by Esther Vivas
The current food model is from top to bottom subject to a high company concentration, being monopolized by a series of transnational agribusiness interests that place their own economic interests above the good of the public and the community.
Today, the food system no longer responds to the nutritional needs of people, nor to sustainable production based on respect for the environment, but is based on a model rooted in a capitalist logic of seeking the maximum profit, optimization of costs and exploitation of the labour force in each of its productive sectors. Common goods such as water, seeds, land, which for centuries have belonged to communities, have been privatized, robbed from the people and converted into exchange currency at the mercy of the highest bidder.
Faced with this scenario, governments and international institutions have bent to the designs of the transnational corporations and have become accomplices, when not co-profiteers, in a productivist, unsustainable and privatized food system. The alleged “concern” of these governments and institutions (G8, World Trade Organization, World Bank and so on) at the increase in the price of the staple foods and its impact on the most disadvantaged populations of the Southern countries [1] only reveals their deep hypocrisy with respect to an agricultural and food model that brings them important economic benefits. A model which is in turn used as an imperialist instrument of political, economic and social control by the major economic powers of the North, the United States and the European Union (as well as their agro-alimentary multinationals) with respect to the countries of the global South.
Continue reading: Food Crisis: Causes, Consequences and alternatives
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