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A CASE OF ECOLOGICAL DEBT
Elizabeth Bravo
Ecological Action
In May 2001 there was a popular uprising of maize and rice producers in response to the drop in prices for their products on the national market.
The price drop owed to, among other things, the fact that the Ecuadorian government had imported 60,000 metric tons of maize from the USA, at a subsidized cost, a cost lower that is, than that of the national market.
In this country two kinds of maize production exist: small- and medium-scale production on farms of up to 5 hectares, and traditional producers who grow maize for subsistence. This last group is made of those that conserve the majority of maize biological diversity. Some 11% of the population economically active in agriculture is related to maize growing (SICA, 2001), and to this figure we can add the population that grows maize for subsistence.
On a commercial scale in Ecuador, the majority of maize production is developed in the coastal region (99.4% of the total) in a cultivated area of 186,400 hectares and with an average yield per hectare of 2.69 metric tons/hectare (SICA, 2001).
The introduction of cheap maize from the USA will harm this whole population and have a serious social impact. Apart from jeopardizing national maize production, the importation of maize from the USA could mean the entry of genetically modified or transgenic maize into the country.
THE HISTORY OF MAIZE
Maize is the most domesticated and evolved plant in the vegetable kingdom. Its origin and evolution are a mystery as it reached us in a highly evolved form, without knowing its intermediate forms.
Since the last century, many theories have existed to explain the origin and evolution of maize. The most popular of them considers the teocintle de Chalco (Zea mays ssp mexicana) as the direct ancestor of maize.
In Ecuador, more or less 5,900 years ago, the village of Valdivia on the Pacific coast, was already a completely agricultural society. This village maintained exchanges with the north of Peru, Central America and even western Mexico, from where maize grains entered the country. By 3,000 BC, an expansion of maize cultivation happened in the Valdivia, Las Vegas, Chorrera, Chaullabamba, Monjashuaico and Cotocollao cultures (Alvarez, 1999).
Currently Ecuador is one of the countries with a greatest diversity of maize varieties in the world (Bravo, 1996). 18% of maize collections held in the CIMMYT (the biggest maize collection in the world) come from Ecuador (RAFI, 1992).
In the present day, maize plays an important cultural role in rural Ecuadorian communities, and has important social and cultural implications.
The maize, bean and pumpkin alimentary complex of ancient origin has been maintained almost without change up to this day. Maize gives the mechanical support that the bean needs, while the bean fixes nitrogen in the soil, improving its quality. Furthermore, the three crops constitute complementary staple foods for the peasant diet.
Maize is not only a base for indigenous food, but also a ritual and festive foodstuff. It is useful for everything: to celebrate a birth or burial, to make chicha (home brewed maize-based drink) for big parties, to toast visitors with roasted maize, etc.
Maize is always present in the peasant diet. When people run out of grain, some women go to other places with later harvests where they exchange different products for maize.
Ecuadorian maize has contributed to the development of modern, improved varieties of maize. According to the germplasm bank of the CIMMYT, "the CIMMYT maize programme, like all national maize improvement programmes across the world, have incorporated elite germplasm sources from Latin America and the Caribbean in the development of improved varieties and hybrids " (Nadal, 2000). To this respect, the then US Secretary of State calculated in 1993 that the “contribution” made by foreign germplasm to his country’s economy was $7 billion annually. This gives us an idea of “the contribution” that Ecuadorian maize has made to the said economy.
MAIZE SALE IN THE USA
In the USA there are 140 million hectares of maize sown, of which 20% of the total sown area (some 28 million hectares) is transgenic maize.
One type of transgenic maize is called StarLink. It is a Bt maize (Cry9C toxin) that gives resistance to insects. It was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA only for animal consumption as it can present allergy problems in human beings. The regulation also asked the company that produced the seed, Aventis, that the maize could not pass directly to human consumers through the meat of animals that ate this maize. The company appealed the EPA’s decision at the time that the maize was put on the market.
Farmers that bought StarLink seeds were warned of these restrictions, but in the USA there is no system that separates transgenic maize from conventional maize, even less so for StarLink maize.
In the middle of the year 2000, the organization “Friends of the Earth” discovered that StarLink was present in many products made from maize, not only in the USA but also in other countries. The first evidence of StarLink presence was in the tortillas for Kraft Taco Bell tacos (Eichenwald, 2000).
It is possible that the pollen from the Bt maize was spread to conventional maize as the grains developed, which could have produced genetic contamination through the air. Although in some areas StarLink amounted to 1% of maize grown, it was capable of contaminating 50% of the total harvest. There are cases of farmers who without planting StarLink seeds, had their crops contaminated by their neighbours.
Aventis has had to face several lawsuits owing to StarLink, including a class action presented in Chicago, in which the company is accused of negligence and fraud of consumers by producing and selling products that have not been approved for human consumption. The lawsuit included people who had suffered allergic reactions, some of whom had informed the FDA of this fact.
On the other hand, several farmers and maize traders hope that Aventis takes on economic responsibility for their losses.
Since then, more than 300 maize-based products have been withdrawn from supermarkets, restaurants and shops in several countries of the world when it was proved that they contained the Cry9C toxin from StarLink, and in other cases imports of this maize has been prohibited.
This has caused a fall in exports of US produced maize. US maize exports diminished by 3.8 million metric tons in 2000, compared to 1999 exports. Principal maize markets in the world have dramatically diminished imports from the USA, including Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and South Africa. Japan alone cut US maize imports by 2.1 million metric tons.
Table No. 1
MAIZE EXPORTS FROM USA
(Thousand metric tons)
DESTINATION 2000/01 1999/00 DIFFERENCE
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Japan 11.869 13.985 -2.116
Mexico 4.521 3.777 744
Taiwan 3.870 4.362 -492
Egypt 2.806 2.664 142
South Korea 2.244 2.777 -533
Colombia 1.055 1.233 -179
Algeria 965 566 400
Canada 956 128 828
Saudi Arabia 657 757 -100
Venezuela 632 656 -24
Israel 577 420 157
Turkey 322 615 -293
Morocco 281 400 -119
Iran 167 604 -437
Indonesia 157 55 102
Peru 118 412 -294
Philippines 117 263 -146
Chile 33 517 -485
Malaysia 0 179 -179
South Africa 0 309 -309
Unknown origin 313 388 -75
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Subtotal 31.657 35.066 -3.409
Others 4.021 4.435 -414
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Total 35.678 39.501 -3.823
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SURPLUS OF TRANSGENIC MAIZE?
Despite the WTO’s provisions obliging countries to eliminate agricultural subsidies so that all countries can compete under equal conditions, avoiding unequal competition by putting cheaper subsidized products on the market, Northern countries continue to subsidise their agricultural systems.
In the USA, there has been an increase in subsidy levels to farmers, meaning that for each dollar of exported wheat, farmer receive a subsidy of $1.4 from the government.
But what happens to maize? After a fall in sales, maize prices have fallen. The Department of Agriculture projected that maize prices will be $1.85 per bushel
a price inferior to that during the economic recession in the mid-1980s. Analysts are in agreement that the fundamental, though not the only, factor was StarLink (McAuliffe, 2001).
In order to balance out this price fall, farmers have called upon Congress to grant them $9 billion in “payments for market losses”. They have received $ 28 trillion in subsidies since 1998.
Furthermore the USA maintains two other subsidy programmes through credits for when there have been price falls; these have been directed at oil products, wheat, maize and other grains. These are post-harvest loans and represent no less than 85% of the average market price of a determined product in the last five years. If the product drops below these averages, the farmer does not pay the whole loan, but a sum based on a calculation made by the Department of Agriculture.
The programme of loans for payment deficiency compenses farmers, even if they have not taken out a loan. Farmers who are eligible to receive the loan but who did not do so receive the subsidy in any case. To calculate the subsidy, the current product price is taken into account, and a formula developed by the Department of Agriculture is applied to this. Annual payments are up to $150,000 per individual.
The National Corn Growers Association is proposing that this scheme of subsidies be replaced by a programme that takes income as a starting point, and that it continues with payments for agricultural transactions, a measure established in 1995 to help farmers in commercial transactions in high-dependency markets.
There are also credit guarantee programmes for commercial exports (GSM-102 y GSM-103), which count on an annual fund of $5.5 billion.
The GSM-102 guarantees credit payments in the short term (90 days to three years) extended by US financial institutions to selected banks in countries that buy US agricultural products. It has been applied in countries in the Andean region, Central America and the Caribbean. Guarantees given by the GSM-103 programme finance periods of more than three years.
There is also a supplementary programme (SCGP) designed to support farmers that want to expand, maintain and develop markets for agricultural products in parts of the world where there is no financing without payment guarantee. This programme supports US exporters that want to give short-term credits (180 days or less) directly to foreign buyers: it has been applied to sales in the Andean and Central American regions.
Export Assistance Programmes (EEP) is a bond for US agricultural products to be more competitive on the international market. In 2000 the bond was $579 million.
The Market Access Programme (MAP) is a fund of $90 million annually, designed to stimulate development, maintenance and expansion of agricultural and like products in foreign markets. It supports market studies and the promotion of agricultural products through fairs and others.
The consequence of this whole scheme of subsidies is that producers in the South are in a completely unequal competition with a highly subsidized and industrialized system from the North. This produces social, economic and environmental impacts, as it leads countries to a gradual loss of food self-sufficiency and to dependency on imported foods.
Even when all subsidies in the agricultural system are taken away from these countries, they find themselves competing in the world market with 50 years of subsidized agriculture.
Another form of subsidy maintained by the US government, is to buy the surplus of agricultural products that have not been sold on the global market and sell them off cheap or donate them to the Third World.
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