Lobbyism: Fast Food for the World?

How will eight billion people soon be able to get enough to eat? This is the question that will be dealt with at the UN Food Summit. Critics criticize the influence of the food industry.

Despite all efforts to combat hunger in the world, one in ten people in the world is still malnourished. The number has even increased significantly again recently, especially in the Corona year 2020. UN Secretary General António Guterres has therefore scheduled a world food summit in New York.

Boycott of many NGOs

But many experts are pessimistic. 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – including Bread for the World and Misereor – are boycotting the summit. Instead, you organized the “Global People’s Summit on Food Systems” as a virtual counter-event.

“In the past few years, the influence of transnational corporations on the international food organizations has increased significantly,” says the Italian agricultural economist Stefano Prato. He heads the Society for International Development – a Rome-based network of 80 NGOs.

The FAO under fire

Prato is one of the sharpest critics of the international food system and the world food organization FAO. It was founded after the war to ensure adequate production of healthy food.

But: The FAO cooperates with companies, among others, whose business goals contradict fundamental FAO concerns. With the Mars group, for example, whose sweets are causing a massive increase in diabetes, especially in poor countries like India. Or with the French Danone group, which has already been involved in numerous baby milk scandals and promotes high-sugar yoghurts to children as healthy.

Not critical of the use of pesticides?

The trade association Croplife International is also a partner of the FAO. He represents the interests of the six largest agrochemical companies, including BASF, Bayer and Syngenta. In 2018, Croplife International member companies sold $ 5 billion in pesticides that the WHO has classified as highly dangerous to the environment or human health. This is reported by the British consulting company Phillips McDougall.

The FAO has drawn up an international code of conduct for the use of pesticides, which provides for a much more careful use than is the practice today. Agricultural economist Prato believes that she must follow this code consistently instead of cooperating with the pesticide industry. “FAO’s partnership with Croplife International undermines FAO’s commitment to address the effects of chemical pesticides.”

Dispute within the organization

In the FAO there are different opinions on partnership with the pesticide industry. An employee of the organization who wants to remain anonymous sees FAO Director General Qu Dongyu as the driving force. “Qu was formerly Deputy Agriculture Minister of China, which imports huge amounts of maize and soy for animal feed – from the USA and South America; at rapidly rising prices. China therefore has an existential interest in low-cost industrial maize and soy production in Africa.”

Alexander Jones, Director of Partnerships at FAO, rejects the criticism: “We can only secure nutrition on a large scale with the help of private actors.” Only in such cooperation can the FAO steer the commitment of the companies in the right direction and induce them to make responsible investments.

The partnership with Croplife is precisely aimed at using fewer pesticides in the future. “We have to tell companies in some cases that we are seriously concerned about some of their practices, such as how their local distributors are putting highly toxic pesticides on the market.” This is best done in a partnership.

The problem is funding

Financially, the FAO has a similar problem to the health organization WHO: It is underfunded, the compulsory contributions of the member states – around 500 million dollars annually – are by no means sufficient to carry out its mandate. That is why the FAO is also dependent on voluntary contributions, including from private donors. These voluntary contributions are more than twice as high, but are almost always earmarked. Anyone who donates money to the FAO thus has a strong influence on its strategic direction.

The corporations also hope to gain their image as a partner to an organization that fights hunger. They also get access to FAO decision-makers and work on FAO recommendations. These in turn flow into the legislation of states. Soft environmental laws or subsidies for industrial products such as fertilizers and pesticides – all of this is worth cash. As a result, the aforementioned partnerships of the FAO promote the further industrialization of global food production. Ecological production, which also has the well-being of the environment, climate and farming families in mind, is falling behind.

Controversial influence by AGRA

A particularly controversial actor in this context is AGRA, the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa”. The initiative has been trying to modernize Africa’s agriculture since 2006. It is financed primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which – like in the health sector – also strives for quick and measurable success in agriculture.

AGRA urges African governments to encourage foreign investments in the agricultural and food sector. They should liberalize the market for hybrid seeds, artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides and subsidize such agricultural goods. The farmers, in turn, should concentrate on high-yielding crops such as corn, soy and cassava, which the industry can export or process into powder for the food industry.

High goals, sobering record

AGRA had ambitious goals: by 2020, its strategy was to double the productivity and incomes of 30 million smallholders in 13 African countries, and halve the number of undernourished people. After 15 years at AGRA, Tim Wise, who conducts research at Tufts University in Massachusetts, draws a sobering conclusion.

“An increase in productivity was only achieved with a few products – especially corn. However, this came at the expense of more nutritious and more resilient cereals such as millet and sorghum,” he says. As a result, food insecurity did not decrease but increased: “According to FAO estimates, the number of undernourished people in the 13 AGRA countries rose by 30 percent between 2006 and 2020.” Wise’s study was supported by Bread for the World and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and was published in 2020 under the title “False Promises”.

Consequences of agricultural subsidies

Even many UN experts recently criticized the almost 500 billion US dollars in agricultural subsidies worldwide as harmful to the climate and biodiversity. The Bonn-based agricultural economist Joachim von Braun, head of the scientific advisory board for the food summit and vice-president of Deutsche Welthungerhilfe, considers the AGRA initiative to be reasonably successful, but also sees the subsidies for agricultural chemistry promoted by AGRA extremely critically: “These subsidies are inefficient and driving Yesterday’s agricultural technologies, “says von Braun. And: “We have to get away from the large monocultures.”

Countless examples show that African smallholders with mixed culture and agro-ecological agriculture can also be commercially successful. To do this, however, these farmers need capital, access to markets and, above all, knowledge. Much of it is traditional knowledge, not high-tech – and is therefore partly under-researched.

Critics of the food summit such as agricultural economist Prato also come across the fact that UN Secretary General Guterres has appointed a particularly high-profile representative of industry-related agriculture to head the summit: Agnes Kalibata, the head of the AGRA initiative.