Nourishing or poisoning the Earth — what is the role of food production? Today, the answer is no longer so straightforward. Navdanya president Vandana Shiva will be in Florence for a manifesto against pesticides.
Nourishing or poisoning? What is the role of food in our productive, social and economic systems? A question with an apparently simple answer. And yet its very formulation reveals a drift we are witnessing around the world. "Food is emerging as a central element for wellbeing. We are witnessing an epidemic of chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes, cardiovascular and neurological diseases, a rise in infertility and hypertension," Vandana Shiva explained ahead of the upcoming event organised by Navdanya International in Florence. "New research shows how our health is closely connected to the way our food is grown and processed. The health of the Earth and the health of people must be considered one and the same thing."
Large multinationals seem, however, to be gaining ever greater control over the entire production and distribution chain, maximising private profits without taking into account the evident, and by now well-established, damage to the environment, to workers in the sector and to consumers.
Read also: L'agricoltura intensiva non sta sfamando il mondo, deve lasciare spazio all'agroecologia
And the warnings raised by scientists — or at least the studies not dependent on agribusiness funding — are enough to make one's hands shake. According to the latest research, many of the recent health crises, from those linked to mental health right through to the cancer emergency, would be directly correlated to the environmental and food contamination arising from industrial production models.
The latest alarm was raised by Ispra, the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, which presented the Rapporto nazionale pesticidi nelle acque highlighting the presence of no fewer than 259 agrotoxins in Italian waters. Pesticide residues were detected in 67 per cent of the monitored surface waters and in 33.5 per cent of groundwaters. This is an upward trend compared to 2003: the Ispra report notes that both the number of substances present in waters and the number of contaminated sites are increasing, with a 20 per cent rise in surface waters and 10 per cent in groundwaters. It is in particular glyphosate, together with its metabolite AMPA, that makes its presence felt in Italian waters: both substances exceed the environmental quality standards for waters (EQS) laid down by the regulations at 24.5 per cent and 47.8 per cent respectively of the sites monitored for surface waters.
"The Ispra report represents yet further confirmation of the concerns expressed by Navdanya and by many civil society organisations regarding the production systems of high-chemical-input industrial agriculture," commented Navdanya International director Ruchi Shroff. "The Ispra report shows that agrotoxins persist in the soil and contaminate both surface and groundwaters. We must question the approval process for pesticides, what is actually being assessed and how it is possible that the use of these agrotoxins can be considered safe for the environment and human health. We must demand independent scientific investigations also into the interaction of a single pesticide with others and into co-formulants: these aspects require far greater attention from the authorities responsible for oversight. We cannot accept seeing the environment contaminated and our health put at risk for the profits of agribusiness companies. We must work to create regions and cities free from the poisons of multinationals."
And it is precisely to discuss and propose alternatives to the industrial production model that the Expert Group on Food and Health — comprising some of the most prominent international figures in the field, including Vandana Shiva, president of Navdanya, Hilal Elver, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and Patrizia Gentilini, member of the scientific committee of Isde (International Society of Doctors for the Environment) — will convene in Florence on 16 May. The aim of the meeting is to draw up a manifesto to highlight the inseparable link between food and health, develop global strategies to move beyond the industrial agriculture model, and foster the convergence and action of movements for agroecology and public health around a shared vision of sustainable, equitable and inclusive development.
A new global strategy is therefore necessary to move beyond a system that is by now unsustainable and to relaunch the agroecological model through scientific innovation. But how did we arrive at this situation? Industrial agricultural production experienced its golden age during the so-called green revolution, which was based on a productivist paradigm, itself sustained by the rhetoric of the need to feed a growing world population. More than fifty years on, we can state — supported by the data of the United Nations themselves — that the green revolution has failed its objectives. The number of hungry people in the world has not decreased, and the results of high-chemical-input farming practices have contributed to environmental pollution, putting the health of millions of people around the world at risk. The FAO Director-General Graziano da Silva spoke, at the recent symposium on agroecology, of an "exhausted" model that has not solved the problem of hunger in the world, still suffered by 815 million people in 2016. But there is more. The mantra of productivity at all costs has presented an environmentally unsustainable bill owing to the massive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which have contributed to soil contamination, the pollution of groundwater and the loss of biodiversity.
The FAO's conclusions represent the final seal on the myth that the use of agrotoxins is necessary to feed the world's population. A myth already debunked by the United Nations Special Commissioner Hilal Elver, who had noted that the problems relating to hunger are more closely linked to poverty, inequality and distribution than to production. On the contrary, Elver had warned, the indiscriminate use of pesticides is to be associated with the deaths of around 200,000 people a year from poisoning.
Worrying figures, though they should come as no surprise given that it is now well established that the health problems associated with chemical substances in food span the entire value chain, from the fields to consumers' tables. Exposure to pesticides can occur in many ways, including direct exposure — particularly among workers employed in pesticide production, among vendors and among farmers who apply them in the fields. Exposure also occurs through residues in surface water from agricultural run-off, the contamination of wells and groundwater, wind drift following aerial spraying, and through residues present on fruit and vegetables. The processing phase between field and table is apparently the point at which most synthetic chemicals enter our food: plastics, preservatives, organic solvents, hormones, flavour enhancers and other food additives are all commonly introduced into our diet at this stage.
Read also: Come i pesticidi stanno avvelenando il mondo e tutti i (falsi) miti che li riguardano
Scientific and empirical evidence confirms that the time is ripe for a paradigm shift, as Vandana Shiva argues: "After years of industrial chemical food production systems producing toxic and nutritionally empty products, we are witnessing a growing number of diseases linked to micronutrient deficiencies, while malnutrition, hunger and obesity continue to rise. We need a new paradigm, a new way of thinking about health — one that is ecological, grounded in systems thinking rather than mechanistic reductionism."