Why agribusiness?

Rise up against agribusiness!

Everyone is fed up. For more than a year, farmers across Europe have been rising in anger. Suffocating economic, legal and administrative constraints and the brutality of ecological breakdown leave them unable to live from their work.  At the same time, the rise of supermarkets, together with inflation, have limited access to high quality healthy food. Eating in a way that does not cause environmental harm remains a choice that is not made by, or not possible for, too many people. working conditions in the food sector are alarming.

Meanwhile agribusiness – the industries that produce, process, sell and distribute agricultural goods  – makes huge profit with the support of our governments. As a citizens’ movement for social and environmental justice, Code Rouge/Rood raises its voice alongside farmers’ in a call for action. 

Farming has always been more than food production. Farmers have been caring for this complex relationship between land, biodiversity, climate, and human communities for ages. They have passed on this knowledge from generation to generation. And yet, over the past 70 years, intoxicated by the promise of industrialization and by the synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, GMOs, and fossil-dependent technology that made it all possible, governments and corporations have systematically sought to erase farmers from the picture. After people struggled to eat during war times, they tried to rapidly increase food production. This way agriculture was made into a business. Competition fosters unsustainable practices and chokes out farmer after farmer.

Competition feeds corporations. Farmers feed people. It’s time to take action. Agribusiness is making huge profits while killing farmers, ecosystems, and people with unhealthy food. We call for food sovereignty, we want people to take back the power over food. People have the right to: “healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through socially just, ecologically sound and sustainable methods”, and to collectively define “their own policies, strategies and systems for food production, distribution and consumption”.[1]

We refuse the narrative that pits farming against environmental justice. This division is created by politicians to protect the profits of multinationals. We met with farmers that are mobilizing. We talked with agroecological and conventional farmers, as well as trade unions and other advocates for farmers’ and workers’ rights. We denounce the precarious conditions of farmers and workers in the food sector in Belgium and elsewhere. We are united in our anger in the face of these injustices and in the belief that alternatives are possible.

This is why Code Rouge/Rood is calling for a mass action in support of the farmers, against the agribusiness. We are targeting corporations that influence food prices, advocate harmful free trade agreements like the EU-MERCOSUR agreement, and are responsible for numerous human rights and environmental violations. For now, we are keeping the exact target a secret.

Agribusiness: corporate greed fueled by a myth of productivity

Agribusiness is a system of mass agricultural production, services and retail, directed at making profit. It includes large industrial farms, suppliers of farming inputs (chemicals),  and the corporations who transform, transport, trade and sell food and non-food products (like biofuels).

Agribusiness thrives on competition between farmers, a race for productivity that encourages limitless expansion, monocultures, and practices like chemical pesticides and deep plowing. These practices may produce a lot initially but are ultimately destructive for soils and biodiversity. Globally, agribusiness makes profit through the hyper-specialization of regions, which creates unequal global trade patterns. In this system, food is produced for its export value, instead of feeding local populations.

Farmers are extremely dependent on retailers (like supermarkets) and food traders, who use their market power to force small and medium producers to accept prices that are below or barely cover their costs of production. Agribusiness owns the seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and machines, and is buying up land at unfair prices. This gives them immense control over the farmers who depend on all of these. Agribusiness lobbies push for public policies that provide even more power to corporations, for example through subsidies based on farm size (like the CAP in Europe) or free trade agreements (like the EU-Mercosur deal), allowing them to import cheap, unhealthy and unsustainable food and push down prices, threatening the survival of farmers in Belgium and elsewhere.

Precarious working conditions in the agricultural sector especially touch the lives of migrant, undocumented and racialized people. They work in huge agricultural productions without any social protection and in conditions of extreme poverty, only to enrich bosses and shareholders of big distribution chains (Carrefour, Delhaize, Aldi, Lidl, Colruyt…).

Destroying our capitalist food system to build a new, social and ecological one, can only happen from a decolonial perspective. Globally, agribusiness makes profit through the hyper-specialization of regions, which creates unequal global trade patterns. This way, Western countries continue to extract resources and labor from the Global South. The most recent example is the EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement, which threatens European farmers by increasing competition from cheaper imports produced under weaker environmental and labor regulations. The agreement risks increased deforestation in MERCOSUR countries, particularly the Amazon, to expand agricultural land for export, contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss. Food should be produced to feed local populations, not for export value.

We don’t need mass food production for food security. In the world, around one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted each year[2], and just a fourth of that would be enough to end world hunger[3]. Contrary to the common narrative, trying to solve the problem of decent incomes for farmers by increasing productivity only makes the problem worse. It leads to overproduction, which means more waste, more poisoning of our soils, water, and bodies, and lower prices leaving farmers unable to make ends meet. In Belgium, even though we have enough fertile land to feed all of our population, nearly 5% of the population has to resort to food aid[4]and nearly 20% of farmers are living below the poverty rate[5]. Belgium exports more agricultural products than it imports and hosts profitable agribusinesses earning millions or even billions of euros each year.

The focus on productivity distracts from the bigger issues: the unfair distribution of profits and the alarming decline of small-scale farmers and peasants. Since 1980 the number of farms decreased while farms got bigger[6]. This is a human and ecological drama. There are extremely high rates of suicides among farmers[7], they are losing family and cultural heritage, including important knowledge about local ecosystems. The average age of farmers is now 55 years old. Few will be able to pass on their farms to their children – either because they are in debt, or because there is no interest in taking up an activity where one has to struggle so much with so little recognition from society. And as land ownership gets more concentrated and speculation drives up prices, access to land for new farmers is near impossible[8]. To survive, many make investments and contracts that lock them into even more dependency.

Resisting social and ecological destruction

A huge part of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture: 11% just from production, and 30% if we count the entire food system (including transport, transformation, retail, etc.). But who is really responsible?

Agribusiness maintains a farming system based on the overuse of natural resources and on chemicals and technology that are energy intensive. They push farmers to overproduce cheap food, that has incredibly high social, health, and environmental costs. This system has destroyed important carbon sinks, like nutrient-rich soils and forests, which in turn intensifies climate change[9]. Moreover, agribusiness fosters a race towards high-tech solutions (drones, trackers, smart tractors) in order to increase production. These technologies are extremely costly, force farmers to incur even more debt and accelerates the disappearance of peasants. Farmers are the first to suffer from the ongoing ecological collapse. They face water scarcity, loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, extreme weather events, changing seasons, and more, that harm their crops and animals. This is an economic risk that is putting even more of them in debt and affects their mental wellbeing. On the other hand, sustainable small and medium-scale agriculture, and agroecology, has a major role to play in reversing this carnage and giving us all a future. It can restore biodiversity, naturally absorb greenhouse gases, and feed the world with healthy food. We can’t leave farmers alone to take up this challenge: to take action to support fair incomes, sustainable practices, and to finally stop the death march of agribusiness and its concentration of land ownership and wealth.

Let’s rise up in defense of social and environmental justice, and to unite with farmers who demand a better life and a better future.

Support farmers, not multinationals

We need to dismantle agribusinessin order to make a long lasting change towards ecological agriculture and food sovereignty. This means targeting its infrastructures as well as the institutions that support this system . It could not exist without animal feed production factories, chemical plants, industrial ports, a large part of the road and canal network, etc.  We have got to this point because our laws and policies seek to accelerate capital accumulation through ever-increasing production and trade. Changing these institutions requires a revolution led by workers and farmers.

We don’t believe in “wallet democracy”, which puts all the responsibility on consumers. The antisocial measures pushed upon us by the new federal government will increase financial stress and throw more people into precarity. This shows us once again that making just, sustainable and healthy decisions is impossible in a broken system. 

Everyone should have access to good food and decent wages. This is possible if we institute food social security. Social justice movements have been advocating this in many European countries including Belgium. Local authorities should guarantee a purchase price for good quality food, produced as locally as possible and in fair conditions. They should ensure that everyone can access it by regulating the profit margins made by actors across the value chain. This would allow us to decide collectively which kind of food we want to eat, and ensures that those producing it can live well. Let’s reclaim food sovereignty now.

Instead of being suffocated with bureaucracy, farmers should be supported to change their practices. For that, we need to reform the CAP: more economic and technical support for installations and smaller farms, more support for agro-ecological practices such as reduced chemical inputs, more diversification and plant varieties adapted to local conditions. Meanwhile, the EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement threatens European farmers by increasing competition from cheaper imports produced under weaker environmental and labor regulations. Also, the agreement risks increased deforestation in MERCOSUR countries, particularly the Amazon, to expand agricultural land for export,  contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss.

We demand that companies that process, trade, and sell food:

  • Stop importing food that does not respect our health and that destroys our ecosystems.
  • Respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) and stop violating human rights of workers, farmers and indigenous communities here and around the world. 
  • Pay farmers a fair prices that are sufficient to cover their costs of production and make a living in a medium farm while working no more than 38 hours a week.

We demand that Belgian governments and the EU:

  • Immediately cancel the EU-Mercosur agreement and all other free trade agreements that benefit multinationals at the expense of farmers’ livelihoods, our health, and our ecosystems.
  • Redirect CAP subsidies to support the installation of new farmers, smaller-scale farming, and agro-ecological practices.
  • Stop speculation on land prices, and enable access to land for new farmers.
  • Support the transmission of farms for farmers nearing retirement and fund more education on agro-ecology and food systems.
  • Implement food social security, as advocated by the Collective for SSA, to guarantee the right to healthy, fair, and sustainable food.
  • Welcome and regularize all migrants to end exploitative working conditions, including in farms and the food sector.
  • Implement compensation schemes for farmers who already suffer the effects of environmental degradation.
  • Take much more ambitious action to prevent climate change and biodiversity loss, which threaten the viability of farms (see our previous demands about the fossil industry ;))

Why direct action?

Code Rouge/Rood is a civil disobedience movement created by activists and supported by different organisations and action groups. We consciously choose civil disobedience as our action method, because in a political system dominated by the imperative of growth and elite interests, legal action methods are no longer an option on their own, since they are co-opted and crushed by an unfair balance of power. Our adversaries are well-organised, extremely well-financed, and have access to media and political power. Therefore, breaking the law is not only a way of being heard, but a legitimate way to assert people power in a repressive capitalist system.

The great changes in history have often taken place as a result of mass acts of resistance. People chose to organize, to break unjust laws, to demand change and to create the change they wanted themselves. The history of peasant struggles is rich: from the mobilizations against CETA-TTIP since 2015, to the movement of landless workers in Brazil against colonial inequality, or that of the Larzac peasants from 1971 to 1981 against a military camp… Systems are not fixed, they are constructed. With imagination, will and a determined collective action, we can shake the powers in place and create resistance against harmful industries. Let’s rise up together! 

[1] La Via Campesina. (1996). Food Sovereignty: A Future without Hunger. https://viacampesina.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1996-Rom-en.pdf

[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/food-waste-makes-up-half-of-global-food-system-emissions/

[3] FAO. (2011). Seeking end to loss and waste of food along production chain. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/in-action/seeking-end-to-loss-and-waste-of-food-along-production-chain/en/

[4] Hubert, H.-O., & Vleminckx, J. (2016). L’aide alimentaire aujourd’hui, le droit à l’alimentation demain. Fédération des services sociaux. https://www.fdss.be/wp-content/uploads/rapport_aide_alimentaire_aujourdhui-1.pdf 

[5] https://oxfambelgique.be/solidarite-avec-le-monde-agricole 

[6] Statbel. (2021). Chiffres clés de l’agriculture 2021. L’agriculture belge en chiffres. Statbel. https://doc.statbel.fgov.be/publications/S510.01/S510.01F_Chiffres_cle_agri_2021.pdf 

[7] https://www.rtbf.be/article/suicide-des-agriculteurs-un-phenomene-mondial-qui-s-accroit-8025294 

[8] In Belgium, one hectare of land now costs on average more than 50,000€, and farm rents are increasing as well. Statbel. (2023, May 16). Agricultural land renting prices. Statbel. https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/agriculture-fishery/agricultural-land-renting-prices

[9] http://www.confederationpaysanne.fr/sites/1/mots_cles/documents/4pages_climat.pdf