The Conversation
Edition:
Available editions
Africa
Job Board
Become an author
Sign up as a reader
Sign in
The Conversation
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Arts + Culture
Business + Economy
Education
Environment + Energy
Health + Medicine
Politics + Society
Science + Technology
In French
How to reduce poverty and re-connect people to nature
March 4, 2018 11.50pm SAST
Farmer-led development projects in places like Tanzania, shown here, can increase access to food and water, and reconnect people to nature. (Cecilia Schubert/flickr), CC BY-SA
Author
Cameron Fioret
PhD Student in Philosophy, University of Guelph
Disclosure statement
Cameron Fioret is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Arrell Food Institute's "Food From Thought" Program. His research group is partnered with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. Cameron receives funding from an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.
Partners
University of Guelph
University of Guelph provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.
The Conversation is funded by Barclays Africa and seven universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Western Cape, the African Population and Health Research Centre and the Nigerian Academy of Science. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a Strategic Partner. more
Republish this article
Republish
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.
Email
Twitter4
Facebook60
LinkedIn
Print
Access to food and water — once considered common goods and a basic human right — are increasingly treated as commodities, like precious metals or lumber. Instead of being necessities for life that are available to all, they are being kept from people who cannot afford them.
The perils of this commodification are rife — and sometimes tragically untold — yet several stories have survived.
Water and food issues in Detroit, the San Bernardino National Forest in California, the Global South and First Nations communities in northern Ontario speak to the negative effects of treating food and water as mere commodities.
In each of these crises, people were separated from the basic necessities of food and water, leading to instability, strife and suffering. What’s more, people have been separated — alienated — from each other.
The current free market economic system has promoted and perpetuated such inequality, and it would be illogical to say that it can lead us to a solution. But development, when done well and from the ground up, can improve people’s lives by connecting them to their environment, food production processes and other people in their communities.
How did we get here?
The commodification of food and water began to take shape more than three decades ago, when Western governments, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank embraced largely unfettered free market policies.
As governments deregulated their food and water industries, these goods moved out of public control and into the hands of the few.
These actions spurred entrepreneurship in water and food, in selling necessities for life for a profit. Of course, they are able to do so precisely because water and food are essential to life.
This change in direction further separated people in developing countries from the environment, from their production of food and from each other. It changed the way people saw nature and each other.
When peering through the current free market lens, nature, food, water, land or people themselves are viewed as merely something to extract monetary value from. Food and water have been commodities for a while, but an appeal to history is not a legitimate reason to maintain a harmful system.
Pressing impacts, making change
The impacts of commodifying food and water are occurring today and are pressing. Puerto Rico is in the midst of a food and water crisis. In Canada, Nestlé has been bottling water on expired permits in Ontario, leading to public pressure to not privatize water. These cases are similar because, while both areas are facing food and water commodification and development issues, people are protesting to enact positive change in their communities.
If we are to see change, it must begin at the community level, later unite with others and then lead to pressing one’s government to act for the good of all people. In Puerto Rico and Ontario, community-led protests have tried to effect positive change — people are fighting back.
Development work should aim to improve life by connecting people to their environment, food production processes and other people in their communities. Doing so could promote the importance of the environment, including food and water, and foster a protective relationship that prevents a resource’s exploitation, whether through destruction or privatization. La Via Campesina, the world’s largest mass movement of peasants, advocates for a similar strategy.
Getting involved
One approach that works well is participatory development, where communities and development professionals work together to reach their goals and find solutions to their problems.
Farmer-led research is but one example of participatory, bottom-up, community-based development. Groups like the Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) do work that tries to reconnect people with the environment, production processes and each other through their research programs.
In some areas, the practice of development has moved away from the top-down approach. An analysis of farmer-led research, conducted in Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia, has found that farmer-led development work promotes interconnectivity between people and a strong exchange of ideas. The study found that participatory development, such as farmer-led research, grew community, a connection with the natural world, and harnessed people’s creativity and ingenuity.
Critics of the participatory development family of approaches might say it lacks rigour and the necessary expertise to enact meaningful change.
A peasant farmer grows vegetables at a small farm near São Paulo, Brazil. (José Reynaldo da Fonseca/Wikimedia), CC BY
But I have found in my experience with the EFAO, as well as research in participatory development, that continued bottom-up collaboration between locals and professionals as mutually beneficial. Locals benefit from the expertise and support of professionals, and professionals benefit from the perspective and knowledge that locals offer. The participatory approach grounds academics and scientists who often approach these issues with an abstracted, solely technocratic distance.
The increased collaboration between locals and development professionals makes more explicit the public’s disdain for the privatization and commodification of food and water. A participatory approach also engages with, and uses, local knowledge and practices.
Development professionals must shirk the current economic model that has led us to our current predicament of rampant inequality and environmental degradation. Embracing the status quo framework cannot guide us away from this problem that it has initiated.
Water
Food
Soil
Sustainability
Farming
international development
Environment
Nestle
developing countries
Puerto Rico hurricane recovery
Tweet
Share
Get newsletter
You might also like
People in African cities are taking charge of their water supplies - and it’s working
How Western Cape farmers are being hit by the drought
How reliant are big development NGOs on UK aid money?
At last, evidence that African agriculture is powering economic transformation
Sign in to comment
2 Comments
Oldest Newest
Erik Kengaard
logged in via Facebook
The greatest factor causing poverty is overpopulation.
a day ago
Report
Erik Kengaard
logged in via Facebook
If land were affordable, more families could grow and catch their own food, and that food would probably be more nutritious than what can be bought in most stores. We grew much of our own food in the 1910s, 20s, 30s and 40s. Land would be more affordable if we weren’t overpopulated.
21 hours ago
Report
Most popular on The Conversation
China’s media struggles to overcome stereotypes of Africa
Spike in Listeria infections in South Africa: why it matters
Cape Town’s plans for what happens after Day Zero just won’t work. Here’s why
After Somali piracy, is sailing the Western Indian Ocean safe again?
Kenyan study shines new light on chronic myeloid leukaemia
Electric vehicles are changing the world. And they’re only just getting started
A tiny beetle and its deadly fungus is threatening South Africa’s trees
Ramaphosa has chosen a team that will help him assert his authority
Nudging the city and residents of Cape Town to save water
Why there may be a silver lining to Ali Bongo’s power grab in Gabon
Expert Database
Find experts with knowledge in:*
Want to write?
Write an article and join a growing community of more than 63,600 academics and researchers from 2,274 institutions.
Register now
The Conversation
Community
Community standards
Republishing guidelines
Research and Expert Database
Analytics
Job Board
Our feeds
Company
Who we are
Our charter
Our team
Partners and funders
Contributing institutions
Resource for media
Contact us
Stay informed and subscribe to our free daily newsletter and get the latest analysis and commentary directly in your inbox.
Email address
Follow us on social media
Privacy policy Terms and conditions Corrections
Copyright © 2010–2018, The Conversation Africa, Inc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment