Andrea Brower

What are we to make of Monsanto’s sponsoring of organic school gardens? Of local food bike tours made possible by Pepsi?

If we create and recreate the world everyday, then how has it become so supposedly absurd to believe we might actually create a world that is honestly making the possibilities of egalitarianism, justice and democracy?

The organic and fair-trade industries are booming, Farmers Markets are the new norm, the word “locavore” was added to the Oxford Dictionary, and Michelle Obama even planted a White House garden. But agribusiness continues to consolidate power and profit, small farmers worldwide are being dispossessed in an unprecedented global land grab, over a billion people are going hungry, and agriculture’s contributions to climate change are increasing. It’s not just that change is slow, but we actually seem to be moving in the opposite direction than alternative food movements are trying to take us.

I write this as an American living in Aotearoa who is deeply concerned by the “trade” deal being negotiated between our countries (or more correctly, between our countries’ corporations and their political cronies). On America’s side, Monsanto, Big Pharma, and Wall Street are attempting to manipulate New Zealand’s laws to eliminate anything that might get in the way of their expansion and bottom-line. On New Zealand’s side, Fonterra hopes for access to the US market. So they are endeavoring to devise a plan amongst themselves (and the elite of several other countries) to maximize their interests (profit, power, market consolidation) — a plan brilliantly named with the most amiable of words, the “Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement” (hereafter referred to simply as the TPP)