[0] Small-Scale Farming: A Global Perspective - Brief Article

...AND VANDANA SHIVA CHAMPIONS THOSE IN THE SOUTH.

We are often told that when farmers, NGOs or campaigners in the North oppose the current system of global trade in agriculture they are being 'protectionist'. This is used as a derogatory term, implying backwardness, selfishness and a desire to cling to privilege. The supporters of open trade in agricultural produce can often be heard saying that the poor of the South 'need' -- indeed, are desperate for -- access to the markets of the West. To deny them this 'market access' is to deny them the chance to 'develop' as the West has done. And what, after all, could be worse than that?

In fact, the term 'market access' like the term 'development' is actually a weapon used by the rich against the poor. It has become a catch-all phrase that facilitates the process of robbing the poor of the South of their last resources and their meagre means of survival for the benefit of northern market hegemony. 'Market access' has become the new code word for giving priority to exports above local needs, and putting the resources of the South in the service of luxuries of the North and the profits of the big corporations.

In fact, what would be best for farmers everywhere -- in Europe, Africa, Asia and in my country, India -- is a focus on relocalising production and consumption, and on meeting the needs of everyone, rather than corporations, rich consumers and amorphous 'global markets'.

Currently, crops grown in Thailand, Brazil and India provide cattle feed for Europe's intensive livestock industry. Scarce land in Colombia and India is diverted to produce flowers for Europe. African countries produce green beans for American markets while African children are denied access to basic food and nutrition.

This, at root, is what the market is about.

Each kilogram of food travelling across the world, from poor producer to rich consumer, produces 10 kilograms of [CO.sub.2], the leading contributor to global warming. And it is the poor of the South who bear the costs of this, too. The current drought in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the worst in living memory, is leaving millions without food and water. These are the costs of globalisation and export-driven economies. Who do they benefit?

Not us.

The alternative is relocalisation -- and it is a realistic alternative. It does not imply 'going backwards', it implies living within the limits set by nature and ourselves. Relocalisation in the North would mean that the poor in the South, who depend on scarce land, water and biodiversity, have access to livelihoods and resources for meeting their own needs and, importantly, have the possibility of conserving their resources for themselves.

They would not be forced to grow export crops for the rich, from which they see little benefit.

The language of 'market access' through globalisation and free trade is often used linked to 'special and differential' treatment for the South. But the banana dispute before the WTO, for example, robbed Caribbean banana growers of their markets in Europe. The 'market access' rules of the WTO work for the Chiquita banana corporation, not the smallholder. They work for Cargill, not the Punjab farmer. Special and differential treatment is excluded by the rules of 'free trade', and market access is embedded in such rules. It is market access based on relocalisation, not market access based on globalisation which will provide fair, just and sustainable markets to the Third World poor. Relocalisation combined with fair trade would recover the banana markets for the Caribbean peasant.

Relocalisation implies, very simply, that what can be grown and produced locally should be used locally, so that resources and livelihoods can be protected. Since the West will never be able to grow tea, coffee and bananas, the South will have its markets for these unique tropical products. There will be trade, but it will be fair, and on the South's terms.

Relocalisation everywhere -- in the South and in the North -- would conserve resources, generate meaningful work, fulfil basic needs and strengthen economic and political democracy. I hope that people of the North will bring about movements for self-rule and localisation, so that the environmental and economic burden is lifted from the South, and we can all shape our economies, political systems and resource-use patterns to provide for our own needs, together.

Vandana Shiva is Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, in New Delhi, India. She is also a writer, lecturer and prominent environmental activist.

Farm facts

UK Government support for organic agriculture is just [pounds]16m out of a [pounds]3bn agriculture budget.

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