The Bureaucratic System Behind the Centralised Food Industry

Who is the one today who can produce food? Who can afford to have their products distributed to the supermarkets?

In the process of deconstruction and demystification of the World's agricultural system, the artist collective Bureau d’Etudes drew a line from the Ford company’s business administration that was inspired by Prussian military organisation and that in return inspired the Ludendorff’s Economical Plan for the War (Kriegwirtschaftsplan) and Gosplan strategic plans in USSR, respectively; American administration was the first to, during the New Deal, apply Fordist planning on agriculture. This soon resulted in the country becoming the world’s main producer and exporter of wheat. Shortly after, the heavy surplus in wheat production was to be compensated by increasing the bread eating habits of foreign consumers. Finally in 1954, the surplus in production could be given out as food aid meant for fighting hunger in the world in the interest of the external politics of the United States. Similar things are happening today with soya and corn crops, especially with the use of corn syrup in the majority of the nutritional products in USA. [*]

Intensification, as this shift in agricultural practice is known, is characterised by an increase in water abstraction, area under cultivation and use of heavy machinery; extended periods of cultivation and high inputs of man-made fertilisers and pesticides; and a reduction in the number of people employed. [*] The system of intensive production manages to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price.

About 500 multinational corporations control the whole food industry; they exercise power over hundreds of thousands of employees and control the process from the seed to the supermarket. Centred around maximising profit and minimising taxes, these companies are built on hierarchies of power where economic interests are placed before social and ecological necessity.

Unlike the third world and developing countries, a significant part of the budget of rich countries is intended each year to subsidize the production of certain foodstuffs. Initially established to help national economies overcome the Great Depression and post World War II food shortage, these subsidizing policies have significantly influenced the disbalance of production capacities and the profitability of food industries worldwide.

The government policy in the USA allows for production of corn below the costs of production. Farmers are payed to overproduce, driven by the large multinational interests. In Europe, the subsidized export of food contributes with ~2% to the gross domestic product but it makes agriculture, in return, unprofitable in developing countries, where the price of the locally produced food amounts to even three times more than the price of a European product.

On the other side, the food business in the rich countries is characterized by a growing scale of companies that control an increasing percentage of the food market. These companies keep farmers under control with loans and conditioning in investments. The farmers have in fact very little say in their own business and are like slaves to these companies. [*]

The European Regulations

"Deciding how much money the EU will spend and how it will be spent is a democratic process." [*]

Since the end of the Second World War, the development of agriculture in the EU has been driven by the pursuit of ever-higher levels of productivity and efficiency. The driving force behind this development has been the agricultural policies of the EU. The CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) was introduced in the early 1960s to provide financial support to farmers and the wider rural community.[*]

The EU farm policy is a very complicated system, "a deep, broad forest for which there is no complete map" [*], as described once by the Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. The common agricultural policy (CAP) has undergone extensive reforms over the last two decades - most recently in 2003 when the EU abolished production-based farm aid. The new scheme still supports farmers incomes but allows them more freedom to grow what the market wants. Food production today accounts for around 55 billion Euros a year, or 40 percent of the EU’s budget. The EU farming sector employs 5 percent of the EU working population. [*]

The EU food safety policy strategy legislates the safety of food and animal feed. It applies the same high standards across the EU. The Commission enforces EU feed and food law by checking its implementation into national laws of all EU countries, carrying out inspections in the EU and outside. [*]

The most recent EU agricultural policies have lead to a shutting down of a large number of smaller farms and the transition of the whole food production to ever larger farms (coupled with the trend of outsourcing the production that isn't profitable under EU standards to other continents). On the other side lays the pressure coming from urban planning to turn all constructible ground into urban zones. Following this shift, the EU started subsidizing a small number of farms to maintain bio-organic growth, although to a far too small degree, according to the opinion of environmental and consumer protection organisations . [*]

Competition & Quality

The border of Europe does not encompass a fully independent ecosystem; the regulations for environmental protection apply only on the inside but are nevertheless affected by the "dirty" and unregulated technology from its surroundings.

The EU had in place a moratorium on the import of genetically modified seeds until 2004. Since then labelling of all foods containing GM constituents is compulsory. And since then genetic engineering has been increasingly infiltrating agriculture in new member and admission states, such as Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia.

When domestic production of feed stuffs is insufficient or unprofitable following such EU standards, it can easily be outsourced outside their borders, to its neighbouring countries or to other continents. Because of the lack of regulation on labeling secondary products produced from animals which have consumed GM feed stuff, this kind of food can then be imported and put on the market. Austria is one of the most resistant countries to the GM food rush. It has no GM food in the supermarket. This however does not count for secondary products. About 60% of the Austrian yearly import of soya is genetically modified.

Apart from the liberal standards for food growing in the third world countries, cheap labor is also a motivating factor for outsourcing production. Which stays profitable even after the transportation costs of lengthy trips the food has to make before it reaches its final destination. Even on a more local scale, a classic Viennese breakfast with all the ingredients sourced in Austria travels at least 5000km on the road.

"In 2002 transport stream analysis of the Austrian foodstuff value creation chain revealed that the road from field to table is becoming ever longer. In the last 30 years the transport output of the chain as a whole has risen by 125%." [*]

"...wide-scale cultivation of genetically modified soya in countries such as Argentina is having huge negative impacts: use of crop sprays has risen drastically, forests are being felled and the nutritional situation of the inhabitants has by and large deteriorated dramatically."[*]

Genetically modified plants are grown today on more than 60 million hectares worldwide, nearly 90% of the area being in North and South America, with 80% in the US, Argentina and Brazil. The United States alone plant over 50% of the world’s GM crops. At the same time, 3% or less of crop land in India and China is given to GM crops. The most grown GM plants today are soya (58%), maize (23%), cotton (12%) and rape (7%).

In 1996 the agricultural company Monsanto launched the pesticide called "Roundup". Next to the pesticide, they have patented the gene of the genetically engineered "Roundup Ready" soya bean that could resist the application of "Roundup". Then the prohibition against seed saving and re-planting was established in the USA. Monsanto now has 75 people employed solely to investigate and prosecute farmers for patent infringement.

Soon after the arrest of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the "friendly occupation" of the country by the US, a new legislation against seed saving was put in place, handing the seed market over to transnational corporations. The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, a whole new chapter on Plant Variety Protection (PVP) has been inserted into Iraq's previous patent law. PVP is an intellectual property right (IPR) or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety.

The Illusion When Looking from Above

Urban planning is a projection of spatial distribution of activities and designated densities within the physical structure. Historically, this has been done by experts zoning down the cities in their two-dimensional representation. The number of people involved and the complexity of zones has increased significantly but the planning is still done from the position of the All Seeing Eye.

Up until now, the all encompassing idea of the inclusion of citizens in the planning processes and decision making, has been limited to certain predetermined participatory forms and fields designed by the ones who were once called "experts". This change is not a qualitative one but more a quantitative shift where we now have more minds included in the system, therefore less responsibility per mind, but not necessarily more space for different ideas.

Simulate a Situation

In order to understand the complexity of the world (of nature), we try to envisage phenomena in their basic physical structure. Anything from a diagram to a detailed physical model or a synthetic environment can be used to simulate it.

When building a simulation, basic assumptions need to be very clearly defined in order for the simulation model to be useful. Every parameter has to be given a value. This means that, in case of very complex processes where these parameters need to be estimated, the results might rely on unrealistic assumptions, or infact be biased to a particular result or eventuality.

The other problem of simulation is predictability of the outcome. Since the simulation is a human-made system, all inputs will be determined by the creators and therefore all possible outcomes limited by their imagination. It is very unlikely to find something we didn't make space for to spontaneously appear.

Just as statistics can be tweaked and refined to prove certain facts, simulations can be to tuned in favor of certain scenarios.

When discussing the use of simulation games as an expert tool, we can draw a line from theories of the ludic society (Huizinga, Nieuwenhuis) to the development of games by the entertainment industry which we can "get good at", and which are paralleled by the development of critical games that try to "explain the world" through their subversion of simulations and construction of unexpected meanings.