CJ Buchmann's Public Library

An interview with Bishop Juan Alberto Cardona, Methodist Church of Colombia

Education is another big issue. There is very little education in rural areas and virtually no way to acquire skills to improve their agricultural practices and so the poor can't compete with larger farmers who know the most modern methods, and have the best equipment. To export your products overseas, and earn money this way, the products have to be of very good quality -- and the smaller and poorer farmers don't have the knowledge or the machinery to produce at this level of quality standards. So any trade deal that is to reduce poverty has to think about how to make sure the poor can participate and get up to the high levels of quality and international standards.

Lewontin turns away from his announced premise of scientific objectivity

to attack, in a markedly personal way, the critics of industrial agriculture


and biotechnology who are trying to defend small farmers against exploitation


by global agribusiness

He criticizes Vandana Shiva, the Indian scientist and defender of the

traditional agricultures of the Third World, for her appeal to "religious

morality," and calls her a "cheerleader."

The farm economy is improving, but the biggest farms are still doing the best financially.

What is different is that technological, economic and other forces are bearing down so hard on moderate-sized farms—those that are commonly thought of as being family farms—that the powerful agrarian myth itself may be in jeopardy.

Faced with these crises, a quiet revolution has begun in which consumers and farmers "are forging links to promote smaller-scale, more diversified, and ecologically sound agriculture."1 Increasing numbers of consumers are buying food from local markets and farm stands. The U.S. independent family farm, the backbone of American democracy in Thomas Jefferson's agrarian vision, is being rediscovered in all its benefits for the production of healthful food, self-reliant communities, and environmental conservation.

On the international level, the global campaign for food sovereignty asks the critical question: Who is in control of our seeds, food, land, water, and other basic life-sustaining resources? The campaign seeks to restore control from the World Trade Organization, multinational corporations, and international financial institutions back to individual nations/tribes/peoples, and ultimately to those who produce the food and those who eat it. The Via Campesina peasant movement is at the forefront of this campaign at the global level, and here in the US, the National Family Farm Coalition has been leading the food sovereignty movement, along with partners such as Grassroots International, Food First, WHY, and others.

"The house of cards called the WTO couldn't be propped up any longer with lies by the spokespersons for the multinational corporations that benefit from its free trade agenda. The deregulation of agriculture resulting from countries bowing to the pressure of the WTO has decimated family farms and rural communities in both developed and developing countries'just the opposite of economic development,"? stated George Naylor, president of NFFC.

Dena Hoff, Montana farmer and NFFC Trade Chair stated, "This week's collapse at the WTO is a reflection of a global system dominated from the top down. Democracy and economic prosperity begin when farmers in every region of the world have rights to their own markets.

Production in Colombia started with small family businesses in the 1960s, promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as a development and diversification strategy for Southern countries (Ortiz, 2000). The sector experienced rapid growth in the 1980s, supported by state tax, credits and tariff benefits, and saw widening employment opportunities, especially for women. In the third stage, from the end of the 1990s the sector entered a period of concentration in the hands of fewer owners, including a multinational corporation, Dole, bought almost the 25% of the cut flower production infrastructure. Many small companies closed, and there were employment layoffs.

Studies of the sector by academics and NGOs over some 20 years have shown that the industry working standards have not changed substantially, and have even declined, and that violations of the right to freedom of association are widespread in ‘the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade union activist' (ICFTU, 2002: p. 1). Almost 4000 trade unionists from various sectors have been murdered since 1986 (ICLR, 2004: pp.1–2). Work intensification, increasing competition among workers, subcontracting labour and short contracts make labour organisation difficult ([Colectivo Bernardo Adam, 1999] and [Ortiz, 2000], p.5; [ILRF, 2003] and [Oxfam, 2002]: p.85; Untraflores, 2005). Nevertheless cut flower workers formed an independent national trade union of flower workers, UNTRAFLORES, in spite of harassment and dismissal of union members ([ILRF, 2003] and [Untraflores, 2005]).

Supporters say subsidies help keep farmers solvent when crops fail or prices plummet. Critics contend subsidies overwhelmingly go to large agricultural operations, interfere with the free market and encourage farmers to overproduce subsidized crops.

Many smaller farms are struggling to stay afloat in the face of low commodity prices, ever-increasing costs for equipment and fertilizer and steep competition from large farming operations.

Despite differing farm size and techniques, family management dominates farming at all levels of development. Consequently--unlike virtually any other major sector, even retailing--the economic advantages of family oversight prevail in farming across a wide range of development levels, typical farm sizes, capital/land/labor ratios, and types of product and ecology. Data strongly suggest that such farms retain competitive advantages despite market distortions, and despite some genuine and growing market handicaps as agricultural supply chains globalize and concentrate. The evolution of the family farm is thus linked to economic development

Feasibility depends on availability, quality, and distribution of farmland (and water); crop, land, and water science; and prospects for national and global trade and exchange, and their effects on farm sales and prices. Sufficiency depends on a corresponding rise in the poor's command over staple foods. Even large increases in staple food productivity would do little to cut mass dollar poverty if they were confined to large-scale farms, using tractors and combines but few workers, and selling at government-boosted prices that the underemployed and near-landless poor cannot afford.