See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/225920408

The power of food

Article in Agriculture and Human Values · January 2000

DOI: 10.1023/A:1007684827140

CITATIONS READS

186 4,965

1 author:

Philip Mcmichael
Cornell University
156 PUBLICATIONS 12,921 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Philip Mcmichael on 04 June 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Agriculture and Human Values 17: 21–33, 2000.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The power of food

Philip McMichael
Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

Accepted in revised form July 21, 1999

Abstract. In the developmentalist era, industrialization has simultaneously transformed agriculture and degraded
its natural and cultural base. Food production and consumption embodies the contradictory aspects of this trans-
formation. This paper argues that the crisis of development has generated two basic responses: (1) the attempt
to redefine development as a global project, including harnessing biotechnology to resolve the food security
question, and (2) a series of countermovements attempting to simultaneously reassert the value of local, organic
foods, and challenge the attempt on the part of food corporations and national and global institutions to subject the
food question to market solutions. It is proposed that the power of food lies in its material and symbolic functions
of linking nature, human survival, health, culture and livelihood as a focus of resistance to corporate takeover of
life itself.

Key words: Biotechnology, Corporate regime, Development, Food security, Globalization, Market rule, Organic
agriculture

Philip McMichael is Professor and Chair of the Department of Rural Sociology at Cornell University. He has
published primarily on the history and politics of agriculture and food in the world economy, including The
Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems (edited, 1994), and Development and Social Change (2000, 2nd
edition). He is President of the Research Committee on Agriculture and Food in the International Sociological
Association.

Introduction (as a global force), the fiction of what the corporate

world chooses to call “genetically-improved” foods
Food poses an interesting paradox as the world is only sustainable through the complicity of govern-
slouches toward the twenty-first century. Long ments, scientists, and agro-chemical corporations in
discounted by the industrial fixation of development concealing ingredients from consumers and biological
theorists and planners, food (and its security) looms hazards from citizens. In short, the power of the food
as a force that threatens the current hegemony of the question is imminent.
market. In fact, one might venture to suggest that food In order to explore the food question, it is neces-
is as much a force to be reckoned with as is money. Just sary to locate its parameters. I propose to address
as international monetary relations today are fragile, this by situating it in the crisis of development.
requiring continual ad hoc adjustments, and countered There are two parts to this: First, “development”
by the expansion of alternative currency movements, was synonymous with industrialization – a movement
so the world food order is increasingly fragile, supple- signified in Britain’s rise to power as workshop of
mented by ad hoc food assistance programs, and the world. The ensuing competitive dynamic in the
countered by alternative agricultures. capitalist world was, of course, industrial rivalry,
The difference, of course, is that monetary rela- extending to the United States, and indeed to the Soviet
tions have become increasingly fictitious in this era Union. As such, development became associated with
of “financialization” (Arrighi, 1994). Food consump- industrial rationality. It viewed nature as an unprob-
tion relations are somewhat less fictitious, and their lematic human laboratory and rendered rural society
deterioration may well generate more powerful dissent as a residual domain: supplying labor for urban indus-
than the ongoing volatility of currency relations in trial ventures as agro-industrialization expelled rural
selected world regions. The series of IMF food riots populations from their local agricultural communities.
over the last two decades attest to the power of food In this movement, food was removed from its direct
to generate substantial critique of the myth of free link to local ecology and culture, and became an input
markets. And, just as the fiction of money is sustained in urban diets and industrial processing plants. While
by the credibility, or sheer power, of the US dollar this movement continues today, there is a counter-
22 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

movement towards community agriculture and fresh The global corporate regime
and organic food that corresponds to the excesses of
industrialism and the crisis of development. Whether and to what extent a corporate regime comes
Second, the crisis of development refers to the to dominate world food systems will depend on
breakdown of consensus regarding the feasibility its political sustainability. By framing the question
and credibility of “development.” Gilbert Rist has this way, I emphasize that not only is globaliza-
suggested development is “like a dead star whose tion profoundly political, but also the agribusiness
light can still be seen, even though it went out for project is itself open to continual modification from the
ever long ago” (1997: 230). The crisis of develop- constraints imposed by the natural environment as well
ment, as a national project, has been displaced to as the social counter-movements. While certainly the
the global arena, and further debased. Through the movement to establish a corporate regime is powerful,
enlistment of multilateral institutions, and the pres- and has a relatively coherent, albeit abstracted, vision
sure to maintain currency credibility in a global money of organizing the world as a single market, the world
market governed by speculation and securitization is not singularly composed of market-oriented indi-
(credit management), national governments are busy viduals. In other words, when vision conflicts with
co-authoring the rules of a global market order, argu- reality, the actual institutional and discursive content
ably with false, or even disingenuous, hopes that of the corporate regime represents these material and
membership will bring prosperity to their countries. ideological tensions. Thus we have various forms
This hasty and short-sighted pursuit of globalization of “greenwash,” USDA-style corrupted definitions of
expresses the crisis of development. organic farming, and the like.
I am not convinced that this new globalist enter- The corporate regime is a set of power rela-
prise is sustainable. Nevertheless, there is currently tions where formal rules and operating procedures
a wholesale effort underway to liberalize agricul- are subject to continual contention – and resistance
ture on a world scale. It is no coincidence that the comes not only from the counter-movements, but the
recent Uruguay Round, which prepared the rules agents of the regime itself. Thus while there is a broad
for the global economic order, included agricultural political counter-movement to the WTO institutional
reform as a prominent and original initiative in the order (expressed in the failure thus far to implement
GATT. Reduction of farm subsidies and agricultural a profoundly undemocratic Multilateral Agreement
trade protections defined this initiative, which was on Investment that seeks to establish a charter of
overwhelmingly authored by states and agribusiness rights for capital at the expense of citizen rights), the
corporations who stood to benefit from agricultural current trade war between the European Union and the
trade deregulation. In the 1990s, the WTO became United States, beginning with the issue of European
vehicle of reform of the system of international trade in banana imports from Latin America and extending
foodstuffs. The specter of a corporate regime organiz- to genetically-modified agricultural products and food
ing world food production and consumption relations exports from the US, has triggered a general trade
via unsustainable monocultures, terminator genes, war between the US and the EU. In other words, the
and class-based diets confirms the limits of devel- corporate regime, as institutionalized in the WTO, is
opment as an inclusive organizing myth of national incomplete and contradictory – precisely because the
prosperity, and reinvents it as an exclusive global world order is authored by competing and unequal
process premised on eliminating the social gains of nation-states, some of which view multilateral rules as
citizenship and of national developmentalism. sources of national corporate power.
The project of globalization is not, however, the I would not want to suggest that reality has
only expression of the crisis of development. There rendered the globalist vision ineffectual. Quite to the
is a plethora of alternatives – including community contrary, the global reorganization of food cultures
supported and sustainable agriculture, community is extensive and has irreversible social and environ-
food security coalitions, organic food, principles of mental impacts. And private-controlled biotechnology
bio-diversity, vegetarianism, fair trade movements, threatens to radically intensify these impacts. Rather
eco-feminism, for instance. These counter-movements than explore these impacts directly at this point, let me
also constitute the crisis of development, offering first address some of the operating principles of this
alternative solutions and trajectories to the globalist global corporate regime.
response. I have argued that globalization is a higher-
Let me elaborate these two opposing expressions of order version of the development project (McMichael,
the crisis of development. 2000). Instead of the initial mid-20th century represen-
tation of development as nationally-organized indus-
trial growth, development has now been reframed as
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 23

globally managed growth, with information technol- being reconstructed as agro-export platforms. Local
ogies and bio-technologies as the leading sectors. food security is compromised by the appropriation of
In addition to the shift from industrial to post- land for the fruits of the “second green revolution,”
industrial technologies, a far-reaching shift in political and by the use of dumping and Structural Adjustment
governance is in the works: the elevation of market Program-derived concessions to install the globalizers’
rule. Whereas development implied a national public version of food security: food dependence on world
sector to regulate the market and its outcomes, global- “breadbasket” regions. In fact, half of the foreign
ism seeks to discard or weaken the public welfare exchange of the FAO’s 88 low income food deficit
function in order to elevate the logic of the market. countries goes to food imports (LeQuesne, 1997).
That does not mean states are disappearing, so The current restructuring of world agriculture
much as modifying their role. Markets are polit- intensifies a global division of agriculture labor, where
ical institutions. Whereas in the 19th century, states trade in low-value temperate cereals and oilseeds has
constructed markets, today states/multilateral insti- been historically dominated by the North, and trade
tutions are reconstructing markets by restructuring in high-value products has distributed increasingly to
states and their inter-relations. NAFTA showed us corporate agro-exporters (or their contract farmers)
that Mexico willingly liberalized in order to secure producing in the South. For Southern states, this
its membership. Alternatively, the recent Asian finan- is often an unstable trade, signaling a more funda-
cial crisis showed us how financial markets (backed by mental process at work: a widespread subordina-
multilateral institutions) can force states to restructure tion of producing regions to global production and
their priorities and forms of governance. The process consumption relations organized by transnational food
whereby markets are reconstructing states is largely companies.
corporate driven. It is not so much that TNCs are Under these conditions, which affect world regions
lobbying states, which they do, but that the WTO is differentially, agriculture becomes less and less an
as close to the institutional foundation of a corporate anchor of societies, states, and cultures, and more
regime as you can get. Let me illustrate from the and more a tenuous component of corporate global
perspective of the corporate transformation of agricul- sourcing strategies. It increasingly anchors a system
ture, and its considerable political import (McMichael, of global profiteering in food products, a system in
1998). which food travels from farm gate to dinner plate an
In the US, two percent of the farms grow fifty average of two thousand miles. Transnational corpor-
percent of agricultural produce, the average family ations stand to gain overall from a free trade regime,
farm earns only fourteen percent of its income from since it enhances and rewards capital mobility and
the farm, and ninety-five percent of American food is facilitates it by reducing institutionalized costs.
a corporate product. The food industry is the largest One way to think about this global system is in
American industrial sector, but it doesn’t produce food terms of its meaning for participating consumers and
security, as thirty million Americans are hungry. Huge states. In Sweetness and Power (1986), Sidney Mintz
conglomerates virtually monopolize sales – ConAgra, distinguishes between “outside” and “inside” meaning
for example, accounts for twenty-five percent of sales in the process of construction of the sugar habit.
in foodstuffs, feed, and fertilizer, fifty-three percent Inside meaning refers to how consumer identity is
of sales of refrigerated foods, and twenty-two percent constructed through the cultural associations with a
of grocery products (Lehman and Krebs, 1996: 122– former aristocratic luxury good and the bio-economic
130). functions of sucrose in providing caloric fuel to the
Food company centralization involves subordina- emerging English proletariat. Outside meaning refers
tion of producers also. But the corporate takeover to the macro-political economic forces responsible for
is not simply a question of the economic viability securing sugar’s supply both offshore and onshore as a
of family farming programs. These national institu- condition of English dietary reconstruction. One could
tions, which once nurtured agribusiness by stabilizing easily extend this analysis to the construction of the
national patterns of consumption of farm commod- global food order and the mechanisms by which the
ities, have now become obstacles to the transnational supply of wheat, beef, shrimp, and fresh fruits and
strategy and structure of the food companies. They are vegetables, for example, are constructed and managed
obstacles because domestic price supports, in raising by combinations of TNCs, states, and multilateral
prices of agro-industrial inputs, compromise the posi- institutions – promoting dietary shifts and dependen-
tion of corporate food processors and grain traders in cies. As Mintz argues, when outside meaning and
the world market. inside meaning converge, you have a powerful new
Meanwhile, under the dictates of debt rescheduling identification of the availability of foods with the
and market reforms, rural regions across the south are global order. That is, consumers buy into the corporate
24 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

and imperial relations that organize the production and At peak season the plant employs over two thousand
consumption relationships. The global managers are pickers and seven hundred packers. The seeds it
well aware of the power of food to lend meaning and uses are hybrid seeds which, although originating
legitimacy to the corporate regime. in Mexico, were developed and patented outside of
Global firms were key supporters of the GATT Mexico, mostly coming from Israel or the United
multilateral approach to liberalization. The original States. The field production requires the heavy
US proposal to the Uruguay Round was drafted by use of pesticides, in multiple varieties. During our
Cargill’s former senior vice president, a former officer visit to the Sayula operation we saw these pesti-
of the US Department of Agriculture. Cargill shares cides stacked in storage, mixed in enormous vats,
about fifty percent of US grain exports with Contin- and being sprayed by trucks that looked like giant
ental. Food companies, grain traders, and the chem- anteaters. Many (but not all) field workers covered
ical industry favor using the WTO to phase out farm their mouths with towels and some wore gloves
programs, thereby eliminating supply management, to protect themselves from direct contact with the
reducing prices, and exposing producers to world-wide pesticides; the company did not provide any health
differential labor costs. By reducing price supports, and safety education or protective gear. There were
the corporations maximize their ability to structure reports of children from a school located next to
comparative advantages in the world market, and to the fields being hospitalized the year before for
source their inputs from the variety of producing intoxication by fumes that spread into the school
regions incorporated into the “free” world market. yard.
The GATT agreement challenges agricultural Although the impact of these practices on the
supply management boards on the grounds that they health of the land was rarely noted, an exposé of
interfere with the free trade of agricultural products on the tomato industry in a state paper did disclose that
the world market. This is no secret to Canadians, where the same companies had left another part of the state
supply-management agencies emerged in the early four years earlier because the land there had been
twentieth century to protect farmers from corporate wasted.
food processors, only to be challenged by Cargill Perhaps a more visually striking indicator of
Canada (Kneen, 1995: 10). Food companies have monocultural production was the packing plant,
supported the NAFTA and GATT in order to institu- employing hundreds of young women whom the
tionalize a trade regime outlawing such “distortions” company moved by season from one site to another
to global markets, in the face of sustained national and as a kind of “mobile maquiladora.” . . . the only
international protests by farmer organizations. Mexican inputs are the land, the sun, and the
The corporate assault on national regulatory workers. . . . The South has been the source of the
policies is both a production, as well as a trading, seeds, while the North has the biotechnology to alter
strategy. Companies seek to either capture new them. An agreement such as the 1993 Convention
markets through direct purchasing of crops and on Biotechnology, while supporting national sover-
processed food, or to directly organize agricultural eignty, legalizes companies’ (mainly Northern)
production. New forms of mass marketing of commod- ownership over improved biomaterials and does not
ities produced under contract in multiple locations are really protect farmers’ or governments’ rights to
emerging, especially in the global fruit and vegetable their biomaterials. . . . the workers who produce the
industry. Global coordination of multiple production tomatoes do not benefit. Their role in agro-export
sites, for the year-round supply of fresh produce, is production also denies them participation in subsist-
aided by information technologies. In Chile, now the ence agriculture, especially since the peso crisis in
largest supplier of off-season fruits and vegetables to 1995, which has forced migrant workers to move
Europe and North America, more than fifty percent to even more scattered work sites. They now travel
of fruit exports are controlled by five TNCs (Watkins, most of the year – with little time to grow food on
1996: 251). their own plots in their home communities. (1997:
Deborah Barndt’s research on the tomato is telling 59–61)
here. With her research team, she retraces the
journey of the tomato from Mexico to the ubiquitous Barndt concludes: “with this loss of control comes
McDonald’s outlets in North America. Naming it a spiritual loss, and a loss of a knowledge of seeds, of
“Tomasita” to foreground its labor origins in national organic fertilizers and pesticides, of sustainable prac-
and gendered terms, Barndt describes the Sayula plant tices such as crop rotation or leaving the land fallow
of one of Mexico’s largest agro-exporters: Santa Anita for a year – practices that had maintained the land for
Packers: millennia” (1997: 61–62).
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 25

The WTO is designed to operate as an enforce- market. As some of you know, Novartis recently
ment mechanism of market rules for the globally entered into a collaboration with the University of
dominant states and corporations. It is also a tribunal California – Berkeley, agreeing to work “in all areas of
for enforcing corporate rights to manage consumption. functional genomics related to agriculture, including
The future portends an intensification of agrochemical gene-library construction, sequencing, mapping and
corporate domination of world food production by six bio-informatics” (Heffernan, 1999: 8). Novartis’s
conglomerates involved in genetically engineered food genes, seeds, and chemicals compliment ADM’s
(Monsanto, Novartis, AgroEvo, Dupont, Zeneca, and global grain collection and processing network.
Dow). They claim that there are now thirty million Agriculture constitutes 65 percent of the global
acres of genetically engineered crops. The companies economy, and corporate centralization is unsurprising:
argue that these new biotechnologies reduce the use of “the top ten agrochemical companies control 81
pesticides, and promise to end world hunger. Critics percent of the $29 billion global agrochemical market.
have disputed these claims, arguing also that these Ten life science companies control 37 percent of
technologies will discriminate against small farmers, the $15 billion per year global seed market. The
threaten public health and environmental health, and world’s ten major pharmaceutical companies control
narrow available food choices. 47 percent of the $197 billion pharmaceutical market.
Bill Heffernan’s recent Report to the US National Ten global firms now control 43 percent of the
Farmers Union, entitled Consolidation in the Food $15 billion veterinary pharmaceutical trade” and 10
and Agriculture System, identifies an emerging process transnational food and beverage companies’ combined
of centralization of agro-food capitals involving food sales exceeded $211 billion in 1995 (Rifkin, 1998:
chain clusters of “firms that control the food system 68). Such corporate clustering is complemented by
from gene to supermarket shelf.” These involve lobbying to revise world food safety standards in favor
anything from acquisition, to mergers, joint ventures, of genetically-engineered foods, food disparagement
partnerships, contracts, and informal side agree- laws gaining ground in the US, global PR firms struc-
ments. One such cluster is the Cargill/Monsanto joint turing debate in favor of genetic engineering, and,
venture: Cargill joins its extensive seed capacity with finally, the WTO being deployed to challenge govern-
Monsanto’s biotechnology and new genetic products. ments that oppose genetically-engineered crops. For
By moving to control the “terminator gene,” Monsanto example, in September, 1997, the WTO ruled against
will no longer “have to depend on access to farmers’ the EU’s ban on imported beef and milk from cattle
fields for collection of tissue samples to make sure treated with Monsanto’s growth hormone, Posilac.
farmers do not keep any seed from one year’s crop Behind WTO multilateralism is the goal of institu-
to plant the following year. Use of the terminator tionalizing rules of a neo-liberal world order to match
gene will mean that all crop farmers must return each (and deepen) the corporate led economic integration
year to obtain their seed from seed firms, just as corn underway. A broader power is anticipated in the nego-
producers have done for the past half-century” (1999: tiation over the terms of the WTO. In particular, the
5). The USDA views the terminator gene as a vehicle current dispute over the reach of the WTO regarding
of market creation for seed companies in the devel- investment concerns the institutionalization of a global
oping world, where farmers routinely save seed for property regime. Through the TRIPS protocol, trade-
next year’s planting, but the critics have pointed out related intellectual property rights of foreign investors
that such transgenic technology threatens millions of have been strengthened by the possibility of patenting
small plant breeders, and their food security. a variety of products and processes. Global corpora-
Heffernan notes that since the corporate world is tions are empowered by this protocol to patent genetic
so fluid, other acquisitions are necessary to survive. materials such as seed germplasm, potentially endan-
Hence Cargill recently acquired Continental Grain, gering the rights of farmers to plant their crops on
which means that Cargill “would control more than 40 the grounds of patent infringement. The expropriation
percent of all US corn exports, a third of all soybeans of genetic resources developed by peasants, forest
exports and at least 20 percent of wheat exports” dwellers, and local communities over centuries of
(Grainnet, cited in Heffernan, 1999: 6). cultural experimentation amounts to bio-piracy. Let me
Another cluster is Novartis/ADM. Novartis is a provide an example.
recent Swiss merger of CIBA-Geigy and Sandoz, The US company Rice Tec holds a patent on Indian
and it has agribusiness operations in 50 countries, basmati rice, and sells “Kasmati” rice and “Texmati”
focusing on crop protection chemicals, seeds, and rice as authentic basmati. Such export substitution
animal health. This merger, followed by the acquisi- pales in the face of the next step: requesting finan-
tion of Merck, makes Novartis the leading agrochem- cial compensation from Indian farmers who use the
ical firm, with 15 percent of the global agrochemical name basmati rice, and monopolizing the control and
26 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

reproduction of seed, using biotechnology. According and embedding decisions in remote, confidential, and
to Gerard Greenfield (1999), Rice Tec reputedly is now bureaucratic organizations. Through authorship of
involved in pirating jasmine rice in Thailand. multilateral agreements, states are embedded in the
The significance of the TRIPS is that intellectual world market, becoming corporate entities themselves
property rights on gene patenting can only be claimed (McMichael, 1995; Greenfield, 1999).
by government and corporations – “farmers and their The scenario of a fully globalized food system is
communities are not legal entities and community undoubtedly far fetched. Roughly ninety percent of
rights – including rights over traditional knowledge the world’s food consumption occurs in the country
– are not recognized” (Greenfield, 1999). Should in which it is produced. Sixty percent of the food
the Thai government attempt to patent jasmine rice, consumed by rural populations they produce, whereas
then the US government will appeal to the WTO urbanites depend on the market for ninety percent
against Thailand’s restraint of trade – it has already of their food consumption (McCalla, 1999: 3). Only
threatened this in relation to Thailand’s attempt to about one-fifth of the world’s almost six billion people
protect the knowledge of traditional healers and medi- participate in the cash or consumer credit economy.
cinal resources from patents by foreign pharmaceutical Nevertheless, the reality is that full implementation
companies. of a WTO regime would be tremendously destabil-
Another area of contention is the WTO Agree- izing to the remaining three billion people who live
ment on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards. This from the land, would intensify environmental jeopardy
aims to harmonize health and hygiene inspection (especially with the growing threat of biological, rather
of imported foods – or to put it another way, to than simply chemical, pollution), and would continue
ensure that standards do not become trade barriers. the process of reducing global biodiversity to agro-
These standards have been devised by Codex, an industrial monocultures and thence greater vulnera-
international organization established by the WHO, bility of crops and livestock. Genetic erosion is already
comprising government and corporate representatives. substantial: “the US soy crop, which accounts for 75
With reference to Codex standards, the US overturned percent of the world’s soy, is a monoculture that can
the EU ban on imports of beef raised with growth- be traced back to only six plants brought over from
inducing hormones. Not only did the beef-hormone China . . . of the seventy-five kinds of vegetables grown
ruling disallow health regulations made in advance in the United States, 97 percent of all the varieties
of scientific certainty, but also the implications are have become extinct in less than eighty years. . . . in the
that SPS provisions on harmonization and equiva- United States just ten varieties of wheat account for
lence “threaten to force countries to lower health, most of the domestic harvest, while only six varieties
safety and environmental standards and to accept of corn make up more than 71 percent of the yearly
imported products that do not meet their high stan- crop. In India, farmers grew more than thirty thousand
dards.” In other words, the SPS Agreement “creates traditional varieties of rice just fifty years ago. Now,
strong incentives to avoid exceeding international stan- ten modern varieties account for more than 75 percent
dards,. . . (which) serve as a ceiling, not a floor” (Public of the rice grown in that country.” Garrison Wilkes,
Citizen, 1998: 11–12). This is the meaning of down- professor of Botany of U Mass, likens the situation to
ward harmonization, and it has serious public health “taking stones from the foundation to repair the roof”
implications. Alternatively, US Trade Representative (Rifkin, 1998: 110–111).
Barshefsky testified earlier to the Senate that “We must At this point it is worth addressing five principal
guard against the increasing use of SPS barriers as the discursive claims of the corporate regime:
‘trade barrier of choice”’ (quoted in Greenfield, 1999).
The forces of privatization are strong – even in the area 1. Biotechnology’s potential for feeding an increas-
of the setting of international standards. ingly hungry, or food-deficient, world. Monsanto
In these respects, the WTO institutionalizes a corporation’s home page has proclaimed: “Guess
corporate regime, targeting food self-sufficiency and Who’s Coming to Dinner? 10 billion by
food safety as restraints on the market and private 2030.” It warns us that low-tech agricul-
accumulation; and perhaps most significantly, seeking ture “will not produce sufficient crop yield
to control the institutional dimension of the world increases and improvements to feed the world’s
market – namely the regulatory framework at the burgeoning population,” declaring that “biotech-
international and, by extension, the national, levels, nology innovations will triple crop yields without
since states author and abide by multilateral rules requiring any additional farmland, saving valuable
(Greenfield, 1999). Stephen Gill (1992) has termed rainforests and animal habitats” and that “biotech-
this the new constitutionalism, the removal of polit- nology can feed the world . . . let the harvest begin”
ical decision-making away from democratic polities (Kimbrell, 1998: 294). The point here is not to
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 27

debate corporate claims regarding the potential of and kept in the form of intellectual property,”
genetic engineering in increasing food supplies where farmers become simply a new market for
– “in theory, it is possible that some transgenic genetically-altered seeds (1998: 114). Further, the
plants could be more nutritious, travel better, or large-scale introduction of transgenic crops could
produce better yields in harsh climates” (Bruno, contaminate remaining centers of crop diversity
1998: 293). Rather, the issue is the conditions through gene drift from transgenic plants to
contributing to hunger. Outside of Africa, gains landraces – gene-complexes with multiple forms
in food production since 1950 have exceeded of resistance to disease.
population growth everywhere, and yet Africa 3. Efficient agriculture. Breeding crops for resistance
has “enormous still unexploited potential to grow to herbicides may improve yields, but there is
food” with land to give and grain yields poten- a fuzzy logic here. The likelihood of intensified
tially higher than in the North. And seventy-eight use of herbicides, would further attack biodiver-
percent of all malnourished children under five in sity and undermine rural survival strategies. In
the South live in countries with food surpluses many rural cultures, non-crop plants (often termed
(Lappé et al., 1998: 8–11). The issue is distri- weeds) represent food, fodder, and medicine.
butional and organizational. Not only do half a For example, peasant women in India use 150
billion rural people lack access to land to grow different species of plants for vegetables, fodder,
their own food largely because of the agro-export and health-care; and in Veracruz, Mexico, peas-
bias, but also, and related, a substantial proportion ants make use of 435 wild plant and animal species
of commercial food production supplies affluent (Mendelson, 1998: 272).
diets that are unsustainable. As Frances Moore 4. Getting government out of (the food) business.
Lappé pointed out in her Diet for a Small Planet In addition to reducing international food safety
a quarter of a century ago, the mass production standards, for example, governments are writing
of animal protein is an inefficient and inequi- themselves out of the picture to the extent that
table use of world grain supplies. To illustrate: they codify inter-state trade relations, from global
“The US beef industry . . . generate(s) close to $40 multilateral, to regional free trade, agreements.
billion per year, (but) leaves less than 10% of Free trade agreements like NAFTA mirror the
planted forage crops to feed people in the US asymmetry of the WTO regime. For example,
and elsewhere. Chemical companies also benefit quotas on duty free US corn, wheat, and rice
greatly from having land farmed to feed animals, imports into Mexico are being lowered in stages.
since animal feed carries far less stringent pesti- In Mexico, two and a half million households
cide tolerances than does feed intended for human engage in rainfed maize production, with a
consumption. The net result of using transgenic productivity differential of two-to-three tons per
crops to feed animals is that more chemical can be hectare compared with seven and a half tons
used” (Lappé and Bailey, 1998: 87). In fact, most per hectare in the American mid-West. With an
of the food products (milk, soybeans, animal feed, estimate of a 200 percent rise in corn imports
canola, sugar beets, corn, and potatoes) targeted under NAFTA’s full implementation by 2008, it
by Monsanto for transgenic development enhance is expected that more than two-thirds of Mexican
their chemical business rather than address the corn production will not survive the competition
issue of supplying food to the world’s hungry (Watkins, 1996: 251). Meanwhile, it is no secret
(Bruno, 1998: 293). to Southern states that Northern states such as the
2. Sustainable agriculture. Monsanto’s CEO Robert EU and the US continue to indirectly subsidize
Shapiro stated: “Sustainable development will be export agricultures. In 1995, the farm subsidy bill
a primary emphasis in everything we do” (quoted in the North was collectively $182 billion – 41
in Bruno, 1998: 292). Arguably, the embrace percent of the value of production. Watkins has
of transgenic technology seriously threatens not estimated that the average subsidy to US corn
only sustainable development, but sustainability farmers and grain traders is 100 times the income
in general. The issue here is the substitution of a corn farmer in Mindanao (Watkins, 1996:
of monopoly for diversity. In describing the 250).
“commercial enclosure of the world’s seeds,” 5. Leveling the playing field – the fifth discursive
Rifkin notes that hundreds of millions of farmers claim of the corporate regime is belied by
across the world controlled their seed stocks, and this undulating relation between Northern agro-
their reproduction, just a century ago, whereas exporting states and the South. While there have
today “much of the seed stock has been bought been concessions to states located in the Fourth
up, engineered, and patented by global companies World, the playing field is more like a slope, with
28 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

a muscular Northern offense facing a Southern Counter-movements are not simply coincidental
defense compromised by structural adjustment, alternatives to the corporate regime. They constitute
FTAs, and WTO rules. Add to that the power of it because they express the material and discursive
TNCs to structure comparative advantage through conditions that the corporate agents actively seek
the mechanisms of global sourcing. to appropriate. For example, the global managers
and the biotech corporations impose a singular and
abstracted discursive and material logic on a culturally,
Contesting the corporate regime: From ecologically, and politically diverse world. Thus, seed
agribusiness to agriculture patenting reduces biodiversity to monoculture under
the guise of addressing the world’s food needs. And,
The claims of the global corporate regime are framed the concept of comparative advantage masquerades as
in “development speak” – provision for the hungry, an efficient allocation of global resources and bene-
sustainability, and trade freedom. But the terms of fits based on ecological and cultural endowments, but
engagement are new and distinct. Development is now is in reality a corporate, rather than a geographical,
less a purposeful national initiative, and more a reward property (Lappé et al., 1998: 113). In other words,
for joining the global regime. Development is deemed the discourse and practices of the corporate regime are
to be the function no longer of states but of private not simply the assertion and management of globaliza-
capital. The WTO is charged with organizing market tion as the path to prosperity, they are also denials of
relations for private capital, transforming national cultural diversity, citizen’s rights, and biodiversity as
regulatory structures, and reducing the “friction” of alternative forms of sustainable practice.
public economy. Another dimension of the globalization movement
In this context, development has become truly that generates counter-movements is the marginalizing
fetishized, as an independent product of the market thrust of the global market. Where the initial, mid-20th
that governs the action of states and citizens. The century project of development aimed to replicate the
development paradigm always presumed a single, Western model, country by country, the 21st century
universal standard with which to assess well-being. project of globalization is premised on specializa-
And Vandana Shiva observes: “The paradox and tion in the global marketplace. Necessarily, regions,
crisis of development arises from the mistaken communities, and producers experience marginaliza-
. . . identification of the growth of commodity produc- tion as a consequence of the footloose transnational
tion with providing better human sustenance for all” corporation and its continual reconstitution of compar-
(1991: 215). Aside from the cultural bias embedded ative advantage. Some dependency theorists used to
in the development paradigm, its resolution to the say that what was worse than the exploitation of
problem of global inequality dictates more of the foreign investment was no exploitation at all. I believe
same, that is, more development. In a world in which we can see beyond this aphorism. Indeed there is
environmental limits are becoming readily apparent, perhaps a blessing in disguise visited on some popula-
the problem of global inequality is as much the tions who find themselves on the margins. This move-
problem of unrestrained affluence as it is the problem ment is known as the culture of the new commons,
of grinding poverty. In a world in which fifteen percent and Mexican intellectual Gustavo Esteva (1992: 21)
of the global population produces and consumes eighty observes:
percent of the world’s income, accelerating develop- Peasants and grassroots groups in the cities are now
ment is arguably a recipe for social and ecological sharing with people forced to leave the economic
disaster. center the ten thousand tricks they have learned to
Fortunately the crisis of development is also limit the economy, to mock the economic creed,
expressed in the proliferation of counter-movements. or to refunctionalize and reformulate modern tech-
Some of these are direct challenges to the corporate nology. The “crisis” of the 1980s removed from the
regime – such as consumer movements concerned payroll people already educated in dependency on
with labeling, food safety, and fair trade; or farm incomes and the market, people lacking the social
worker movements concerned with pesticide use and setting enabling them to survive by themselves.
worker security; or farmer movements concerned with Now the margins are coping with the difficult task
protecting agriculture from agribusiness. And others of relocating these people. The process poses great
are indirect challenges insofar as they mushroom in challenges and tensions for everyone, but it also
the interstices of the global economy as the basis offers a creative opportunity for regeneration.
for alternative food cultures – such as community
supported agriculture, local foodsheds, and the organic Without romanticizing this phenomenon, because
movement. it generates all manner of hideous exploitation at
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 29

the same time as it enables alternative, co-operative with decidedly antisocial tendencies. Even the global
practices, it is important to observe that the global managers recognize this. The World Economic Forum,
corporate regime is highly selective and exclusive. an organization of executives from the top 1,000 global
As such, it is characterized by an implosive dynamic corporations that meets annually in Davos, Switzer-
in which the triadic markets of the North American, land, produced an article entitled: “Start Taking the
East Asian, and Northern European regions concen- Backlash to Globalization Seriously,” which states that
trate formal global economic activity. The Chairman of “a mounting backlash to economic globalization is
Citicorp distinguishes between bankable and unbank- threatening a very disruptive impact on the economic
able parts of the world (Hoogvelt, 1997: 83). This activity and social stability in many countries” and
phenomenon, aided by financial globalization, and that globalization “leads to winner-take-all situations;
mandated by structural adjustment programs, only those who come out on top win big, and the losers lose
intensifies the Southern elites’ channeling of their even bigger” (Menotti, 1996: 1). Of course, the notion
national wealth to the financial markets and institutions of a disruptive impact can be taken both ways, which is
of the North. Manuel Castells points out that “within why I am arguing that the corporate regime is contra-
the framework of the new informational economy, a dictory, but there’s no doubt that the battle lines are
significant part of the world population is shifting from being drawn and redrawn daily now. And with respect
a structural position of exploitation to a structural posi- to our topic, the material and symbolic power of food
tion of irrelevance” (cited in Hoogvelt, 1997: 89). suggests that this will be a long struggle rather than a
Irrelevance could be a virtue. short corporate pushover.
The selectivity of globalization represents both an There are two streams of contention – one concerns
opportunity and a danger. The danger lies in the the claims and counterclaims of the proponents and
movement towards privileging corporate over citizen opponents, respectively, of the corporate regime:
rights, and the abrogation of responsibility for broad such as whether and to what extent biotechnology
social and ecological sustainability on the part of the has any solutions to the world food problem. The
governments and institutions of the global system. other concerns how the world and its possibilities are
For example, Southern critics have charged that the presented – the corporate world presents globalization
Global Environmental Facility is more concerned with as a global express train, in the act of leaving the
preserving the sink function of the world’s forests station. It “. . . relies upon (a) vast means of communi-
and wetlands to sustain global economic activity that cation to persuade people that there really is no alter-
supports Northern lifestyles (Hildyard, 1993: 32– native” (Rist, 1997: 226). For example, “Greenwash”
34). Commenting on the biospheric limits of the beef employs environmental image advertising, voluntary
cattle complex, promoted as a developmental indicator corporate Codes of Conduct, and more traditional
(climbing the animal protein ladder), Jeremy Rifkin political campaigns to avoid environmental regulations
remarks: (Bruno, 1998: 288). The US Chemical Manufacturers
Association formed Responsible Care after the Bhopal
Global warming is the inverse side of the Age gas leak in India. Bruno surmises that their motto
of Progress. It represents the millions of tons of “continuous improvement” “leaves open to interpre-
spent energy of the modern era. The biosphere has tation whether improvements in environmental perfor-
served as a kind of giant cosmic ledger, recording mance are truly necessary for the planet’s health or are
the minutest details of our profligate consumption necessary mainly to save their public image” (1998:
during the whole of the industrial era. The modern 289). Reassuring? Corporations captured Earth Day,
cattle complex figures prominently in that ledger, “endorsed recycling and redefined pollution preven-
its saga imprinted in the countless molecules of tion to their liking” in a bid to substitute self-regulation
carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane that for new environmental legislation (ibid).
have migrated up into the heavens in the course Greenwash, in seeking to deny a problem by
of bringing beef to market. Now the biosphere appropriating oppositional discourse, at the same time
may have the final word . . . Altered climates, shorter sustains the credibility of the problem of environ-
growing seasons, changing rainfall patterns, eroding mental and food contamination. In addition to legal
rangeland, and spreading deserts may well sound intimidation through the courts, and a challenge via
the death knell for the cattle complex and the arti- the WTO, the biotech industry is currently bombarding
ficial protein ladder that has been erected to support Europeans with advertising designed to undercut
a grain-fed beef culture (1992: 229–230). opposition to GM foods. However, an official EU poll
The opportunity presented by globalization is demonstrates overwhelming support for labeling of
precisely the more complete disrobing of the Emperor, GM foods, with the following favorable percentages:
as the global market is revealed to be a social invention Austria 73%, Belgium 74%, Denmark 85%, France
30 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

78%, Germany 72%, Greece 81%, Ireland 61%, Italy farmers markets, and other community organizations,
67%, Netherlands 79%, Spain 69%, Sweden 81%, and in order to contest the USDA’s move to monopolize the
the UK 82%. While the biotech industry represents definition of “organic” (Lilliston and Cummins, 1998:
the issue as non-controversial in America, in a survey 200).
conducted by Novartis, 93% of respondents favored Organic farmers may have movement support, but
labeling of GM food (Goldsmith, 1998: 314). they face a greater biological threat to their use of
Just as corporate agriculture generates its own the Bt gene as a natural pesticide. Deployment of
environmental opposition, so the global food system Bt by biotech firms could increase insect resistance
generates food scares, like mad cow disease and the to it, and thereby jeopardize an important element
Belgian scare of June, 1999. Food safety is increas- in organic farming (Financial Times 1/9/98). Also,
ingly threatened by global sourcing – from regions organics are already farmed under corporate contract,
with polluted water, resource-poor safety systems, including offshore. It is within this context that the
exotic microbes unknown in the consumer countries proliferating community supported agriculture move-
and generally just the increasing distance from farm ment (around 1000 in the US) and its farmers’ markets
gate to dinner plate. The Center for Disease Control have become important outlets for organic foods,
in Atlanta reports growing outbreaks of disease, some because of the competitive advantage CSA’s have in
fatal, linked to imported food in the 1990s – raspber- linking producers and consumers directly through the
ries from Guatemala, carrots from Peru, strawberries, exchange of fresh foods, and eliminating the physical
scallions, and cantaloupes from Mexico, coconut milk and social distancing involved in corporate agriculture
from Thailand, canned mushrooms from China, an (Henderson, 1998: 117).
Israeli snackfood. As President Clinton’s first trade There is no question that the biotech industry is
representative, Mickey Kantor said: there is “a tension meeting with concerted resistances around the world
between the two goals of safety and trade. You want to (McMichael, 1997). In 1998, French farmers attacked
open markets but not lower standards. And that’s easy a storage facility owned by Novartis and destroyed 30
to say, but very, very difficult to carry out” (New York tons of transgenic corn seed, when the French govern-
Times 9/29/1997: A1, 10). No kidding. ment allowed planting of GM corn. The Confederation
Organic farming, as part of the counter-movement, Paysanne – an organization of European small farmers
is a case in point where there are fine lines to characterised this as a “giant step toward more and
be drawn between corporate and alternative agricul- more dangerous agriculture.” The Karnataka Farmers
tures. Certainly organic foods are mushrooming – for Union in Bangalore (claiming a membership of 10
example it was a $5 billion industry in Canada and the million) actively resisted Cargill’s attempts to patent
US by 1997, and growing 20% annually. A Novartis germplasm, and more recently have turned their atten-
survey showed that 54% of American consumers tion to Monsanto, ripping up and burning GM crops,
preferred organic food production as the dominant and giving life to other grassroots organizations in this
form of food production. More than 2 million Amer- struggle. On August 9th, 1998, the anniversary of
ican families are organic consumers, with an additional Gandhi’s telling the British to quit India, a Monsanto
14 million consuming natural foods (Kimbrell, 1998: Quit India campaign was launched by a group of
296; Lilliston and Cummins, 1998: 196). In 1997, non-farm organizations who have been mailing Quit
the USDA attempted to redefine organic food stan- India postcards to Monsanto’s headquarters in Illinois
dards – under pressure from agro-chemical and genetic (Kingsnorth, 1999: 9–10).
firms, the proposed standards “would have allowed Schemes for sustainable agricultures crop up across
the use of genetic engineering, nuclear irradiation, the world. The Centre for Conservation of Tradi-
and toxic sewage sludge in organic agriculture, as tional Farming Systems in Madhya Pradesh is now
well as a more liberal use of synthetic chemicals on cultivating unirrigated wheat varieties by traditional
crops and in processed organic foods. Intensive animal methods, in a bid to reverse the green revolution, to
farming practices, with a subsequent reliance on anti- reverse the socially and environmentally unsustainable
biotics and cruel confined conditions, would also be impact of high-input agriculture, and to model small
acceptable.” Opposition was swift and unprecedented, farming and subsistence agriculture as the alternative
with 27 of 40 non-governmental and state organic to big-dam-based irrigated agriculture (Nellithanam
certifiers insisting on a uniformly high organic agri- and Samiti, 1998: 29–33). In the Andes, the PRATEC
cultural standard, and with 220,000 responses, 99% of group consciously rejects Western methods in the
which denounced the proposed changes, leading to the context of the collapse of the formal economy in
formation of a new national organization: the Organic the region, and seeks to recover traditional Andean
Consumers Association. This Association is building peasant practices. The peasants grow and know some
a movement through natural food co-ops, retail stores, 1,500 varieties of quinoa, 330 of kaniwa, 228 of tarwi,
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 31

3,500 of potatoes, 610 of oca (a tuber) and so on. As pathogens, feces, chemicals, toxic sludge, rendered
one Bolivian peasant explains, animal protein, genetically modified organisms, chem-
ical additives, irradiation-derived radiolytic chemical
We have great faith in what nature transmits to us. by-products, and a host of other hazardous aller-
These indicators are neither the result of the science gens and toxins” (Lilliston and Cummins, 1998:
of humans, nor the invention of people with great 196).
experience. Rather, it is the voice of nature itself The crisis of development is not simply the crisis
which announces to us the manner in which we must of a model, but a philosophical and ethical crisis with
plant our crops (quoted in Apffel-Marglin, 1997: a very hard edge of growing inequality. The upward
223). redistribution of wealth is accompanied by the arro-
gance of power of the wealthy as they reconfigure the
world in the service of short-run profit. It seems to me
Conclusion that over the long haul, citizens and consumers will not
subscribe to the market fetish, as some higher authority
In these various ways, and more, the counter- than the polity, as they experience social polarization
movements express the crisis of development. While and the erosion of social institutions and stable habitats
they do not necessarily have the same historical, and communities. The crisis of development is a crisis
cultural, and philosophical point of departure, nor of institutions of governance also. The globalization
goal, these movements express a certain unity in project seeks to strengthen states and multilateral insti-
rejecting or re-framing the discursive claims and tutions as corporate entities but weaken boundaries
material practices of the global corporate food regime – both national and, in this case, biological. The
(which also expresses the crisis of development). counter-movement, on the other hand, is exploring
Arguably, the counter-movements mentioned here are alternative political and social forms – from global
unified around reversing the marginalization of rural citizen networks to community-level organization to
culture and the extreme commodification of a life force what Wolfgang Sachs (1992) terms “cosmopolitan
such as food. localism,” that is local activism situated within its
The central issue is surely that the corporate logic world-historical context.
is culturally reductive and unsustainable, and food may Much is made of the alternative scale of action
be the strongest litmus test of this. Of course, cuisines of contemporary counter-movements. However, given
have evolved over time and across space, but we stand the scenario outlined here, I believe that such move-
on a threshold beyond which the proverbial “franken- ments cannot avoid engaging with policy-making insti-
food” beckons to populations in what we may now tutions, and addressing the transformation of states
call the Fast World (as opposed to the Three Worlds into corporate entities – this process is progressively
of development). Tim Lang’s studies in England show shrinking democratic political space. One obvious
that cooking has become a form of TV entertain- example of such engagement is questioning the
ment and less a practical art or activity (1999). He legality and ethics of bio-engineering. Another is the
found 93 percent of the people surveyed could master discursive dispute over the definition of “organic,”
a computer game, yet only 38 percent could cook a which has serious material consequences. And the
potato in the oven. While England is the home of terrain of this dispute in the US directly implicates
the cuisine one may least wish to preserve, one does the global regime insofar as how the US govern-
wonder how the food ritual might recapture the Fast ment defines organic affects its trade relations. A
World peoples’ imagination. There is a dialectical rela- confidential USDA memo reported in Mother Jones
tion between the greater abstraction associated with magazine in April, 1998 remarked: “Few if any
corporate foods and the intimacy of fresh and organic existing [organic] standards permit GMOs [genetically
food that expresses both locality and sustainability. But modified organisms], and their inclusion could affect
this is not a zero sum game, in which one will elim- the export of US Grown organic product. However,
inate the other – it’s more like an ongoing struggle the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and
between forms of social organization, outcome to be the Foreign Agricultural Service are concerned that our
determined. In the North, as the corporate PR machine trading partners will point to a USDA organic standard
bulks up, the activist network will strengthen. In that excludes GMOs as evidence of the depart-
my opinion it has one key card up its sleeve: more ment’s concern about the safety of bio-engineered
and more consumers/parents understand the short- commodities” (cited in Lilliston and Cummins, 1998:
comings of industrial food: “routinely contained in 197).
nearly every bite or swallow of non-organic industrial Finally, for the majority of the world’s population,
food are antibiotics and other animal drug residues, food is not just an item of consumption, it’s actu-
32 P HILIP M C M ICHAEL

ally a way of life. It has deep material and symbolic Lang, T. (1999). “Beyond globalization: Tensions within the
power. And because it embodies the links between UK food system and the challenge to food policy.” Agricul-
nature, human survival and health, culture and live- ture and Human Values 16(2): 169–185.
lihood, it will, and has already, become a focus of Lappé, F. M. (1971). Diet for a Small Planet. New York:
contention and resistance to a corporate takeover of life Ballantine.
Lappé, F. M., J. Collins, P. Rosset, with L. Esparza (1998).
itself.
World Hunger. Twelve Myths. New York: Grove Press, 2nd
edition.
Lappé, M. and B. Bailey (1998). Against the Grain. Biotech-
Acknowledgments nology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food. Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press.
The author thanks Fred Buttel, President of the Agri- LeQuesne, C. (1997). “The World Trade Organisation and food
culture, Food, and Human Values Society, 1998–1999, security.” Talk to UK FoodGroup, July 15.
for the invitation to present this paper as the keynote Lehman, K. and A. Krebs (1996). “Control of the world’s food
supply.” In J. Mander and E. Goldsmith (eds.), The Case
address at the 1999 annual meetings. The author also
Against the Global Economy, and for a Turn Toward the
thanks Dia Mohan and Raj Patel for helpful sugges- Local. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
tions concerning this topic. Lilliston, B. and R. Cummins (1998). “Organic vs ‘organic’:
The corruption of a label.” The Ecologist 28(4): 195–
200.
References McCalla, A. F. (1999). “World agricultural directions: What do
they mean for food security?” (Paper presented at Cornell
Apfel-Marglin, F. (1997). “Counter-development in the Andes.” University, sponsored by Cornell International Institute for
The Ecologist 27(6): 221–224. Food, Agriculture and Development, March 30).
Arrighi, G. (1994). The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power McMichael, P. (2000). Development and Social Change: A
and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso. Global Perspective, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge
Barndt, D. (1997). “Bio/cultural diversity and equity in post- Press.
NAFTA Mexico (or: Tomasita comes north while Big Mac McMichael, P. (1998). “Global food politics.” In F. Magdoff, J.
goes south).” In J. Drydyk and P. Penz (eds.), Global Justice, B. Foster, and F. H. Buttel (eds.), Monthly Review, special
Global Democracy (pp. 55–59). Winnipeg/Halifax: Fern- double issue, “Hungry for profit: Agriculture, food and
wood Publishing. ecology.”
Bruno, K. (1998). “Monsanto’s failing PR strategy.” The Ecolo- McMichael, P. (1997). “Rethinking globalisation: the agrarian
gist 28(5): 287–293. question revisited.” Review of International Political
Esteva, G. (1992). “Development.” In W. Sachs (ed.), The Economy 4(4): 630–662.
Development Dictionary. London: Zed Books. McMichael, P. (1995). “The ‘new colonialism’: Global regu-
Gill, S. (1992). “Economic globalization and the internation- lation and the restructuring of the inter-state system.” In D.
alization of authority: Limits and contradictions.” Geoforum Smith and J. Borocz (eds.), A New World Order? Global
23(3): 269–283. Transformations in the Late Twentieth Century (pp. 37–56).
Goldsmith, Z. (1998). “Who are the real terrorists?” The Westport: Greenwood Press.
Ecologist 28(5): 312–317. Mendelson, J. (1998). “Roundup: The world’s biggest-selling
Greenfield, G. (1999). “The WTO, the world food herbicide.” The Ecologist 28(5): 270–275.
system, and the politics of harmonised destruction”, Menotti, V. (1996). “World leaders warn of ‘backlash to global-
www.labournet.org/discuss/global/wto.html. ization’.” IFG News, Fall: 1, 7.
Heffernan, B. (1999). “Consolidation in the food and agriculture Mintz, S. (1986). Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in
system.” Report to the National Farmers Union. Modern History. New York: Vintage.
Henderson, E. (1998). “Rebuilding local food systems from the Nellithanam, R. and Jacob, and S. S. Samiti (1998). “Return of
bottom up.” Monthly Review 50(3): 112–124. the native seeds.” The Ecologist 28(1): 29–33.
Hildyard, N. (1993). “Foxes in charge of chickens.” In W. Sachs Public Citizen (1998). Comments of Public Citizen, Inc.
(ed.), Global Ecology. London: Zed Books. Regarding US Preparations for the World Trade Organi-
Hoogvelt, A. (1997). Globalization and the Postcolonial zation’s Ministerial Meeting, Fourth Quarter 1999. Wash-
World. The New Political Economy of Development. London: ington, DC: Public Citizen.
Macmillan. Rifkin, J. (1992). Beyond Beef. The Rise and Fall of the Cattle
Kimbrell, A. (1998). “Why biotechnology and high-tech agri- Culture. New York: Penguin.
culture cannot feed the world.” The Ecologist 28(5): 294– Rifkin, J. (1998). The Biotech Century. Harnessing the Gene
298. and Remaking the World. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Kingsnorth, P. (1999). “India cheers while Monsanto burns.” Rist, G. (1997). The History of Development. From Western
The Ecologist 29(1): 9–11. Origins to Global Faith. London/New York: Zed.
Kneen, B. (1995). Invisible Giant. Cargill and its Transnational Sachs, W. (1992). “One world.” In W. Sachs (ed.), The Devel-
Strategies. London: Pluto Press. opment Dictionary. London: Zed Books.
 T HE POWER OF FOOD 33

Shiva, V. (1991). The Violence of the Green Revolution. London: Address for correspondence: Philip McMichael, Professor
Zed Books. and Chair, Department of Rural Sociology, 119 Warren Hall,
Watkins, K. (1996). “Free trade and farm fallacies. From the Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7801, USA
Uruguay round to the world food summit.” The Ecologist Phone (voice-mail): +1-607-255-5495; Fax: +1-607-254-2896;
26(6): 244–255. E-mail: pdm1@cornell.edu
View publication stats