Synopses & Reviews
The French radical farmers union Confédération Paysanne, with its charismatic leader José Bové, has led the world in demonstrating the possibility of a socially progressive future for farming. Rejecting the increasing intensification and industrialisation of agriculture, the Confédération has argued for the need for local food production by small, independent farmers - both for the sake of the quality of the food we consume and to support the kind of societies we want to live in.Originally published in French, Food for Thought has been expanded and adapted for an English-speaking audience. Patrick Herman and Richard Kuper demonstrate how the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy and now the WTOs Agreement on Agriculture are both designed to encourage an increasingly free-market, profit-maximising, destructive agriculture. The majority of farmers have lost out and continue to lose. Agribusiness thrives at their expense. The consequences are dire in terms of social and environmental costs in the industrialised world, and devastating for developing countries, whose ability to feed themselves is being destroyed along with a massive proportion of their small farmers.There are alternatives: to outlaw dumping of food on world markets effectively, to control the amounts of food produced, to share its production fairly among regions and countries, to encourage rather than to outlaw the use of import controls. There are farmers and other radical organisations struggling in support of these aims worldwide. They are at the forefront of the struggle against free market globalisation. They hold out the possibility of a radical, human-centred way of producing our food and organising our society.
Synopsis
A manifesto for change in agriculture produced by the radical French farmers union, Confederation Paysanne.
Synopsis
Thoroughly revised and updated edition of this comprehensive survey of resource depletion.
About the Author
Patrick Herman, a long-time member of the Confédération Paysanne and a full-time farmer, is a trade-union activist in the department of the Aveyron. He was responsible for editing the original French edition of this book.Richard Kuper has been a publisher, university lecturer and trade-union and political activist. He spent much of the last four years farming in France in the department of the Drôme where he was a member of the Confédération. He is now politically active back in Britain.José Bové is a global leader of movements to save family farms. He is also a leader of the international farmers' movement Via Campesina.
Table of Contents
List of boxes
List of abbreviations
Translator's note
Foreword by JosT BovT
Introduction
1 The industrialisation of farming
1962: the birth of productivism
Exporting and free trade
From stockpiling to commercial war
The logic of free trade
Europe's export vocation
2 Reforming the CAP
1992: the topsy-turvy CAP
The Marrakech shambles
1999: From Berlin to Seattle
Headlong to disaster!
3 French agricultural trade unionism: the long march of the ConfTdTration Paysanne
The FNSEA (the National Federation of Far