Home »

[Haitinow!]

Of Ecological integrity and the Eradication of hunger

In this segment I will specifically speak about Food production and ecological concerns in the Third World and will cite only some relevant examples taken from countries like Haiti where misconceptions absentee landlords and colonial practices of the elites represent a major part of the ongoing problems which are plaguing the life of the majority. I will briefly however enumerate the facts which are most important to be acquainted with and which answer the questions most often asked by analysts. Those facts I will take them from the United States to sustain the objectivity of my arguments which I will illustrate with a couple of case studies as I found them in my sources from The Institute for Food and Development policy.

The experts of the Institute started their research after asking themselves the following questions

1- To grow more food should we accept environmental and health risks of these deadly chemicals?

2- Just how pesticide -dependent is the world current food production?

In the United States about 1.2 billion pounds, a whopping six pounds for every American and 30 per cent of the world?s total, are dumped into the environnement every year. Surely one would be inclined to think that such staggering figure means practically every acre of U.S farmland is dosed with deadly poisons. U.S food abundance appeared to us as the plus that comes from such a big minus. The facts however, proved the researchers wrong.

Fact one: About one third of the pesticides in the United States are used not on farmland but on golf courses, parks and lawns.

Fact Two: Only about 5 percent of the nation?s crop and pasture-land is treated with insecticides, 15 per cent with weed-killers, and 0.5 percent with fungicides.

Fact Three: Over half of all insecticides applied in the United States agriculture are used on nonfood crops Cotton alone receives almost half(47 percent) of all insecticides used. It should be noted that , even then, half of the country?s total cotton acreage receives no insecticide treatment at all.

Fact Four: 50 years ago American farmers used 50 million pounds of pesticides and lost 7 per cent of their crop before harvest.

Today, farmers use twelve times more pesticides, yet the percentage of the crop lost before harvest has almost doubled.

Fact Five: Even if all pesticides were eliminated, crop loss due to pests(insects, pathogens, weeds, mammals, and birds) would rise only about seven percentage points, from 33.6 to 40.7 percent. Such an increase does not take into account the possible use of alternatives to chemicals.

And what about the developing countries? Do pesticides there help produce food for hungry people?

In developing countries most pesticides are used for exports crops, principally cotton, and to a lesser extent for export fruits and vegetables planted uniformly in vast expanses a condition known to exacerbate pest problems. The quantities of pesticides injected into the world?s environment therefore have little to do with the hungry?s food needs.

The alternatives to chemical pesticides, crop rotation, mixed cropping, mulching, hand weeding, hoeing, collection of pest eggs, manipulation of natural predators, and so on are numerous and proven effective. The first step, however is spraying only in response to need. Cotton growers in Graham County, Arizona, found they could reduce pest damage tenfold and pest control costs fivefold by spraying only in response to a specific outbreak rather than the blind, scheduled spraying recommended by pesticide manufacturers. The Chinese have minimized pesticide use through a nationwide early warning system. In Shao-Tung in Honan province, 10,000 youths make up watch teams that patrol the fields and report any sign of pest damage. Appropriately called the ?barefoot doctors of agriculture? , they have succeeded in reducing the damage of wheat rust and rice borer to less than one percent and in bringing locust invasions under control.

All these alternatives would increase the numbers who could be productively employed in agriculture, thus taking advantage of a country most underutilized resource while reducing dependence of imported inputs. But the alternatives require the motivation of farmers who have the security of individual or group tenure over the land they work. Clearly , environmentally safe techniques for pest control will never be developed and employed widely as long as the problem is seen as merely a technical one to be solved by profit maximizing chemical corporations.

Is the need for food for a growing population the real pressure forcing people to farm marginal lands that are easily destroyed? The experts of the Institute investigated many of the most likely cases around the world. Let me quote what they say specifically about Haiti :

? Haiti offers a shocking picture of environmental destruction. The majority of the peasants ravage the once green mountain slopes in a desperate effort to grow food. Has food production for Haitians used up every safely cultivated acre so that only the mountains slopes are left? No. These peasants seeking to farm the fragile slopes can only be seen as exiles from their birthright, some of the world?s richest agricultural land. The rich valley lands are in the control of a handful of elites(and their American partners) whose concern is not food but dollars to pay for an imported lifestyle.

These fertile lands are thus made to produce largely low nutrition and feed crops( sugar, coffee, cocoa, alfalfa for cattle) exclusively for export. In the early 1970?s some Texas-based operators began to fly cattle into Haiti for grazing and re-export to the American institutional and fast food market.? End of quote.

In Columbia a world bank study concluded that large numbers of farm families?.try to eke out an existence on too little land, often slopes of?45 degrees or more. As a result they exploit the land very severely, adding to erosion and other problems, and even so are not able to make a decent living?

Overpopulation? No. Colombia?s good level land is in the hand of absentee landlords who keep it idle or use it to graze cattle, raise animals feed and even flowers for export to the United States.

In Africa, large tracts of land perfectly suitable for permanent crops such as grazing grasses and fruit or nut trees have been torn up for planting cotton and peanut monoculture imposed on the peasant farmers, first by the French colonial administrators and now by the taxation and other programs of elite governments, has devastated the soils.

In Brazil the Amazon forest is being destroyed not because of a shortage of farmland. Even though agronomists have warned that tropical forest soils are not suited to permanent cropping, the military dictatorship of the 70?s has promised the landless people ? new frontiers ? in the Amazon basin. This was one way of deflecting popular demands for land redistribution and thereby protecting the largest estates, controlling 43 per ecnt of Brazil?s farmland. But in reality , only a few thousand peasants have received any land. At the same time, multinational corporations like Anderson Clayton, Goodyear, Volkswagen, Nestlé, Liquigas, Borden, Mitsubishi, and multibillionaire Daniel Ludwig?s Universe Tank ship Co. Get massive government subsidies to bulldoze hundreds of millions of acres to produce beef, rice, and wood for upper income domestic and foreign markets. Scientists disagree over how monumental the devastation to the planet?s environment will be. Now you can see why the pop singer Sting was campaigning for the protection of the Amazone forest . Can?t you?

My friends I decided to conclude this segment with the Haitian example cited above by the researchers of the Institute for Food and Development Policy also with a Columbian case study , an African case study and a Brazilian case study of the same researchers. I find those cases relevant enough to illustrate objectively my points. I have omitted a few case studies in The Great Plains, in Arizona and in Iowa. But the most important message I want to leave with you in this segment is this one:

It is not the growing population that threatens to destroy the environment either in America , in Africa, in Brazil in Venezuela or in Haiti even in the United States but other forces as: land monopolizers that export nonfood and luxury crops, forcing the rural majority to abuse marginal lands; colonial patterns of cash cropping that are reinforced by elites today, and a system that promotes the utilization of food producing resources simply according to profit seeking criteria. Cutting the world?s population in half tomorrow would not stop any of these forces.

I am seizing the opportunity to thank Amor and Panoramix who raised some relevant questions about the cultivation of our valley lands near Grand Riviere Du Nord, about Globalization, and about policies which could alleviate the situation at home. Tomorrow I will come with a segment which may answer some of their questions.

Mèsi anpil ankô pou opotinité-a zanmi konpatriot and:

Please think about it.

This research has been conducted through the channels of The Institute for Food and Development Policy U.S.A.

A suivre.