Food. Jennifer Clapp

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СКАЧАТЬ 49 percent of Nicaragua’s exports were agricultural products. Some rich industrialized countries are also heavily dependent on agricultural exports, such as New Zealand, where around 70 percent of all exports are agricultural products.⁷

      A particularly high percentage of some key commodities enter world markets, and some countries rely heavily on a single commodity for most of their agricultural exports. According to the FAO, over forty developing countries are dependent on a single agricultural product for over 20 percent of their total exports, with the crops that they are dependent on typically being coffee, cocoa, sugar, and bananas. For these crops, a very high percentage of global production is traded internationally, with around 80 percent of coffee, 70 percent of cocoa, 30 percent of sugar, and 18 percent of bananas entering world markets. Palm oil is also a highly traded agricultural commodity, with over 70 percent of production entering world markets. Just two countries – Indonesia and Malaysia – account for around 85 percent of all palm oil production. It is not just tropical crops that see a high percentage of production enter world markets. The export share of wheat is around 25 percent globally and for soy it is approximately 40 percent.⁸

      At the same time that food and agriculture exports are growing, so are imports, particularly in developing countries, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. The least developed countries as a group, for example, were net agricultural exporters in the 1960s, but are now net agricultural importers. Between 2000 and 2015, this group of countries saw their agricultural import bill increase from US$2.5 billion to around US$33 billion, while their agricultural exports lagged behind, leaving them with an agricultural trade deficit of around US$15 billion. African countries in particular have become dependent on food imports, especially cereals, in recent decades.⁹

Foreign direct investment (FDI) by transnational corporations has also intensified in the food and agriculture sector, serving as another indicator of the extent to which this market has become more global in recent years. FDI inflows in the food and beverage sector, for example, increased from approximately US$7 billion per year in the 1989–1991 period to US$35 billion in 2009, reflecting increased investment in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 food price crisis. FDI in the sector dropped to around US$20 billion in 2014, and then rose back up to US$30 billion in 2017. In some sectors of the food industry, just a few TNCs dominate production and trade, as is the case with some highly traded commodities such as grains, coffee, cocoa, and bananas. Investment by agricultural input corporations has also been on the rise, with growing market concentration in the seeds and agrochemicals industries, as well as the retail food sector, as will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4.¹⁰

As the food system has become more globalized, diets around the world have also changed. With the rise of global food trade and transnational food corporations, a growing proportion of diets are based on what are known as ultra-processed food products – foods that have multiple ingredients, and which have been processed in industrial facilities. These foods are typically energy dense with added sugars, and contain added fats, salt, emulsifiers, and preservatives. Around 50–60 percent of diets in many industrialized countries – for example, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom – are comprised of ultra-processed foods. Levels of ultra-processed food consumption are typically lower in less industrialized countries, although this is changing quickly with the globalization of the food system. Consumption of ultra-processed foods, such as sugar sweetened beverages and other highly processed snack foods, has risen faster in middle-income countries, such as Brazil and India, than it has in industrialized countries in recent years. Meat consumption has also been on the rise. Global average meat consumption per annum climbed from approximately 23 kg per person in 1961 to 43 kg per person by 2013. This average masks huge differences. Over that same period, China’s meat consumption per person per year rose from 4 kg to 60 kg, while Guinea’s rose from 4.5 kg to 10 kg and the United States increased its consumption from 90 kg to 115 kg.¹¹

How Did We Get Here?

Four key forces have been behind the expansion of the world food economy: (1) state-led global expansion of both the industrial agricultural model and transnational food trade; (2) agricultural trade liberalization; (3) the rise of transnational corporate actors in all aspects of the food and agricultural sector; and (4) the intensification of the financialization of food, which has resulted in food commodities becoming increasingly like any other financial product bought and sold by investors. Each of these forces, shown in Figure 1.1, has contributed to greater distancing in the food system. New middle spaces opened up by these forces have created opportunities for powerful actors to gain influence over the norms, practices, and governance processes that shape the world food economy. These forces, and the middle spaces they have opened up, will be discussed in more detail in the various chapters of this book. A brief overview is provided below.

       State-led industrial agriculture and international market expansion

      Industrialized country governments set the stage for the globalization of the world food economy by actively engaging in shaping agricultural development over the past century. Through national agricultural policies that had a global impact, these wealthy states promoted the adoption of an industrial agricultural model and encouraged production with farm subsidies and other forms of support. It was through these policies that rich country governments laid the groundwork for an intensification of international agricultural trade. The widespread adoption of large-scale industrial agricultural production generated food surpluses in a number of industrialized countries, particularly the United States, Canada, and Australia, which by the 1950s had become significant enough that they posed an economic problem due to the high cost of storage. The donation of those surpluses in the form of food aid dominated agricultural trade and aid in the 1950s–1960s, as surplus countries sought to dispose of their unwanted grain in a bid to support their domestic farm sectors and to develop new export markets.

      Figure 1.1 Major Forces in the Dominant Food System in the Past Century

By the 1960s, these same rich countries – along with the support and encouragement of private foundations and international development agencies – also sought to export industrial agricultural production methods. The export of the agroindustrial model to developing countries is often referred to as the “Green Revolution.” Intensive agricultural development assistance dominated international aid programs in the 1960s–1970s and promoted the development and dissemination of new seeds and other agricultural inputs necessary for the installation of an industrial agricultural model on a global scale.

      The increased dominance and spread of the industrial agricultural production model, and the creation of new patterns of international agricultural trade and development assistance, opened up new arenas of governance in the world food economy. The same actors that were driving these trends – rich country governments, international development agencies, agrifood TNCs, and private foundations – shaped these middle spaces. Despite the crises in the world food economy that emerged in the 1970s – soaring food prices and ecological fallout from the spread of industrial modes of agriculture – this type of farming and participation in global markets have become the dominant norms, especially for international agricultural assistance.

       Uneven liberalization of agricultural trade

Most governments have long protected agriculture for national security reasons, but recent decades have seen growing moves to liberalize trade and investment in this sector. In the 1980s, many developing countries were strongly encouraged to liberalize their agricultural markets СКАЧАТЬ