Civil society challenges the global food system: the International Monsanto Tribunal

Abstract

The global food system has severe implications for human health, soil quality, biodiversity, and quality of life. This paper provides an analysis on how transnational alliances challenge the global food system. We illustrate this by focusing on the activities and hearings of the International Monsanto Tribunal (IMT), held in the Hague in 2016. The IMT provided a platform for civil society and enabled transnational alliances to demand attention for local struggles and legal disputes in relation to Monsanto's products. With the involvement of independent and renowned experts, the knowledge exchange between local victims and civil society was enhanced, and the IMT reinforced social movement's goals towards demanding justice for the negative effects associated with the global food system. The advisory opinion determined that Monsanto's practices are in violation with human rights standards. The IMT exemplified that there is an immediate need for structural change in the current global food system.

Power to the people? Food democracy initiatives’ contributions to democratic goods

“…civil society organizations which aim for food system transformation through influencing existing political processes and institutions (Schiff 2008 ; Prové et al 2019 ). Other types of democratic innovations within the realm of food include the emergence of citizen tribunals (Busscher et al 2020 ), hackatons (Termeer and Bruinsma 2016 ), or citizen summits at national level, such as France’s ‘National Food Conference’ (Candel et al 2020 ). Whereas the academic corpus about such initiatives, food policy councils in particular, is rapidly growing, relatively few systematic and comparative assessments going beyond single- n thick case descriptions have been undertaken to date.…”

“…innovative arrangements designed to mitigate democratic deficits of the policy process in traditional democratic institutions. Examples of such initiatives in the realm of food include the development of urban and regional food policy councils (Schiff 2008 ; Rocha 2009 ), the International Monsanto Tribunal (Busscher et al 2020 ), and the use of deliberative citizens’ summits at national level.…”

Land Grabbing and International Political Economy: Towards a Critical Neo-Gramscian Theoretical Model of Land Governance in Latin America

“…The strong acceptance of the discourse that associates large-scale industrial agricultural production with efficiency, economic growth and hunger alleviation (Ioris 2018) proves that this model of agricultural production has become hegemonic. Despite growing questioning (Busscher et al 2020), the ideas that encourage the reconfiguration of agricultural structures in food-producing countries according to corporate interests enjoy broad social support. Meanwhile, not only the impacts of this model on health, the environment and food security but also alternative forms of production are disregarded.…”

Activists as strategic science communicators on the adoption of GMOs in Uganda

“…Patents would make it illegal for farmers to plant certain seeds without getting the permission of multinational companies, such as Beyer which recently acquired Monsanto), Syngenta, Pioneer (Corteva) and Pannar that sponsor the breeding of seeds. Moreover, based on (perception) studies from other countries [Busscher et al, 2020;Rzymski and Królczyk, 2016], activists have also argued that GMOs do not necessarily increase yield [Dowd-Uribe and Schnurr, 2016], but can lead to increased cases of cancer [Singh, 2018]. Further, activists contend that GMOs can lead to contamination of other gardens, since, in the case of Uganda, in densely populated areas, the gardens are so congested that it is hard to tell whether the gardens belong to an individual or several individuals due to the prevalence of subsistence farming.…”

“…Activists such as Food Rights Alliance, 16 Pelum Uganda, 17 Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI) 18 and Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) 19 use their own websites and are also helped by partner organisations to publish their content. Activists have particularly argued that the use of Roundup, a pesticide that contains glyphosate -a chemical linked to cancer [Busscher et al, 2020], reduces Uganda's competitiveness in international trade, and exposes unsuspecting consumers to health and environmental hazards. 20 Scientists have used social media to counter the activists.…”