A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Global Trade

Trade and the globalization of agriculture is increasingly “delocalizing” the origin of food and the political authority over food policy. Producers and consumers are often vulnerable to events that take place far away and subject to decisions over which they have little control. Transnational agribusiness, and the global political and financial institutions that support it, exercises tremendous influence over food production, often with great consequences for food security, food safety and the social fabric of communities. One social consequence of intensive agriculture is the consolidation of small farms into large, monocrop farms. As industrialized farming replaces human labor with machinery, millions of people every year are displaced, eradicating societies based on rural farming, where half of the world’s population still lives and works. These farms do not produce food for local people to eat, but instead grow single crops for export, usually luxury items like coffee, sugar, cotton, fruit and flowers. As farming communities dwindle in the face of competition, people are driven off their land and into poverty, usually settling in urban centers. Poverty, not the lack of food production, is widely believed to be the cause of food insecurity and famine.