Agricultural Missions: mitigating US agricultural policies

January 23, 2006

The US and Europe subsidize their agricultural industries to the tune of $300 billion. These farm subsidies lead to glutted markets and undermine the livelihood of small farmers in developing countries. The average European cow receives $2.50 in subsidies. Meanwhile, 75 percent of the people in Africa scrimp on less than $2 per day.

In 2004, Church World Service co-convened a North American ecumenical consultation
that addressed the impact of free trade and globalization, calling on churches to offer education and advocacy for trade that is just and fair.

During the Global Week of Action on trade last year, the CWS Education & Advocacy program cosponsored a conference in Ann Arbor, MI, on sustainable globalization and economic justice.

Agricultural Missions is one of Church World Service’s partners in this effort. Starting in 1930 as an agency that supported missionaries working in rural areas worldwide, in the 1990’s “Ag Missions” assumed a new commitment to accompany worldwide people’s movements. Its aim is to partner with people of faith and conscience to end poverty and injustice in rural communities.

Church World Service’s Education and Advocacy Program asked executive director Winston Carroo and Network Liaison for Latin America Stephen Bartlett what Agricultural Missions has done to support small farmers recently.

Carroo and Bartlett: In Kenya we gave sunflower growers hand presses. They can sell sunflower oil for more money than outside buyers were paying for seeds. The meal that’s left from pressing the seeds can be fed to farm animals. Hand pressing also generates employment. Last year we also held a series of trainings to help women’s and marketing Cooperatives understand why corn coming from the US is cheaper than their own. In El Salvador, we’ve helped people hold a big assembly to promote their own localized knowledge of how to raise crops organically and link up with consumer organizations in the capital to market their crops. We’re trying to help people mitigate the agricultural policies of our government.

CWS: How about small farmers in the US?

Bartlett: In the US we work with the National Family Farm Coalition: 33 small farm organizations allied with the Farm Workers struggle. Our partner organizations have had significant victories in the Taco Bell boycott and the Mt. Olive pickle boycott among others. We’ve helped bring US farmers to these events, to create solidarity and change the stereotype that US farms are benefiting from all these policies. It helps people understand that these policies oppress US farmers also. They are all in the same boat.

In September last year, we joined the Beehive Collective (an artists’ workshop exposing the links between colonization, militarization and resource extraction in the Americas) and the Presbyterian Hunger Program in bringing a member of a Guatemalan banana workers union and a Peruvian organizer to speak to farmers and farm workers in the Northeast and Midwest. The tour ended at the School of the Americas, showing the link between economic policies and political oppression. It’s the 4 th tour of its kind.

CWS: How does Agricultural Missions support women in agriculture?

Carroo: In Africa, 70-80 percent of them grow most of the food that’s consumed in the home, but men control the cash crop. In Kenya, traditional law prohibits women from inheriting land. We supported six students at the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming, four men and two women. When they came back to their community they couldn’t find a job. The women couldn’t get land to farm. We found some donors so they could buy land. But how will they pass on that land? It can go only to sons. Most women farm on land that’s owned by their husbands or they are squatters. That limits the chances of investments to improve soil and water, since there’s no security about the ownership. So we provide support to women’s organizations within the coalitions we work with. We encourage them to go into politics. Joann Ngoni, one of the two Kenyan women we supported, wants to talk to the chiefs who represent the local districts, and try to change the system.

CWS: What are you doing about the worldwide promotion of genetically modified organisms (GMO) by giant agricultural corporations?

Bartlett: I’ve been working with small farmers to build a broad base of popular opposition to GMOs, for instance. Education also takes place in the US, via churches and the population at large. A lot of people don’t know they are consuming genetically modified foods. We helped Percy Schmeiser go on tour to Asia in 2003, to talk to people about how GMOs threaten food security. (Schmeiser is a small farmer from Canada who battled Monsanto in court over the agricultural company’s claim that he had planted its patented GM canola seed on his farm without paying for it.) Late last year, I spoke on the GMO issue to indigenous groups in Bolivia and Paraguay.

CWS: What are the results of your work?

Carroo: One way we know we’re making an impact is the slowdown of the WTO and trade talks. What we’ve seen in Seattle, Cancun, Doha, and at the Free Trade Agreement talks in Miami are all direct results of the movement. When people understand what’s happening they take action.