Blog Posts

By Patrick Woodall

Patrick Woodall, Research Director and Senior Policy Advocate

It is shaping up to be a banner year for the big food monopolies. This week, Cargill’s wheat milling partnership (Horizon) announced a proposed merger with ConAgra Mills, joining two of the nation’s largest wheat flour milling operations. This is on top of two flour mills Cargill bought earlier this year.

Cargill already is probably the world’s largest grain trading company and the merger would only increase its stranglehold on the food supply—on the farmers that raise wheat and the consumers that eat, well, practically anything.

The new company, Argent, would control a third of the wheat flour market. Today, the top four flour making firms (Horizon, ADM, ConAgra and Cereal Food Processors) mill more than half the wheat flour in the country—sort of like making the flour in the bread for every other sandwich.

If the proposed merger is approved, the top four firms (Argent, ADM, Cereal Food Processors and Bay State Milling) will mill nearly two-thirds of the flour—like making the bread in two out of three sandwiches. The new Argent would mill the flour for one-third of all sandwiches.

A lot of reporters are calling this “flour power,” and it is all about the bread because the new company would sell about $4.3 billion in flour every year. Most of that is not in the $3 bags of flour we buy at the supermarket, but in the millions of loaves of bread sold in supermarkets and restaurants. The consolidation will affect the companies that buy flour to bake bread and the farmers that sell wheat, because a stronger Cargill-ConAgra partnership gives them more leverage as both buyers of wheat and sellers of flour. Bakery companies will have fewer competitive sources for flour, which could make flour more expensive.

Farmers will have fewer competitors bidding for their wheat, which tends to drive down the prices farmers receive for crops. Already, farmers get less than a slice of bread out of each loaf. According to the National Farmers Union, wheat farmers receive about 19 cents for every $3.00 loaf of bread or about 6 percent, well below the average farmer share for food of about 16 percent.

This may just be the beginning of a wave of mega-mergers. In the past six months, there has been the proposed big beer merger, the Ralcorp-ConAgra snack and frozen dinner merger, a proposed beef-packing merger between JBS and XL Foods, the takeover of Heinz ketchup and Hormel’s purchase of Skippy peanut butter. And the year has just begun.

By Genna Reed

Dan Charles’s NPR piece this morning asserts that GE technology in the form of golden rice will help feed the developing world, but there is no evidence that GE technology has had any positive impacts on feeding the developing world, or creating more nutritious, vitamin-rich foods for consumers.

Although some scientists and development advocates have promoted biotechnology as a means to combat malnutrition, there has been no indication that poor and hungry people would actually benefit from the technology. Golden rice adds beta-carotene to rice to help fight the vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness in quarter million children annually. Yet engineering crops with beta-carotene may not even reduce vitamin A deficiency because consumption alone does not ensure absorption. Diets of malnourished people often lack the fats and oils crucial to absorbing vitamin A.

The first set of clinical trials on humans to examine golden rice’s nutrition effects studied only five, healthy American volunteers hardly representative of the target population. Charles discusses the 2012 golden rice study as a benchmark of the potential for golden rice, yet even this looked at healthy Chinese children. There is still no evidence that this technology will actually help those that need Vitamin A most. A much better way to combat Vitamin A deficiency is with orange produce, like sweet potatoes, carrots or mangos, and dark leafy green vegetables, supplemented with fats and oils.

The biotechnology industry and trade groups have touted golden rice in the same manner as they did drought-tolerant corn (which doesn’t even help those most affected by severe drought). The fact remains that despite 20-years-worth of claims that GE crops would help feed the world, most of GE development has led only to dozens of herbicide-tolerant crops that have provided short-term gains for GE growers (now cancelled out by the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds) and huge profits for biotechnology companies.

And in the case of higher yielding drought-tolerant crops, conventionally bred varieties have shown comparative and even better results than engineered varieties. Yet, today’s plant breeding research is predominantly focused on developing new genetically engineered crops, despite the potential for similar discoveries through traditional breeding.

Development agencies, foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and biotech companies are investing in uncertain technological solutions to a problem that needs a more practical solution. Instead, Charles should have examined how providing low-income rural families with the capacity to grow crops that provide balanced nutrition is a more effective, practical approach than asking them to spend more money for seeds that may not have better yield or bear more nutritious food. But perhaps he was too mesmerized by the so-called beauty of the golden rice to see past its false promises.

By Marcela Olivera

This blog was originally posted at Thebrokeronline.eu.

In the Americas, we have been fighting water privatization since the early 1990s: from Detroit in the United States to Buenos Aires in Argentina. After the infamous 2000 water war in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that led to the expulsion of a multinational corporation, social movements throughout the Americas have organized themselves to protect water from greed.

In August 2003, in El Salvador, several organizations from the Americas assembled and decided to create the Red VIDA (Network for Inter-American Vigilance in Defense of and for the Right to Water).  Through this network, we would launch a coordinated hemispheric campaign to defend water as a common good. 

Since its beginning in 2003, we have worked very hard resisting water privatization and expelling corporations that were profiting from our water sources and water utilities. We have also insured that constitutional amendments were passed that prevent the commodification of water. In Uruguay, for example, the Red VIDA was active in the campaign that led to a constitutional amendment declaring access to water as a human right. 

Read the full article…

By Seth Gladstone

Perhaps more than anyone in recent history, Gloria Steinem has become synonymous with the protection of women’s health and safety. From her early years at New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine – defending the right to choose and promoting the Equal Rights Amendment – to her subsequent work with race and labor activists like Coretta Scott King and Cesar Chavez, Steinem has set the benchmark for safety, fairness and equality among not just women, but all residents of the nation.

In more recent years, Steinem has turned her attention to public health threats that are derived from the weakening of environmental protections like the Clean Water Act. So it should come as no surprise that she recently signed a letter to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urging him to halt any consideration of fracking in his state before a collection of long-term statewide and national public health studies on the controversial natural gas drilling method are completed. The letter was also signed by hundreds of doctors, health organizations and environmental and consumer groups from across the nation.

Read the full article…

Credit: NASA

By Genna Reed

Industry currently estimates that at least 60 million acres of crops are now resistant to at least one herbicide. Almost half of the U.S. farmers interviewed in an industry survey reported that glyphosate-resistant weeds, and the rate at which the weeds are spreading, are increasing every year. In Georgia, a staggering 92 percent of the surveyed farmers reported having glyphosate-resistant weeds in 2012.

And even though weed scientists clamor for alternative solutions and diversified approaches to weed management to avert further damage, industry and the USDA seem to believe that simply throwing more herbicides and associated herbicide-tolerant crops at the problem is the solution. There are currently 19 GE crop petitions that have been submitted for approval by the USDA. Of those 19 crops, 14 are resistant to herbicides. You might remember that a handful of these crops were introduced in the form of a rocket docket of 12 new petitions last July.

Just when we had gotten over the trauma of the last slew of incoming petitions, the end of February brought on a second wave when USDA announced the comment periods for seven new crops and approved another. Among the seven are new, stacked herbicide-tolerant crops designed to fight glyphosate-resistant weeds that have developed since Roundup Ready crops were introduced in 1996, which led to the almost exclusive use of glyphosate for weed control.

One of the crops with a 60-day comment period ending in April is Monsanto’s dicamba and glufosinate tolerant cotton. Dicamba belongs to the same herbicide class as 2,4-D: synthetic auxins. By design, these herbicides act similarly to growth regulators in several species of broadleaf plants, causing abnormal growth and death. This would be less egregious if it stayed put, but since dicamba and 2,4-D are especially prone to drift, any specialty crops—like tomatoes, grapes and potatoes—that are near fields sprayed with these herbicides could be in danger of herbicide-related yield loss.

And just when you think USDA might have learned its lesson with glyphosate, one of the 30-day comment periods is for a draft Environmental Assessment for yet another glyphosate-tolerant corn. Apparently the glyphosate lesson has somehow still not been learned. Not only that, but simultaneously introducing more herbicides into the mix will just fan the proverbial wildfire that is herbicide-resistant weeds.

While this may sound too senseless to believe, these herbicide-laden crops could glide right through approval unless we let the USDA know we’re watching and we’re not going to let them repeat the same mistakes that got us into this superweed mess in the first place.

The 2013 World Social Forum will be held this March 26-30 in Tunisia, where only two years ago, a revolution began and resulted into a historic change that created a ripple effect across the region. Now, Tunisia is an inspiration to movements both old and new, across the globe.

Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe are busy getting ready to participate in the World Social Forum on water, fracking and food sovereignty issues. As a coordinator of the European Water Movement, our main aim is to build up links with local and regional groups and set up a Euro-Mediterranean Alliance for Water to facilitate the exchange of experience and information. Many North African countries are currently facing the same problems we have in Europe namely with the threat of privatization of water services and unconventional energy sourcing projects such as hydraulic fracturation. The same private water companies and energy companies are trying to push through projects in the North African region which have been met with resistance by civil society in Europe. Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch

Tonight, millions of people will enjoy a beer. What the vast majority of them probably won’t realize is that the variety of brands they see in the stores come from just two foreign-based multinational companies that control 80 percent of the market here in the U.S.

While many of America’s favorite beer brands appear unchanged over the years, behind the label, the beer industry has become a global affair, along with the rest of our food system. Now, one of the largest beer corporations, AB InBev—which owns Budweiser, the king of American beers, wants to buy Grupo Modelo—which owns Pacifica, Tsingtao, and Corona brands. The Department of Justice (DOJ), after allowing foreign companies to buy nearly all U.S. breweries in the past decade, finally took some action in January when it sued to block the Budweiser-Corona marriage.

But AB InBev seems intent on forging ahead with the deal, claiming it is working to address the DOJ’s concerns. It is rearranging the trimmings of the proposed takeover (selling one factory and the Corona and Modelo brand rights in the U.S. to another company), but even these changes leave AB InBev in control of nearly everyone’s beer cooler. The company would have a bigger stranglehold on what brands of beer are available and the power to raise prices unilaterally.

AB InBev, based in Belgium, and SABMiller, based in the U.K., are indeed beverage behemoths. AB InBev owns over 200 brands worldwide including Budweiser, Becks, Stella Artios, Boddingtons, Löwenbräu, Michelob, and St. Pauli Girl. SABMiller owns 367 brands distributed on six continents, including Coors Light, Fosters, Miller Light and Milwaukee’s Best. Meanwhile, the nearly 2,000 independent craft breweries comprise less than 6 percent of the market.

Read the full article…

Food & Water Europe has joined a growing group of civil society organisations in calling on the EU to abolish its Emission Trading System (ETS) to open space for truly effective climate policies.

More than 90 organisations from around the world launched this campaign called Time to Scrap the ETS with a declaration that lists the structural flaws of the ETS and the risks of trying to fix it.

Why are we supporting it?

The EU’s main policy to address climate change has taken attention away from the need to transform our dependency on fossil fuels and growing consumption. High prices were supposed to curb carbon emissions in the EU, instead prices have been very volatile and have been on a constant downward spiral since early 2011. Now that prices have dropped to less than 2.81€ per tonne, it is clear that this is not a solution to decreasing emissions and that it is time to make a new space for effective and fair climate policies.

Cap and trade policies have not been proven to work, they rely on unverifiable offsets and permit allocation schemes that benefit companies which are already polluting. The EU ETS is also being carried out at great public expense. European citizens are already going through austerity measures in a time of financial crisis and are being forced to bear the cost of running the ETS, including legislation, regulation and much of the quantification of emissions that carbon markets require. Read the full article…

The Ides of March – March 15 – marks the day in 44 B.C. that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate. This year in the United States, If Congress and the President reach the First of March without a budget compromise, the state of our economy could become just as bloody and the federal agencies that protect our food and water could be crippled beyond repair.

These severe cuts being threatened are part of a process that Congress invented called “sequestration,” which comes after several years of political show-downs including a committee that was anything but super, an imaginary “fiscal cliff” and deadline after deadline being pushed back. Sequestration was supposed to be the ominous bitter pill that we would never actually need because just the sheer threat of it would force both parties to behave and do their job. But here we are – about 72 hours away from 8 percent across-the-board budget cuts in many departments of the federal government. You don’t need to look much further than the front page of your local newspaper (no matter where you live) to see how these cuts will impact all of us, but particularly the most vulnerable members of society and the middle class. Read the full article…

By Michele Merkel

Despite all the rhetoric about how important it is to have an unpolluted and healthy Chesapeake Bay, sometimes you just have to wonder if anyone is really taking this Bay cleanup issue seriously. We’ve known for years now that agricultural operations in the Bay states are the number one source of nutrients and sediments to the watershed, yet neither state nor federal regulators have shown any willingness to do any of the things – permitting, compliance mandates and enforcement – that have worked well with so many other polluting industries.

While power plants, paper mills, sewage treatment plants and manufacturing plants have largely been cleaned up through the implementation of regulatory “stick” approaches, the chosen method of ag pollution abatement comprises of a series of unsuccessful, voluntary “carrot” approaches, including manure transport programs and nutrient trading.

After decades of failure, we’re about to reach new depths of futility with a bill, largely written by Maryland’s own Department of Agriculture, which was introduced this legislative session in Maryland by Senator Thomas Middleton. Middleton’s “Ag Certainty” bill will not only make certain that these highly polluting operations continue to pollute with officially sanctioned immunity, but it will also openly undermine the current Bay cleanup plan – the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL).

Ag Certainty refers to a program under which agricultural operations that certify that they meet pollution reduction goals or certain pollution-control requirements will be deemed in compliance with existing and/or future water quality regulations and standards. In short, it’s a blanket immunity program designed to offer Big Ag a continuing free ride from mandatory pollution control and enforcement. Even worse, it ties regulator’s hands when it comes to implementing more protective water quality approaches when needed. Read the full article…