Green Biotech for Society, 06.12.2012

Philipp Aerni

ETH Zurich &

University of Bern

Overview

1. Dual subordination of farming

4. Aid, Trade and Business in African Agriculture

5. Concluding Remarks

3. European Hypocrisy and Food Sovereignty

2. Causes and consequences of industrial agriculture

> Environmental Variation (abiotic/biotic stress factors)

- Hesiod’s ‘Erga’: ‘unheroic’ focus on practices and tools

to cope with variation. Restraint versus hybris

> Political Control (conquest > land ownership>power)

- Agriculture as the base of civilization…and domination

> Subject to rule of public (tax) and private agents (lenders)

Old Testament (Deuteronomy 15, Leviticus 25):

Social Policy: Redemption of Property / Debt relief

Ancient civilization ruled by clans with divine legitimacy (Vico)

> Peasants as slaves, serfs, clients of costal warriors

Rational Household management (oikos): Pater familias as

land owner ensures revenues through taxes/rents/unfree labor

Little prestige for entrepreneurship and Innovation (except war)

Hermes: Messenger God (individual adventure, trade, theft)

No incentive to increase in productivity in

Athens and later Rome (surpluses = taxes)

Population pressure offset by war losses

Food from subjected land > zero-sum game

Max Weber: Ancient Culture = Slavery Culture

St.Anthony of Egypt: Passive Protest against Roman terror

Choice to move out of the system > Life in the desert

First Monastery set up in Egypt by St. Pachomius

Walls of protection, rules and work discipline

> First capitalist enterprise (Conrad Zander)

Monasteries as creators of agricultural

innovation: flour mill, brewing, agricultural tools

and techniques in medieval times / Gregor

Mendel in the 19th century: laws of genetics

Capital endowment, no commercial pressure

> commercialization of prototype elsewhere > welfare

Hanseatic League/Renaissance Italy

> Commerce as a driver of peace and human development

(movement for equal rights)

1492: Discovery of the New World

New Crops > troubles (resistance against potato in France)

Reversal to slavery culture: Slave plantations overseas and

rightless farmers in Europe feed European elite

The alternative to slavery plantation was innovation in crop

production, grain trade (chicago board of trade),

transportation (railways), storage (refrigerator)

1789: French Revolution / 1791-1804 Slave Revolt in Haiti

US-Civil War > Abolishment of Slavery

> Morill Act 1962 > Land Grant System

Napoleon failed to reconquer Haiti > Continental

System (award system for import substitutes)

Population Growth thanks to industrial Revolution

> Extension of agriculture at the expense of forests

Crisis of the Allmende (Commons) and the

Manorial System (focused on Self-Sufficiency)

Growth of cities & decline of rent-seeking aristocrats opened

opportunities, enabled structural change, investment in

agriculture and productivity

Elinor Ostrom’s error: local institutions in

Swiss mountain villages were sustainable

because they exported their population surplus

(less people to feed plus possible remittances)

Catch-up growth > exchange in ideas more important

than exchange in commodities > Malthus was wrong

19th century: First unholy alliance between

French farmers and technophobic medical

scholars prevented the import of refrigerated

meat from Argentina > public perception problem

of the refrigerator: distrust of ‘freshness’, no need

for such an unsafe technology (Freidberg 2009)

Resistance against the use of Mendel’s laws in plant

breeding > Germany and France claimed to have their own

breeding methods / biodynamic agriculture

First Hybrid Corn developed in the

1920s at Iowa State University > Birth of

modern Agro-industry

Birth of Agro-industry (~1920)

Invention of fertilizer

Plant Protection Improved irrigation systems

Tractors

Environmental problems

Birth of green gene technology (~1980)

Public sector research dominates

Private sector research increases Great expectations

Die Birth of public resistance against GMOs (~1990)

NGO activities, mass media

No new products on the market > industry concentration

Great public concerns

Hybrid varieties

Prohibitive Regulation

Opposition against GM food merging with Food Sovereignty

movement > GMOs as a symbol for industrial agriculture

and unwanted change („profits before people“)

Lessons learned: emotion prior to reason /

unconscious prior to conscious

Dual framing: Food Sovereignty = people, local, controllable

GMOs = profits, global, uncontrollable > NFP 59 Project

Negative emotional tags > negative public perception

Hansjörg Walter (President of Swiss farmers:

«Everything we import is missing elsewhere»

Self-interest wrapped in a language of

moral concern

Facing Reality in Europe

The biggest famines ocurred in closed socialist systems

with policies of self-sufficiency (China, North Korea, Ethiopia)

José Bové, Vandana Shiva and Prince Charles represent the fears of

the ‚haves‘ about globalization. They „feel“ right. But they may harm

the poor and the environment because they

- use public trust as a private political resource

(burning rather than building bridges)

- export the culture of fear to poor countries that need change

- Start from wrong baseline assumptions:

Farmers before industrial agriculture were not free and

happy. They lived in bondage and were badly nourished

Farms in Africa are not getting bigger but smaller (farming

there is not a lifestyle choice) > structural change is needed

4. Aid, Trade and Business in African Agriculture

Working for a multinational corporation (commodities, retailing)

Working for an international NGO/Donor (aid, policy advocacy)

Working for the government (more

committed to foreign donors)

Problem: Heteronomous Development (not driven by Africans)

What are the best jobs for skilled people in Africa?

Most of these organizations serve

non-African customers, donors

and constituencies

- Africans better educated but low chance to succeed with a formal

business > complying with regulation can be as expensive as in

Europe > lack of empowered middle class

- Africa’s potential begins with the primary sector (structural change)

> Europe: part of the problem rather than part of the solution?

Most trade with Africa is Intra-firm trade of European companies

Investors in Africa as off-shore islands of Europe with CSR standards?

Most aid benefits European consultants, NGOs more than local people

Many African governments tend to accept bad deals if some of it helps to

strenghten the ruling party’s power (historical fact of unholy alliance)

Aid agencies: negative selection (aiming to support to less able rather

than the more able) and foster dishonesty (evalution reports done by

locals often as a copy-paste exercise) > Principal-agent problem

‚Capacity building‘ > Europeans explain why Europe knows better

CAP and opposition to industrial agriculture > declining productivity

growth rates (Europe imports food grown on a surface of Germany)

If Food Sovereignty means closing borders, CH agriculture would collapse

Producing/consuming fresh food locally has always been the

privilege of affluent landowners (symbol of prestige). Today it can be

sustainable if infrastructure is there, otherwise return to old times?

Overcoming trade-offs by facilitating exchange and testing of ideas > innovation, creation of new markets, connecting urban/rural dev

Population Growth Innovation

Institutions

5. Conclusions

We need to move away from the paternalist approach practiced

in aid, trade and regulation with Africa

Europeans do not remember anymore how their countries moved

from poverty to affluence – the Chinese and the Brazilians still do

remember > success of South-South Collaboration

‚Food Sovereignty‘ is based on wrong baseline assumptions

Introducing the history of technological change in

schools and social science departments

Save agriculture departments from environmental

takeover at universities

Most advocates of Food Sovereignty do so because

they „feel“ right. They are mostly chefs, lawyers, bored

agroecologists and political entrepreneurs