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19.12.2016 |

Grow initiative expands corporate control over agriculture in the Global South

Maiz
Grow in Vietnam: Maize for animal feed (Photo: CC0)

Under a programme called Grow, the world’s largest agribusiness corporations are taking control of food and farming in the Global South, warns a new report released on December 15 by the non-profit organisation GRAIN. According to the report “Grow-ing disaster: the Fortune 500 goes farming”, some of the biggest food and agribusiness companies such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Monsanto are promoting public-private partnerships within the framework of the Grow programme, which focuses on Latin America, Africa and Asia – the main growth markets for the global food industry. They are promising ”market-based solutions” to poverty, food insecurity and climate change, with the aim of supporting small farmers. In reality, however, those food companies are fostering close ties with governments in order to increase their control over markets and supply chains. The programme’s focus is on a few high-value commodities, for example potatoes, maize, coffee and palm oil, showing that the real objective of the Grow initiative is to expand the production of these cash crops to benefit just a handful of companies, most of which are based in the US and Europe. The report warns that the programme will have negative impacts on local communities, biodiversity, nutrition and the climate.

Grow is part of the New Vision for Agriculture, an initiative of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that was launched in 2009 and is led by 31 of the WEF's “partner” companies involved in the food business, whether in agriculture, food processing or retail. GRAIN criticises that The New Vision for Agriculture is “a vague document that calls for market-based approaches to increase global food production and ensure environmental sustainability. Its main emphasis is on contract farming linking small farmers to multinational companies or corporate plantations. Grow Asia is the Southeast Asian leg of a global initiative and is located within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its Food Security Framework. One of Grow Asia’s projects in Vietnam is a Monsanto and Syngenta-led project to assist the Ministry of Agriculture in converting 668,000 ha from traditional rice production for food to hybrid maize production for animal feed within five years. GRAIN reports that the conversion scheme has already had dramatic consequences for the Xinh Mun people who live in this region. Over the past several years, many of them were pushed into planting maize instead of their traditional upland rice by offering them seeds and fertilisers, as well as household staples such as rice and salt in exchange for signing contracts to grow maize. The report says the farmers didn’t realise that they would have to repay the cost of the seeds at twice the price at harvest time. Almost all village households ended up in debt and many farmers have lost their land in an effort to repay debts. Another project in Vietnam’s Lam Dong province promotes contract potato production linking small farmers with US-based food giant PepsiCo. The company needs a particular potato variety for its Lay’s brand of chips and aims at building up a more affordable local supply chain. In Latin America, the New Vision's companies have their sights set on the Pacific Alliance (composed of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) but it has so far been limited to a national programme in Mexico. In Africa, the Grow programme is closely intertwined with the infamous New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa. The report describes a project in Ghana, where local people have been severely affected by the loss of land for food production and the decline in access to fish from the project's use of their water sources. For corporations, Grow offers a win-win scenario, the report concludes, but there is no future for small farmers or food traders and processors in this vision. (ab)

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