Ploughing Up the Farm

Around the world, farmers' livelihoods and food security have eroded in the past 20 years. Increasing reliance on markets and modern technology has not generated universal farm affluence. Neoliberalism has brought about rural depopulation in the northern hemisphere, rising rural poverty in the southern, and environmental problems all around the farming world. Farmgate prices have stagnated since the 1980s, while market-driven growth has encouraged production of agricultural exports and increasing use of chemical inputs. Trade liberalization is often biased against southern and small farmers, while the power of transnational corporations in agricultural trade and farm technology has grown by leaps and bounds. The corporate-driven GM-food revolution has had little positive effect on farm livelihoods or food security. The book calls for farm policies founded on farmer-led food security and a democratization of the global institutions that have had such detrimental effects.