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Why do the farmers who produce our food gain so little for their effort?
Theories of socio-economic development often suggest that societies tend to evolve from an agrarian base, through the growth of a manufacturing capacity, toward a thriving service sector that represents economic maturity. Based on this orientation, some see the decline in farming populations around the world as a necessary and even healthy indicator of ongoing global development.
But that optimistic assessment begs a set of basic questions: Do farmers choose to leave the land, drawn by greater opportunities elsewhere in an expanding economy? Or are they forced out by market distortions and government policies that undervalue the social, cultural and environmental contributions of sustainable agricultural management?
Evidence of oligopoly power, price manipulation and corporate political influence strongly suggests the latter response. Farmers feel the pinch of agribusiness market power on several levels. They are immediately affected by the global secular decline in commodity prices, a trend that benefits agribusiness and encourages the industry to use its political weight to resist discussion of global commodity supply management mechanisms.
Farmers are further squeezed by the disappearance of competitive markets: having paid top dollar for seeds, fertilizer and pesticides from one of the few remaining agri-chemical suppliers, they are then forced to sell their produce for less than the cost of production to one of the handful of processing firms whose market share is sufficient to dictate ever-lower prices.
While farmers in developing countries are usually portrayed simply as competitors to their counterparts in the industrialized world, producers around the globe have more in common than most people realize. Farmers are more clearly seeing the danger of giant corporations dominating food production and tying the hands of individual farmers. They should say: "I'm not into helping Monsanto, Cargill and ADM control all of agriculture. Why should I do all the work just so some huge corporation can make more money?"
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