Secret Ingredients: The Brave New World of Industrial Farming

Bruce Grainger is head of the Public Services Department, Macdonald
Library, McGill University.

The author, a member of The Toronto Star’s editorial board, outlines
the rapidly changing organization of agriculture in Canada, the United
States, and other parts of the world. His message is that large food and
agricultural conglomerates have assumed an astonishing degree of direct
control of farming technology in major sectors of agriculture. The
result is often disadvantageous to farmers who have made large capital
investments but lack the bargaining power to secure better contracts
from the companies for whom they produce a specific agricultural
commodity.

Negative effects of these new agricultural production systems include
air pollution resulting from pig manure, soil and water contamination
resulting from pesticides and manure, and social and economic problems
resulting from low wages in the reorganized meat-packing industry (in
contrast to above-average wages only 20 years ago). The federal
government has helped industry keep wages low by allowing temporary work
permits for foreign workers.

The issue of genetically modified (GM) food plants is also discussed.
Patented GM plants are a means by which corporations can profit from
their research but also, as in the case of Monsanto, create a food plant
resistant to the company’s weed killer, thus benefiting from the sale
of both seeds and herbicides. Consumer resistance, particularly in
Europe, has slowed the development of markets for GM foods.

Corporate interests are advanced in a number of ways. Corporations
influence the direction of university research through direct funding
and in some cases through pressure to skew research results. Corporate
representatives monitor the media, ready to downplay any possible
negative research results or unfavourable coverage of the GM food issue.
Examples are given of how corporations and their supporters are quick to
attack anyone and any institution that challenges their science or
business strategy. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency suffers from a
conflict of interest between protecting the public interest and
promoting GM products for the food industry. The World Trade
Organization (WTO) has been used to challenge the existence of the
Canadian Wheat Board as well as the actions of Canadian milk marketing
boards. Any producer-controlled supply management program that limits
corporate power over the market is likely to be relentlessly challenged
at the WTO.

Apart from advising farmers to exploit niche markets and more targeted
government financial assistance, Laidlaw provides no real solution to
the ever-increasing control over food production and distribution by a
few huge corporations.