The globalization of agriculture and social resistance

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, Sociology, 2008Today, within our current global economy, food has become a target for neo-liberal policies, which has transformed how farmers practice agriculture and the types of food they grow. In the pursuit for free-trade, the world???s food supply has been placed in the hands of transnational corporations, who have pushed for an industrial practice of agriculture in place of traditional knowledge. Today small family farmers and subsistence farmers are being threatened by an industrial practice of agriculture, which has transformed much of the traditional farmlands of the world into large corporate farms for the mass production of cash crops. Neo-liberal policies have allowed corporations to seize the world???s food supplies and place it on the global market to be sold for profit. The result of this has been the displacement of rural peoples to urban centers, increased poverty, starvation and the degradation of our ecosystems.\ud In opposition to current global food policies, people around the world are rising up in resistance. This resistance comes in all different forms across the globe, but all unify in the injustices of global food policies. One such movement found in the United States, is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). I have been a part of this movement for the past four years at Redwood Roots Farm, a local CSA, located in Arcata California. While working with Janet Czarnecki, the owner and head farmer of Redwood Roots Farm, we both recognized the importance of educating our shareholders, interns and community on the topics of globalization, agriculture and social resistance. This is when we came up with the idea for an educational guide on these topics. The goal of this project is to educate our community by providing a history of globalization, the institutes that govern global trade, global food policy and those around the world who are in resistance to these policies. From this we hope that our community will have a better equipped to make informed decisions about the food they buy, where it comes from, and the types of food they eat. We hope that this guide can be utilized as a resource as well as an educational tool for workshops on and off of the farm. This project is geared towards adult shareholders, interns and all visitors of Redwood Roots Farm. The greater goal is to make this guide accessible to the general public on how the global economy has transformed food systems around the worl