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Witness for Peace Northwest
Delegation to Nicaragua
REPORT
Linking our Food Security with Nicaragua
October 21 – November 2, 2005

Introduction

In October 2005 thirteen delegates from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania traveled to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace Northwest to explore food security in Nicaragua along with links to our own food security. Delegation members included small farmers, teachers, social workers, journalists and many first time travelers to Nicaragua. This was the first Witness for Peace delegation to focus on food security issues.

The International Team members who staff our office in Nicaragua pulled together a packed schedule of meetings and visits to agricultural organizations, communities and farms to give us a broad sense of the Nicaraguans’ struggle to achieve food security. We visited organizations working in agricultural policy and advocacy, and we met with a national union representing the interests of small and medium-sized farmers. We learned about two programs working to restructure agriculture and food security within a community context. We heard a presentation about initiatives in producing and marketing coffee and visited both a thriving coffee cooperative and a profoundly poor coffee producing community. We were inspired by a model farm in the Sebaco region.

Our time was divided evenly between Managua and rural Nicaragua. We had home stays in La Pita, a coffee producing and ecotourism community, and El Regadio, a community with an agricultural cooperative producing corn and beans. Neither community has food security. In El Regadio we encountered strong anger and even a sense of despair growing out of the oppression of U.S. and U.S.- backed policies.

We heard from an astute and moving Nicaraguan Economist who challenged our worldview and painted a grim picture of the direction of U.S. policy. We were unable to meet with USAID, the U.S. Embassy or the policy arm of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Food Security/Food Sovereignty. What is Food Security? The concepts of Food Security and Food Sovereignty have similar meanings in the United States but different in the Third World. In the United States Community Food Security is the assurance that all residents of a community can obtain a safe, culturally appropriate and nutritionally adequate diet through a food system that maximizes community self-reliance, sustainability and social justice. The concept rejects a globalized food system in which the majority of food is produced where the costs are lowest and sold where the prices are highest.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food security differently. The FAO convened World Food Summits in 1996 and in 2001 during which Food Security was defined as adequate and safe caloric intake regardless of the systems of production and distribution of the food supply. Their proposals to eliminate hunger emphasize trade liberalization, biotechnology and genetic engineering over strengthening of production by the poor themselves for local markets. This approach leaves the door open for large-scale trade in food, including dumping of commodities and genetically modified crops (GMOs). In response to this approach to food security in June 2002 representatives of many southern nations countered with the concept of Food Sovereignty.

“What is Food Sovereignty?" Food sovereignty is the right of a country to control its own food and agriculture. Toward this end each country needs to be able to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives. Food sovereignty does not negate trade but rather promotes trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production.

Food Sovereignty requires placing priority on food production for domestic and local markets, ensuring fair prices for farmers, having the power to protect internal markets from low-priced imports, access to land through genuine redistribution, community control of water and genetic material and recognition and promotion of women’s role in food production.

The concept of Food Sovereignty represents a departure from the globalization of agriculture and the food systems being developed under that model. It challenges the definition of development both in the United States and in the developing world. It is a major issue of the international agricultural debate and the primary reason for the failure of WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico. The concepts embodied in Food Sovereignty were reflected in the goals of the Nicaraguans with whom we met. 

Our report is divided into seven sections:

1. Issues in Food Security for the Nicaraguan People

2. Impact of U.S. Policy on Nicaragua’s Food Insecurity

3. Sustainable Alternatives Enhancing Food Security within Nicaragua

4. Internal Structural Changes sought by Nicaraguans

5. Commonality with United States Food Security/Sovereignty

6. Seeking a Different Paradigm and a Different Future

7. Reflection and Action

Issues in Food Security for the Nicaraguan People

“We don’t have food security in this country. That is our reality.”

Augusto Castillo Obregøn, farmer and community leader, El Regadio

Nicaragua, with a population of 5.36 million, has 17,000,000 acres (10,000,000 manzanas) under cultivation. That’s over 3 acres/person yet 80% of the population lives in poverty and lacks food security. One third of children are chronically malnourished. People migrate to Costa Rica and the United States seeking income and food security. The Nicaraguan Constitution requires the government to guarantee food security. Why then is there so much food insecurity?

• Access to Land. Access to land is the basis of food security. Most small and medium sized farmers acquired their land following the 1979 revolution when large land holdings were divided among peasants. Many have never been given legal title to their land, and many ex-patriots and foreigners have attempted to reclaim the holdings. A Property Institute was established to resolve the conflicting claims but with little action. Those without land holdings must work on large plantations for meager wages, emigrate to other countries, work in maquilas or starve. Assistance from NGOs typically reaches only those with land.
   

• Access to Capital. During the 1980s the Sandinista government established credit agencies for small and medium sized farmers. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) those credit agencies were dissolved and priority lending went to large producers. Without access to affordable loans small and medium sized producers cannot expand or develop their production; instead they attempt to maintain a meager living from one year to the next. Ironically, small producers contribute significantly to GDP, farming 65% of the total land in production and producing 57% - 90% of the most common products, but they do this without access to credit.
   

• Limited Knowledge of Sustainable Agricultural Systems and Little Access to Technical Assistance. Most Nicaraguan campesinos farm by hand or with oxen and have little access to knowledge and technical assistance in areas of crop diversification, irrigation technology, maintenance of soil, high quality animal feed, value-added opportunities and marketing strategies.
   

• Policies that prioritize commodity exports over local food production. Since 1950 the model of development in Nicaragua has emphasized the export of raw materials, such as bananas, coffee, sugar, cotton and beef, over the production of food for its population. However, in commodity production producers receive only a small portion of the value of the crop, a problem compounded by fluctuating prices on the global market. The low prices of commodities on the world market means that this export-oriented model has had little impact on poverty. Small producers end up unable to pay their debts, which leads to an inability to get credit and eventually bankruptcy. These farmers then migrate to the cities, resulting in a constant crisis in food production.
   

• Environmental Destruction and Natural Disasters. Deforestation has contributed to loss of topsoil and increased the impact of natural disasters. In 1997 Hurricane Mitch destroyed productive land and infrastructure. This year Hurricane Stan drowned a large portion of the bean and corn crops in the communities we visited. In addition to flooding, loss of the water-holding capacity of the trees has brought drought. Misuse of the environment by farmers has also been very destructive to the land, and heavy use of chemicals, including by United States corporations, has poisoned the soil.

We heard about a particularly egregious example of the unethical use of chemicals - the use of Nemagon on banana plantations. Nemagon or cloropropano (DBCP), developed by Shell and Dow, was registered for use in U.S. agriculture in 1964 and introduced in Central American Agriculture by Standard Fruit Company (Del Monte and Chiquita) in 1969. Subsequently, the chemical was banned in the United States but its use continued in Central America. An estimated 65,000 Central Americans have suffered male infertility, damage to liver, kidney, respiratory and digestive systems, endocrine disruption and cancer. Workers have suffered pain in their bones, black spots on their bodies, and many children have suffered birth defects and died in infancy. Chemical and fruit companies have enjoyed profits and U.S. consumers have enjoyed low prices for bananas. Workers have won mitigation suits, and Nicaraguans have started a campaign to rid their soil of poison and promote organic agriculture.

• Coffee Crisis. Nicaragua’s coffee industry fell into crisis five years ago. Coffee constitutes 27% of Nicaragua’s total exports. As with other commodities producers have little control over price. During 2001 coffee from Vietnam and Brazil flooded the international market, and prices plummeted 65%. Hundreds of thousands of coffee producers and workers were left with no source of income. There is no food security when there is no income. Recovery from this crisis is ongoing. On the delegation, we visited two coffee producing communities – one somewhat insulated from the crisis and one made of families left homeless and without means of survival.  Both cooperatives had been coffee plantations controlled by single landowners prior to the 1979 revolution.
   

• Poor Infrastructure, especially roads. Most roads in Nicaragua are deeply rutted dirt roads. During the rainy season, which is the primary food production season, movement of goods can be especially difficult.
   

• Inadequate income and lack of a safety net. Seventy-five percent of Nicaraguans live on $2/day or less. We were given the challenge of attempting to purchase a day’s supply of necessities at a local market on that amount of money. We returned with meager provisions. Nicaragua has no programs of income support or publicly funded food support such as our food stamp program.

Our poignant visit to the coffee producing community La Pintada highlighted the devastation brought on by many of these issues. The members of this community had been left without access to land, capital or income by the coffee crisis. After years of protests they now hold land in a remote location, where they live in flimsy shelters with inadequate sanitation. The price they receive for their coffee is poor and the recent hurricanes drowned this year’s food crops.

We were greeted with smiles by the children, whose bellies were distended and hair was bleaching from malnutrition. The community received us in their “schoolhouse,” an open post and beam structure, which is the place of learning for 120 children. The representative from the cooperative communicated to us their struggle for survival, and their lack of some of the most fundamental human rights, such as access to food and latrines. Most families in “La Pintada” were surviving on one meal a day.

La Pintada’s reality demonstrates the vulnerability of the small-scale producer within the agro export model. You cannot eat coffee, and you cannot purchase adequate nutrition on the meager prices paid to producers of commodity coffee. These two realities are the faults in an economic system over which producers have no control. Small-scale producers need alternatives to obtain sovereignty over their future

New Threats to Food Security.

Fears of new threats to food security and food sovereignty were voiced repeatedly by Nicaraguan farmers and agricultural advocates. These fears are (1) the inability of farmers to compete, and therefore, survive under the free trade agreement known as CAFTA, 2) Potential damage to Native Seeds through introduction of GMOs, and (3) Potential privatization of water along with increases in the price of electricity.

• Inability of Nicaraguan farmers to compete under the Central American Freed Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA is a trade agreement with all the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic recently signed by Nicaragua. The Agreement forces Nicaragua to import guaranteed quantities of food commodities produced in the United States. U.S. agribusinesses are able to sell these commodities below their cost of production in Nicaragua because the U.S. Government subsidies the cost of production in the states. Over time the Agreement removes the ability of Nicaragua to protect its production of staple crops from these cheap imports.
  
  The Nicaraguans perceive this Agreement as putting them in an unequal competitive relationship with the United States and, therefore, grossly unfair. The United States has large, technically advanced farms and large government subsidies. In contrast Nicaragua has small farms worked by hand and little if any government support. Policy organizations estimate that only 34% of Nicaraguan businesses will benefit from CAFTA and 66% will be excluded. Those benefiting will have more advanced technical development, market capacity, financing and contracts with the United States.
  
  What will happen to the Nicaraguan farmer who can no longer sell rice and beans because U.S. imports are cheaper? What will be the means of survival? If the country is forced to stop or reduce production of its staple crops, where will it find food security?
   

• Potential damage to Native Seeds through introduction of GMOs. Nicaraguan farmers have developed seeds suited to their soils and climates and resistant to local pests. Compliance with the Central American Free Trade Agreement will result in the introduction of GMO crops and seed from the United States. Several times we heard strong anger and fear over the inevitable damage to native seeds and resultant loss of control over the country’s food supply. “GMO seed takes away our right to live as a people,” a sentiment expressed by a representative of ATC Managua. In the short term this is an issue of food sovereignty. No one knows what the longer-term consequences will be.
   

• Potential privatization of water and increases in the price of electricity. Throughout the delegation we heard fears of the privatization of the water supply, which is being strongly promoted by international entities. Water is currently free to users, and irrigation technology has great potential to increase the number of crops grown per year, thereby increasing both income and food security. Nicaraguan producers could not compete in the international market if they were required to pay for water, and Nicaraguan citizens, already malnourished, could not pay the necessary price increases. In the community of El Regadio producer and community leader Augusto Castillo Obregon claimed that the entire country would oppose water privatization, and any attempt to force it might result in war. This strong statement from a community that has suffered greatly from two recent wars reflects the depth of their anger and the desperateness they feel.

As a condition of ongoing loans and debt relief the IMF required Nicaragua to privatize the generation and distribution of electricity. State funded development of the electrical sector became a means of private gain. However, old, inefficient distribution lines could not yield the desired profits. Therefore, in October 2005 the IMF demanded a 25% increase in the price of electricity. According to Nicaraguan economist Carlos Pacheco complying with this demand would have a disastrous impact on the entire productive sector including agriculture.

All of the above factors contributing to the lack of food security for our Nicaraguan neighbors are direct or indirect consequences of U.S., IMF and World Bank policy. We will explore these policies in the next section.

Impact of U.S. Policy on Nicaragua’s Food Insecurity

“Poverty grows every day here. Our problems started in 1990 with Neoliberal policies. Our government is servile to the U.S. government. It doesn’t care about the Nicaraguan people. People get depressed and die. They see no alternative.” 

“Why don’t they (the United States and the International Financial Institutions) allow us to manage the internal affairs of Nicaragua?”

Augusto Castillo Obregøn, farmer and community leader, El Regadio

One of the most disturbing experiences of our delegation was the intense anger expressed toward the United States government. This anger grows out of policies the U.S. forces on the Nicaraguans directly, such as free trade agreements, or indirectly via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Nearly all the reasons for food insecurity in Nicaragua are tied to U.S., IMF and World Bank policies. The United States has by far the dominant voice in both the IMF and the World Bank; therefore it can manipulate the policies of those institutions to accommodate its agenda. What are some of the policies the U.S. and its surrogates, the IMF and World Bank, force on Nicaragua, and how do those policies impact Nicaraguan Food Security?

• Neoliberal Economic Policies. For twenty-five years the United States has pursued a set of economic policies in which the central tenet is free, unfettered markets function best for the well being of all. These policies are known as Neoliberal Economic Policies. The wealthy countries of the world have been able to force these policies on developing nations because of the economic leverage they hold, due most especially to the external debt of developing nations. The application of these policies in Nicaragua has impacted food security in several major areas, and the recently passed Central American Free Trade agreement ensures additional impacts.
   

• The principal components of this economic philosophy and the consequences of its application in Nicaragua include:

o    Development of and reliance upon the private sector as the engine of economic growth. This principle seeks to limit government services and government’s role in developing and guiding a nation’s economy. Central features include reducing and privatizing public services and attracting foreign investment. Privatization of utilities is a central component and is often required by the IMF as a condition of debt relief or new loans. Under privatization corporations receive the benefits of state investment spent establishing the systems under which the utilities are generated and delivered. In Nicaragua this policy has been used to force the privatization of electricity, and now intense pressure is being applied to privatize the water system. Also under this principle Nicaragua has been forced to reduce government services, including health, education and technical assistance to farmers.

o    Comparative Advantage. Under this 19^th Century economic principle each country or entity should produce what it does best and then trade that with other countries. Application of this principle throughout the Third World has led to a “race to the bottom” for investors seeking the highest return. In Nicaragua we see the development of the export market over local food production as a key application of this principle. Nicaragua’s value to large agribusiness corporations is in the production of coffee, bananas, sugar cane and beef for U.S. consumers as well as in the consumption by Nicaraguans of basic grains produced in the United States. Self-sufficiency and food sovereignty are subordinated to this principle.

Operating under these two principles the U.S. and the International Financial Institutions forced reductions in government spending in support of agricultural cooperatives. During the 1980s Sandinista era 780 agricultural cooperatives were formed. With training and technical assistance from both a national organization of farmers and ranchers (UNAG) and the government the cooperatives acquired machinery and markets, and poverty was greatly eased for the campesinos. Beginning in 1990 the U.S., the World Bank and the IMF sought to undermine these cooperatives in a movement known in Nicaragua as “Death to Cooperatives.” Most of the 780 cooperatives ended in 1993 due to lack of financing. The loss of cooperatives meant the loss of an economy of scale for small producers, who were forced to revert to subsistence living.

Difficulties accessing land and capital can be traced to these principles. U.S. policy favors larger-scale production on large land holdings and therefore the government has interfered with granting peasants title to land. The IMF forced the closing of the credit union for small and medium-sized farmers.

o         Free Trade Agreements. These agreements remove tariffs that countries have used historically to protect their internal economies. They also go significantly beyond tariff removal with multiple provisions reflecting the Neo-liberal model. An important provision is the requirement that a country permit foreign investment with few, if any, requirements or limitations. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signaled the beginning of this approach to trade. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) reflects portions of NAFTA as well as World Trade Organization policies and policies covering trade in services. As with other free trade agreements, the terms of the agreement supercede national law. The results of this kind of policy in Mexico have been devastating for small Mexican farmers and for Mexican food security.

The Nicaraguan Assembly ratified CAFTA just two weeks before the delegation arrived, and, therefore, it was in the forefront of most everyone’s thinking. Agricultural producers throughout Nicaragua had been overwhelmingly opposed to CAFTA. Why then did the Assembly ratify the agreement? We were told that in early October U.S. State Department representative Robert Zoellick blackmailed the Nicaraguan national assembly into signing by threatening to withhold funds from the Millennium Challenge Account if it failed to do so.

Impact of CAFTA on Food Security. When the U.S. sells its agricultural commodities on the Nicaraguan market below the cost of production for Nicaraguan farmers, Nicaraguan farmers cannot survive. Expected increases in the cost of utilities exacerbate the problem. Farmers will be forced to give up subsistence farming to work in a maquilla (sweatshop) or grow products for United States consumption. Land may move out of agricultural production and the knowledge base to grow Nicaragua’s staple crops may be replaced by knowledge of more exotic crops. Employment generated by Nicaragua’s agricultural sector will decline. Thousands of persons who now grow their own food may be forced to purchase food on wages of $1 or $2 per day.

• U.S. Farm policy that encourages overproduction and subsidizes exports. Nearly everyone we met expressed distress over subsidized U.S. farm products and the unfairness they introduce in the marketplace. Since the late 1980s, and particularly since 1996, the US government’s official policy has been to permit and even encourage a free fall in domestic farm prices while simultaneously promoting rapid liberal trade measures to open new markets for US products. As a consequence of this policy production rose beyond demand, global prices fell below the cost of production, and the US government responded with subsidies. This practice of paying farmers the difference between their cost of production and the global price allows U.S. farmers to undercut farmers from other countries. Our reading indicated that this is a complex issue in which the root problem is deliberate over-production in the United States, initiated by policy changes in 1996. The 1996 Freedom to Farm legislation eliminated tools of both the government and farmers to ensure a stable price for their commodities and allowed prices to go as low as they could.
   

• U.S. Withdrawal from the International Coffee Agreement and World Bank policy to promote over-production of coffee. From 1962 until 1989 the United States was a signatory to the International Coffee Agreement, which placed strict limits on coffee exporting nations in order to maintain a reasonable price for coffee producers. This foreign policy initiative was intended to keep Nicaragua and other Central American coffee producing nations dependent upon the United States so that these nations would not be attracted to socialism or communism. With the demise of the Cold War the United States abandoned this policy, and in so doing, abandoned the Nicaraguan coffee worker. Concurrently, the World Bank encouraged Brazil and Vietnam to substantially increase production of coffee. Production from these two countries flooded the world market, and prices plummeted. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguan coffee producers and workers were left with no source of income. There is no food security when there is no income.

We can see that nearly all of the above policies are designed to shape the Nicaraguan economy around the objectives of U.S. economic policy and corporate profits. Nicaragua has little power against the strength and size of the U.S. government and global corporations. Popular resistance to “U.S. interests” has been suppressed historically through the use of military force, economic policy and involvement in the internal politics of the country. The United States forced a military presence on the Nicaraguans for 150 years, either through direct use of U.S. troops, through support of a military dictator or through waging war against the Sandinista government. Since 1990 the oppression has been through economic violence.

According to Nicaraguan Economist Carlos Pacheco, the United States is pursuing an integrated political, military and economic strategy throughout Latin America, wherein political and military activity is designed to sustain U.S. economic power. When implementation of economic policy encounters resistance, political and military strategies are employed. Pacheco asserts that the goal of this integrated strategy is to control natural resources, capital and the economy for the benefit of large corporations and U.S. economic dominance. The well being of the country of Nicaragua and its citizens are incidental except as they serve “U.S. interests.” It is a grim picture.

Alternative Models Enhancing Food Security within Nicaragua

• CIPRES (Centro para la Promoción, la Investigación y el Desarrollo Rural y Social). The non-governmental organization CIPRES has initiated a holistic system of food production to combat hunger and poverty. The Program works both with communities and with families within the community by offering capitalization and training. Program components include ecological practices to save and renew soil, product diversification, production of food for both consumption and sale, use of animals for fertilizer, income and family nutrition, and value-added processing.

To qualify for this food production program a family must own 1.7 acres of land and agree to “repay” the benefits given to them by sharing those benefits with two other families in their community. Contracts are signed with the women in each household, a package of goods valued at $2,000 is awarded and technical training is initiated. The package consists of a milking cow, a pregnant pig, 5 hens, 1 cock, a bull, oxen for 15 families, seeds, a gray water filter, and a bio-digester The goods given to the family are repaid into a community savings fund or a micro-credit fund to benefit more members of the community. This structure allows the initial investment to be reproduced exponentially.

Families within each community are organized into cooperatives or another form of organization. The cooperative develops strategies to market and add value to the communities’ crops. Additionally, participating families must work with other organizations in order to create an economic platform for the community to flourish. These organizations include universities, churches, non-profit organizations and institutions, NGO’s.

Through this holistic program CIPRES is working to ensure the economic viability of small and medium-sized producers, who are the major food producers in the country. By investing resources that the producers themselves could not directly afford, the program enables producers to increase both production and income. Increased production and protection of the land through ecological practices means increased food security. Four thousand families and 106 cooperatives have participated in the program; sixty percent of families have repaid the $2,000 package.

The CIPRES program impressed us for its comprehensiveness and its ability to extend its benefits to all producers within a community. The delegation had a fascinating meeting with program administrators but, unfortunately, we did not meet with a community receiving assistance through CIPRES.

• Chaguitillo. We were all inspired by the small, beautiful organic farm at Chaguitillo in the Sebaco region. The farm has been established as a closed agricultural system wherein everything is reused, no inputs are purchased, and needed seeds are produced. The diversified, year-round crop production includes bananas, coffee, Neem trees, pineapple, a number of vegetables, clove plants and grapes from California. Chickens and pigs are raised for fertilizer.

The farm operators believe they can compete in the global market by maintaining very high quality production, keeping costs low and adding value to the crops. Currently, the farm markets its produce regionally but would like to supplement that income with a high-end export market. The pride in the farm and the belief in the farm’s competitiveness were in great contrast to the dismay over CAFTA we encountered elsewhere in the country. Hopefully, the Chaguitillo producers will be able to extend their model in other regions and partner with similar farms to gain leverage in the global market.

Only $12,000 was needed to establish this model farm. Extending the model requires access to land, knowledge of closed system agriculture, seed saving technology, access to water to extend the season, access to markets and access to start-up capital.