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FOOD SUPPLY AS A GLOBAL CHALLENGE 195
agriculture as an industry which aims to create profit by producing vegetable- and
animal-based products (Ángyán 2003). This means that agriculture — which by
its nature, is also the functionally diversified management of the environment and
the landscape (as it can provide a variety of ecosystem services and possesses both
cultural and recreational functions), is degraded to “agribusiness” with one single
goal, which it shares with every capitalist undertaking, the production of profit.
Since this mode of production effectively serves mass production, the profit is
primarily realized on the global market. Therefore, the produced food items enter
the system of global capitalism as commodities. Everyone is familiar with such
examples as cheap Brazilian chicken or Chinese garlic (they are cheap, because the
environmental and social costs implied by their production are not being paid).
But these are only a few typical examples of a globalized system. The detrimental
impacts of the system on human health, the environment and the living creatures
in it have lately gained an increasing amount of attention.
It is, however, important to consider the historical dimension, for systematic
processes are relatively easy to define in time and space. Although the production
and trade of food was also a key factor in the earliest phases of globalization — just
think of the classic examples of sugar or cotton (Mintz 1986) — up to the mid-20"
century, agricultural production followed the traditional model worldwide. Despite
a few environmentally harmful practices at its core, such as plowing, it was more
environmentally friendly in several regards. It produced practically no waste. The
remains of plants and diverse by-products were utilized, so it was a closed circulation
of matter and energy, while the system accommodated some of the other (biological
and social) functions of the space used for agriculture (Ângyän 2003). Evidently,
the traditional model of agriculture could not have existed without the special
economic structure and social forms which supported it. Like in all other cases,
the production, processing and trade of food were embedded in a complex social
and economic system and functioned accordingly. The traditional peasantry, the
social order resting on communities of peasants, has gradually been disappearing
in the wake of changes in historical capitalism (van der Ploeg 2008).
The explosive breakthrough of the so-called “ Green Revolution” in the 1960s,
due primarily to the influence of Norman Borlaug’s activity, meant the worldwide
spread of industrial agriculture, primarily under the banner of food security. Despite
serious objections, the mentality represented by Borlaug remains fairly influential
to this day. Several arguments for food security claim, or imply, that industrial
agriculture has and will have no real alternative. The “no alternative” type of
argument is in accord with the political and economic doctrine of neoliberalism,
which has been developing since the 1970s and 80s and which has achieved
dominance all over the world. These intertwined parallel processes have kneaded
the social-economic order — including food provisioning — at nearly every point
of the globe into what can be seen today. The modern agriculture that emerged
from the changes not only jeopardizes the existence of indigenous and local
communities, but is destructive to the ecosystems and the biosphere, not to mention
the issue of food security, which has received growing publicity in the recently¬
evolving global crises.