Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Change

3. Agriculture: Voices of Resistance

 &KDSWHU 7KUHH Introduction In this chapter, we will listen to the voices of resistance that are constituted under the broader area of agriculture and the rights of local communities across the globe to grow food and secure access to it. In the context of agriculture, the tension constituting efforts of social change lies between the liberalization principles of national governments that have sought to turn agricultural lands into the hands of industrial projects, projects of mining, or large-scale agribusiness, and the rights of local communities at the global margins to grow their own food in sustainable and locally meaningful ways. The questions around which local agricultural communities organize relate to the capacities of communities to locally produce food and secure access to basic food resources. The question of local rights of farmers in the global South to grow food in their local communities and make a living on the basis of agriculture is also constituted amidst the inequitable agricultural policies at the global level that favor transnational agribusiness. Voicing the large-scale corporatization of agriculture and the consolidation 9RLFHVRI5HVLVWDQFH $JULFXOWXUH Agriculture: Voices of Resistance  of power in the hands of multinationals, the Gandhian activist Siddharaj Dhadda voices (2010, p. 247): the farmer used to preserve his own seeds, and this had been going on for centuries. Now half a dozen multinational companies are striving to capture the seed markets of the whole world. All the seed that the world needs has to be brought from them. They are pushing high-yielding seeds in the market, and government departments are helping them. These genetically engineered seeds are so structured that seed from their crops would not bear fruit, or only very little. The farmer will thus have to buy seeds from corporations every year. The multinationals have patented their seeds and are forcing the government of India to amend our patent laws so that they are favorable to them. Joining the voices of activists such as Dhadda, in chapter three, we review the processes through which global policies create the margins in the agricultural sector, and the ways in which these global agricultural policies are resisted by farmers in local-global networks of solidarity. An overview of the political economy of food production and food consumption serves as the basis for exploring the (a) inequities in access to agricultural production and agro-markets in the different sectors of the globe, and (b) food insecurities that are created in the marginalized sectors of the globe through the deployment of neoliberal policies that are supportive of transnational hegemony. This chapter draws from specific case studies that discuss the experiences of marginalized communities in the agricultural sector, and brings forth the voices of farmers and farm workers in the co-construction of the narratives of resistance constituted in the realm of agriculture. Of particular interest in this chapter are the discursive constructions and communicative processes through which voices of resistance articulate alternative frameworks for understanding and practicing agriculture in resistance to the structures of neoliberalism. Connecting Local Resistance into Global Alliances Voices of resistance around agriculture point to neoliberal policies globally that are played out in the local politics of agriculture experienced by peas- Voices of Resistance  ant communities. The voices of resistance of local farmers are articulated in the backdrop of neoliberal policies framed in the form of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and development projects that are often antithetical to the interests of local farmers. For example, in organizing against the takeover of peasant lands, local and global activists came together in solidarity in Mali to voice a collective entry point to resistance. In a meeting held in Nyeleni on November 19, 2011, the global alliance against land-grabbing articulated the vision of the alliance in the following words: We, women and men peasants, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and their allies, who gathered together in Nyeleni from 17-19 November 2011, are determined to defend food sovereignty, the commons and the rights of small scale food providers to natural resources. We supported the Kolongo Appeal from peasant organizations in Mali, who have taken the lead in organising local resistance to the take-over of peasants’landsinAfrica.WecametoNyeleniinresponsetotheDakar Appeal,whichcallsforaglobalallianceagainstland-grabbing.(http:// ewwaunel.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/stop-land-grabbing-now/) What becomes evident in the above voicing of the global alliance is the local-global interconnectedness of the alliance, crafting out a space for a collective voice that connects...