The Global Food Economy : The Battle for the Future of Farming

The Global Food Economy examines the human and ecological cost of what we eat. The current food economy is characterized by immense contradictions. Surplus ‘food mountains’, bountiful supermarkets, and rising levels of obesity stand in stark contrast to widespread hunger and malnutrition. Transnational companies dominate the market in food and benefit from subsidies, whilst farmers in developing countries remain impoverished. Food miles, mounting toxicity and the ‘ecological hoofprint’ of livestock mean that the global food economy rests on increasingly shaky environmental foundations. This book looks at how such a system came about, and how it is being enforced by the WTO. Ultimately, Weis considers how we can find a way of building socially just, ecologically rational and humane food economies. Contents......Page 6 Different worlds of food and farming......Page 8 Aim and outline of this book......Page 10 Uneven bounty......Page 18 The industrial grain-livestock complex......Page 23 A snapshot of global agro-food trade......Page 28 The great agrarian question of the twenty-first century......Page 31 Assessing the ecological footprint of industrial agriculture......Page 35 Conclusions......Page 51 Notes......Page 53 Speeding agrarian revolutions......Page 54 Managing a state of chronic surplus......Page 70 Agro-giants: the ascendancy of transnational corporations......Page 77 The polarity of production in industrial agriculture......Page 88 Conclusions......Page 93 Notes......Page 95 Land and the colonial inheritance......Page 96 Struggles for (and against) land reform......Page 98 The marginals: the construction of food import dependencies......Page 106 The powerhouses i: prioritizing domestic food self-sufficiency......Page 111 The powerhouses ii: building competitive agro-export platforms......Page 119 Structural adjustment and agriculture......Page 123 Conclusions......Page 132 Notes......Page 133 The rise and imbalances of the WTO......Page 135 The push to regulate global agricultural trade under the WTO......Page 138 The new ‘discipline’ for the global food economy......Page 140 Unpacking the imbalances: from contestation to a crisis of legitimacy......Page 145 Moving from impasse to impasse......Page 150 Beyond Cancún: which way forward?......Page 157 The uncertain future of the WTO......Page 161 Conclusions......Page 164 Notes......Page 167 The (resistible) trajectory of the global food economy......Page 168 Battling for what?......Page 170 The multiple scales of resistance and change......Page 183 Notes......Page 195 Bibliography......Page 197 Index......Page 215 This book sets out some answers to the question: how can we build an ecologically sustainable and humane system of food production and distribution? The modern food economy is a paradox. Surplus 'food mountains' sit alongside global malnutrition and the developed world subsidizes its own agriculture while pressurizing the developing world to liberalize at all costs. Export competition is increasingly aggressive whilst the reliance on imports in many countries has worrying implications for food security. Family farms go out of business and dispossessed peasant farmers are driven into urban slums. The WTO's uneven application of neoliberal economics to food production is relatively new, and the consequences of mounting deficits, rising 'food miles', and social upheaval, are untested but ominous. "The current food economy is characterized by immense contradictions. Food mountains, bountiful supermarkets and rising levels of obesity stand in stark contrast to widespread hunger and malnutrition. Transnational companies dominate the market in food and benefit from subsidies, whilst farmers in developing countries remain impoverished. Food miles, mounting toxicity and the 'ecological hoofprint' of livestock mean that the global food economy rests on increasingly shaky environmental foundations." "This book looks at how such a system came about, and how it is being enforced by the WTO. Ultimately, Weis considers how we can find a way of building socially just, ecologically rational and humane food economies."--Jacket The global food economy: contradictions and crises -- The temperate grain-livestock complex -- From colonialism to global market integration in the South -- Entrenching an uneven playing field: the multilateral regulation of agriculture -- The battle for the future of farming A comprehensive guide to the issues affecting world foodproduction.