From: The GeneEthics Network
(Bob Phelps)
To: geneethics@acfonline.org.au
Subject: Corruption: Not only in brown paper envelopes
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 10:08 PM
Curruption comes in many
forms
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corruption: Not
only in brown paper envelopes
by George Monbiot
A few weeks ago I used this column to argue that the ministry of
agriculture was institutionally corrupt. It had been captured, I
suggested,
by agro-industrialists and chemicals companies, with the result
that it had
chosen to help large farmers while eliminating small ones. While
negotiating the new Common Agricultural Policy, the ministry
boasted, it
had "fought hard - and successfully" to stop subsidy
cuts being "targeted
towards larger farms." It would, it had proposed, do
precisely as the big
businessmen dominating the National Farmers' Union had suggested,
buying
existing small farmers into retirement and discouraging new ones
from
entering the market. The only future it envisaged for small farms
was for
"domestic or recreational uses".
I had challenged these positions during meetings of the
"Rural Sounding
Board", an informal committee convened by MAFF and the
environment
department to canvass opinion for the rural white paper. The
ministers had
claimed that they wanted to hear a wide range of views, which, I
assumed,
included those with which they disagreed. So I was taken aback
when a fax
from the agriculture minister Elliot Morley arrived at Guardian,
addressed
not to the letters editor, but to myself. My article was
"utterly
outrageous and unacceptable," it thundered. "Unless you
publicly apologise
and withdraw these allegations, Michael Meacher and I agree that
there is
no alternative but for you to withdraw from the Rural Sounding
Board."
So much for open government. The fax confirmed, I felt, two of
the
government's central failings. The first is its limited
understanding of
freedom of speech. The second is its inability to grasp the idea
that
corruption is not confined to the receipt of brown envelopes. A
ministry
set up to do one thing (support all farmers, irrespective of
size) but
which, thanks to the pressure exerted by rich and powerful
people, ends up
doing another is clearly a ministry whose purpose has been
corrupted.
This year the government has had ample opportunity to show whose
agricultural interests it represents. In May, when the European
Union opted
to defend consumers from imports of hormone-contaminated beef,
one country
undermined the common position. The UK chose instead to defend
the
interests of the agrochemical companies producing the hormones.
In June
Britain blocked the attempt by France and Greece to introduce a
moratorium
on genetically engineered crops in the European Union. Over the
last year,
the government has allocated a grand total of pounds 2.2 million
for
research into organic farming, for which consumer demand
outstrips supply
by 200 per cent, and pounds 52 million for research into
genetically
engineered food, which no one wants to buy.
This week, the ministry of agriculture would like us to believe,
it has
started to redeem itself. For the next seven years, the
agriculture
secretary Nick Brown has announced, MAFF will spend an average of
pounds230
million on paying farmers to protect landscapes and wildlife,
convert to
organic production and diversify their activities. This trebling
of the
budget for environmental measures "demonstrates" Mr
Brown maintained, "the
Government's commitment to rural communities".
Unfortunately it does just that. While some of the measures are
unquestionably positive, providing desperately needed money for
the
conservation and restoration of rare habitats, the changes are
likely to
help accelarate the destruction of small farms, while supporting
large
ones. Much of the money will be released by cutting farmers'
production
subsidies. Though large farms need much less state help than
small ones,
the same percentage, despite the pleas of smallholders, will be
taken from
all of them. As big farmers, with their managers and secretaries,
are
better placed to harvest the new subsidies than small ones, the
changes
promise to be deeply regressive.
The new money is just a fraction of that required to stop the
orgy of
state-subsidised vandalism which has destroyed nearly all our
most
important farm habitats over the last fifty years. The British
taxpayer
will now be spending pounds230m a year on protecting the farm
environment,
and some pounds5 billion on destroying it. The money allocated to
organic
farming is just one seventh of the subsidy required to achieve
the Soil
Association's modest target of 30 per cent organic production by
2010. Most
alarmingly, the whole package still relies on the big farmers'
repeatedly
broken promise of self-regulation. There is nothing to prevent a
landowner
from destroying a habitat the taxpayer has spent a fortune to
restore, the
moment the price of sugarbeet rises.
The government's problem is that the deal it negotiated during
the European
talks in March leaves it with little room for manoeuvre. Rather
than
insisting that the whole programme be radically changed, it
concentrated
instead on protecting British barley barons.
Yes Mr Morley, your ministry IS institutionally corrupt. Why else
would you
try to stamp out small farming in Britain? Why else would you
continue to
rob the poor in order to support the rich? And why else would you
seek to
silence your critics?
Published in the Guardian 9th December 1999
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