Regional Paper - North America
The U.S. Charts a New Path
Overview of the U.S. Problem
The U.S. has been a main driver in promoting global food and agricultural markets. It heavily influences the direction of the world market and is host to some of the major transnational agribusiness corporations and commodity exchange markets. U.S. agricultural policy may have created new global markets but it has had certain negative impacts. U.S. agricultural production is based on energy-intensive approaches such as monocropping, confined animal operations, use of pesticides, GMOs and fertilizers, which have been shown to have damaging effects on biodiversity and the environment. U.S. policy has allowed it to dump its products into other countries at below the cost of production. Dumping has led to problems such as food insecurity, unemployment in the rural sector as well unsustainable migration patterns. U.S. investment has prioritized increased food production and new markets rather than more comprehensive long-lasting healthy solutions for food and agriculture. This approach contributes to market volatility and allows U.S. agribusiness to consolidate operations around the world at the expense of consumers and producers.
What are possible U.S. solutions to the problem?
The U.S. has a responsibility to acknowledge that this approach is not working at home or abroad. It is time to make a change. Moving in a more positive direction, the U.S. should adopt the Right to Food and incorporate it as a guideline for its policymaking. It should create a new Farm Bill in 2013 that is mandated to ensure that all people have access to healthy food, farmers receive a fair price for their production, and that climate-friendly agricultural practices are implemented. It should promote more effective food aid and investment in agriculture. The U.S. should be a leader in addressing market volatility by supporting food stocks and regulations to deter excessive commodity speculation. It should also redirect its trade policy to eliminate dumping practices and allow developing countries to protect their domestic agricultural markets. Finally, the U.S. has a particular challenge to reign in agribusiness from setting national and foreign policy. No tax payer money should be directed to support agribusiness from having any unfair advantage over prioritizing local, resilient food and agricultural systems.
Change we can believe in
The global crises have opened the U.S. public's eyes to the fact that markets need to be regulated so as to serve social and environmental goals. This, along with the rhetoric and action of the Barak Obama administration to re-engage in the world and to strengthen democracy at home, opens an important window for new rules and actions that meet the needs of the time.
