of poverty and hunger.

The food sovereignty concept, meanwhile, emphasizes the
importance of giving authority to local communities to make their
own choices about how they produce, distribute, and consume food.

To be able to achieve genuine food resilience, rural people
must have access to resources through an agrarian reform drive
and they must also receive a fair price for their products. Local
communities, involving small-scale farmers, farm laborers, small-
scale fishermen, women farmers, traditional communities and the
people living around forest areas, must gain access to resources
such as land, water, forests, seedlings, genetic resources and
knowledge.

Food sovereignty does not mean isolating the community from
the rest of the world. Neither does it mean going against trade
practices. This concept demands that a just trading system be
introduced by prioritizing the needs of the family and community.

Therefore, each country must protect and regulate their food
agricultural production and trading to sustain farmers'
livelihood and sustainable supplies of food for the entire
population. Food sovereignty appreciates the role of farmers'
families as they constitute a sound local and national economic
basis and part of national resilience and sovereignty.

Witoro is the coordinator of the working team of People's
Coalition for Food Sovereignty based in Bogor, West Java.