BY RAISA PAGES
HAVANA — Falling prices in the developing countries' exports of farm produce and the ruin of millions of farmers are the pernicious outcome of neoliberal policies, US professor Peter Rosset from the US Institute of Food and Development (also known as Food First) argued during a meeting on organic agriculture here on June 4.
Western transnational corporations are flooding the market with cheap and subsidised food and driving millions of farmers to bankruptcy, not just in the Third World. In the US, an average of 2000 farmers go bankrupt every week. Banks are taking over the farmers' lands and leasing them to the transnationals. In Europe, it is calculated that some 400 farmers have to sell their properties each week.
In Latin America, poverty is devastating the rural areas and millions of peasants are migrating to the cities due to their products' falling prices on the international market.
Rosset noted that Cuba is one of the only countries in the world that, with state aid, is making advances. He said he considers the island to be a beacon of organic agriculture at an international level as it has the essential conditions for organic farming: free access to land and an organised population.
[Abridged from Granma International.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.