World Farmers' Alliance Challenges Food Profiteers

Family farming, Desmarais reports, has remained a prominent form of cultivation, in rich and poor countries alike. She cites data from the U.S., where farm technology is most advanced. There, family-owned farms made up 85% of all units in 1990s, although a significant proportion of them are dependent on wage labour. There is growing evidence, she says, "that small farms are more 'efficient' than large corporate farms" and are more "sustainable." Indeed, " 're-peasantization' is going on as the absolute number of peasants grows."

Farmers have survived - but have been subjected to extreme levels of corporate exploitation. Indeed agribusiness has learned to take maximum advantage of small-scale farmers, who carry the costs and risks of farm production but are robbed of almost all the proceeds. Added to that is predation by the banks, whose mortgages suck the lifeblood from farms before ultimately destroying them.

Even harsher exploitation is imposed on agricultural workers, concentrated in labour-intensive fruit and vegetable farms.
 

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