Globalized Agriculture and Hunger

More food is grown in the world today than ever in the history of humans, yet somehow more people suffer from hunger, 854 million people, almost one out of six. The hungriest people in the world ironically are those who live in rural areas. It seems that the food may be grown in these areas, but food distribution systems and globalized food economies, do not guarantee people access to food as a basic human right. (Madre 2007)

There are many reasons for this, wars which destroy land, villages and farms, not unlike the scorched earth policies practiced against many of our Indigenous peoples here on Turtle Island. People at war cannot grow food and people in refugee camps are hungry. Countries which spend a great deal on the military and the aftermath of war, cannot feed their people.

Another cause of hunger is environmental, the transformation of large ecosystems to agribusiness, or their inundating by dam projects. In other words, what happened to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples along the Missouri River, with the Pick Sloan-Garrison Diversion project is a prime example of this challenge.The dams put the best lands under water and drowned history, causing the villages to be relocated, and the people to be removed from their food and way of life. The 1947 legislation provided for the taking of reservation lands for the Garrison Reservoir. Began in 1946 and completed in 1956, the dam inundated 155,000 acres of prime agricultural land of the reservation. The Pick Sloan project, designated for both power generation and irrigation, was devastating to the community and divided it deeply. The reservoir, now known as Lake Sacajawea, divided the reservation into five segments now identified as districts and largely isolated from each other. For instance, to reach the southern segment, one must travel over 100 miles around the lake. Ironically with the increase in climate related weather changes, the dam project (like many others internationally) is now diminishing in power production effectiveness, largely due to a lack of recharge in the Rocky Mountain region.

This is an example of this problem nationally and internationally, and also provides the example of the White Earth reservation. In specific, the loss of access to the land, through the theft of the land, and removal of Native people to housing projects caused more food insecurity.

The Anishinaabeg continue to have a strong harvesting economy of wild rice, maple syrup, berries, mushrooms, medicines, fish, and game, but do not have the strongest agricultural economy, that was once had. We are committed to recovering this set of relations with our relatives with roots.

We are deeply concerned with the environmental and social barriers to access to food security, and we are concerned increasingly about economic access to food security. In this case, one of the largest issues is who controls the seeds, the irrigation systems and the production systems. Increasingly this is a huge issue as the ownership of seeds, which have belonged to communities and families for generations becomes patented and owned by major corporations. We are also deeply concerned about the potential for genetic contamination of our foods by genetically engineered seeds.