A Call for Worldwide Actions against Global Agri-Business during the G8 Summit in 2007

international | anti-capitalism | news report Sunday August 27, 2006 17:12 by Soundmigration - WSM

In June 2007, the political elite of the world's strongest economies
(the group of G8 states) will meet in Germany at Heiligendamm near
Rostock to coordinate their politics. A basic tenet of this is the
creation and widening of better conditions for profit making by
transnational companies from the North. At the same time, thousands
of people will gather to demonstrate global resistance to
exploitation, oppression and capitalism. One topic will be the global
politics of agriculture, and in particular genetic technology.

n June 2007, the political elite of the world's strongest economies
(the group of G8 states) will meet in Germany at Heiligendamm near
Rostock to coordinate their politics. A basic tenet of this is the
creation and widening of better conditions for profit making by
transnational companies from the North. At the same time, thousands
of people will gather to demonstrate global resistance to
exploitation, oppression and capitalism. One topic will be the global
politics of agriculture, and in particular genetic technology.

The Companies of the North - Hand in Hand with the IMF, World Bank and WTO
For years, multinational companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta,
DuPont, Bayer and BASF have been trying to impose agricultural
technology worldwide. This has been nothing less than an attempt at
the total control of agricultural production. With biopiracy,
patenting, the buying up of land, the Protection of Species
Agreement, WTO rulings and terminator technology an attempt has been
made to take the freedom to decide what they grow on their fields
away from farmers. The globalisation of agriculture has brought a
worldwide standardisation of food habits and in particular the
methods of industrialised growing and cultivation. Genetic technology
has accelerated this process through monoculture farming and a total
dependence on the fertiliser and seed industries. Furthermore, it has
involved the systematic destruction of the means of subsistence for
small scale and indigenous communities with catastrophic
consequences, especially in the global South. The context in which
all this has taken place are the structural adjustment programmes of
the IMF, the free trade agreements of the WTO and the agricultural
subsidies of the United States and EU governments.

The consequences of agriculture politics are visible globally. More
than half of humanity, be it small scale farmers or agricultural
labourers, live from agriculture.

Resistance in the South
The farmers' movements in the South are the force for resistance
against the politics of agricultural industrialisation. There are
reports - even if they are limited - of diverse forms of resistance.
Over the last few years, in India, thousands of cotton farmers have,
again and again, stormed local branches of Monsanto. In South Brazil,
in March 2006, 1500 farmers destroyed 5million eucalyptus trees which
were sucking up groundwater. In Brazil, Ghana, Malawi and Zimbabwe,
land occupations have been a part of everyday political life.

The right, in particular, to "food sovereignty" is demanded, amongst
others, by Via Campesina, a worldwide association of small scale
farmers, agricultural labourers and landless people with more than
200million members. Food sovereignty means more than just the right
to free access to enough healthy, wholesome and culturally typical
food. Moreover, it means the right to agricultural - which means
non-industrialised - food production, and therefore the right to
control the means of production, especially land, water and seeds.
Answers to fundamental questions concerning property and distribution
need to be rethought in the context of food sovereignty.

Resistance in the North?
In Europe and the industrialised North, the issue plays a smaller
role, only coming to the surface in extreme circumstances. One
example was the articulation of support for mistreated,
hyper-exploited migrant agricultural workers on vegetable plantations
in southern Spain. Another is the activities against the planting of
genetically modified food. For example, in 2004, 2500 "Voluntary
Mowers" destroyed genetically modified fields in the south of France.

Now, some activists involved with the mobilisation against the G8
Summit also want to support the resistance in the North. The aim is
not only to make the worldwide resistance to globalised agriculture
and genetic technology visible, but also to help it grow. This is no
small task as problems manifest themselves in very different ways.

In the "South": through hunger; displacement; incredibly fast-growing
slum cities; exploitation in the countryside; the worldwide worsening
of the social situation of women in particular; catastrophic
environmental destruction.

In the "North": through the widespread closure of farms; the erosion
of villages and their replacement by advanced capitalist agro-export
monocultures; growing alienation in cities and the countryside.
Everywhere, the tendency is visible: more and more land is being
controlled by fewer and fewer actors, namely, landlords and
transnational companies.

The First Successes in Cooperation
There has already been successful cooperation between the South and
the North in resistance to genetic agriculture. Worldwide protests
and actions have severely limited its development. Again and again,
genetic engineering companies have been forced to withdraw from
various regions and countries. Of course, they are always looking for
ways to return. The genetic companies are global actors and their
politics are a part of capitalist globalisation. For this reason,
successful resistance needs to be globally networked and part of the
worldwide movement against neoliberalism!

Hopefully, a broad coalition of farmers, consumers, trade unionists
and opponents to economic globalisation will take action against the
global agri-business, gaining publicity around the G8 Summit in
spring 2007. The objective is to carry out actions at various points
within the agricultural production chain. For example: to blockade
the sowing of genetically modified crops; to address the outrageous
working conditions of employees and the ruinous prices paid by the
head buyers at the multinational supermarket, Lidl; to criticise the
agricultural policies of the European Union and the collaboration
between different departments at the University of Rostock and
agri-business in front of a pig-fattening factory. With a diversity
of actions, it should be possible to show who are the winners and
losers in globalised agriculture. We will demonstrate to the world
media gathered in Rostock that we won't accept this insanity without
resistance. Also in agriculture: another world - without profit,
exploitation and environmental destruction - is possible!

We hope that lots of people from different parts of Europe will take
part.

Beyond this, we want to appeal to the movements in the South to
support our project.
We hope that there will be coordinated actions during the 2007 G8
Summit, for example, against seed multinationals. Not only in Europe
and North America, and not only in India or Brazil, but rather, in
every country throughout the whole world resistance needs to
demonstrate that they are responsible for hunger, exploitation and
displacement. They simply have to go - worldwide!

This proposal has been discussed in Germany and amongst some other
European movements.

We request that you make this proposal known globally, that you
discuss it, and that you modify it.
We also request that, if you decide not to support this Call, you tell us why

http://dissentnetzwerk.org/node/8

A english language first edition of the G8Extra can be downlaoded here
http://www.heiligendamm2007.de/PDF/g8Xtra_ESF.pdf