Radical UN Report Promotes Democratic Control of Food and an End to Corporate Domination

[yurbud]

A crucial read and worth spreading around.

Do we really want food subject to monopolies and cartels that can manipulate prices to create artificial scarcity or kill competition by dumping their product so cheaply local farmers can't make a profit?

We don't need a Agriculture Commissar dictating five year plans for grain--but we do need some genuine trustbusters and watchdogs that keep them from rising up again.

This also argues for laws against economic terrorism, which does far more damage than any guys with a political or religious agenda could ever dream of doing.

A new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the “Right to Food” took aim at the entire basis on which food is produced and distributed on a global scale. Reflecting the type of progressive analysis of our food system from experts like Vandana Shiva and Michael Pollan, report author Olivier De Schutter called for an undermining of large agribusinesses and an infusion of democratic control.

Although the report’s recommendations are revolutionary, news of its release went largely unreported in the major U.S. media.

De Schutter, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, spent six years visiting more than a dozen countries and concluded that the world’s entire food system should be rebuilt, starting with the promotion of local, sustainable farming so that ordinary people have control over what they can grow and eat. This certainly does not sound radical to those of us in U.S. cities where there has been a rapid expansion of farmers markets and an explosion in backyard farming. But in poor American communities and in poor countries as a whole, it is a radical notion for food to be grown locally, sustainably and democratically.

The world’s food system is controlled by a handful of giant corporations, the majority of which are based in the U.S., such as ConAgra, Cargill and PepsiCo. These companies are a bottleneck through which most of the world’s food is forced, in order to feed most of the world’s people. Not only is this method environmentally unsustainable given its overreliance on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fossil fuels, but it is also inefficient at actually feeding people. The World Food Programme estimates that there are 842 million hungry people worldwide.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/21-0

[Cal33]

1. How about the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, which was created but not led by

Elizabeth Warren? Wouldn't this problem come under its jurisdiction?

I think leaders of the free world should come together and make agreements to
make sure that no corporations should become so big that they can dictate terms
to their governments. When this happens, corruption results. It's inevitable.

Just look at history. Corruption has always led to the downfall of governments. We
are already half-way there. And if the GOP wins both Houses of Congress in
November, God help this country!

[yurbud]

3. the difficulty is that presently those with the power to make the changes are paid to take dictation

[Wilms]

2. ^