World Food Day and 'food sovereignty'

Tejo Pramono, Researcher, Center for Agricultural Policy Studies (CAPS), Jakarta

On World Food Day of Oct. 16, we should reflect on whether our food development policy is on the right track. If the answer is no, then what are the main causes for decades of neglect of a very fundamental development sector? What should the alternative policy be?

The most crucial issue regarding food today in Indonesia is the scarcity of food in an agrarian nation, while international food stocks are abundant. The average import volume of rice has grown to 2 million tons per year over the last few years. Even last year, 3,707 million tons were imported because domestic production only reached 30,892 million tons.

And this excludes the underreported smuggling of rice. Rice dependency has placed Indonesia on top of the world's rice- importing nations. Besides, the volume of rice distributed as aid for the poor by the World Food Program is also very high.

Food dependence on the international market also occurs in the case of wheat, maize, soybeans, red onions, sugar, milk, and meat. Last year we imported 4 million tons of wheat, mainly for small and large-scale bread and noodle industries. This increasing dependence on wheat could jeopardize the domestic and traditional food system because wheat could replace local food someday.

A local favorite, tempeh, is also highly dependent on outside supplies; 1.13 million tons of soybeans were imported last year, up from 723,000 tons in 2001. The soybean sauce industry also uses imported soybeans cultivated from genetically modified seeds from developed countries.

All this dependence implies that the economic profit from the food sector in Indonesia is enjoyed by farmers in developed countries. And while many consumers in developed countries have rejected food derived from genetically modified organisms, such food supplies flow freely to consumers in developing countries.

Further, without shame our government allows transnational corporations to invest in the food processing industry, such as in bread, noodles, bottled water, poultry and meat production. These large agroindustries and agribusiness companies with huge capital resources push aside local food industries and small agribusinesses.

Small poultry industries in rural areas have been swept away by the new system of contract farming introduced by a big agribusiness company. Small agricultural firms now only rent out chicken coops and farmers only sell their labor for very low wages. So in a nation of more than 200 million people, the chicken meat market is dominated and determined by less than 10 big firms. Worse still, chicken feed is also supplied by other large agribusiness companies. These firms then determine prices.

Food security is defined as access by all people at all times to nutritionally adequate and safe food for an active and healthy life. One problem is the interpretation of foodstuffs as tradable commodities that are tradable, with those reaping the greatest advantage being the large agribusiness companies and merchants.

Other impacts of the failure to ensure food security is barely increasing domestic rice production due to degradation of the ecosystem, reductions in landholdings and the withdrawal of subsidies for, among other things, fertilizers at a time when the economic crisis was far from over.

Deforestation in upstream areas has affected water catchment areas, with the impacts being acutely felt during droughts through a lack of irrigation water. Damaged irrigation systems remain neglected as development budgets in the regions following decentralization are devoted to short-term returns in fast yielding investment sectors.

Farmers have been selling their land to cover debts and landless farm laborers now head more than 20 million households. These have now joined the urban poor in spending almost 90 percent of income for food.

Opening up agriculture to the world market, along with the agribusiness approach to agricultural development, has therefore impoverished peasants and led to a deep dependency on the international market and food aid from other nations. This shows that we no longer have sovereignty over even our most basic needs.

An alternative approach would be precisely that -- food sovereignty. Developed by the Via Campesina organization, this approach focuses on the rights of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labor, fishing, food and land policies -- policies that are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes a real right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources so as to be able to sustain themselves and their societies.

At the least, food sovereignty requires, first, placing priority on food production for domestic and local markets. Second, ensuring fair prices for farmers, which means the power to protect internal markets from low-priced imports and dumping.

Third, access to land, water, forests, fishing areas and other productive resources through genuine redistribution, not through market forces and World Bank sponsored "market-assisted land reforms."

Fourth, recognition and promotion of women's role in food production, and equitable access and control over productive resources. Fifth, community control over productive resources, as opposed to corporate ownership of land, water, and genetic and other resources.

Sixth, protecting seeds, the bases of food and life itself, for the free exchange and use of farmers, which means no patents on life and a moratorium on genetically modified crops.

Seventh, public investment in support of the productive activities of families, and communities, geared toward empowerment, local control and the production of food for people and local markets.

Food security involves a human approach to development where the community itself should supply the food that the people need. The implementation of "food sovereignty" would eradicate hunger through the creation of jobs to alleviate poverty, both in rural and urban areas.