No Farmers, No Food

By Jessica Kaplan

The history of food production goes back over 10,000 years ago with the first farmers. Although our methods have changed drastically through this time something has stayed constant: farmers are a vital part of our existence. During this time of change we’ve seen many food movements come and go, like the slow food movement (the counteraction of fast food) we are currently in. 

Michael Pollan, in his book In Defense of Food, poses a question that I think is crucial to the 21^st century’s food concerns: “What if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more as a relationship?” This may seem like a silly comparison to draw, but if you think about it it’s kind of the central problem with food production today. We produce so that people can buy as much as their personal economic situation will allow even if it’s unnecessary and wasted. This is why we have lost the notion that it’s important to know where your food comes from. Industrialization is one major contributor to this lost notion. Monoculture accounts for a large portion of industrialization and is being done across the globe. A single crop being produced on a huge scale depleting the soil of the same nutrients a thousand times over is leading to soil erosion and other ecological issues. Pollan argues that this is why the American diet has lost so much of its core nutrients. “The fact that at least 30 percent of Americans have a diet deficient in vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A, and magnesium surely owes more to eating processed foods full of empty calories than it does to lower levels of nutrients in the whole foods we aren’t eating.” He goes on to explain that the foods even before being processed are of lesser nutritional value already. Pollan’s book is one that appeals to people interested not only in food production, but also literature. He’s a well-known author and commentator on food topics. He explains all the scientific-based explanations thoroughly because he wants the information he’s writing to be accessible to anyone. This is important because every person should know about what they’re consuming. 

Monsanto is the basis for many arguments against GMOs and any biological tampering of really anything. If you take a look at the biotechnology company’s website, you may find yourself confused by all the drama around the company. At first glance it’s a rather cheery website. The company seems pro-farmer and environmentally friendly through tabs labeled “Sustainable Agriculture” and “Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability.” If you watch their short video, "Monsanto at a Glance", you get a false idea of the company as a whole. The video highlights Monsanto employees explaining how they “empower farmers.” However, this is far from the truth. The corporation has taken ownership of seeds, literally. Vandana Shiva explains in her book Stolen Harvest how Monsanto patented the Indian mustard plant. This means that if the country wanted to plant mustard they are forced to go through Monsanto, and use genetically modified varieties of a plant that belongs to India and its people. Contrary to the smiley Monsanto employees, owning every aspect of agriculture production in places like India is not helping farmers. They find themselves forever entwined with the corporation once they purchase seeds once. When the seeds are purchased it’s almost impossible for a farmer to do anything else for the rest of their food producing lives. Indian farmers end up putting themselves in debt trying to pay for all the components of Monsanto’s agriculture production. 

A  2014 New York Times article entitled “After Farmers Commit Suicide, Debts Fall on Families in India” by Ellen Barry, Monsanto isn’t found explicitly named as a key factor in the high rate of farmer suicides in India. However, Barry does not state, “farmers took on new risks, switching to commercial crops and expensive, genetically modified seeds…” Monsanto was one of the companies selling farmers the genetically modified seeds. This article takes on a more unbiased approach than “Monsanto’s Seeds Contributing to Farmer Suicides Every 30 Minutes,” written by Anthony Gucciardi appearing in Nation of Change in 2012, makes Monsanto the core reason for the tragic loss of farmers. It says that some even used the insecticide from Monsanto to end their own lives. Although this article may seem like it is only blaming Monsanto there seems to be truth behind it. The article includes a story from a wife whose husband committed suicide and she says that they had bought the BT cotton seed from Monsanto and it failed twice. The incorporation of this story was to impact the reader in a way that makes them understand that farmers need support and not company’s imposing methods on them. Articles like the two mentioned above make the public, even if they’re thousands of miles away, realize the importance of farmers and the hardships they go through that we don’t always recognize. 

If you refer back to the Monsanto website, you’ll find Monsanto’s comments on the increase of farmer suicides in India. They include references to different scientific studies that show how other socio-economic factors played the major role in the increase. One of these being “lack of reliable credit,” but the farmers are most likely in need of loaned money because of failed GMO crops. Many farmers turn to the government in order to provide for their families when crops fail, but then when they need to pay it back they are already so in debt from purchasing the Monsanto seeds and supplies that they can’t come up with the money. They also only refer to the increase in production yield for the BT cotton crop when there are other possible GMO crops affecting the farmers. I can’t help but imagine how Monsanto would have constructed not just this comments page to the situation in India, but the entire website. I can tell that each word was carefully selected to make sure that nothing can be implied except the message they are trying to put out. The wording seems as though they are trying to not say too much. The language isn’t flowery or wordy. If someone who had no former knowledge of Monsanto looked at their website they may not believe that it is the company many people see it as. I think this is what made Monsanto into the power that it is.

So after all of this—where do the farmers stand? Who advocates for farmers? Beyond people like Shiva and Pollan, we owe a lot more than we think to the farmers around the world. Through the media today we hear a lot about GMOs and why or why not they should be labeled, but what about the farmers? People have gotten so caught up in the drama and controversy surrounding genetic modification, to the point where I had no idea about the farmer suicides in India until I heard it from a friend. I was shocked that I never heard about it, but thought I knew a considerable amount about GMOs. Farmers rights are something that is sometimes forgotten about because of our disconnect with food. If you look at farmersrights.org, which is a website designed to provide information about farmers’ rights as they’re referred to in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, you will see that protecting farmers means protecting diversity of plant genetics. It seems like a rather simple concept, allow farmers to continue to use and save seeds in order to produce food. However, in today’s world this is being attacked by company’s’ desires to “own” seeds. This means that farmers would not be able to do seed saving, which has been a crucial component of food production since farming begun over 10,000 years ago. By farmers being able to have access to diverse plant genetics they’re able to adjust to environmental conditions as well as the changing needs of the global population. If you take this ability away (something that is connected to Monsanto seeds) you leave the farmers unable to utilize different types of crops that may work better one season because of changing environmental conditions. In the media today there isn’t a lot of coverage on the issue of farmers’ rights. It’s something that even in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture which is a treaty that was created at the 31^st Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2001, there is no definition as to what exactly constitutes “farmers’ rights” because each farmer’s needs vary depending on each of their situations. The importance of this treaty, as well as the website that highlights its main points, is to make sure that farmers have access to the genetic resources they need. The website makes reading a lengthy treaty simple. Looking at all of the conditions in the treaty I feel as though more needs to be done to make sure that farmers all over the world feel they have support from an organized body to advocate for them.  

We all see those bumper stickers that say, “If you’ve eaten, today hug a farmer” and we may find it cheesy, but it’s so true. We have lost the connection we once had with our food, and in turn, our farmers as well. We no longer find it important to know where our food came from. We get nutrients through foods processed to have nutrients when we could just eat foods that naturally have them. Farmers around the world are feeling the pressure of the increase in global population. In places like India, they feel like they have no other option than to use genetically modified seeds. Countless farmers are now caught up in the expensive monopolies created by corporations like Monsanto. Moving forward, it’s important to look to the ideologies of people like Michael Pollan and Vandana Shiva.