A PLATFORM TO UNIFY STRUGGLES FOR ALL HUMAN RIGHTS

The global agricultural system is increasingly being shaped by corporations in their own interests. In the past 40 years we have witnessed a significant shift in power from nation states to corporations as the drivers in the global agri-food system. There are multiple dimensions to this change, including trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation and reregulation in favor of corporate interests, and corporate globalization. This has led to greater authority to corporations to dictate systems of governance and allocate risk in production and distribution systems, and has generated waves of mergers and acquisitions resulting in corporate concentration. Nation states continue to play a role, but not so much as mediators of power relations between capital and national populations. States are increasingly subordinated to the logic of capital accumulation, economies of scale and concentration of technical and financial expertise. This era has also expanded financialization of the system in numerous ways. Since the birth of capitalism, finance has been an integral feature of the system—the lubricant that animates processes of production and distribution. However, in the contemporary era, financial capital relies increasingly on financial engineering to create products (such as derivatives) that enable profit without investment in productive processes.