When Malthus wrote his famous ‘Essay on population’ (1765), his conception regarding the organisation of food production was probably based on Old McDonald’s farm, which produced enough for itself, and sold the surplus’ milk and honey, ham and cheese within the borough. He saw population rise, and felt, (on the basis of his empirical observation) that the planet earth, with all the Mc Donald Farms would not be able to feed the ever growing population. His argument was resurrected, every now and then, by several others of his ilk and also found institutional support from such influential quarters like the Club of Rome. However, in the intervening years, the Old McDonald Farms have all but dissapeared, but a new variant, the Big Mac fast food joint has taken its place. And for the first time in the history of the world, the Malthusians appear to have taken a back seat because ‘obesity’ is challenging malnutrition as the ‘numero uno’ concern of public health officials. However the problem with obesity is that unlike ‘malnutrition’ which is addressed as a public policy issue – for it is regarded that people are not malnourished by choice, in the case of obesity, governments and health officials are busy propagating the myth that obesity is a function of ‘wrong choices’ made by individuals, and that is can be corrected by interventions at an individual level, thereby masking what Raj Patel brings out in Stuffed and Starved as a conscious and well thought out strategy by food majors and agri business conglomerates to push the sales of agricultural products which can be produced on an industrial scale . Thus while the eradication of hunger, and access to food become part of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, addressing the health problems caused by the ‘corporate takeover’ of the food chain are not discussed at that level. Agaain, while at one level global integration has resolved the problem of hunger, at another level the food majors have become so powerful that even small and medium enterprises in the sector which add value to farmers produce at an intermediate level are being swamped, and agriculture produce is kept in the cold chain/warehouses for much longer, and transported across continents, thereby increasing the carbon footprints and adding to the ecological dilemma.
Thus a major question for all those engaged in the policy debate on food issues will centre on how the production of food is organised at the global level. The family farm (Old McDonald’s –with its barn, sheep, hen, cows and farm cattle ) has given way to the large consolidators maintaining online inventories for supplying the Big Mac outlets – from California to Ludhiana and Beijing to Johannesburg. This means that at one level , both the global demand and supply chains are getting integrated, but looked at from another angle, the local specificities are getting lost. True Big Mac has made its own adjustments and bacon and ham is a strict ‘no-no’ in South Asia.
The challenge is interesting – as global companies try to reach out to local customers, they adapt, and in the process there’s learning on both sides. Many small to medium size eateries along India’s National Highways now give a run to Mc Donald’s in terms of almost everything –visibility, affordability, hygienic preparation and ‘ready –to serve/pack’ option. Meanwhile, as customers become more aware and conscious, most eating establishments may have to display the calorific value of each item, along with the sourcing thereof-i.e., whether the ingredients used are grown organically, and more importantly, whether any GMO has become part of the food chain. The latter is indeed problematic, because if GM corn has been fed to cows, then the status of the milk/beef/veal is open to question. It is difficult at this stage to assess the collateral impact of GM crops on animal fats produced by the use of GM foods. However in addition to GMOs, there are many other yield enhancers/stimuli to boost production of milk or increase the body fat of farm animals are so external to their normal production system that they often lead to externalities like the Mad Cow disease, Bird Flu and now Swine Flu which leads to a major strain on the public health system. Here again the question is – while the profits from these ‘short-cuts’ have accrued to the owners/shareholders of the corporates , the cost of these pandemics is borne by the governemtns and the multilateral organisations – and ultimately by the tax payer.
There is also the larger issue of public information and choice. Consumers have a right to be aware about what goes into the making of their food, and the terms on which the transaction has been made with the primary producer, and the impact the production has had on the environment. It is also becoming clearer that while it is possible to have standard practices in management and accounting, agriculture production cannot be organised as a manufacturing line operation because of the dynamic interface of the complex biological cycles in plants, animals and human beings. There is an increasing realisation that even though Big Mac can become an impoatnt indicator of the World Bank’s attempt to estimate Purchasing Power Parity across nations, Big Mac comes with its own set of problems. As health regulators throughout the world are questioning both the content and the context of the advertising campaigns of these corporates, newer, more nimble kind of agribusiness firms are taking shape which are addressing the concerns of the consumer, as well as those of the environmental organisations. Is it possible to have a symbiotic relationship among the producers, consumers and regulators or do they always have to be daggers drawn ?
AgriMatters feels that this debate should generate not only heat, but also some light, and some possible options will be taken up in the next column.