Once an industrial-chemical titan, GMO seed giant Monsanto has rebranded itself as a "sustainable agriculture company." Forget such classic post-war corporate atrocities as PCB and dioxin—the modern Monsanto "uses plant breeding and biotechnology to create seeds that grow into stronger, more resilient crops that require fewer resources," as the company's website has it.

That rhetoric may have to change, though, if Monsanto succeeds in buying its Swiss rival, pesticide giant Syngenta. on Friday, Syngenta's board rejected a $45 billion takeover bid. But that's hardly the end of the story. Tuesday afternoon, Syngenta's share price was holding steady at a level about 20 percent higher than it was before Monsanto's bid—an indication that investors consider an eventual deal quite possible. As The Wall Street Journal's Helen Thomas put it, the Syngenta board's initial rejection of Monsanto's overture may just be a way of saying, "This deal makes sense, but Syngenta can hold out for more."

The logic for the deal is simple: Syngenta is Monsanto's perfect complement. Monsanto ranks as the globe's largest purveyor of seeds (genetically modified and otherwise), alongside a relatively small chemical division (mainly devoted to the herbicide Roundup), which makes up just a third of its $15.8 billion in total sales



Syngenta, meanwhile, is the globe's largest pesticide purveyor, with a relatively small sideline in GMO seeds that accounts for a fifth of its $15.1 billion in total sales.




Combined, the two companies would form a singular agribusiness behemoth, a company that controls a third of both the globe's seed and pesticides markets. To make the deal fly with US antitrust regulators, Syngenta would likely have to sell off its substantial corn and soybean seed business, as well its relatively small glyphosate holdings, in order to avoid direct overlap with Monsanto's existing market share, the financial website Seeking Alpha reports. So the combined company would have somewhat smaller market share than what's portrayed below:





In trying to swallow Syngenta, Monsanto is putting its money where its mouth isn't—that is, it's contradicting years of rhetoric about how its ultimate goal with biotech is to wean farmers off agrichemicals. The company has two major money-making GM products on the market: crops engineered to carry the insecticideBacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, which is toxic to certain insects but not to humans; and crops engineered to withstand the herbicide glyphosate, an herbicide Monsanto sells under the brand name Roundup.

The company markets both as solutions to farmers' reliance on toxic chemicals. Bt crops "allow farmers to protect their crops while eliminating or significantly decreasing the amount of pesticides sprayed," Monsanto's website declares; and its Roundup Ready products have" allowed farmers to ... decrease the overall use of herbicides."

Both of these claims have withered as Monsanto's products have come to dominate US farm fields. Insects and weeds have evolved to resist them. Farmers have responded by unleashing a gusher of pesticides—both higher doses of Monsanto's Roundup, and other, more-toxic chemicals as Roundup has lost effectiveness.

Monsanto's lunge for Syngenta and its vast pesticide portfolio signals that the company thinks more of the same is in the offing.

One immediate winner would be the Monsanto's formidable PR department. Battle-tested by years of defending the company from attacks against GMOs and also from the World Health Organization's recent finding that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans," the department would also find plenty of opportunity to flex its muscles if Syngenta came on board.

Syngenta is the main US supplier of the herbicide atrazine, which has come under heavy suspicion as an endocrine-disrupting chemical that messes with frogs' genitalia and seeps into people's drinking water. Syngenta is also one of two dominant purveyors of neonicotinoids—blockbuster insecticides (annual global sales: $2.6 billion) that have been substantially implicated in declining health of honeybees and other pollinatorsbirds, and water-borne animals. Both atrazine and neonics are currently banned in Europe, and widely, albeit controversially, used in the US.

All of which would make it ironic if, as some observers have speculated, Monsanto hopes to use the deal as an excuse to move its corporate HQ to Syngenta's home base in Europe, in order to avoid paying US taxes.



http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/05/monsanto-syngenta-merger-45-billion-pesticides

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작물의 야생종이 중요한 까닭은?

역시나 유전적 다양성 때문이다.


그러나 현대의 농업은 산업화의 과정을 거치면서 지나치게 획일화, 단일화되고 있다. 

그로 인해 혹시라도 발생할 사태가 우려스럽다.

 
그래서 토종이라도 열심히 보전하고 퍼뜨려야 하지 않을까 한다.

---------


Nora Castañeda is a PhD student in Biosciences and is part of the Crop Wild Relatives team of CIAT. In this ‘coffee with’ she explains what this team is about, the projects they are working on and their collaboration with other themes within and outside of CIAT.

“Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) are like the ‘ugly cousins’ of the crops as we know them, with differentiating traits useful for agriculture”. These relatives live in or near disturbed agricultural areas, usually not depending on human intervention to ensure their survival. Understanding CWR is important for agriculture as these species can have some characteristics that might be useful for improving the crops that we depend upon, especially now that agriculture is facing challenging conditions such as climate change and reduced availability of inputs as water and fertilizers.

Arachis duranensis. Peanut ancestor. CENARGEN, Brazil. Photo by: NP Castañeda

When humans once started the process of plant domestication, genetic diversity of the resulting cultivated species was narrowed as a consequence. However there are many other species that our ancestors didn’t pick. These other species contain genes that have allowed them to grow under harsher climates, including drought prone regions, soils with high contents of salts or aluminum and extreme temperature variations.

Plant breeders require sources of pest and disease resistance, tolerance to heat and drought, among other abiotic stresses, as well as higher contents of micronutrients and quality related traits.  Some of these traits can be found hidden within old and modern varieties of these crops, as well as within the wild relatives of crops (CWR), as long as this material is conserved and available in plant genebanks.

This conservation is of main importance and it is therefore that “the main objective of the work we do is to target the wild relatives needing urgent ex situ conservation, collect them and prepare them for their use in breeding” (for more info, click here). This way, the closest wild relatives of important crop species will be safeguarded, ensuring that important characteristics are conserved and can be used in adapting agriculture to climate change.

“From CIAT-DAPA we intend to give information on the priorities of which species to safeguard and the sites where to collect this plant material”. Through the ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives’ (CWR Project), about 1000 CWR species were assessed, identifying priorities for collection and regions where each of them are naturally distributed. “One of the main tools developed over the past three years is aCrop Wild Relative Global Atlas”. This Atlas provides the opportunity to explore distributions and conservation concerns in geographic regions, crop gene pools, or particular CWR species of interest.

Using maps of the species found as priorities, Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is preparing Seed Collecting Guides to provide collectors in the field with as much information as possible about these wild plants, so that they are able to find them and collect their seeds: the collecting guide contains a description of what the target plants look like, when they are going to have ripe seeds, where they are found, and also has some photos to help identification.

Solanum commersonni (a wild relative of potato)

Photocredit: Ariana Digilio (INTA, Balcarce)

Although the information we have gathered is massive, there will always be some gaps and some areas in which more research and action would be necessary. “We research about 80 crops. The majority of these crops are for food security, but there is also another group: the group of crops that generate income, such as coffee and tea. It would be great to receive more information on that group. Also, right now we only work with one type of forage, but it would be interesting to include more crops from tropic forages, to be able to include this information and highlight the need to conserve these seeds also gene banks“.

CWR is a pretty cross-cutting theme. “Centers and teams we work with are: The International Potato Center (CIP) (we are refining our analysis with additional data provided by them, preparing publications out of the analysis made and they are using this information to set priorities for collections); the University of British Columbia (we are using our results and merging it with genetic information for the sunflowers), the Centre for Genetic Resources in the Netherlands (for the lettuce) and the Natural History Museum (for the eggplant and tomato).

Within CIAT we work closely with Julian Ramirez, who first designed the gap analysis methodology. We also collaborate with the team of Terra-I: it is interesting and necessary to see how the changes in vegetation detected by Terra-I, affect the populations of some of the wild relatives in the region. The same goes for the team of climate change. Crop wild relatives give us the flexibility of mashing-up with other topics and finding other interactions with other specialized knowledge”.

More efforts are needed to highlight the importance of conserving CWR in target groups as conservationists, policymakers and the general public. They are a perfect example of elements from biodiversity with real and potential uses.

Crop Wild Relatives is a research team within the Decision and Policy Analysis group of CIAT. This group is made up of: Nora Castañeda, Colin Khoury, Harold Achicanoy, Chrystian Sosa and Alex Castañeda

For pictures look at this Flickr Album

Further Reading:

http://www.nature.com/news/weeds-warrant-urgent-conservation-1.13422?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130723

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v499/n7456/full/499023a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20130704

http://www.scidev.net/global/food-security/feature/could-crop-ancestors-feed-the-world-.html

http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/how-much-are-crop-wild-relatives-worth/

http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/collecting-crop-wild-relatives-lessons-from-the-field/

http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/filling-the-gaps-seed-collecting-for-the-future/


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It is commonly heard today that small farmers produce most of the world's food. But how many of us realise that they are doing this with less than a quarter of the world's farmland, and that even this meagre share is shrinking fast? If small farmers continue to lose the very basis of their existence, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.

GRAIN took an in depth look at the data to see what is going on and the message is crystal clear. We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems.

Download the PDF version of this report here

Download the printer friendly dataset in PDF format here.

Download the fully-referenced dataset as a spreadsheet here.





Alcides Raméon Ramírez, a member of one of 200 peasant families fighting to defend their land in Curuguaty, Paraguay. Eighty percent of the country's land is in the hands of just two percent of landowners. (Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam Intermon)






Governments and international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest share of the world's agricultural land. Inaugurating 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, José Graziano da Silva, Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), sang the praises of family farmers but didn't once mention the need for land reform. Instead he stated that family farms already manage most of the world's farmland1 – a whopping 70%, according to his team.2 Another report published by various UN agencies in 2008 concluded that small farms occupy 60% of all arable land worldwide.3 Other studies have come to similar conclusions.4

But if most of the world's farmland is in small farmers' hands, then why are so many of their organisations clamouring for land redistribution and agrarian reform? Because rural peoples' access to land is under attack everywhere. From Honduras to Kenya and from Palestine to the Philippines, people are being dislodged from their farms and villages. Those who resist are being jailed or killed. Widespread agrarian strikes in Colombia, protests by community leaders in Madagascar, nationwide marches by landless folk in India, occupations in Andalusia – the list of actions and struggles goes on and on. The bottom line is that land is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the rich and powerful, not that small farmers are doing well.

Rural people don't simply make a living off the land, after all. Their land and territories are the backbone of their identities, their cultural landscape and their source of well-being. Yet land is being taken away from them and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands at an alarming pace.

Then there is the other part of the picture: that concerning food. While it is now increasingly common to hear that small farmers produce the majority of the world's food, even if that is outside of market systems, we are also constantly being fed the message that the "more efficient" industrial food system is needed to feed the world. At the same time, we are told that 80% of the world's hungry people live in rural areas, many of them farmers or landless farmworkers.

How do we make sense of all this? What is true and what is not? What action do we take to deal with these imbalances? To help answer some of these questions, GRAIN decided to take a closer look at the facts.5 We tried to find out how much land is really in the hands of small farmers, and how much food they produce on that land.6

The figures and what they tell us

When we looked at the data, we came across quite a number of difficulties. Countries define "small farmer" differently. There are no centralised statistics on who has what land. There are no databases recording how much food comes from where. And different sources give widely varying figures for the amount of agricultural land available in each country.

In compiling the figures, we used official statistics from national agricultural census bureaus in each country wherever possible, complemented by FAOSTAT (FAO's statistical database) and other FAO sources where necessary. For statistical guidance on what a "small farm" is, we generally used the definition provided by each national authority, since the conditions of small farms in different countries and regions can vary widely. Where national definitions were not available, we used the World Bank's criteria.

In light of this, there are important limitations to the data – and our compilation and assessment of them. (See Annex 1 for a fuller discussion of the data.) The dataset that we produced is fully referenced and publicly available online and forms an integral part of this report.7

Despite the inherent shortcomings of the data, we feel confident in drawing six major conclusions:

  1. The vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getting smaller
  2. Small farms are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world's farmland
  3. We are fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger
  4. Small farms continue to be the major food producers in the world
  5. Small farms are overall more productive than big farms
  6. Most small farmers are women

Many of these conclusions might seem obvious, but two things shocked us.

One was to see the extent of land concentration today, a problem that agrarian reform programmes of the 20th century were supposed to have solved. What we see happening in many countries right now is a kind of reverse agrarian reform, whether it's through corporate land grabbing in Africa, the recent agribusiness-driven coup d'état in Paraguay, the massive expansion of soybean plantations in Latin America, the opening up of Burma to foreign investors, or the extension of the European Union and its agricultural model eastward. In all of these processes, control over land is being usurped from small producers and their families, with elites and corporate powers pushing people onto smaller and smaller land holdings, or off the land entirely into camps or cities.

The other shock was to learn that, today, small farms have less than a quarter of the world's agricultural land – or less than a fifth if one excludes China and India from the calculation. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world.

Let's go through these findings point by point.

1. The vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getting smaller

By our calculations, over 90% of all farms worldwide are "small", holding on average 2.2 hectares (Table 1). Even if we exclude China and India – where about half of the world's small farms are located – from the calculations, small farms still account for over 85% of all farms on the planet today. In over two-thirds of all countries, small farms – as defined in each country – represent more than 80% of all farms. In only nine countries, all of them in Western Europe, are small farms a minority.8

How many small farms are there – and how much land do they have?

Click here to view in full screen




Due to a myriad of forces and factors (such as land concentration, population pressure or lack of access to land) most small farms have been getting smaller over time. Average farm sizes have shrunk in Asia and Africa. In India, the average farm size roughly halved from 1971 to 2006, doubling the number of farms measuring less than two hectares. In China, the average area of land cultivated per household fell by 25% between 1985 and 2000, after which it slowly started to increase due to land concentration and industrialisation. In Africa, average farm size is also falling.9 In industrialised countries, where the industrialisation of agriculture is rampant, average farm size is increasing, but not the size of small farms.

Table 1: Global distribution of agricultural land

 Agricultural land (thousands of ha)Number of farms (thousands)Number of small farms (thousands)Small farms as % of all farmsAgricultural land in the hands of small farmers
(thousands of ha)
% of agricultural land in the hands of small farmersAverage size of small farms (ha)
Africa1,242,62494,59184,75789.6%182,76614.7%2.2
Asia-Pacific1,990,228447,614420,34893.9%689,73734.7%1.6
China521,775200,555200,16099.8%370,00070.9%1.8
India179,759138,348127,60592.2%71,15239.6%0.6
Europe474,55242,01337,18288.5%82,33717.4%2.2
Latin America & Caribbean894,31422,33317,89480.1%172,68619.3%9.7
North America478,4362,4101,85076.8%125,10226.1%67.6
TOTAL5,080,154608,962562,03192.3%1,252,62824.7%2.2
Notes: All figures on agricultural land obtained from FAOSTAT. Figures on number and size of farms obtained from national authorities wherever possible. Click to download the full dataset as a spreadsheet.



2. Small farms are being squeezed onto less than a quarter of global agricultural land

Table 1 reveals another stark fact: globally, small farms have less than 25% of the world's farmland today. If we exclude India and China again, then the reality is that small farms control less than a fifth of the world's farmland: 17.2% to be precise.

India and China merit special attention because of the huge number of farms and farmers they are home to. In these two countries, small farms still occupy a relatively large percentage of farmland. If we put the figures into a graph, we can see more clearly the disparity between the number of small farms and how much land they have .

We find the most extreme disparities in some 30 of the countries for which we have sufficient data. Here, more than 70% of farms are small, but they are relegated to less than 10% of the country's farmland. These worst cases are listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Worst off

Countries where more than 70% of farms are small yet control less than 10% of domestic agricultural land
AfricaAlgeria, Angola, Botswana, Congo, DR Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia
AmericasChile, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela
AsiaIran, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Turkmenistan, Yemen
EuropeBulgaria, Czech Republic, Russia

Source: Land distribution dataset compiled by GRAIN.

Box 1: A word about Africa

As can be seen in Table 1, we find that small farms in Africa represent almost 90% of all farms but have less than 15% of the total agricultural land. Our figures contradict the frequent assertion that most farmland in Africa is managed by small farmers.10

Data on who uses what land in Africa are hard to get. Most of Africa's traditional land tenure systems have been seriously eroded and even dismantled, beginning in colonial times. In many countries, ownership of land has been vested in the state or allocated to plantation companies or local chiefs. This has profound implications for classifying land and accounting for its use.11

Additionally, there is the problem of defining what constitutes agricultural land. In many cases, African governments measure “agricultural land” as the area being used by sedentary farmers at a given period of time, thereby leaving out large areas of land used by pastoralists for seasonal grazing. Also, land under fallow, shifting cultivation and land used by communities that farm within forest areas are often excluded.12 The FAO, by contrast, includes permanent pastures, uncultivated savannah and lands sown to permanent crops in its definition of agricultural land.

As a consequence, most national censuses in Africa register just a fraction of the area of agricultural land recorded by the FAO – less than half, as far as the entire region is concerned. The FAO's approach is a more realistic and inclusive way of measuring land use by small producers, which is why we used FAOSTAT's figures to establish the amount of farmland in Africa.

Where land is assumed to belong to the State – and is not accounted for as cropped or used by local farmers – this provides a basis for land grabbing by big farmers and companies, the rationale being that they will develop the unused land. Under customary law, however, these lands belong to the local communities and are often actively used.

Given that we used, wherever possible, national census data provided by governments to calculate the amount of land in the hands of small farmers, it is possible and even likely that we underestimate the situation in Africa. Small farmers in Africa are probably using much more than the 15% of the region's farmland than we our data shows – but communities' access to that land is not guaranteed and can be lost at any moment.

3. We're fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger

Almost everywhere, big farms have been accumulating more land over the last decades, with many small and medium-sized farmers going out of business. The statistics are dramatic. The official data that we were able to access are summarised in Table 3.

The situation seems most dramatic in Europe, where decades of EU agricultural policies have led to the loss of millions of farms. In Eastern Europe, the process of land concentration started earnestly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the enlargement of the European Union. Millions of farmers were forced out of business by the opening up of East European markets to subsidised farm produce from the West. In Western Europe, meanwhile, biased agricultural policies coupled with large scale infrastructure, transportation and urbanisation projects have been taking a vicious toll. Large farms now represent less than 1% of all farms in the European Union as a whole, but control 20% of EU farmland.1314 A recent report by the European Coordination of La Via Campesina and the Hands off the Land Alliance found that in the EU, farms of 100 hectares or more, which represent only 3% of the total number of farms, now control 50% of all farmed land.15

Table 3: Losing farms, concentrating land

AfricaWhile we found no official statistics on the evolution of farms and land concentration in Africa, numerous research papers indicate that in a great majority of countries, small farms are getting smaller because, with population pressure, farmers have to share access to existing land among more people while gaining no access to new land.16
Asia- Pacific

▪ Between 1980 and 2005, Japan lost 60% of its farms under 2 ha.17
▪ Australia reported 22% fewer farms from 1986 to 2001, and then 15% fewer still from 2001 to 2011.18
▪ In New Zealand, the number of farms has steadily decreased since the 1990s. The most affected farms are mid-sized, as the number of small farms (under 40 ha) and big farms (over 800 ha) each increased around 35% between 1999 and 2002.19
▪ In Indonesia, a country that has been actively turning forests into agricultural land, the number of small farms increased 75% between 1963 and 1993, but the amount of land in their hands increased less than 40%, as most newly deforested land has been transformed into big oil palm plantations. From 1993 to 2008, the number of farms under 0.5 ha has grown 50%, indicating that small farmers are being pressured to divide the holdings they have.20 ▪ In Azerbaijan, 20% of farms disappeared between 2000 and 2011.21
▪ In Bangladesh, from 1996 to 2005, the number of farms rose 23% but the number of landless rural families ballooned by 44%.22

Europe23▪ In Western Europe, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and Norway have lost around 70% of their farms since the 1970s, and in some cases this trend is growing.
▪ Things are no better in Eastern Europe. From 2003 to 2010, Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia lost over 40% of their farms.
▪ Poland alone lost almost 1 million farmers between 2005 and 2010.
▪ Within the EU as a whole, over 6 million farms disappeared between 2003 and 2010, bringing the total number of farms down to almost the same level as in 2000, before the inclusion of 12 new member states with their 8.7 million new farmers.
Latin America▪ Argentina lost more than one-third of its farms in the two decades from 1988 to 2008; between 2002 and 2008 alone, the decline was 18%.24
▪ In the decade from 1997 to 2007, Chile lost 15% of its farms. The biggest farms, those holding more than 2,000 ha, shrank 30% in number but doubled their average size, from 7,000 to 14,000 ha per farm.25
▪ In Colombia, small farmers have lost around half of their land since 1980.26
▪ In Uruguay, just since 2000, the number of farms has dropped 20% and this especially affects small farms: there are 30% fewer small farms, and they have 20% less land.27
United StatesThe United States has lost 30% of its farms in the last 50 years. However, the number of very small farms has almost tripled, while the number of very large farms has more than quintupled.28 So there are more very small and very large farms, but fewer medium-sized farms.29

Official data on farm losses and land concentration in Africa and Asia are harder to get, and the situation there is less clear, since contradictory factors and forces are often at play. In many countries with high levels of population growth, the number of small farms actually increases as small farms are divided up between children. But at the same time, land concentration is growing.

The rapid expansion of huge industrial commodity farms is a relatively recent phenomenon in Africa, while it has been going on for decades in many countries of Latin America (e.g. soybeans in Argentina and Brazil) and in several parts of Asia (e.g. oil palm in Indonesia and Malaysia). Box 2 and Graph 2 give the background and figures for a few major industrial crops. The conclusion is inescapable: across the world more and more fertile agricultural land is occupied by huge farms to produce industrial commodities for export, pushing small producers into an ever decreasing share of the world's farmland.

Box 2: The invasion of the mega-farms

Why are small farmers increasingly pushed into an ever smaller corner of the world's farmland? There are many complex factors and forces at play. one is population growth in rural areas in many countries, where small farmers are increasingly forced to divide their land among their children, resulting in smaller and smaller farms, as they have no access to more land. Another is urbanisation and the covering of fertile farmland with concrete to serve expanding cities and their transportation needs. Yet others are the burgeoning spread of extractive industries (mining, oil, gas and now fracking), tourism, and infrastructure projects – and the list goes on.

Overwhelming as these pressures are, perhaps the single most important factor in the drive pushing small and medium-sized farmers onto ever smaller parcels of land is the tremendous expansion of industrial commodity crop farms. The powerful demands of food and energy industries are shifting farmland and water away from direct local food production to the production of commodities for industrial processing. Graph 2 shows how just four crops – soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane – have quadrupled the amount of land they occupy over the past five decades. All are grown mainly on big industrial farms.

A massive 140 million hectares of fields and forests have been taken over by these plantations since the 1960s. To put things in perspective: this roughly the same area as all the farmland in the European Union. And the invasion is clearly accelerating: almost 60% of this land use change occurred in the last two decades. This doesn't take into account any of the other crops that are fast being turned into industrial commodities produced on mega-farms or the tremendous growth of the industrial forestry sector. The FAO calculates that in developing countries alone, monoculture tree plantations grew by over 60%, from 95 to 154 million ha, just between 1990 and 2010. Others put this figure higher, and point out that the trend is accelerating.30 Many of these new plantations are encroaching on natural forests, but they are also increasingly taking over farmland.

A research team in Austria analysed trade flows of agricultural crops in relation to land use. They concluded that the global area of farmland dedicated to export crop production grew rapidly – by about 100 million ha during the past two decades – while the area producing crops for direct domestic use remained virtually unchanged.31

Without significant changes in government policies, this aggressive attack by commodity monocultures is set to expand further. According to the FAO, between now and 2050 the world's soybean area is set to increase by one-third to some 125 million ha, the sugar cane area by 28% to 27 million hectares, and the rapeseed area by 16% to 36 million hectares.32 As for oil palm, there are currently 15 million hectares under production for edible palm oil (not biofuels), and this is expected to nearly double, with an additional 12-29 million hectares coming into production by 2050.33 Much of this expansion will happen in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Soybean and sugar cane are today mostly produced in Latin America, and oil palm in Asia, but these crops are also now being pushed aggressively into Africa as part of the global wave of land grabbing.

This trend is compounded by yet another recent phenomenon: the new wave of land grabbing. The World Bank has estimated that between 2008-2010 at least 60 million hectares of fertile farmland were leased out or sold to foreign investors for the purpose of large scale agricultural projects, with more than half of this in Africa.34 These massive new agribusiness projects are throwing an incalculable number of small farmers, herders and indigenous people off their territories.35 Yet no one seems to have a real grasp of how much land has changed hands through these deals over the last few years. The scores, possibly hundreds, of millions of hectares of agricultural land being taken away from rural communities are not yet captured in the official statistics that were available for this report.

Another way of looking at land distribution is through the Gini index, a statistical tool that ranges from 0 (indicating perfect equity) to 1 (total inequity). For example, when calculated for income distribution, countries with a Gini index above 0.5 are considered "highly unequal". GRAIN gathered Gini indices for agricultural land distribution in more than 100 countries.36Most have indices exceeding 0.5, with many reaching 0.8 and some even surpassing 0.9. In the Americas, all countries for which we found information have indices over 0.5, and most of them reach to 0.8-0.9. In Europe, of the 25 countries for which this information is available, only three have an index under 0.5. Where more than a single year's data was available, the most common tendency was for the index to go up, indicating that land inequality is increasing.

4. Despite their scarce and dwindling resources, small farmers continue to be the world's major food producers

At a time when agriculture is almost exclusively judged in terms of its capacity to produce commodities, one tends to forget that the main role of farming is feeding people. This bias has infiltrated national census data, too, as many nations do not include questions about who produces what and with what means. However, when that information is available, a clear picture emerges: small farmers still produce most of the food. They are feeding the world. The UN Environment Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, FAO and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food all estimate that small farmers produce up to 80% of the food in the non-industrialised countries.37

Table 4 shows the percentage of food produced by small farms in those countries where GRAIN was able to obtain good data. Across a diverse range of countries, the data shows that small farmers produce a much larger proportion of their nations' food than might be expected from their limited landholdings.

Table 4: Lots of food from little land

BelarusWith 17% of the land, small farmers produce: 87.5% of fruits and berries, 82% of potatoes, 80% of vegetables and 32% of eggs38
BotswanaSmall farms are 93% of all farmers, have less than 8% of the agricultural land, and produce: 100% of the country's groundnuts, 99% of its maize, 90% of the millet, 73% of beans and 25% of the sorghum39
Brazil84% of farms are small and control 24% of the land, yet they produce: 87% of cassava, 69% of beans, 67% of goat milk, 59% of pork, 58% of cow milk, 50% of chickens, 46% of maize, 38% of coffee, 33.8% of rice and 30% of cattle40
Central AmericaWith 17% of the agricultural land, small farmers account for 50% of all agricultural production41
ChileIn 1997, small farmers owned 6% of the land and produced: 51% of vegetables, 40% of field crops, 26% of industrial crops (sugar beet, sunflower, rapeseed), 23% of the fruits and vineyards, 22% of cereals and 10% of pastures42
CubaWith 27% of the land, small farmers produce: 98% of fruits, 95% of beans, 80% of maize, 75% of pork, 65% of vegetables, 55% of cow milk, 55% of cattle and 35% of rice43
EcuadorAlmost 56% of farmers are small and have less than 3% of the land but produce: more than half of vegetables, 46% of maize, over a third of cereals, over a third of beans, 30% of potatoes and 8% of rice44
El SalvadorWith just 29% of the land, small farmers produce: 90% of beans, 84% of maize and 63% of rice, the three basic staple foods. Backyard farmers, with even smaller land areas, provide 51% of the country's pork, 20% of its poultry and most of its traditional fruits.45
HungarySmall farms control 19% of the land and obtain 25% of the agricultural sector's total standard gross margin46
KazakhstanJust over 97% of farms are small and operate on 46% of the land, producing: 98% of fruits and berries, 97% of milk, 95% of potatoes, 94% of melons, 94% of vegetables, 90% of meat, 78% of sugar beet, 73% of sunflower, 51% of cereals and 42% of eggs47
KenyaWith just 37% of the land, small farms produced 73% of agricultural output in 200448
RomaniaFamily farms are 99% of all farms, and have 53% of the land, with an average of 1.95 ha/farm. They keep: 99% of sheep, 99% of goats, 99% of bees, 90% of cattle, 70% of pigs and 61% of poultry49
RussiaSmall farms have 8.8% of the land, but provide 56% of agricultural output, including: 90% of potatoes, 83% of vegetables, 55% of milk, 39% of meat and 22% of cereals50
TajikistanSmall farms have 45% of the land yet account for 58% of all agricultural production51
UkraineSmall farmers operate 16% of agricultural land, but provide 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk52

If small farmers have so little land, how can they provide most of the food in so many countries? one reason is that small farms tend to be more productive than big ones, as we explain in the next section. But another factor is this historical constant: small or peasant farms prioritise food production. They tend to focus on local and national markets and their own families. Much of what they produce doesn't enter into national trade statistics, but it does reach those who need it most: the rural and urban poor.

Big corporate farms, on the other hand, tend to produce commodities and concentrate on export crops, many of which people can't eat as such. These include plants grown for animal feed or biofuels, wood products and other non-food crops. The primary concern for corporate farms is their return on investment, which is maximised at low levels of spending and thus often implies less intensive use of the land. The expansion of giant monoculture plantations, as discussed earlier, is part of this picture. Large corporate farms also often have considerable reserves of land that lie unused until land that is currently being cropped or grazed is exhausted.

Small farmers are not only our main source of food at present, but also for the future. International development agencies are constantly warning that we need to double food production in the coming decades. To achieve that, they usually recommend a combination of trade and investment liberalisation plus new technologies. But this will only create more inequality. The real solution is to turn control and resources over to small producers themselves and enact agricultural policies to support them.

In a recent paper on small farmers and agroecology, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food concludes that global food production could be doubled within a decade if the right policies towards small farmers and traditional farming were implemented. Reviewing the currently available scientific research, he shows that agroecological initiatives by small farmers themselves have already produced an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% among all African initiatives assessed. Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries provided a doubling of crop yields in a short period of just three to ten years.53

The real question, then, is how much more food could be produced if small farmers had access to more land and could work in a supportive policy environment rather than under the siege conditions they are facing today?

5. Small farms not only produce most of the food, they are also the most productive

For some, the idea that small farms are more productive than big farms might seem counterintuitive. After all, we have been told for decades that industrial farming is more efficient and more productive. It's actually the other way around. The inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has been long established and is dubbed “the productivity paradox”.54

In the European Union, 20 countries register a higher rate of production per hectare on small farms than on large farms. In nine EU countries, productivity of small farms is at least twice that of big farms.55 In the seven countries where large farms have higher productivity, it is only slightly higher than that of small farms.56 This tendency is confirmed by numerous studies in other countries and regions, all of them showing higher productivity on small farms.

Our data indicate, for example, that if all farms in Kenya had the current productivity of the country's small farms, Kenya's agricultural production would double. In Central America and Ukraine, it would almost triple. In Hungary and Tajikistan it would increase by 30%. In Russia, it would be increased by a factor of six.57

Although big farms generally consume more resources, control the best lands, receive most of the irrigation water and infrastructure, get most of the financial credit and technical assistance, and are the ones for whom most modern inputs are designed, they have lower technical efficiency and therefore lower overall productivity. Much of this has to do with low levels of employment used on big farms in order to maximise return on investment.58

Beyond strict productivity measurements, small farms also are much better at producing and utilising biodiversity, maintaining landscapes, contributing to local economies, providing work opportunities and promoting social cohesion, not to mention their real and potential contribution to reversing the climate crisis.59

6. Most small farmers are women, but their contributions are ignored and marginalised

The role of women in feeding the world is not adequately captured by official data and statistical tools. FAO, for example, define only as people who get a monetary income from farming as “economically active in agriculture”. Using this concept, FAOSTAT indicates that 28% of the rural population in Central America are “economically active” and that women form just 12% of that group!60

This distorted view does not change significantly from country to country. However, when data is more specific, a totally different picture emerges. The last published agricultural census figures from El Salvador indicate that women are just 13% of “producers”, meaning farm holders, much in line with the number provided by FAO.61 However, the same census indicates that women provide 62% of the labour force used on family farms. The situation in Europe is better for women, but still highly unequal. There, the data show that women comprise less than a quarter of farm holders and on average have smaller farms than men, but provide almost 50% of the family labour force.62

Statistics about the role of women in Asia and Africa are difficult to obtain. According to FAOSTAT, only 30% of the rural population in Africa is economically active in agriculture and 40% in Asia – around 45% being women and 55% men.63 Yet studies carried out or cited by FAO show totally different numbers, indicating that in non-industrialised countries 60 to 80% of the food is produced by women.64 In Ghana and Madagascar, women make up about 15% of farm holders, but provide 52% of the family labour force and constitute around 48% of paid workers.65 In Cambodia, just 20% of agricultural land holders are women, but they provide 47% of the paid agricultural force and almost 70% of the labour force on family farms.66 In the Republic of the Congo, women provide 64% of all agricultural labour and are responsible for around 70% of food production.67 In Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, they are 53% of the active population in agriculture.68 There is very little data on the evolution of the contribution of women to agriculture, but their share would likely be growing, since migration is resulting in mostly women and girls picking up the workload of those who leave.69

According to FAO, fewer than 2% of landholders worldwide are women, but figures vary widely.70 There is broad consensus, however, that even where land is registered as family or joint property between men and women, men still enjoy much wider powers over it than do women. For example, a common situation is that men can make decisions about the land on behalf of themselves and their spouses, but women cannot. Another impediment is that in giving credit, governments and banks require women to present some form of authorisation from their husbands or fathers, while men encounter no such barrier. It is no surprise, then, that available data show that only 10% of agricultural loans go to women.71

Additionally, inheritance laws and customs often work against women. Males tend to have priority or outright exclusivity in the inheritance of land. In many countries, women can never gain legal control over land, with authority passing to their sons if they are widowed for example.

The data above support the contention that women are the main food producers on the planet, although their contribution remains ignored, marginalised, and discriminated against.

Reversing the trend: give small farmers the means to feed the world

As the data show, land concentration in agriculture is reaching extreme levels. Today, the vast majority of farming families have less than two hectares to feed themselves and humankind. And the amount of land they have access to is shrinking. How are small farmers supposed to sustain themselves in these conditions?

Most families that depend on a small farm need to have family members working outside the farm in order to be able to stay on the land. This situation is often described euphemistically as "diversification", but in reality it means accepting low wages, and bad working conditions. For the rural families of many countries, it means mass migration leading to permanent insecurity both for those who leave and for those who stay. Also, living and working on a small farm often consists of long and difficult working hours, no holidays, no pensions, no retirement for the elderly and irregular school attendance for children.

If this land concentration process continues, then no matter how hard-working, efficient and productive they are, small farmers will not be able to carry on. The concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day. Genuine land reform is not only necessary, it is urgent. And it must carried out in line with the needs of peasant families and small producer communities. one of these needs is that land be redistributed to small farmers as an inalienable good, not as a commercial asset that can be lost if rural families are not able to cope with the highly discriminatory situations that they face. Farming communities should also be able to decide by and for themselves, and without pressure, the type of land tenure they want to practice.

The situation facing women farmers also requires urgent action. Many international agencies and governments are currently discussing these issues. Land access for women is specifically part of the Millennium Development Goals. The FAO has written numerous documents advocating for women's rights over land and agricultural resources. The issue is being considered by the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, the G8 and the G20, among others. However, what these institutions are advocating is often not what women farmers and women's organisations have been struggling for. Such institutions often advocate a system of land rights based on individual property titles that can be bought and sold or used as collateral. This is likely to lead to further concentration of land, just as the allocation of individual land property rights to men has done historically around the world.72

Doing nothing to turn this situation around will be disastrous for all of us. Small farmers – the vast majority of farmers, who tend to be the most productive and who produce most of the world's food – are losing the very basis of their livelihoods and existence: their land. If we do nothing, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself. The message, then, is clear. We urgently need to launch, on a scale never seen before, genuine agrarian reform programmes that get land back in the hands of small and peasant farmers.


 

Annex 1: The data

What sources of data were used?

Gathering and analysing data on land distribution and food production raises major questions and problems. First, data on farms, farmers, rural people and food are often patchy, slanted, or influenced by the politics of those who collect them. Second, classification criteria and definitions are highly variable.

Although government statistics are no exception to such problems, we have used government sources, most often provided by national agricultural censuses, as much as possible because they provide the most comprehensive data. We also used data provided by FAOSTAT and other FAO sources, and we incorporated data from research papers when other data was not available at national level. This means that we have used data from various years, in some cases from 10 or more years ago. If this had any impact on our results, it is most likely that the amount of land in the hands of small farmers has been overestimated, since with few exceptions the worldwide trend is towards less land in the hands of small farmers. The sources for each case are indicated in the dataset accompanying this report.73

Outside Europe and the Americas, data for around one-quarter of the world's countries – representing around 12% of all agricultural land and about the same fraction of global rural population – was either partial or not available. We estimated the number of farms and small farms and the amount of land in the hands of small farmers in these countries based on total agricultural land (provided by FAOSTAT), rural population (provided by UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and average household size per country (provided by UN Habitat).

What definition of small farms was used?

What is a small farm? The area of land it occupies is not the only significant parameter. Twenty hectares may be very big in India but very small in Argentina. Access to irrigation, the fertility of the soil, the type of production being undertaken, climate and topography are all factors in determining what is considered a small farm and what is not. There is clearly no universal definition of a small farm, and GRAIN had no possibility of adopting one. Building or proposing an all-encompassing definition was impossible because in many cases it would have rendered the available data inapplicable or impossible to interpret.

We also avoided the concept of "family farm" that FAO and others are now promoting in the context of the International Year of Family Farming. Although it can be a meaningful concept in many countries, the definitions used are so broad and ambiguous that they can hide serious contradictions, sometimes with unintended consequences. In addition, few official statistics provide data on family farming.

Hence, we decided to use the definition of “small farms” provided by the national authorities of each country. When such criteria were not available, we adopted the definition of the World Bank (farming households with less than 2 hectares). An exception was made in the case of the US, where according to official criteria any farm with an annual turnover of less than US$250,000 is considered small. Given that this would seriously contradict other criteria on what a small farm is (such as the destination of production or the source of labour), we opted for the criterion put forward by Lincoln University in Nebraska, which defines a small farm in the US as one with a turnover of US$50,000 or less per year.

We have, therefore, used several definitions of small farms in this report. These definitions are based on data and measurements as disparate as gross income, gross sales, amount of land, source of farm labour and type of resources – or combinations of these. Still, we believe that this approach gives the best approximation of reality, since the criteria used by each country do represent certain aspects of small farms.

What kind of land are we talking about?

Farmers, and more so small farmers, carry out a wide range of agricultural activities under quite diverse arrangements. These include intensive management of horticultural crops, crop rotations with annual forages, agroforestry, shifting cultivation, livestock rearing, fish farming and pastoralism, or any combination of these.

Governments and FAO classify land under different categories according to how the land is used, and they collect data accordingly. The EU accounts for all the land within a farm, no matter how it is being cropped or utilised. The same holds for the US, Brazil, Argentina and India. But in Africa, many governments exclude communal land and grazing areas from the statistics, thus greatly underestimating the land area used by farmers. once again, different criteria are being employed, and we had no means of selecting or disaggregating data (for example, cropped land versus total agricultural land) governments or other agencies had collected under a single heading.

The FAO provides figures on total agricultural land for almost every country in the world, even for those where no census data are available, and defines total agricultural land as the sum of the following areas:

  • arable land - land under temporary agricultural crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily (for less than five years) fallow.
  • permanent crops - land cultivated with long-term crops which do not have to be replanted for several years (such as cocoa and coffee); land under trees and shrubs producing flowers, such as roses and jasmine; and nurseries (except those for forest trees, which should be classified under "forest").
  • permanent meadows and pastures - land used permanently (for five years or more) to grow herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land).74

We used the FAO's more inclusive definition and the associated statistics to calculate the total agricultural land in each country.

Missing: the landless, the urban food producers, extractive industries and land grabbing

Our research left out numerous realities, either because they were outside the scope of this study or because we did not find enough data. one important missing element is the situation of landless food producers and workers. Landlessness is a major and increasing reality in many countries, as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), the largest social movement in Brazil, so clearly testifies. Nor did we examine urban food producers, an increasingly important factor in global food production. Very few countries provide data on them, and we could not compile significant figures on their situation worldwide.

Through our work and that of our partners, GRAIN is keenly aware that urbanisation, the extractive industries, hydroelectric dams and many other industrial mega projects are increasingly advancing over farmland, forest lands, water sources, farming communities and indigenous peoples' territories. They are massively affecting the availability of agricultural land in the world, but since much of their rapid expansion is relatively recent, they are often not adequately addressed in agricultural land statistics.

And finally, also missing in our calculations is the recent wave of land grabbing that is now handing millions of hectares of fertile farmland to large corporations and depriving tens of thousands of farming communities of their livelihoods. Today's massive land grab took off only in the last decade and has yet to be captured in the official statistics.


1 Graziano da Silva, opening speech at the Global Forum on Family Farming, Budapest, 5 March 2014. http://tinyurl.com/nmkhffc.

2 Sarah K. Lowder, Jakob Skoet and Saumya Singh, “What do we really know about the number and distribution of farms and family farms in the world?” Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2014. FAO April 2014. Figure quoted on page 8.http://tinyurl.com/qh6ql7l. See also: FAO, "Family farmers - feeding the world, caring for the earth", 2014, http://tinyurl.com/osuelv8

3 Beverly D. McIntyre (editor), IAASTD "International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development: global report", 2008, page 8,http://tinyurl.com/mlmuzqy

4 Wenbiao Cai, a professor at the University of Winnipeg, states in several studies that small farms account for most of the farmland in the non-industrialised world. Other examples include allies of small farmer movements like Miguel Altieri, who says that small farms in Latin America "occupy 34.5% of the total cultivated land" (http://tinyurl.com/qxxxf5u), or Greenpeace, who say that "Small-scale farmers form the larger part of global agricultural land" (http://tinyurl.com/p233eef).

5 A number of people generously took time to review and comment on earlier drafts of this report or help us with certain problems. Their inputs were very useful and we are grateful to all of them. They include: Maria Aguiar, Valter Israel da Silva, Thomas Kastner, Carlos Marentes, Pat Mooney, Ndabezinhle Nyoni, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Mateus Santos, Chris Smaje and Liz Aldin Wiley.

6 When we talk about "farmers" or "peasants" in this report, we mean food producers including people who raise livestock, such as herders or pastoralists, fishers, hunters and gatherers.

7 The land distribution dataset compiled by GRAIN can be downloaded here.

8 Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Norway.

9 Peter Hazell, “Is small farm led development still a relevant strategy for Africa and Asia?”, 2013: http://ppafest.nutrition.cornell.edu/authors/hazell.html

10 For example, FAO affirms that “Eighty percent of the farmland in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia is managed by smallholders” in "Smallholders and family farmers", 2012:http://tinyurl.com/nb5t5jx

11 The discussion of some specific country cases can be seen in “Land Tenure and Administration in Africa: Lessons of Experience and Emerging Issues” by Lorenzo Cotula, Camilla Toulmin and Ced Hesse; in “Paradigms, processes and practicalities of land reform in post-conflict Sub-Saharan Africa” by Chris Huggins and Benson Ochieng; in “Land tenure and violent conflict in Kenya in the context of local, national and regional legal and policy frameworks” by Judi Wakhungu, Elvin Nyukuri and Chris Huggins; in “Land reform in Angola: establishing the ground rules” by Jenny Clover, as well as in “Land reform processes in West Africa: a review” by SahelSahel and West Africa Club Secretariat

12 This is the case, for example, of Botswana (2011 Annual Agricultural Survey Report) that does not account the land used for traditional livestock rearing, although traditional herds of cattle and goats are composed of more than 4 million head. It is also the case of the World Bank, which states that “Land abandoned as a result of shifting cultivation is excluded” from their definition of agricultural land.

13 EUROSTAT, Statistics in focus 18/2011, "Large farms in Europe",http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-11-018/EN/KS-SF-11-018-EN.PDF

14 Unless otherwise stated, figures on countries of the European Union are based on the Agricultural Structure Survey of 2007, as published data from the 2010 survey did not allow us to do the necessary calculations.

15 ECVC and HOTL, "Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe", 17 April 2013. www.eurovia.org/IMG/pdf/Land_in_Europe.pdf

16 O. Nagayets, "Small farms: current status and key trends", 2005http://tinyurl.com/ocp7quw

17 Statistics Bureau, Government of Japan, “Agriculture”,http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/chouki/07.htm

18 Government of Australia, “Australian farmers and farming”, Dec 2012,http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features10Dec+2012#FARMING

19 Stephanie Mulet-Marquis and John R. Fairweather, “New Zealand farm structure change and intensification”, Lincoln University, 2008,http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/Documents/4322_RR301_s14339.pdf.

20 I Wayan Rusastra, "Land economy for poverty reduction: Current status and policy implications"; Capsa Palawija News, April 2008; Indonesia Agricultural Census 1963, 1993, 2003. Main Results; Lani Eugenia, "Significance of family farming in the Asian Region: The Indonesian agriculture sector"

21 State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan. "The Agriculture of Azerbaijan. Statistical yearbook 2012"

22 "Preliminary report on agriculture sample survey 2005", Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2005

23 All figures for countries of the European Union were obtained from EUROSTAT, http://tinyurl.com/kbmom54 and http://tinyurl.com/l9aqu39. Country specific data can be found by searching “farm structure survey [name of country]”

26 A.M. Ibañez. "La concentración de la propiedad rural en Colombia: evolución 2000 a 2009, desplazamiento forzoso e impactos sobre el desarrollo económico" (PRIO, Policy brief 5/2009); Oxfam. "Divide and purchase. How land is being concentrated in Colombia"; Y. Salinas. "El caso de Colombia". Study on landgrabbing commissioned by FAO LAC Regional Office

27 Government of Uruguay, “Censo 2011”, http://www.mgap.gub.uy/portal/hgxpp001.aspx?7,5,149,O,S,0,MNU;E;55;1;MNU and “Censo general agropecuario 2000”,http://www.mgap.gub.uy/Dieaanterior/CENSOVOL2/data/11.htm

28 Tables with government data can found athttp://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/index.php.

29 James MacDonald et al, "Farm size and the organisation of US crop farming" Economic Research Report No. 152, USDA, Aug 2013, http://tinyurl.com/m8lqvyv

31 EJOLT, “The many faces of landgrabbing”, EJOLT briefing, 10 March 2014.

32 Nikos Alexandratos and Jelle Bruinsma, “World agriculture towards 2030/2050. The 2012 revision”, FAO, 2012

33 Corley, R.H.V. (2009): How much palm oil do we need? Environmental Science & Policy 12: 134-139 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901108001196

34 Other agencies like the International Land Coalition-led Land Matrix put the figure at 203 million hectares but over a ten year period (2000-2010):http://www.landcoalition.org/sites/default/files/publication/1205/ILC%20GSR%20report_ENG.pdf

35 See http://farmlandgrab.org for a range of published reports and day to day accounts.

37See, for example, Kanayo F. Nwanze, IFAD. "Small farmers can feed the world"; UNEP, "Small farmers report"; FAO, "Women and rural employment fighting poverty by redefining gender roles" (Policy Brief 5)

38 National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus, "Agriculture of the Republic of Belarus" 2013

39 Statistics Botswana, "Stats brief", 2009 and 2010 annual agricultural surveys preliminary results

40 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadistica, "Censo Agropecuario 2006",http://tinyurl.com/m376s82

41 Eduardo Baumeister. "Características económicas y sociales de los agricultores familiares en América Central." INCEDES, 2010. http://tinyurl.com/n33wlh9

42 Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas de Chile, http://www.ine.cl, "Censo Agropecuario 1997".

43 Braulio Machin Sosa et al., ANAP-Via Campesina, "Revolución agroecológica, resumen ejecutivo"

44 Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos, Censo Nacional Agropecuario 2000, http://tinyurl.com/ngvm5te

45 IV Censo Agropecuario 2007-2008. Ministerio de Economía de El Salvador. http://tinyurl.com/qatfm5y

47 Agency on Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Statistical Yearbook "Kazakhstan in 2009"

48 Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize et al (eds). "Agricultural land redistribution. Toward greater consensus". 2009.

49 National Institute of Statistics, press release No. 149 of July 2, 2012, "General agricultural census 2010"

50 Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Service, Russia in Figures 2011.

51 Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dept of Ag Economic Research, Economics and Management. Discussion paper No. 16.08. "The economic effects of land reform in Central Asia: The case of Tajikistan"

52 State Statistics Service of Ukraine. "Main agricultural characteristics of households in rural areas in 2011"

53 Olivier de Schutter, “Agroecology and the Right to Food”, Report presented at the 16th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council [A/HRC/16/49], 8 March 2011,http://tinyurl.com/nmxyf87

54 See, for example: Michael Carter, “Identification of the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity: an empirical analysis of peasant agricultural production”; IFAD, “Assets and the rural poor. Poverty Report 2001”; Giovanni Andrea Cornia, “Farm size, land yields and the agricultural production function: An analysis for fifteen developing countries;” H.N. Anyaegbunam, P.O. Nto, B.C. Okoye and T.u. Madu, “Analysis of determinants of farm size productivity among small-holder cassava farmers in south east agroecological zone, Nigeria”.

55 The nine countries are Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom. See "Large farms in Europe", Eurostat Statistics in Focus 18/2011, http://tinyurl.com/ny3qsgv.

56 Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Sweden. Ibid

57 These figures are obtained by extrapolating the productivity of small farms indicated in the sources for table 4 to 100% of agricultural land.

58 Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, University of Wageningen, personal communication, 25 March 2014.

59 For a discussion of food systems and the climate crisis, see: GRAIN “Food and climate change, the forgotten link”, Sep 2011. http://www.grain.org/e/4357

62 EU Agricultural Economic Briefs. “Women in EU agriculture and rural areas: hard work, low profile”, Brief No. 7, June 2012.

63 FAOSTAT. Search done within "resources" and "population", using annual time series.

65 Ministry of Food and Agriculture of Ghana. Agriculture in Ghana. Facts and Figures 2010. Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishery of Madagascar. Recensement de l' Agriculture. Campagne Agricole 2004-2005

66 FAO and National Institute of Statistics of Cambodia. National Gender Profile of Agricultural Households, 2010.

68 FAO, Gender Team for Europe and Central Asia. “The crucial role of women in agriculture and rural development

69 International Organization for Migration. "Rural women and migration"; B. Dodson et al. "Gender, migration and remittances in Southern Africa"; A. Datta and S.K. Mishra. “Glimpses of women's lives in rural Bihar: impact of male migration".

72 On this, see for example the discussion by Celestine Nyamu-Musembi in "Breathing Life into Dead. Theories about Property Rights: de Soto and Land Relations in Rural Africa", Institute of Development Studies. 2006

73 The land distribution dataset compiled by GRAIN can be downloaded here.




http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4929

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유전자변형 작물을 개발하여 종자를 판매하는 몬산토와 신젠타를 위시한 생명공학 기업들은 슈퍼 잡초가 번성해도, 슈퍼 해충이 등장해도 하등 싫어할 이유가 없다. 아니 오히려 두 손을 들고 반색할지도 모른다. 왜냐하면 그러한 내성을 지닌 풀과 벌레의 등장은 새로운 시장이 열린다는 뜻이고, 그건 곧 새로운 작물과 농약을 개발하여 기업의 이윤을 극대화시켜줄 수 있는 기회가 될 수 있기 때문이다. 기업의 생리가 그러하다.


하지만 유전자변형 작물에 반대하는 입장에서는 아주 골치 아픈 일이다. 생태계가 망가지고 있다는 증거이면서, 그러한 생명공학 기업에 대한 종속도가 높아진다는 뜻이기 때문이다. 답은 어찌 보면 간단하다. 손쉽게 풀과 벌레를 제어할 수 있는 유전자변형 작물을 포기하면 된다. 하지만 그러한 선택을 하기에 현실은 녹록치 않다. 한국은 유전자변형 작물이 필요없다. 지금의 작물과 그에 따른 농약만 가지고도 충분히 풀과 벌레를 제어할 수 있기 때문이다. 하지만 미국 같이 한 사람이 몇 백만 평의 농사를 짓는 일이 일반적인 곳에서는 어떠한가? 아마 쉽지 않을 것이다. 이 기사를 작성한 톰도 그러한 면을 지적하고 있다. 농민들은 습관처럼 유전자변형 작물을 선택해 라운드업을 살포한다고.


지금의 산업구조에서 농사짓는 사람들이 획기적으로 늘어나는 일을 바라는 건 어려울지 모른다. 한국도 베이비부머들이 은퇴하면서 귀농귀촌 인구가 증가하고 있다고 한다. 지난해에는 1만 건이 넘는 귀농귀촌자가 있었다고 한다. 그런데 그 뚜껑을 열어보면 어떤가? 농업으로 생계를 꾸리는 사람은 별로 없고, 대부분 귀촌자이거나 아니면 혼자서 내려가는 사례가 많다. 농사를 짓는 분들은 아시겠지만 남자 혼자, 또는 여자 혼자 귀농하여 할 수 있는 일은 무척 제약적이다. 물론 농촌에 새로운 활력을 불어넣는다는 측면에서는 긍정적인 면도 있겠지만, 오히려 농촌의 물을 흐리는 사례도 꽤 많다고 한다. 그래도 우리가 농사지어야 하는 이유는 무엇인가? 바로 이와 같은 유전자변형 작물의 확산을 막는, 즉 새로운 농업, 새로운 사회를 바라며 움직이는 최소한의 저항이라고도 볼 수 있지 않을까. 물론 그 안에서도 스펙트럼은 워낙 다양해서 하나로 무어라 규정하기는 힘들다. 그렇지만 그 모든 걸 아우르는 말로는 '나 자신의 행복'을 들 수 있을 것이다. 목적과 방법이 어떻든 우리는 행복하기 위해서 자신의 삶을 선택해서 살아간다. 유전자변형 작물은 우리를 행복하게 하지 않는다. 그건 우리를 그저 먹기 위해 사는 존재로 전락시킬 뿐이다. 우리는 건강하고 행복하게 살아가기 위해서 먹는다. 그러기 위해서는 먹을거리를 생산하는 방법도 건강해야 한다.

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아, 한여름. GMO 종자의 거인 몬산토의 주력 제품인 해충에 저항성이 있고 제초제에 견디도록 설계된 작물의 효율성이 떨어지고 있다는 이야기를 읽을 시간.

2008년으로 돌아가, 나는 연례 의식에 참석하여 조금 외로웠다. 그 자리에는 와 대형 농업무역 언론의 기자들뿐이었다. 지난 몇 년 동안 그것이 주류였다. 여기 몬산토가 한때 뽐내던 바실러스 투린지엔시스라는 벌레를 죽이는 유전자를 지닌 박테리아를 함유하도록 설계된 Bt 옥수수가 해충이 증가하며 옥수수 농민들의 농약 비용을 늘렸다는 기사로 콧대를 눌러버린 NPR의 유명 농업기자 Dan Charles 씨가 있다.

농민들이 이야기의 일부를 입수하여 적는다: 생명공학만으로는 넓적다리잎벌레 문제를 해결하지 못할 것이다. 그러나 교잡종 옥수수나 모든 옥수수 농사를 그만두는 대신, 대부분은 이전보다 더 많은 농약을 살포하면서 벌레와 맞서 싸우려고 노력을 배가하고 있다. 옥수수밭에 사용하는 토양살충제를 판매하는 기업들은 매출이 지난 2년 동안 50~100%로 엄청나게 증가했다고 보고하고 있다. 

그리고 내가 보기에 가끔 너무 부드러운 측면으로 잘못하기도 하는 GMO 종자 산업의 중견 전문가도 있다.

월스트리트 저널의 Ian Berry 씨는 올해 초 이런 제목의 기사를 썼다. "농약이 다시 돌아오다(Pesticides Make a Comeback): 많은 옥수수 농민들이 어머니 자연이 유전자변형 종자보다 한 수 앞서면서 화학물질의 사용으로 돌아가다":

살충제 판매가 미국 농민들이 해충으로부터 보호하기 위해 설계된 유전자변형 옥수수를 더 많이 심으면서 하락하다가, 그 효율성이 사라지기 시작하며 다시 급증하고 있다. 그러한 매출로 American Vanguard사와 신젠타 같은 대형 농약제조업체이 혜택을 보고 있다. 

슈퍼 해충에 대한 모든 관심이 주요 언론의 "슈퍼 잡초"에 대한 스포트라이트에 뺏기고 있다. 슈퍼 잡초는 몬산토의 라운드업 레디 작물에 살포하는 제초제인 라운드업을 흠뻑 맞으며 진화하여 내성이 생긴 풀이다. 그러나 그것이 이러한 흉악한 풀들이 마법을 부리지 않는다는 걸 뜻하지 않는다. 그들은 미국의 핵심 옥수수/콩 생산지인 아이오와 주에서 "전진하고 있다"며 시더래피즈에 있는 Gazette에서 보고한다. 그리고 농민들은 라운드업 내성 풀이 적어도 5년 동안 만연한 남부에서 한 것처럼 대응하고 있다. 즉 화학물질을 쏟아붓고 있다. 다음은 이와 비슷한 주제를 설명하는 Gazette의 여러 기사 가운데 하나이다.

뷰캐넌 카운티에서 아버지와 아들과 함께 288만 평의 농사를 짓는 Tracy Franck 씨는 "해마다 똑같은 양의 풀을 죽이기 위해 더 많은 라운드업을 살포하고 있다"고 말한다. 그들은 그 지역의 다른 대부분의 농민들처럼 글리포세이트(라운드업의 주요 성분) 내성 풀이 밭에 보이자마자 그것을 억제하는 데 도움이 되는 잔류제초제를 사전에 살포한다. 그는 "죽이기 힘든 명아주와 돼지풀들이 보이기 시작하고 있다"고 한다.

한편 Food and Water Watch는 "슈퍼 잡초: 어떻게 생명공학 기업들이 농약산업을 떠받치는가"라는 보고서를 발표했다. 한마디로, 1990년대 중반 라운드업 레디 옥수수와 콩, 목화의 증가는 제초제 사용의 급격한 증가를 불러왔다. 어떻게 라운드업 레디 종자가 도입된 이후 잠시 농약 사용이 줄다가 라운드업 내성 풀이 등장한 2001년 치솟기 시작했는지 주목한다. 



GMO 산업의 방어자들은 농민들이 라운드업 레디 작물로 전환함으로써 예전의 더 독한 제초제 상대적으로 온화한 라운드업으로 대체했다고 지적한다. 그러나 FWW에서 입증하듯이, 그 말은 신뢰를 잃었다. 농민들은 라운드업이 효율성을 잃어버린 복수로 특별히 심술궂은 옛날 제초제 2,4-D에 의지하고 있다.



모두가 의문을 제기한다. 몬산토의 종자가 실패하고 있다면, 왜 농민들은 아직도 막대한 양을 사고 있는가? 그 답의 일부는 확실히 습관일 수 있다. 농민의 입장에서, 새로운 잡초 제어 체계를 시도하기보다는 라운드업 레디 옥수수를 심고 가혹한 제초제인 라운드업을 추가하는 것이 더 쉬울 것이다.

답의 또 다른 일부는 GMO 종자의 거인이 지배하는 종자시장에도 있을 것이다. 지난해 미국 법무부는 몬산토와 그 동료들에 대한 독점금지 조사를 아무 조치 없이 스윽 중지해 버렸다. 당시 나의 기사에서 밝혔듯이, 몬산토와 듀폰, 신젠타, 다우는 함께 옥수수 종자시장의 약 80%와 콩 종자시장의 70%를 장악하고 있었다. 이처럼 긴밀하게 통합된 시장에서는 이와 같은 결과를 낳을 수 있다.

농민들이 저렴한(비GM) 종자에 접근하기 힘들다는 증거도 있다. 2010년, 일리노이 대학의 연구원 Michael Gray 씨는 7곳의 농업 집약적인 카운티에서 농민들을 대상으로 설문조사를 했다. 그는 농민들이 만약 몬산토의 Bt 살충제 특성이 함유된 유전자변형 종자가 아닌 고품질 옥수수 종자에 접근할 수 있는지 물었다. 7곳의 카운티 모두에서, 적어도 32%의 농민들이 "아니오"라고 답했다. 1곳의 카운티에서는 46.6%의 농민들이 고품질 비Bt 종자에 전혀 접근할 수 없다고 답했다. 그들에게 분명히 원하든 원하지 않든 몬산토의 값비싼 Bt 종자를 사는 것 이외에 선택의 여지가 별로 없다.

아무튼 Food and Water Watch의 지적처럼, 파괴적인 제초제 저항성과 Bt 주입 작물들은 이러한 기업들을 전혀 다치게 하지 않았다. 실제로 그들은 NPR과 월스트리트 저널의 기사에 나오듯이 농약도 팔았고, 농약 매출은 호황을 누리고 있다. 




http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/07/superweeds-and-superinsects-still-bedeviling-monsanto-crops

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아래의 사진은 인도네시아의 팜야자를 재배하는 플랜테이션 농장의 사진이다. 

얼마전 큰 산불이 나서 주변국들에게 연기 피해를 심각하게 끼쳤다는 소식은 들으셨을 것이다. 

그 주요 원인이 바로 아래와 같은 팜야자 농장을 개발하기 위해 숲을 불태우는 행위와 연결되어 있다고 한다.



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난 이런 모습을 보면 저 남해의 고사리밭이나 강원도의 고랭지 배추밭이 연상되어 떠오른다. 


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1900년대 초반, 미국의 농민들은 값싼 땅을 찾아서 남부의 평원으로 몰려들었다. 이 지역은 사실 강한 바람에 뜨거운 여름, 빈번한 가뭄으로 농사에 적합한 곳은 아니었다. 특히 1차대전 기간에 밀 가격이 폭등을 하면서 농민들의 이주를 부추겼다. 밀 가격의 폭등과 함께 토지 개발업자들은 "쟁기질하면 비가 온다"고 꼬드겼고, 농민들은 재빨리 수억 평의 초지를 밀밭으로 바꾸어 놓았다. 이로써 역사상 가장 참혹한 인간이 만든 재앙이 시작되었다. 


당시의 상황에 대한 이러한 기록도 있다(http://bit.ly/11Qh66q). 


"1930년대 초반, 가뭄과 대공황이 밀어닥치면서 밀 시장이 붕괴되었다. 예전에는 밀이 바다를 이루었던 곳이 평원을 훑고 지나는 바람에 무방비 상태로 노출된 건조한 겉흙에 뿌리를 내린 풀의 바다로 바뀌었다." 


그때 일어난 황진 때문에 가축들이 죽고, 그 지역에 사는 사람들은 폐렴과 기관지염, 기침, 천식 등과 같은 호흡기 질환으로 고통을 받거나 죽어갔다. 결국 사람들은 견디지 못하고 집과 땅을 포기한채 서둘러 짐을 싸서 자신이 살던 곳을 떠났다. 1935년 4월 14일, 최악의 황진폭풍이 발생하며 그날을 "검은 일요일(Black Sunday)"이라 부른다.


아래의 영상에는 당시 그곳에서 살아남은 26명의 인터뷰가 나온다. 당시의 상황은 정말 끔찍하다고밖에 표현할 수 없다.


이 영상을 통하여 흙이 얼마나 소중한지, 그를 지키는 농법이 왜 중요한지 절실히 깨달을 수 있다.























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생명공학 소비시대 알 권리 선택할 권리


책소개

한국인 식탁에 등장하는 GMO와 복제 쇠고기를 둘러싼 쟁점 유전자 조작 식품과복제 쇠고기는 인류의 축복인가, 재앙인가? 세계 60개국의 소비자가 정부의 승인 아래 GM 농산물을 섭취하고 있다. 한국은 전 세계 GMO 수입국 가운데 일본에 이어 2위이며 GMO 표시제도 정상적으로 실시되고 있다. 그런데 그 많은 GMO가 왜 한국 소비자 눈에는 보이지 않는 것일까? 그것은 수입 GM 농산물의 대부분이 가공식품 안에 포함되어 있기 때문이다. 무엇보다 GM 옥수수 전분으로 만드는 빵, 과자, 음료, 빙과, 스낵 등 소비자용 제품에는 더욱 표시가 되어 있지 않다. GMO 이슈는 1999년 시판되는 두부에서 GM 콩 성분이 처음 검출되면서 등장했지만, 지금도 식품을 선택할 소비자에게 국내에서 얼마나 많은 양의 GMO가 어떠한 방식으로 판매되고 섭취되고 있는지는 잘 알려지지 않고 있다. 한편, 복제 동물과 관련해서 2008년 미국 식품의약국은 복제 동물이 식품으로 사용되기에 아무런 문제가 없다는 내용의 보고서를 발간했다. 2008년 기준으로 우리나라에 복제 소는 총 서른세 마리에 불과하지만, 미국에서 수입된 쇠고기 가운데 복제 쇠고기가 없으리라는 보장은 없다. 정말로 복제 쇠고기를 먹어도 괜찮을까? 『생명공학 소비시대 알 권리 선택할 권리』는 한국 정부와 과학기술계가 과연 복제 동물 식품에 대해 어떤 판단을 내릴지 주목할 필요가 있다고 보고, 이것을 새로운 생명공학 소비시대에 직면한 소비자의 의무이자 권리라 주장한다.

저자소개

저자 :김훈기
서울대학교 동물학과를 졸업하고 같은 대학 대학원에서 석사학위(과학사)를, 고려대학교에서 박사학위(과학관리학)를 받았다. 과학저널 「과학동아」 편집장, 동아사이언스 신문팀장으로 일하면서 우리나라 과학커뮤니케이션의 새로운 세대를 현장에서 열었다. 그 경험을 바탕으로 서울대학교에서 과학을 매개로 소통하는 방법을 가르치면서 과학과 관련된 글을 쓰고 연구하고 있다. 단순한 과학적 사실이나 외국의 논의들을 소개하는 이전 세대의 과학저널리즘을 넘어서 연구와 취재로써의 탄탄한 글쓰기를 선보이는 것이 저자의 향후 목표다. 현 서울대학교 기초교육원 전임대우강의교수 및 김훈기공학사회 연구소장으로 활동하고 있으며, 과학과 사회에 대해 많은 논문을 썼다. 저서로 『시간여행 . 미로에 새겨진 상징과 비밀』, 『유전자가 세상을 바꾼다』, 『노빈손의 버뮤다 어드벤처』(공저), 『생명공학과 정치』, 『줄기세포, 생명공학의 위대한 도전』(공저), 『물리학자와 함께 떠나는 몸속 기氣 여행』 등이 있다.

목차

서문

1부 GM 농산물과 국내 소비자

1장 16년간 우리 식탁에 오른 GM 농산물 
방울토마토와 씨 없는 수박은 GMO일까
국산 GM 농산물이 있을까
외국의 GM 농산물 종자는 국내에서 자라고 있을까
한국인은 언제부터 GM 식품을 먹었을까
한국, GM 농산물 수입국 세계 2위
한국에 수입되는 식용 콩의 75%가 GM 콩
GM 옥수수와 콩은 어떤 모습으로 소비자에게 판매되고 있을까
한국은 왜 GM 농산물을 수입해왔을까
그 많은 GMO가 왜 한국 소비자 눈에는 잘 안 보일까

2장 GM 농산물 어떻게 만들까
재료 준비 
운반체 준비 
숙주에 구조유전자 끼워 넣기
위해성 판단과 시험 재배
상업적 재배 승인 신청, 그리고 특허등록

3장 안정성의 근거인 ‘실질적 동등성’의 원리와 심사 내용 

4장 GM 농산물 수입국의 쟁점
청사진
적신호 
ㆍ예상치 못한 인체 위해성
ㆍGMO의 생태계 유출과 오염
ㆍ수입 전후 안정성 검토의 공정성 문제
ㆍ표시제, 소비자의 알 권리와 선택할 권리

5장 GM 농산물 수출국 또는 재배국의 쟁점
청사진
적신호 
·재배 승인을 둘러싼 논란
·슈퍼잡초, 슈퍼버그의 등장

2부 복제 소 살코기와 우유의 유통

1장 시장에 진출한 복제 동물 식품

2장 복제 생명체 어떻게 만들까

3장 복제 쇠고기는 GMO보다 안전한가

4장 청사진

5장 적신호
인체 위해성
동물 복제 자체에 대한 거부감
표시제, 정말 필요 없을까

3부 새로운 생명공학 소비시대에 직면한 소비자 

1장 GM 동물 식품, 슈퍼연어 출현 임박

2장 신기술로 무장한 GM 농산물
소비자가 선호할 만한 2세대 GMO의 등장 
GMO의 진화와 GMO를 넘어선 새로운 생명공학 기술

〈부록〉 합의회의 시민 패널 보고서 서문과 요약문
〈참고 문헌〉


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한국의 친환경 쌀 생산량은 2010년 기준 무농약 22만9230톤, 유기농 2만5491톤으로 총 39만5752톤이다. 이는 전체 쌀 생산량 429만5000톤 가운데 9.2%를 차지한다. 그런데 그 가운데 유기농의 비율만 따지면 전체 생산량의 0.6% 정도뿐이다. 이렇게 생산된 유기농 쌀은 대부분 생협 등으로 유통된다.


현재 유기농 시장의 소비자는 크게 환경과 농업을 고려하거나 농민운동 등에 뜻을 두고 소비하는 사람들과 일부 프리미엄 건강식품의 개념으로 구매하는 사람으로 나뉘는 듯하다. 유기농업의 확산에는 결국 어떻게 생산비 절감하여 가격을 낮추느냐가 관건이라고 볼 수 있다. 운동 차원에서 유기농산물을 사서 먹는 데에도 한계가 있기 때문에 일반 소비자들에게 매력적으로 다가가려면 결국에는 몸에도 좋고 가격도 싼 그런 상품이 될 수밖에 없을 것이다. 그런데 그게 쉽지 않다는 것이 또한 현실이다. 그렇다고 관행농처럼 생산방식을 가져갈 수는 없는 노릇이다.


하지만 당장 유기농업의 확산을 이야기하는 건 배부른 소리일 수도 있다. 2011년 기준 현재 한국의 곡물자급률(사료곡물 포함)은 1990년 43.1%에서 22.6%로 급락했다. 이는 OECD 국가 중 최하위에 해당하는 수준으로서, 선진국들이 대개 식량자급률 100% 이상인 것에 비교하면 암담하다. 더구나 국내에서 생산되는 쌀(밥쌀용·가공용 포함)의 자급률이 83%까지 떨어졌고, 밥쌀용 쌀의 자급률도 94.8%로 떨어졌다. 즉 위기의 순간이 찾아오면 우리 중 일부는 밥도 먹지 못한는다는 뜻이다.


거기에 우려를 더하는 것이 1995년 220만ha였던 한국의 농지면적이 점차 감소하여 2010년 182만ha로 줄었다는 사실이다. 올해 상반기에만 다른 용도로 전용된 농지면적이 7018ha(여의도 면적의 약 8.3배)에 달하는데, 해마다 이렇게 많은 농지가 사라지고 있다. 즉 농사를 짓고 싶어도 농사지을 수 있는 땅이 없다는 것이다. 사실 농촌에 가보면 놀고 있는 땅이 꽤 많기는 하다. 그런데 그런 곳은 기계가 들어가기 어려운 곳, 즉 편하게 농사짓기 쉽지 않은 곳이 대부분이다. 이런 곳은 기계를 사용할 수 없어 천상 손이나 축력으로 농사지을 수밖에 없는데, 지금 그렇게 농사지었다가는 굶어죽기 십상이다. 이런 곳은 그냥 자신이 먹는 걸 생산하는 자급농에게나 어울리는 땅이지 농업을 하는 사람에게는 너무 불리한 곳이다.


땅이 있어 농사짓는다고 해도 어려움은 남는다. 바로 수입산 농산물과 관련된 문제 때문이다. 2010년 배추 가격이 급등하자 이명박 정부에서는 그를 막기 위해 신선농산물에 할당관세를 예외없이 적용했다. 이를 통해 외국산 농산물이 값싸게 한국 시장으로 들어올 수 있었다. 당장 배추 가격 상승이라는 발등의 불은 껐지만, 그로 인해 위기에 몰린 국내 농업은 벼랑으로 떠밀렸다. 국내 농산물 가격의 상승을 수입 농산물의 유입으로 막는다는 처방은 오히려 국내 농산물 시장에 혼란을 야기했다.


엎친 데 덮친 격으로 한국은 2002년 칠레와 FTA 협상을 맺은 이후 지난 10년 동안 45개국과 8개의 FTA를 체결했다. 특히 농업 강국인 EU를 비롯한 미국과의 FTA로 농업 분야에 피해를 입기 시작했다. 여기에 끝판왕이라 할 수 있는 한중 FTA의 체결이 기다리고 있다. 농협경제연구소와 농촌경제연구원 등에 따르면, 한중 FTA 체결로 고추, 마늘, 양파, 배추, 인삼 등 13개 과수와 채소 품목의 10년간 피해액이 최대 12조원에 달하고, 임산물은 연평균 4211억원, 양돈업은 최대 2607억원의 피해가 예상된다고 한다. 그래도 정부에선 FTA를 멈출 생각이 없고 계속하여 강력히 추진 중이다. 이 문제는 문재인 후보가 대통령이 되었다고 해서 크게 달라지지 않으리라 본다. 그동안 국책사업이라고 하는 대형 사업에 민주당이 대처한 것을 보면 더욱 그렇다. 노무현 대통령 때 새만금 사업과 대추리 미군기지 이전 문제를 보라. 이미 진행이 되고 있는 국익을 위한다는 사업에 민주당도 새누리당과 다를 바 없이 대처했다. 그래서 난 FTA에 대해서도 마찬가지일 것이라 본다.


자, 그럼 이제 할 수 있는 일은 무엇이 있을까? 망했다고 복창하고 농촌을 떠나 도시로 이주하자. 슬프지만 방법이 없다. 물론 정부에서 FTA대책으로 돈을 투입한다지만 그 돈으로 혜택을 보는 건 분명 소수의 지역유지들일 테고, 농업은 급속히 구조조정이 들어갈 것이다. 식량자급률이란 건 개나 줘야 할지도 모를 일이다. 아니면 이제 한국의 농민들도 유럽의 농민들처럼 되는 길이 있다다. 이른바 농업선진국이 되는 것이다. 이는 농업경쟁력 강화라는 이름으로 적극 추진되고 있다. 하지만 겉보기에는 화려하나 속은 글쎄... 농업은 강해질 것이다. 그러나 농촌은 사라질 것이다.


오늘은 시장에 나가서 국산 들깨가루를 사려고 돌아다녔는데 모두 중국산뿐이었다. 가게 주인의 말에 따르면 가격에서 배 이상 차이가 나니 손님이라면 그 비싼 걸 사겠느냐고 반문한다. 그래서 상인들도 국산이 아닌 중국산만 가져가 놓는다고 한다. 중국산이 얼마나 싸냐면, 고추를 예로 들면 국산 고추가 600g에 1,5000원 정도인데 중국산은 4000원밖에 하지 않는다. 거의 4배 정도 차이가 난다. 우리가 착한 가격을 좋아하며 착한 소비를 할 때, 한쪽에서는 나가 떨어지는 농민이나 생산자가 있을 것이다. 착한 건 다 이유가 있다. 맛 좋고 값싼 식당이 있을까? 아마 원재료가 싼 걸 쓸 것이다. 그리고 그건 대개 중국산일 것이다. 식당 주인들도 남는 게 있어야 먹고 살 테니 어쩔 수 없는 구조다.


중국산 고추에 밀리면서 한국의 고추 재배면적은 여느 해의 4만8913ha에서 2011년에는 4만2574ha로 감소했다. 이에 따라 고추자급률도 2000년 91%에서 2010년 51%로 급락했다. 이는 앞으로 일어날 기후변화로 더욱 떨어질 전망이다. 몇 십 년 동안 농사지은 베테랑 농부들도 지금의 기후변화에는 두 손 두 발 다 들 정도로 대처할 방법이 없다고 한다. 그래서 지금 농촌에서는 조금 무리해서라도 빚을 내서 고급 시설하우스 재배로 돌아서고 있다. 300평짜리 시설하우스 하나 설치하는 데에 1억은 우습게 넘는 비용이 들어간다. 거기서 사시사철 보일러를 때면서 공장처럼 농산물을 생산해야 이익을 남길 수 있는 구조다. 그를 설치하는 데 드는 비용 이외에 온실가스라든지 토양악화와 같은 문제로 인한 비용은 아예 고려하지도 않았다. 그런 것까지 감안한다면 엄청난 고투자 고에너지 소모 사업이다.


조만간 우리는 국산 농산물을 구하고 싶어도 구하기 힘든 그런 날이 올지도 모르겠다. 이미 정부의 농업정책에서도 농업경쟁력이란 이름으로 유기농에 국산이라는 프리미엄까지 붙은 초고급 식재료를 생산하는 쪽으로 방향을 잡은 듯하다. 박근혜 정부의 농업정책을 통해 이러한 흐름은 더욱 거세고 더욱 빨라질지도 모르겠다. 그나마 문재인 후보의 공약이 조금 더 나았는데, 현실에서 어떻게 풀어낼지 알 길이 없음으로 일단은 묻어두기로 하자.

벼농사도 어려움이 존재하기는 마찬가지다. 2005년 300평 규모로 논농사를 지으면 54만5776원을 벌었는데, 2010년에는 43만4162원으로 11만1614원이 줄어들었다. 이를 소비자 물가상승률을 고려하여 계산하면 벼농사의 소득이 40% 정도 떨어진 셈이다. 그렇다고 규모를 더 늘려서 생산량을 늘릴까? 이는 어불성설이다. 화성에서 논 9만평을 빌려서 농사짓는 분이 트랙터나 콤바인 같은 농기계에 사용되는 기름값만 1년에 2000만원이 넘는다. 여기에 비료, 농약, 종자 등 농자재를 포함하면 1년에 5천만원은 넉넉히 들어간다. 규모가 큰 만큼 쌀을 많이 생산하지만, 추곡수매제도가 폐지되어 스스로 판로를 개척해야 하고, 이외에 농기계가 고장난다든지 기후변화로 인한 자연재해가 닥치는 등의 가외비용이 발생하면 본전도 뽑기 어려워지는 것이다.


물론 그에 대비하여 농작물 재해보험이라든지 논농사에는 직불금이란 게 있는데, 특히 직불금 제도는 이명박 정부의 장관 예정자 청문회에서도 터졌듯이 실제로 농사짓는 사람이 아니라 지주가, 그것도 부재지주가 꿀꺽해도 모른다는 맹점이 있다. 또한 농작물 재해보험도 가입할 수 있는 작물의 품목이 한정되어 있다. 아무튼 농민들 땀 묻은 돈 뺏어먹는 인간들은 진짜로 나쁜사람이다. 결국 농사지어도 돈이 안 되는 건, 요즘 석유가격 상승으로 인해 생산비 자체가 급등한 것이 한 원인이다. 농약이니 비료니 농기계니 모두 석유에 기반하여 굴러가는 것이다. 거기에 농산물이 물가상승의 원흉으로 지목되는 등 미친 듯이 오르는 생산비만큼 수익을 뽑지 못하는 구조가 또 하나의 원인이다. 세번째는 기후변화의 영향도 빼놓을 수 없다. 앞에서 언급했듯이 노농들도 날씨를 종잡을 수 없어 농사짓기 힘들다고 혀를 내두를 정도로 지금의 기후변화는 심각하다. 도시민들에겐 그냥 비가 많이 오나 보다 하는 정도일지 몰라도 농사짓는 사람들에겐 그것이 치명적인 피해를 입힌다.


이제는 농사는 아무나 짓는 일이 아닌 세상이다. 할일이 없으니 농사나 지으라는 말을 함부로 하지 말아야 한다. 그리고 농사짓는 사람을 우습게 여기는 언행도 삼가해야 한다. 그래도 농민은 아직까지는 누구보다 어렵고 귀한 일을 하는 사람들이다. 그들은 여전히 누군가의 먹을거리, 곧 생명을 책임지는 사람들이다.

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Not long ago few doctors – not even pediatricians – concerned themselves much with nutrition. This has changed, and dramatically: As childhood obesity gains recognition as a true health crisis, more and more doctors are publicly expressing alarm at the impact the standard American diet is having on health. 


“I never saw Type 2 diabetes during my training, 20 years ago,” David Ludwig, a pediatrician, told me the other day, referring to what was once called “adult-onset” diabetes, the form that is often caused by obesity. “Never. Now about a quarter of the new diabetes cases we’re seeing are Type 2.” 


Ludwig, who is director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center in Boston, is one of three authors, all medical doctors of an essay (“Viewpoint”) in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Opportunities to Reduce Childhood Hunger and Obesity.”


That title that would once have been impossible, but now it’s merely paradoxical. Because the situation is this: 17 percent of children in the United States are obese, 16 percent are food-insecure (this means they have inconsistent access to food), and some number, which is impossible to nail down, are both. Seven times as many poor children are obese as those who are underweight, an indication that government aid in the form of food stamps, now officially called SNAP, does a good job of addressing hunger but encourages the consumption of unhealthy calories.


The doctors’ piece, which addresses these issues, was written by Ludwig along with Susan Blumenthal, a former assistant Surgeon General and U.S.D.A. medical adviser, and Walter Willett, chair of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition (and a stalwart of sound nutrition research for more than 30 years). It’s essentially a plea to tweak SNAP regulations (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits, the program formerly and more familiarly known as Food Stamps) so that the program concerns itself with the quality of calories instead of just their quantity. 


It’s shocking,” says Ludwig, “how little we consider food quality in the management of chronic diseases. And in the case of SNAP that failure costs taxpayers twice: We pay once when low-income families buy junk foods and sugary beverages with SNAP benefits, and we pay a second time when poor diet quality inevitably increases the costs of health care in general, and Medicaid and Medicare in particular.”


The argument that soda and other junk masquerading as food should be made ineligible for purchase by food stamps, as are alcohol and tobacco, is one that’s been gaining momentum in the last few years. It’s also one that has led to a split in what might be called the nutrition advocacy community.


On the one side are “anti-hunger” groups who want to maintain SNAP’s status quo; on the other are those who believe SNAP must be protected but also that it must be adjusted to take into account the changes in agriculture, marketing and diet that have occurred since SNAP was born 50 years ago, changes that have led to the obesity crisis.


I’m in that second camp, as are the authors of this article, who make a case that the rift is artificial, though both sides share the same fear: if we advocate any tinkering with SNAP, it may make the program more vulnerable to cuts which it can ill afford.


But the reality is that some billions of SNAP dollars (exact figures are unavailable, but the number most experts use is four) are being spent on soda, which is strictly speaking not food, and certainly not a nutritious substance, and is a leading cause of obesity. Seven percent of our calories come from sugar-sweetened beverages, none of them doing any of us any good.


Though there were those who argued against including soda when food stamps were created, the most pressing need was to address calorie deficiency, and that remains important. But the situation is different now: we recognize the harmful properties of added sugar, the importance of high-quality nutrients in children has been better analyzed, and obesity is a bigger problem than hunger. So funding low-quality, harmful calories is detrimental to both funders and recipients.


“It’s time,” says Ludwig, “for us to realize that the goals of anti-hunger and obesity prevention are not at cross purposes. In fact poor quality foods can actually increase hunger because they are inherently less filling.” A child will become hungrier, sooner, after consuming 200 calories from a sugary beverage, compared to an apple and peanut butter with the same calories.


What’s to be done? How to improve the quality of calories purchased by SNAP recipients? The answer is easy: Make sure that SNAP dollars are spent on nutritious food.


This could happen in two ways: first, remove the subsidy for sugar-sweetened beverages, since no one without a share in the profits can argue that the substance plays a constructive role in any diet. “There’s no rationale for continuing to subsidize them through SNAP benefits,” says Ludwig, “with the level of science we have linking their consumption to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.” New York City proposed a pilot program that would do precisely this back in 2011; it was rejected by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) as “too complex.”


Simultaneously, make it easier to buy real food; several cities, including New York, have programs that double the value of food stamps when used for purchases at farmers markets. The next step is to similarly increase the spending power of food stamps when they’re used to buy fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains, not just in farmers markets but in supermarkets – indeed, everywhere people buy food.


Both of these could be set up as pilot programs by the USDA. (The department already finances a similar pilot program — known as the Health Incentives Pilot — in Hampden County, Mass., but it is tiny and is scheduled to end soon.) Their inevitable success would lead to their expansion, and ultimately to better health for SNAP participants, who now number nearly 50 million. The impact of improving the diet of that many Americans would be profound; the impact of not doing so is tragic


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스리랑카 Sandamalgama 마을의 우물에서 목욕하는 여인.

 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




니카라과 Chichigalpa 근처의 사탕수수밭에서 일하던 남편과 동료들의 사진을 들고 있는 여인. 남편은 만성 신장질환으로 사망했다; 그의 네 아들도 현재 병에 걸렸다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester



니카라과 Chichigalpa 근처의 La Isla 마을에서 잠든 아이를 안고 있는 남자. 그는 알 수 없는 만성 신장질환에 걸렸다. 사진:

Anna Barry-Jester



니카라과 Chichigalpa 근처의 마을에 사는 만성 신장질환으로 아버지가 사망한 아이들이 음식을 포장하려고 나뭇잎을 모은다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




니카라과 La Isla에 사는 아이들이 근처 냇가에서 놀고 있다. 근처 사탕수수 플랜테이션에서 일하는 노동자들은 10년 가까이 농약과 노동환경이 이 지역의 만성 신장질환의 유행에 책임이 있다고 주장했고, 연구자들이 만성 탈수증이 중요한 요인이라는 증거를 찾아냈다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




중앙아메리카에서 이러한 질병은 태평양 연안으로 6개국의 1130km에 걸쳐 있다. 지난 5년 동안 엘살바도르와 니카라과에서 신장질환은 당뇨병, 에이즈, 백혈병보다 더 많은 사람을 죽였다.

 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




니카라과에서 만성 신장질환으로 1시간 전에 사망한 Luis Asavedo(37) 씨. 그의 아내와 9달 된 아이가 임종을 지키고 있다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




인도 Uddanam에 있는 우물에 비친 아이와 여성 들. 이 지역은 만성 신장질환이 심각한 곳이다. 인도에서 이 질병의 유행은 안드라프라데시 북부의 해안을 따라 특정 지역에서 매우 빈번하게 발생한다. 연구자들은 물이나 토양의 독성 노출 때문이 아닐까 가정하고 있다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester

 




인도에서 만성 신장질환은 주로 캐슈너트와 벼, 코코넛을 주요 작물로 재배하는 지역에서 이상하게 많이 발생한다. 그러나 중앙아메리카와 스리랑카의 비슷한 유행과 달리 하바드와 스토니 브룩 대학의 연구자들은 남성과 여성에게서 거의 비슷하게 발생한다는 걸 알아냈다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




인도 Vs\isakhapatnam의 Seven Hills 병원에서 신장투석을 받고 있는 Laxmi Narayna 씨. 이 46세의 코코넛 농부는 매주 치료를 받기 위해 1시간 거리를 찾아오는데, 그의 주치의에 따르면 "사람들이 투석을 잘 하지 않는다. 1년 정도만 할 뿐이다"라고 한다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




Laxmi Narayna 씨가 병원에서 집으로 가는 긴 여정에 나섰다. 그는 1주일에 2번 안드라프라데시 북부의 Gonaputtuga에 있는 그의 마을에서 병원까지 와서 투석 치료를 받는다. 주 정부의 건강보험에서 그의 치료비와 여비의 일부를 책임진다. 그가 지불하는 약간의 비용은 이미 코코넛 농부인 그와 가족에게 부담이다. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester




스리랑카 Padayiya에서 자신의 논을 갈고 있는 농부. 최근 정부 보고서는 카드뮴과 비소가 북중부 스리랑카에서 유행하는 만성 신장질환에 일부 책임이 있다고 밝혔다. "신경독성 요소가 있는 화학비료와 특정 농약의 무분별한 사용을 금지하는 것이 신장을 보호하는 데 도움이 될 수 있다"고 진술한다. 사진: Anna B

arry-Jester




Anuradhapura 종합병원에서 투석 치료를 받는 Wimal Rajarathna 씨. 사진: 

Anna Barry-Jester





스리랑카 정부는 북중부 지역에서 화학물질이 심각한 만성 신장질환의 알 수 없는 유행을 확산시킨다는 우려가 커지는 가운데 농약과 화학비료를 엄격하게 통제하겠다고 천명했다. 

지난 9월, 농지의 수수께끼(Mystery in the Fields)에서 공공의 진실을 위한 센터(Center for Public Integrity)는 스리랑카와 인도, 중앙아메리카에서 만성 신장질환이란 희귀한 질병이 어떻게 농업노동자들을 죽이는지에 대해 조사했다. 각 지역의 과학자들은 전 세계적으로 수만의 사망자를 발생시키는 이러한 질병이 유행하는 원인을 찾기 위해 노력하고 있으며, 독성 노출과 연결되어 있다고 의심한다.

2012년 11월에 스리랑카의 Mahinda Rajapaksa 대통령은 국가예산안에 대한 연설에서 농화학제품에 대한 엄중한 단속을 실시하겠다고 공약했다.

대통령은 “농약과 화학비료가 비전염성 질병을 확산시킨다는 견해가 있다”며 신장질환의 유행에 대한 정치적 논란을 피해 완곡하게 언급했다. “따라서 모든 농화학제품의 생산자와 유통업자들이 품질 기준을 준수하도록 규제안을 마련할 것이다.”

과학 전문가와 이익단체와의 국무회의가 열리고 규제에 대한 권고안을 내각에 제출할 것이라고 스리랑카의 농약 등록관 Anura Wijesekera 박사가 말했다.

농화학제품의 수입과 허가를 총괄하는 Wijesekara 박사는 스리랑카가 올해 초 이미 중요한 단계에 이르렀다고 한다: 카드뮴과 비소를 포함한 9가지 독성물질의 검출에 대한 제한을 확립. 이러한 화학물질을 허용된 양보다 많이 함유한 농약과 화학비료는 유통이 금지되었다.

스리랑카가 급속하게 농약을 금지하는 것은 아니다. 

공식 연구에 따르면, 스리랑카 보건부와 세계보건기구는 6월에 중금속인 카드뮴과 비소에 소량이라도 노출되는 것이 알 수 없는 병인으로 인한 만성 신장질환이라 이름을 붙인 질병의 "원인 요소"라고 선언했다. 농민이 농화학물질에 노출되는 것을 줄여야 한다는 세계보건기구의 사전 경고에도 불구하고  2011년 스리랑카 정부는 소량의 비소가 검출된 농약에 대한 일시적 금지를 해제했다고 Center는 보고한다.

Wijesekara 박사는 농약에 포함된 비소의 수준이 너무 낮아 위협이 되지 않기 때문에 해제했다고 한다.

Wijesekara 박사는 현재 자신이 일하는 등록기관에서 농민들이 과다한 양의 농화학물질을 사용하도록 권장하는 농약과 화학비료 생산자들의 홍보를 제한하고 있다고 한다. “그들은 고속 소비재로 농약을 판촉해 왔다”고 Wijesekara 박사는 농약산업에 대해 말한다. 

그러나 스리랑카 정부는 그동안 엄격한 통제에 대한 정책적 기반을 제공하는 과학적 보고서를 발표하지 않았다고 한다.

6월에 WHO와 스리랑카 보건부가 카드뮴과 비소 노출이 만성 신장질환의 원인일 수 있다고 인용했을 때, 그들은 공개적으로 그 증거를 발표하지 않았다. WHO 관계자는 실험결과를 자세히 설명하는 기술보고서를 9월 말에 발표할 것이라고 했다. 그 마감일이 10월 말로 바뀌고, 검토를 위해 스리랑카 보건부에 제출된 보고서가 다시 뒤로 미루어졌다. 12월 20일, 스리랑카 종합 보건서비스 사무총장 Palitha Mahipala 씨는 기술보고서를 공유하자고 CPI 보고자에게 말했지만, WHO는 1월 중순까지 준비할 수 없다고 나타냈다고 한다. 

일부 전문가들은 정부가 진정으로 그 주장을 뒷받침할 증거가 있는지 없는지 의심하고 있다. Wijesekara 박사는 자신이 올해 초 WHO가 정부 관료와 주요 연구자들에게 과학적 결과를 발표하는 비공개 회의에 참석했다고 한다. 그는 WHO가 지적한 원인은 비소보다 카드뮴이었지만, 농화학물질에 대한 노출과 연결된다는 자세한 증거는 공유하지 않았다고 한다. “난 그것이 만성 신장질환의 원인이 된다고 납득할 만한 어떤 과학적 증거도 없다”고 Wijesekara 박사는 말한다.


신장 수령인에 대한 보호


공식 연구가 밀봉된 상태에서, 스리랑카는 북부의 농지를 강타하고 있는 만성 신장질환 환자의 급증을 개선하고자 노력하고 있다. 올가을, 스리랑카의 북중부 주의 주도 Anuradhapura에 있는 국립병원은 환자가 장기생존할 가능성을 높이고자 처음으로 신장 이식을 실시했다. 

Anuradhapura에서 이식을 받을 7명의 환자 가운데 21세의 Sampath Kumarasinghe 씨가 있다 –9월에 센터가 확인한 병이 든 벼농사 농부. Sampath 씨가 9월 25일 이식을 받고 성공적으로 회복중이라고 Anuradhapura 병원 신장 담당의 Rajeewa Dassanayake 박사는 말한다. 

그러나 그의 새로운 신장을 얻는 일은 쉽지 않았다. 

9월에 센터는 Sampath 씨가 W. B. Ajantha라는 사람이 무료로 기증한 신장을 이식받을 것으로 예상된다고 보고했다.

Dassanayake 박사는 병원은 Ajantha 씨가 여러 환자에게 자신의 신장을 제공하겠다고 한 것을 발견했다고 한다 –미리 소액의 돈을 받고 가족을 위한 숙소도 요구한 것이다. “그는 자신의 신장을 제공하는 척하면서 수백 루피를 요구했다"고 Dassanayake 박사가 Ajantha에 대해 말했다.

Dassanayake 박사와 Sampath 씨는 Ajantha 씨가 Sampath 씨의 가족과 함께 살며 수술 전 몇 주 동안 그들의 지원에 의존했다고 한다. Sampath 씨는 그의 신장을 얻었다. 수술하고 며칠 뒤, Ajantha 씨는 그 지역을 떠났다. 그는 연락이 닿지 않는다. 

최근 Dassanayake 박사는 이를 악용하는 일부 개인과 집단이 등장했다고 한다. 문제를 막기 위해 Dassanayake 박사는 자신의 병원은 오직 불교 승려와 환자의 가족으로부터 기증받은 신장만 허용하고 대금을 받고 신장을 거래하는 건 금지한다고 했다. 그는 신장을 팔려고 거짓으로 형제자매라고 주장하는 사람도 있고, 신장을 기증하며 가족들 사이에 돈을 주고받는 사례도 있다고 한다. 

"기증자가 없으면 낙담하여 지푸라기라도 잡으려고 한다”고 Dassanayake 박사는 말한다. “신장을 찾으려고 하는 사람들을 돕는 다양한 사람과 조직들이 있지만, 나는 이런 조직의 하나를 통해 신장을 찾았다는 환자를 한 사람도 보지 못했다”고 한다.







원인을 알 수 없는 만성 신장질환의 발생 지도


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http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/12/28/11985/sri-lanka-new-steps-target-mysterious-kidney-disease#!14

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