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The 20th century was a terrible blight on small farmers everywhere. In both
wealthy capitalist economies and in socialist countries, farmers paid a
heavy price for industrialization by Walden Bello .
In advanced capitalist countries like the United States, a deadly
combination of economies of scale, capital-intensive technology, and the
market led to large corporations cornering agricultural production and
processing. Small and medium farms were relegated to a marginal role in
production and a minuscule portion of the work force.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, took to heart Karl Marx's snide remarks about
the ?idiocy of rural life? and, through state repression, transformed
farmers into workers on collective farms. Expropriation of the peasants'
surplus production was meant not only to feed the cities but also to serve
as the source of the so-called ?primitive accumulation? of capital for
industrialization.

Today, perhaps the greatest threat to small farmers is free trade. And the
farmers are fighting back. They have helped, for instance, to stalemate the
Doha round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This tug
of war between farmers and free trade is nowhere more visible than in Asia.

The triple threat to Asia?s peasantry

Asian governments placed the burden of industrialization on the peasantry
during the phase of so-called developmentalist, industry-first policies. In
Taiwan and South Korea, land reform first triggered prosperity in the
countryside in the 1950s, stimulating industrialization. But with the shift
to export-led industrialization in 1965, there was demand for low-wage
industrial labor, so government policies deliberately depressed prices of
agricultural goods. In this way, peasants subsidized the emergence of Newly
Industrializing Economies. Peasant incomes declined relative to urban
incomes, and the resulting stagnation of a once-vibrant countryside led to
massive migration to the cities and a steady supply of cheap labor for
factories. The farmers left in the countryside were primarily poor and
aging, and they formed an increasingly small part of the national work
force.

In Thailand, for instance, a tax on rice exports insulated the domestic
market from price movements in the international market, depressing the
price of rice and reducing the wage costs of non-agricultural employers. A
transfer of real wealth from the countryside to the city took place every
year between 1962 and 1981, except for 1970. Not surprisingly, despite the
image of Thailand as an agricultural superpower, a large percentage of the
rural population remains poor.

In China, millions of peasants died of starvation during the Great Leap
Forward as the government requisitioned grain surplus to finance Mao
Zedong's super-industrialization drive. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution
allowed peasants to regain a degree of control over production because the
government was in crisis. Following the death of Mao in 1976, Deng Xiaoping
dealt with the crisis by introducing the ?household contract responsibility
system.? Each family was given a piece of land to farm, along with the right
to sell what was left over after a fixed proportion of the produce was sold
to the government at a state-determined price. This led to peasant
prosperity that, as in Taiwan, stimulated industrial production to fulfill
rural demand.

But, as in Taiwan, this golden age of the peasantry came to an end, and the
cause was identical: the adoption of urban-centered, export-oriented
industrialization. Primitive capital accumulation for industry took the form
of requisitioning peasant surpluses via heavy taxation. Currently, the
various tiers of the Chinese government foist a total of 269 different taxes
on farmers, along with often-arbitrary administrative charges. Not
surprisingly, in many places, taxes now eat up 15% of farmers' income, three
times the official national limit of 5%. Not surprisingly, too, while the
economy has been growing at 8-10% a year, peasant income has stagnated, so
that urban dwellers now have, on average, six times the income of peasants.
True indeed is the observation of the rural advocates Chen Guidi and Wu
Chuntao that the urban industrial economy has been built ?on the shoulders
of peasants.?

The typhoon of trade liberalization

The forcing of peasants to subsidize industrialization was indeed harsh. But
at least trade policies at the time helped to mitigate the pain by barring
agricultural imports that were even cheaper than local commodities.
Practically all Asian countries with agricultural sectors tightly controlled
imports via quotas and high tariffs. This protective shield, however, was
severely eroded when countries signed the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) and
began joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) starting in 1995.

The AOA forced open agricultural markets by banning quotas, which were
converted to tariffs, and required governments to import a minimum volume of
each agricultural commodity at a low tariff. At the same time, under the
pretext of controlling the heavy subsidization of agriculture in developed
countries, the AOA institutionalized the various channels through which
subsidies flowed, such as export subsidies and direct cash payments to
farming interests in the northern hemisphere.

As a result, the level of subsidization of agriculture actually increased in
developed countries in the first decade of the WTO. The total amount of
agricultural subsidies provided by the OECD's member governments rose from
$182 billion in 1995 to $280 billion in 1997, $315 billion in 2001, $318
billion in 2002, and almost $300 billion in 2005. The United States and the
European Union (EU) were spending $9-10 billion more on subsidies in the
early 2000s than they were a decade earlier. For every $100 of agro-exports
from the United States, government subsidies accounted for $20-30. In the
case of the EU, the figure was $40-50. While unsubsidized smallholders in
the developing world had to survive on less than $400 a year, American and
European farmers were receiving, respectively, an average of $21,000 and
$16,000 a year in subsidies.

With massive American and European subsidies distorting global prices in a
downward direction, developing country agriculture became ?non-competitive?
under the conditions of WTO-mandated trade liberalization. As the Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) notes, instantaneous import surges following
the adoption of the AOA in a number of developing countries led to
?consequential difficulties? for ?import-competing industries.? The report
continued, ?Without adequate market protection, accompanied by development
programs, many more domestic products would be displaced, or undermined
sharply, leading to a transformation of domestic diets and to increased
dependence on imported foods.?

This historic shift to dependence on food imports was, needless to say,
accompanied by the displacement of millions of peasants.

Even before the AOA took effect, the World Bank was predicting that
Indonesian farmers would lose out under the new regime. Indeed, since 1995,
farmers in rice and other basic commodities have been marginalized.
Meanwhile, competitive pressures induced by trade liberalization led to the
expansion of commercial plantations at the expense of smallholders.

In the Philippines, corn farmers, chicken farmers, cattle raisers, and
vegetable growers were driven to bankruptcy in huge numbers. In Mindanao,
where corn is a staple crop, many farmers were wiped out. As analyst Aileen
Kwa has described, ?It is not an uncommon sight to see farmers there leaving
their corn to rot in the fields as the domestic corn prices have dropped to
levels [at which] they have not been able to compete.? With production
stagnant, land devoted to corn across the country contracted sharply from
3,149,300 hectares in 1995 to 2,150,300 hectares in 2000.

In China, tens of thousands of farmers, including those growing soybeans and
cotton, have been marginalized with China's entry into the WTO. Indeed, to
maintain and increase access for its manufacturers to developed countries,
the government has chosen to sacrifice its farmers. According to the
Institute of International Economics: ?The challenge of managing the farm
sector has grown with China's WTO commitments in agriculture, which are more
far reaching than those of other developing countries and in certain
respects exceed those of high-income countries. The Chinese government
agreed to reduce tariffs and institute other policies that meaningfully
increase market access; accepted tight restrictions on the use of
agricultural subsidies; and pledged to eliminate all agricultural export
subsidies. These commitments went far beyond those made by other
participants in the Uruguay Round negotiations that led to the WTO's
creation.?

In Sri Lanka, thousands of small farmers staged street demonstrations to
protest the import of chicken parts and eggs, claiming they were being
driven out of business. The FAO concurred, noting that import surges on
major food items like chilies, onions, and potatoes made local production
?precarious, as reflected in the significant drop in areas of production.?

In India, tariff liberalization, even in advance of WTO commitments, has
translated into a profound crisis in the countryside. Indian economist Utsa
Patnaik has described the calamity as ?a collapse in rural livelihoods and
incomes? owing to the steep fall in the prices of farm products. Along with
this has come a rapid decline in consumption of food grains, with the
average Indian family of four consuming 76 kg less in 2003 compared to 1998
and 88 kg less than a decade earlier. The state of Andra Pradesh, which has
become a byword for agrarian distress owing to trade liberalization, saw a
catastrophic rise in farmers' suicides from 233 in 1998 to over 2,600 in
2002. One estimate is that some 100,000 farmers in India have taken their
lives owing to collapsing prices stemming from rising imports.

Governments under pressure

The resistance to the new regime so opposed to the interests of small
farmers has come from several sectors. At the international level, trade
liberalization and other anti-agriculture policies led to the formation of
two blocs of developing countries: the Group of 20 and the Group of 33. The
G-20 put the developed countries on notice that, unless they significantly
reduced unfair domestic support for agriculture, there would be no more
concessions on market access. The G-33 demanded exemptions from tariff
liberalization for certain products considered vital to agricultural
production and employment (special products or SPs). They also wanted the
right to raise tariffs and resort to other measures -- special safeguard
mechanisms (SSMs) -- to protect their products from surges of agricultural
imports. When the EU and the United States refused to compromise on these
issues, the WTO's Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancun in 2003 collapsed.

The Ministerial Declaration of the Sixth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in
Hong Kong in December 2005 recognized the right of developing countries to
designate SPs and institute SSMs. However, the U.S. backtracking on this
commitment as well as its refusal to significantly reduce its domestic
subsidies led to the collapse of the Doha Round of negotiations in July
2006. Developing countries simply could not provoke more discontent among
their peasant populations by opening their markets even more in exchange for
cosmetic reductions in the massive EU and U.S. agricultural subsidies.

The driving force behind the positions some developing countries have taken
in these multilateral forums is the backlash in the countryside. In 2004,
for instance, a rural backlash against agrarian distress led to the
unexpected defeat of the BJP-led ruling coalition that had campaigned on the
vision of ?India Shining.? India's rural electoral revolt was part of a
global phenomenon that put governments on notice that the countryside would
no longer accept policies that sacrifice farmer interests. In Asia, protests
in the form of land occupations, hunger strikes, violent demonstrations, and
symbolic suicides made rural distress a pressing issue. In China, what the
Ministry of Public Security calls ?mass group incidents? -- in other words,
protest actions -- increased from 8,700 in 1993 to 87,000 in 2005, most of
them in the countryside. Moreover, the incidents are growing in average
size, from 10 or fewer persons in the mid-1990s to 52 people per incident in
2004. Not surprisingly, the current leadership increasingly sees the
countryside as a powder keg that needs to be defused.

Farmers' internationale?

The suicide of the Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae at the barricades in Cancun
in September 2003 was a milestone in the development of farmers' resistance
globally. Committed under a banner that read ?WTO Kills Farmers,? Lee's
suicide was designed to draw international attention to the number of
suicides by farmers in countries subjected to liberalization. He succeeded
only too well. The event shocked the WTO delegates, who observed a minute of
silence in Lee's memory. By adding to what was already a charged atmosphere,
Lee?s act was certainly a key factor in the unraveling of the talks.

In December 2005, invoking Lee's sacrifice, hundreds of Korean farmers tried
to break through police lines in an effort to storm the Hong Kong Convention
Center. Some 900 protesters, the bulk of them Korean farmers, were arrested.

Both Lee and the Korean farmers protesting in Hong Kong were members of Via
Campesina, an international federation of farmers established in the
mid-1990s. Since its founding, Via Campesina -- literally translated as the
Peasants' Path -- has become known as one of the most militant opponents of
the WTO and bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. While there
are other international farmers' networks, Via is distinguished by its
position that small farmers must not only fight to survive in the current
global system of corporate-dominated industrial farming, they should lead
the process to transform or replace the current system. Commenting on the
vision of Jose Bove the famous French activist who dismantled a MacDonald's
restaurant in his hometown of Millau, France and other Via leaders, one
progressive journal has described the aim of the organization as the
creation of a Farmers' Internationale in much the same way that Communist
and Social Democratic groups sought to establish the Communist International
and Socialist International to unite workers in the 20th century.

The main battle cry of Via Campesina, whose coordinating center is located
in Indonesia, is ?WTO Out of Agriculture? and its alternative program is
food sovereignty. Food sovereignty means first and foremost the immediate
adoption of policies that favor small producers. This would include,
according to Indonesian farmer Henry Saragih, Via's coordinator, and Ahmad
Ya'kub, Deputy for Policy Studies of the Indonesian Peasant Union Federation
(FSPI), ?the protection of the domestic market from low-priced imports,
remunerative prices for all farmers and fishers, abolition of all direct and
indirect export subsidies, and the phasing out of domestic subsidies that
promote unsustainable agriculture.?

Via's program, however, goes beyond the adoption of pro-smallholder trade
policies. It also calls for an end to the Trade-Related Intellectual
Property Rights regime, which allows corporations to patent plant seeds,
thus appropriating for private profit what has evolved through the creative
interaction of the natural world with human communities over eons. Seeds and
all other plant genetic resources should be considered part of the common
heritage of humanity, the group believes, and not be subject to
privatization.

Agrarian reform, long avoided by landed elites in countries like the
Philippines, is a central element in Via's platform, as is sustainable,
ecologically sensitive organic or biodynamic farming by small peasant
producers. The organization has set itself apart from both the First Green
Revolution based on chemical-intensive agriculture and the Second Green
Revolution driven by genetic engineering (GE). The disastrous environmental
side effects of the first are well known, says Via, which means all the more
that the precautionary principle must be rigorously applied to the second,
to avoid negative health and environmental outcomes.

The opposition to GE-based agriculture has created a powerful link between
farmers and consumers who are angry at corporations for marketing
genetically modified commodities without proper labeling, thus denying
consumers a choice. In the European Union, a solid alliance of farmers,
consumers, and environmentalists prevented the import of GE-modified
products from the United States for several years. Although the EU has
cautiously allowed in a few GE imports since 2004, 54% of European consumers
continue to think GE food is ?dangerous.? Opposition to other harmful
processes such as food irradiation has also contributed to the tightening of
ties between farmers and consumers, large numbers of whom now think that
public health and environmental impact should be more important determinants
of consumer behavior than price.

More and more people are beginning to realize that local production and
culinary traditions are intimately related, and that this relationship is
threatened by corporate control of food production, processing, marketing,
and consumption. This is why Jose Bove's justification for dismantling a
MacDonald's resonated widely in Asia: ?When we said we would protest by
dismantling the half-built McDonald's in our town, everybody understood
why -- the symbolism was so strong. It was for proper food against malbouffe
[awful standardized food], agricultural workers against multinationals. The
extreme right and other nationalists tried to make out it was
anti-Americanism, but the vast majority knew it was no such thing. It was a
protest against a form of production that wants to dominate the world.?

Many economists, technocrats, policymakers, and urban intellectuals have
long viewed small farmers as a doomed class. Once regarded as passive
objects to be manipulated by elites, they are now resisting the capitalist,
socialist, and developmentalist paradigms that would consign them to ruin.
They have become what Karl Marx described as a politically conscious
?class-for-itself.? And even as peasants refuse to ?go gently into that good
night,? to borrow a line from Dylan Thomas, developments in the 21st century
are revealing traditional pro-development visions to be deeply flawed. The
escalating protests of peasant groups such as Via Campesina, are not a
return to the past. As environmental crises multiply and the social
dysfunctions of urban-industrial life pile up, the farmers' movement has
relevance not only to peasants but to everyone who is threatened by the
catastrophic consequences of obsolete modernist paradigms for organizing
production, community, and life.

Walden Bello is Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, a
Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and a Professor of Sociology
at the University of the Philippines at Diliman. A longer version of this
piece comes out in the April 2007 issue of Global Asia. It is republished
with permission.

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