Wed 23 Jul 2008
The WTO and the World Bank want hungry farmers to move to cities
Posted by Nigel Tunnacliffe under Food , Public policyNo Comments
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved had harsh words for corporations, governments, the WTO and the World Bank in an interview with CBC that aired today on a program called “Diet for a Hungry Planet”. That interview can be heard by downloading the podcast from iTunes. According to Patel, who worked at both the WTO and the World Bank, it is official policy of these two organizations to drive the poor from farming areas into the cities, and to encourage chemical industrial agriculture to dominate instead.
(image credit: food_for_action on flickr)
I think there are few readers of this blog that would disagree with Patel’s assessment with that policy decision. He states that small scale organic or at least low chemical-intensive farming which relies on crop rotation and crop diversity (which he implies is the most common method of farming among the poor in developing countries) is the most sustainable form of agriculture being practiced in the world today. The decision by these two major organizations to encourage the use of agricultural methods which use toxic chemicals, erode topsoil, and reduce biodiversity is an enormous step in the wrong direction, and I can’t say I disagree. That being said, the WTO and the World Bank are not exactly organizations which have been known for choosing to help people and the planet over the profits of corporations.
I think if we are going to provide a place to live for our grandchildren, we need to be providing micro-finance loans to the impoverished farmers of developing countries. We should be promoting people to live in smaller communities rather than contributing to urban sprawl. And most of all, we should be encouraging local food economies based around organic farming methods in both developed and developing countries to reduce our dependency on petroleum and toxic chemicals.



