Street roots., June 22, 2018, Page 4, Image 4

Street Roots • June 22-28, 2018
Conversation
Page 4
The
oligarchy
of food
I
*
In a world where
mega-corporations buy
and sell genetic material
and control what we
consume, author and
activist Raj Patel says we
can shake the yoke of
corpocracies, reclaim our
food supply and
bring collective solutions
to the table
BY MARCO FILARDI
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
ummer is here, replete with sunny days,
sandy beaches, cool water and, of
course, food - lots of glorious food for
celebrating with friends and family^ and
anchoring a deep conversation on the
complex political and economic implications
of eating a meal.
Well, maybe that last part only comes up if
you’ve invited Raj Patel to your barbecue.
Raj Patel is an award-winning economist
and sociologist who is an activist for
agroecology - the application of ecological
philosophies to agriculture. Patel is a
research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson
School of Public Affairs at the University of
Texas, Austin.
He is the author of “Stuffed and Starved:
The Hidden Battle for the World Food
System,” and “The Value of Nothing: How to
Reshape Market Society and Redefine
Democracy.” The latter’s title is a reference to
Oscar Wilde’s statement, “Nowadays people
know the price of everything and the value of
nothing.”
Patel weaves together the big picture of
so-called corpocracies, market manipulation
and corrupt governments vs. people power,
which he sees rebalancing societies and -
re-calculating “worth.”
In a capitalist society like ours, the entire
construct of food value and costs is perverted.
“If you have money, you’ll eat,” Patel said,
in a recent interview in Austin, Texas. “If you
have a lot of money, you’ll eat well: organically,
locally and sustainably. We speak about the
need for better nutrition but, in this system,
only a minority eat well. The majority remain
entrapped by harmful foods with
intergenerational effects, which can lead to
obesity. The majority are stuck in a cycle of
cheap, ultra-processed foods which exploit
workers and the environment. It is for this
reason that you can find an obese person and
a malnourished person within the same
family.”
S
M arco F ilard i: In your book, “Stuffed and
Starved,” you describe the food system as an
hourglass and you p u t the focus on those at the
narrowest part o f this hourglass. Why?
Raj Patel: To understand how food
circulates from the farm to fork. We believe
that this is a short chain: the farmer sells to
the dispatcher, they sell to the local market,
and the market sells to you. But no. The myth
of the free market is exactly that: a myth.
There are millions of farmers and billions of
consumers and, in between, there’s only a
handful of corporations who control the
markets in an oligarchical manner and decide
what and how we eat. The food industry, food
giants and supermarkets intertwine to make
up the food system.
M.F.: How are recent fusions between Bayer
and Monsanto, Syngenta and ChemChina, and
Dow and Dupont involved?
R.P.: Viewing the food system as an
hourglass allows you to understand how the
system works and how to predict its future.
These mega-fusions are a sign of how these
organizations generate profit by finding their
way into the government to achieve changes
to regulations and concentrate market power
that prevents, for example, access to certain
seed types or different methods of producing
foods. They monopolize what you buy and sell
as well, as what you are able to buy and sell.
The concentration of power in these chemical
businesses and pesticide giants takes place
thanks to the penetration of governments, big
NGOs and the UN. This destroys the
traditional knowledge of small-scale farmers
as, by assuming that farmers are idiots, these
organizations rob them of the possibility of
experimenting and further understanding due
to seed legislation and of the application of
agrotoxins.
M.F.: Do you believe that we are living in a
“corpocracy”?
See FOOD, page 5