(c) Copyright 1998: Graham Strachan
As part of the ‘globalisation’ process, the policies of successive Australian governments have helped foreign-owned agribusiness multinational corporations (MNCs) increasingly take over the farming sector. During the early 1970s, Australian family farmers found themselves competing with huge foreign-owned MNCs with massive capital backing. To make the contest ‘equal’, the federal government began removing tariffs, something it committed itself to do by signing various trade agreements, such as the Lima Agreement.
Farmers looked to their traditional champion, the Country Party, for support, but it too showed signs of deserting them. It renamed itself the National Party and sought to broaden its electoral base by courting mining industry MNCs and others. In a bid to protect their interests, farmers formed what they hoped would be a representative body, the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) in 1979. But something happened. The NFF began reciting the slogans of economic rationalism and requested the dismantling of tariffs, subsidies and other mechanisms which enabled the family farmer to compete. If the truth be known, from the very beginning the NFF really represented agribusiness multinationals, not the Australian family farmer (1).
In 1986 the NFF launched a ‘fighting fund’ allegedly to save the family farm, and collected about $15 million from farmers. The money was never used for the stated purpose, but was put into a trust fund where it apparently remains to this day (nobody seems to know). In the meantime, family farmers were told they had to become ‘more competitive’, they had to ‘get big or get out’.
So they did. They borrowed money to get big, then they went broke paying the interest, and got out. 60% of the Australian-owned farming sector has been wiped out. In the 1960s there were 300,000 farms, now there are around 100,000. At the end of 1997 remaining farmers were leaving the land at the rate of 35 per week, according to Primary Industry Minister John Anderson himself (2). The rest are heavily in debt. In mid-1996 they owed $18 billion to banks, an average of $133,000 per farm.
Now the government stands by while Australian farmers bulldoze orange trees, and the country imports orange juice from Brazil. It is important to note, however, that ‘Brazil’ does not mean Brazilian peasant farmers, it means multinational-owned orange plantations. This is how the multinational global takeover hides behind humanitarian-sounding slogans. The gullible think ‘giving preference to exports from developing countries’ means a hand-up to the underdog. Far from it. ‘Exports from developing countries’ more often than not means ‘exports from MNCs operating in developing countries’. Most Brazilians probably can’t even afford to buy their own orange juice, in the same way that locally harvested seafood is now beyond the reach of many Australians.
The Australian government’s response to Australian-owned farm destruction has been to put up a $500 million ‘rural assistance’ package to help farmers LEAVE the land. The destruction is deliberate, it is policy. The privately-owned Australian ‘family’ farm is scheduled for destruction. Foreign multinationals are to own and control Australia’s farming sector. That’s ‘globalisation’.
Adoption of the MAI will result in still further loss of Australian ownership and control. MNCs pursue what is called the ‘total market concept’, which means gaining total control of the entire food chain from seeds, to farms, to products on the table. They own patents on the high yield varieties (HYVs) of genetically-altered seeds, and they induce governments to ban the use of any others (5). They control seed distribution companies, agricultural machinery companies, and agricultural chemical and fertiliser companies. To perform to expectations the HYV seeds require massive amounts of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and water (soon to be owned by MNCs too). These run off into rivers and streams and cause serious pollution problems, all of which have to be cleaned up at taxpayer expense.
MNCs and foreign investors buy up the best farms and merge them into larger farms, which employ less labour. The smaller Australian-owned farm cannot compete. The family farmer has limited resources, cannot easily integrate activities, has limited market power, cannot engage in practices like ‘transfer pricing’ to avoid tax, and has to rely on family labour. Some try to compete by borrowing money to ‘get big’, most get out and become farm labourers or join the unemployed in the cities. So many people are leaving country towns that rail, banking, schools and other services are being discontinued, businesses are closing down, and many towns look like becoming derelict. More foreign investment in the country will hasten that process: the exodus from the bush.
More foreign investment will lead also to an increase in contract farming. Some farmers, in a bid to keep their farms, produce quotas under contract to MNCs. This gives the MNC maximum control, while the farmer takes most of the risk and responsibility. The contract farmer is really a wage labourer producing agricultural commodities for MNCs on a farm which he or she nominally owns. So much for the proud tradition of Australian farming. But tradition counts for nothing now, only multinational profits do. Tradition is a ‘non-rational’ consideration, and this is the age of ‘economic rationalism’.
In the Third World foreign investors have taken over the best land from the local farmers, and now make record profits from ‘cash crops’ grown for export, while Third World people literally die of starvation for lack of food. To suggest, as the MAI people do, that more foreign investment will fix that situation is absurd. At the moment, because they are so dependent on foreign investment, it is difficult for Third World governments to demand conditions which require that investment to provide lasting real benefit to local populations. After they have signed onto the MAI it will be impossible.
Once they are ‘globalised’, countries must all produce for the global market (export), and import everything they need for local consumption. India provides a good example: in 1996 it exported 2 million tonnes of wheat, and then imported 2 million tonnes of wheat for local consumption (3). This ensures MNCs and speculators will continue to make guaranteed profits from international trade, while controlling world food supplies. Then if any country looks like wanting to go its own way, politically or economically, as the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky said, “Who does not obey, does not eat”.
It looks like they won’t drink either. A United Nations conference on managing the world’s fresh water supplies agreed in Paris on 21 March 1998, that water should no longer be treated as an essential staple to be supplied free of cost, but paid for as a commodity. The conference appealed for more ‘market forces’ in managing the world’s water supplies. MNCs and investors are about to be allowed to own the world’s fresh water, and believe it or not, that includes the water in private tanks and dams. Satellite surveillance is already being used to detect ‘unlicenced’ dams on farms in Queensland (4). Welcome to the new world order.